Fat Loss After 40: 5 Mistakes Making It Harder Than It Should Be

I spent literal decades doing an hour of cardio a day, eating as little as I could, trying to be a smaller version of myself. I thought cutting more and moving more was the answer. Unfortunately, it was only the answer to an unhealthy version of myself that ultimately stopped making any weight loss progress.

After 40, some of the habits that feel the most disciplined, the ones that should be working, are actually making fat loss harder. 

In this episode, I'm breaking down five of them, why they feel like the right, healthy move, what they're actually doing to your body that we don't want, and what to do instead.

If you've been putting in real effort and not seeing results that match, this episode is going to connect some dots.

👉 Grab The FREE Fat Loss Formula Workbook to calculate your exact protein, calorie deficit, and maintenance numbers.

🎯 TAKE MY FREE QUIZ: 'What's My Metabolism Type?': Find out what's stalling your weight loss + get your personalized action plan.

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🎧 THE PERMANENT FAT LOSS Masterclass Episodes 50–53 — linked in the playlist below.

• E50: Why 95% of Diets Fail Women Over 40
• E51: Your Perfect Calorie Deficit for Fat Loss Over 40
• E52: How to Stop Dieting Without Gaining the Weight Back (Reverse Dieting Explained)
• E53: How to Eat Out, Travel, and Live Your Life Without Gaining the Weight Back

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👋🏻 ABOUT ME
I'm Andrea, a NASM-certified nutrition and fitness coach and founder of Behind the Body. For years, I tried every diet imaginable, avoided weights, and stuck to cardio, all in pursuit of being skinny. None of it worked. At 40, I overhauled my approach and started lifting 3–4 times a week. Now at 45, I have the strong, toned body I spent decades chasing, and I've maintained it for 10 years using the same simple approach. I help women over 40 simplify their approach, build real strength, and get results that actually last. Every week, I cover the science, the strategy, and the honest truth about fat loss and maintenance for women over 40.


MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, exercise, or health routine. Results vary. Andrea is a NASM-certified nutrition and fitness coach, not a doctor or registered dietitian.

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

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Welcome to Behind the Body. I'm Andrea, certified nutrition and fitness coach. In my 30s, I lost 20 pounds and I've maintained it well through my 40s. Every week here, we talk about what's really happening with perimenopause and wake gain, what to do about it, and the brutal but beautiful truth about this stage of life. Whether you're just starting or tired of starting over, you are in the right place, and I'm so happy you're here. Let's dive in. Being a woman is so hard. And I don't mean to sound dramatic, but if you think about your entire life growing up from a teenager to adulthood, we are constantly being told we need to look better, we need to act a certain way, we need to be smaller, be thinner, be petite. It is literally exhausting. And for that reason, if you're like me, I'm 45 years old. You've spent your entire adult life dieting, trying different fads, different supplements, different programs, literally anything that's going to help move the needle. And the unfortunate thing is as we get older, it gets so much harder to lose the weight or to make an impact with what we're doing. And to be honest, I am just so exhausted with all of that. I'm exhausted with everything that this billion-dollar industry is telling us that we should be doing in order to look a certain way as woman. But I am also human. I do want to look a certain way. I do want to feel a certain way. I have a certain standard in my mind of how I like to look. And as a result, I have learned how to fine-tune my health, my nutrition, my fitness routine to work for me at this age. And I am so grateful to be in this place because it was decades of dieting, starvation, so much exercising that barely moved the needle and really just generally made me an unhealthier version of myself. I am so glad to not be there anymore. And I want to bring all women along this journey with me. I want to bring you from that mindset of needing to look a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain size, and trying all of these fads and programs and things that are marketed to us on a daily basis. And I want to make it easier for you. And that is a whole point of my Behind the Body podcast is I have done it all. I have been to the depths of dieting and have finally figured out what works most effectively and most sustainably now at 45 years old. And I have maintained my weight for 10 years. That's