Why your body looks and feels different in your 30's and 40's

You're eating the same way you always have... maybe even better than you did in your 20s. So why does your body feel completely different?

The answer isn't that you're doing something wrong. It's that your body actually is different and nobody has explained to you what that really means.

The strategies that worked a decade ago weren't designed for the season of life you're in now, especially if your body has carried, birthed, and nourished babies.

In this episode, we're breaking down exactly why your body has changed, the mistakes most moms make when they notice something is off (hint: eating less and doing more cardio isn't the answer), and how to start fueling your body in a way that actually gets you results now.

🎙️ In this episode we'll cover:

• How to fix your metabolism instead of unknowingly making it worse
• The most common mistakes moms make when fat loss feels stuck
• How pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood in general can affect weight loss
• Practical tips on how to care for your body in your 30s & 40s to lose fat, build muscle, and actually feel good

PS - doors for Strong as a Mother close THIS Friday at 11:59 p.m. EST!

We kick off Monday, May 11th. This is my signature group coaching program that teaches you how to lose fat and fit in your clothes again without another restrictive diet or feeling miserable in the process. You get hands on support and coaching from me so we can turn your body into a fat burning machine again while actually enjoying the process.

You can sign up here!

Want to connect with Christie?

Make sure to follow Stronger Within so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop weekly with practical tools for sustainable fat loss, mindset shifts, and habits that fit your life.

If you want to learn how to make consistent fat loss progress while balancing mom life (or you identified your struggles in this episode and want help) join my 3 day LIVE event Ditch The Diet: Mom Edition for free on June 9th-11th! Register for free here!

Ready to go ALL in on your goals with high touch, personalized coaching and strategy so you can lose fat consistently without restricting yourself or spending hours in the gym? Apply for 1:1 Coaching!

Looking for a low commitment way to get direct access to me and my expertise? Join my group coaching program, Strong as a Mother!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magri, and here we talk about becoming stronger within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body and life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. So today we are going to talk about why you're eating the same way you did in your 20s, but things aren't moving the same as they used to. All of a sudden your body is responding differently. It feels completely different. You might even have healthier habits now in your 30s and 40s than you did in your 20s, but you're still feeling stuck, tired, fluffier, frustrated, inflamed, bloated, all the things you're like, what the heck is going on? And everybody tells you that your body changes after you have kids, but you did not expect it to be like this. And that's hard, right? Like when I think of motherhood, I love being a mom. I love motherhood, but it already stretches and challenges us in enough ways. So to feel out of place in our body only adds this extra layer of stress and frustration. And sometimes I find even resentment. And it does leak into the way that you show up daily for your kids, around your husband, as a friend, as a human in general, and you know you want to change it, but you just aren't sure why it feels so hard. So today I'm going to walk you through why your body has actually changed the mistakes most moms make when they notice something is off, and exactly how to fuel your body and take care of your body in a way that works for the season of life that you're actually in. So if you're like, yes, Christy, this is me. My body is completely different. This is very frustrating. Please tell me how to fix this. I'm gonna help you. So don't worry, we're gonna get right into it. So I want to first of all validate what you're experiencing because I think as moms, we carry a lot of shame around this, and I want to dismantle that right away and allow you to give yourself some grace because your body has changed, your entire life has changed. And so you need to recognize that the things you were doing five, 10, 15 years ago to take care of yourself, it's it's gonna look different to what you have to do now. And I want to start with chatting about our hormones. While this is not maybe the most exciting topic in the world, it is really important and it plays a big role because in your 20s, your hormones are generally more stable. So when we think about our hormones as females, estrogen and progesterone, in our 20s, they're doing their thing. Your insulin sensitivity is usually higher, meaning your body can handle carbohydrates more efficiently. So maybe you could have eaten differently and not packed weight on like you do now. And cortisol, which is your stress hormone, it's there, but it's probably not as heavily active as it is now, especially in motherhood. So now we fast forward to our 30s and 40s, everything starts to fluctuate. Estrogen starts to fluctuate, your progesterone can drop. And when those two hormones shift, everything else really shifts with them, meaning like your mood, your energy, your sleep, your body composition, your hunger levels, your cravings, a lot of different things. Now we layer motherhood on top of that, starting with pregnancy, which pregnancy really does change your body on a physiological level. We think about our hormones, our core, our posture, um, our relationship with food, our hunger, our fullness cues. Your body just spent nine months prioritizing growing and birthing another human being, and that is incredible. And we should be so proud of our bodies for that. But it also means that your body is different now. And then there's postpartum, which by the way, I feel like people only consider postpartum the first few weeks or months, but really I consider postpartum years because it really does take your body time to recalibrate. It takes time for your hormones to recalibrate. If you're breastfeeding, that plays a big role because your estrogen stays low. Sleep deprivation, which basically every mom of littles that I know is dealing with it in some capacity, that directly affects your cortisol, your hunger hormones, like ghrelin and leptin, everything really goes hand in hand, and all of those things impact your body's ability to burn fat efficiently. And then we think about stress, the mom stress, which I probably don't even need to tell you the stress of like just the mental load of keeping tiny humans alive and managing a household and toddler tantrums or cranky teenagers, or you know, maybe you're working and work is stressful, or you're trying to show up for everybody and it's just a very stressful load that you didn't have when you were in your 20s. And again, when we think about high cortisol and all of that stress on our body, it puts our body in this fight or flight response where our body's like, mm-hmm, pump the brakes. I have to hold on to fat because you know, I I don't feel safe right now. And so when people say your metabolism slows down as you get older, which is something that I hear people say a lot, that is a massive oversimplification. Our metabolism just doesn't just randomly decide to slow down. It's like, oh, we're 40, we're slowing down. What really happens is that combination of the hormonal changes, um, muscle loss from years of chronic dieting or under-eating, uh, not strength training, the increased chronic stress that we were experiencing, um, years of disrupted sleep, all of these things really affect how our body use and store energy. So I say all of this to show you how different things are now versus what they were in your 20s. So now I want to go into the mistakes that I see most moms make when they notice this change. They notice that their body is different after having kids because you know it's frustrating. You're like, the weight isn't coming off like it used to. I feel off. What what do I do? And maybe you do what society has told you to do your entire life, which is eat less and exercise more. And I get that. Like the whole eat less, exercise more, the logic makes sense on the surface. It's calories in versus calories out, right? If I just tighten things up, if I just cut this out, if I just do this more, it's gonna work. I'm gonna lose weight. But here's where the problem comes in. That approach does not account for where your body actually is right now. And sometimes, a lot of times, actually, what you're doing is just placing more stress on the body. So not only are the methods that most moms using for fat loss unsustainable, meaning you can't stick with it. You do good for a few days or maybe a few weeks, but then you ultimately fall off. But also, it's not actually what your body needs. And so let's go through some of the common mistakes I see moms make when they're feeling this way. So, mistake number one is eating too little, and this is probably the most common one I see with moms, and it's also the one that breaks my heart the most because you are trying hard. Maybe you're skipping breakfast because you're getting the kids ready and there's no time, so it's not even an intentional skipping a meal, or you're having a small lunch because you're trying to be good, or you know, you're exhausted by dinner, the day was so long, and um you're just tired, so you eat whatever's fast, or you order out most nights, um, or you're good all day, and then at 9 p.m. when your kids are finally in bed, you're ravenous and you end up eating everything that's in sight, and then you feel guilty about it the next morning, and the scale is up, and it's just the same vicious cycle. So when you consistently under eat, especially as a mom who is doing so much physically and mentally every day, your body responds by down-regulating your metabolism, increasing your hunger hormones, and now it's holding on to fat as a protective mechanism. And I think about actually one of my clients who started with me just about two months ago, and she came to me and she was like, Christy, I'm eating 1600, 1700 calories a day. I'm doing all the right things, and my weight just will not go down. It's either staying the same or going up. When we started working together, one of the things we noticed was you're actually underfueling. We increased her calories by 600 and she's losing about a pound per week. So that just goes to show you less does not always mean better. Okay, mistake number two is cutting carbs and eliminating sugar completely. This one kind of goes along with number one, and like society has told us that this is effective, and low carb has really been sold to women for decades as the answer. And sure, some people totally can feel better with fewer carbs and more fats, but for a lot of moms, especially like we just went over dealing with hormone fluctuations, high stress, thyroid issues, going low carb can actually make things worse because we need carbohydrates. Carbohydrates give us energy, and that energy is what we need as moms to be able to keep up with our kids. And when you cut carbs to almost nothing and you're already stressed out, you're already running on eat, you are taking away another one of your body's main tools for being able to manage all of that and really, again, giving yourself that energy you need in a day. And then practically speaking, too, I think about when we cut carbs or we do these things that just are not sustainable, especially for our lives as moms, now you can't eat the same meals as your family. So you're sitting there with your salad that you don't want to eat while everyone else has pasta and you feel deprived, and then you have constant food noise, and now you're stuck in this binge-restrict cycle, maybe where you cut it out, but then you have it in excess. You cut it out, you have it in excess. And you know, it it's that same vicious cycle. And so we don't need to cut carbs, we don't need to eliminate sugar, we need to practice balance, we need to focus on fueling our body, eating good carbs. Sometimes we can have the carbs too that maybe aren't the most nutrient dense, but that is the beauty of tracking macros that you can implement those things into your diet, which we won't go down that today because I could talk and talk about how amazing macros are for moms especially. So, mistake number three is hours and hours of cardio only. And again, I understand where and why this feels logical because it's like, okay, burn more calories to lose more fat. But chronic cardio, especially when you're already under-eating, like we just talked about, get not getting enough sleep. What are we doing now at this point? You're raising your cortisol, your stress levels even more. You're breaking down muscle tissue, it's increasing your appetite, it's leaving you exhausted. I actually remember this cycle when I did 75 hard when I was about a year postpartum with Carter. I was doing so much cardio because 75 hard is two 45-minute workouts a day. I was eating pretty little and I felt so depleted all the time. I remember being so irritable. I had no energy. I was like falling asleep while trying to sit on the floor with my son and play with him or just be like there taking care of him. And I was technically working out consistently and I was doing all of this cardio and all these things, but I I actually felt worse than ever. So again, this comes to more, does not always equal better. All right, last mistake is mistake number four, and that is trying to get back to your pre-baby body. I had to throw this one in there because I want to say this as gently and as firmly as I can. That body is not coming back, and that is okay. Your body is not the same anymore because you aren't the same anymore. Chasing a body that is from a completely different chapter of your life with tactics that were designed for that chapter, that's always going to leave you feeling frustrated. What we need to do instead is shift our goal into first of all, loving the body we have, being so appreciative of our body for all that it's done, growing and birthing a beautiful baby, maybe multiple babies, and shifting your idea of beauty and health, which again, I feel like we are back in the skinniness epidemic where everyone is on freaking Ozempic and everybody just wants to be smaller. And I'm like, no, fuck that. I want to be strong. I want to be the one that can outlift or outrun anyone in the room. I want to be, you know, the mom that takes care of her body and loves her body and does things out of a place of love and appreciation, not hatred, because being smaller does not equal healthier. So those are a few of the common mistakes that I see moms make when they want to make these changes and be healthier after noticing, you know, that their body feels and looks different after having kids or in your 30s and 40s. So let's go into some practical tips about what actually works and how to fix this unhappy place that you're in. So, first of all, I want to be clear right off the bat, which if you know me, you know the way that I coach, you know my style, this is not about a perfectly clean diet. This is not about restriction, it's not about giving up pizza forever. You know, you know that my approach is the exact opposite of that, but we do need structure and boundaries. So let's go through what this should look like. Tip number one is to eat more protein. If there is one change you make after listening to this episode, let it be this. Protein is the most important macronutrient for women in their 30s and 40s. And most women in their 30s and 40s are not eating enough of it. So as we get older, we naturally start to lose muscle mass. And I want you to remember that the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories your body naturally burns at rest. Meaning, people who have more muscle on their bodies in their 30s and 40s can burn fat easier and they can eat more. That is why you can see two people that are different body compositions, they can eat the same exact amount of food in a day, but it affects them differently. Protein is also what builds and preserves that muscle. It keeps you fuller longer, it stabilizes your blood sugar, it reduces your cravings, all things which are obviously very important when you're in a fat loss phase. It is incredibly hard to overeat protein as well. And a cool fact about protein actually is it has the highest thermic effect, meaning that it requires the most energy from your body to to digest over fat and carbs. So it actually gives your metabolism a little boost as well. And like I said, most moms I work with are significantly under-eating protein when they come to me. I see on average, most moms are eating like 30, 40, 50, 60 grams a day when really they need closer to 100 to 130 grams or more, depending on their body and activity and all of that. But you know, it's not difficult. It's actually very simple to get in enough protein. You just need to have that structure when it comes to your meal planning, really making sure that each meal has around 30 grams of protein, choosing snacks that have protein in them, not just crackers and fruit. So this comes back to your meal planning process, which I have an entire episode on that. So make sure you go give that a listen if you're like, how do I implement that? Tip number two is to stop being afraid of carbohydrates. We just went this, uh, we just went over this, but carbs do not make you fat, okay? Carbs in the right amounts at the right times are actually essential for you as a mom if you want to have energy, if you want to build muscle, if you want to sleep well, recover well, and be able to eat meals with your family and all of that. And the key here is context and quality, okay? So we're not talking about eating candy all day. We're talking about rice, potatoes, oats, fruit, whole grains, real food that fuels your body, your brain, your workouts. Um, I'm not just saying, you know, go eat crappy carbs every single meal. We're eating them strategically. Um, but you can absolutely eat carbs and you should be able to eat dinner with your family without making separate meals for everyone. So when we think about what really makes you successful with fat loss, it's having a lifestyle that has some general ease and fits everyone's life. So we always want to keep that in mind with whatever approach we're using to see results. All right, tip number three is to eat enough. This goes along with one thing that these are kind of all piggybacking off of what I just went on what not to do. And I know this feels counterintuitive when the goal is fat loss. I I do get pushback from my clients on this, and then I'm like, ha, I proved you right when I increase their calories, and they're like, oh my gosh, why am I seeing better results than when I was eating less? But you have to eat enough to support your metabolism, especially in your 30s and 40s. Undereating is not a sustainable strategy, it never has been, and it truly can be so destructive for you as a mom in a season of life where your body is already navigating so much, and especially if you are someone who is stuck in that yo-yo dieting cycle, we need to get your body to a point where it feels safe, it feels supported. We are giving it that consistency. And a lot of times when clients come into my program, I will not immediately start them off in a fat loss phase because we need to give your body that security that, hey, you're safe, you're good here, okay. I'm gonna feed you, I'm gonna fuel you. Again, especially if you're someone who has chronically dieted over the years, we need to get your metabolism back up there. We need to create um this awareness of what a healthy diet looks like, and then you earn the right to go into a fat loss phase. But the mistake that most moms make is they're like, all right, I want to lose weight. They immediately drop calories super low, they're not eating enough, it's unsustainable, they fall off, they think they're a failure, they think they don't have enough willpower, and it's just this constant cycle. And so please just eat enough. And if you're not sure, like how do I even know I'm eating enough? How do I know how many calories I should be eating in a day, how much protein, send me over uh a message on Instagram and I'll help walk you through that because I know that it can be feel very confusing. And a lot of the calculators, like even the My FitnessPal calculator, I find sets people way too low on calories. So um my DMs are always open if you need help with that. So uh two more tips here. Next tip is to prioritize strength training. I'm not saying cardio is bad, cardio can be amazing for your heart health, but I want you to consider adding lifting or potentially even shifting your focus to it entirely if that's all you have time for. Because again, building muscle is the most powerful thing you can do for your metabolism as you get older. We just went through people that have more muscle on their bodies can eat more, they burn fat more efficiently. It also improves your insulin sensitivity, your bones, your bone density, which really becomes increasingly important as you go through your 30s, 40s, and beyond. And it also makes you stronger for the physical demands of motherhood. Um, you know, we think about also as we age, getting into our 70s or 80s or 90s, being able to bend over or pick something up, you know, those things we might not think about them now because um, you know, everybody our age can still do that, but it really does play a big role, especially as we age, you know, far beyond. Um, and it changes the shape of your body in a way that cardio can. If you want that toned, defined look that is built through strength training. You can't tone muscle you don't have, so you need to make sure you are effectively strength training. Um, and that doesn't mean you need to spend hours in the gym. Three sessions a week is is plenty. So that paired with eating enough and eating enough protein will do more for your body composition than hours of cardio ever could. All right, lastly, the mindset shift. You didn't think I was gonna really record a podcast episode without talking about mindset, did you? So we need to shift our mindset, and I kind of already touched on this a few minutes ago, but we need to stop approaching this journey from a place of I want to shrink my body, I want to be smaller, I wanna, you know, whatever. We need to start shifting our focus to I am fueling my body to build a strong, healthy body. Because when our goal is restriction, every food decision starts to feel like deprivation. When our goal instead is to fuel our body to perform, to have energy for our kids, to get stronger, to feel good, food really becomes a tool instead of a punishment. This this shift truly can change everything. I know it changed everything for me and my journey, and it makes this journey enjoyable. If we want to be able to stick with this, we need to make sure that we are not miserable in the process. Now, I know what you might be thinking, this sounds great in theory, but I'm a mom. My mornings are chaos. I am lucky if I eat lunch before 2 p.m. How is this actually supposed to work in my real life, Christy? Here's what I want you to know and understand. None of this requires you being perfect. It doesn't require a meal prep Sunday where you're spending four hours in the kitchen or you're lifting five days a week for two hours. It doesn't require eating different food than your family or having all these really strict rules or following a specific meal plan where certain things are off limits. A well-fueled day for you could look like this. Okay, you wake up and within an hour you eat breakfast. This day, maybe it's your overnight oats, which took you all of five minutes to prep yesterday, has 50 grams of protein. It's literally so easy. You open up your fridge, there's no second guessing what you're gonna be eating. You know that it tastes delicious, you look forward to it, and it keeps you full for hours. And because it keeps you full Full for hours, you don't even have to worry about eating until lunch because the food noise is so low, you're not even concerned with what you're eating next. Lunch is whatever you can pull together. Maybe you do um you grabbed a rotisserie chicken and you throw that into an easy salad kit, or you made a uh batch of shredded barbecue chicken in the crock pot and you pair that with some rice and some green beans that you prepped over the weekend, or you do um one of the frozen veggie kits, or it's not a kit. I'm thinking salad kit in my head, but you guys know what I mean. Um, a bag of frozen veggies. All right, now for your snack, you do one of your favorite yogurt bowls and you love chocolate. You love to have sweets every day. So you do a vanilla Greek yogurt bowl and you do some honey, maybe some granola or chocolate chips, some strawberries, and then by the time it's dinner, whatever the family is having. So if you guys are having pasta, cool, let's add some meat in. Or if you're having tacos, okay, that's fine. You can maybe get like a low-carb tortilla, or um, you just have your your serving looks different than the other members of your family. Pizza on a Friday night is something my family loves to do. I can eat it without guilt because I know that I'm planning for it. I know that we enjoy doing that. So that's the first thing I track going into my day. I know that I can still hit my macros that day and work the rest of my day around it, right? So tracking macros is almost like an art form, and it is the most effective way to help your body lose fat in your 30s and 40s. I do not consider tracking macros another diet, but truly learning how to eat for your body in a way that supports it in this season. And all of these things that we are talking about, especially with eating enough, eating enough protein, tracking your food, and we just covered this actually in last week's podcast episode, but it is the most efficient route to get there. So I want to show you, and it's funny because me sharing this day in the life, I'm this is literally my day in the life yesterday, because I'm like, let me just throw in if you couldn't tell, I love my overnight oats and my rotisserie chicken with my salad kit, and I enjoy eating the same thing as my family for dinner. You know, I don't if something feels complicated or I have to live a completely different life and make all these different meals at dinner. Uh, actually, let me be fair, I don't cook. My husband cooks. I can throw things in the crock pot, I can take chicken off a rotisserie chicken and throw it in the salad kit. But like cooking, cooking, I I don't do. But I want to I wanna start. I wanna like I have a very fixed mindset about cooking. So, anyways, different topic for a different day. But I want you to walk away with this today. Your body has changed, right? That's real, it's valid, it's part of the process as we have kids and as we age, the physical demands of motherhood that we deal with, and that means that our approach has to change too. Eating less and doing more cardio was never the answer, and it is especially not the answer now. What your body needs is fuel. We need to fuel your body with more protein, real food, strength training, being consistent over being perfect, being able to enjoy the pizza night with your family. You deserve to feel strong and energized in your body. If you, every single time you try to diet or change your body, you feel depleted, miserable, guilty. That's a problem. That is not sustainable, and that's never going to lead you to the results that you want. And that is exactly why I built Strong as a Mother. Strong as a Mother is my signature group coaching program that teaches moms how to lose fat and fit in their clothes again without strict diets or feeling miserable in the process. Here we really focus on breaking out of that constant dieting cycle. I'll teach you how you can lose fat without feeling miserable in the process and building that lifestyle that actually sticks through every season of motherhood through tracking macros, habit building, mindset work, and strategies designed specifically for your life as a busy mom. We kick off May 11th, so make sure you join us now so you can lock in founders pricing before rates increase on May 8th. The link is in the show notes to join us. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode resonated, I'd love for you to share it or leave a review. It helps this message reach even more women who need it. Until next time, keep becoming stronger within.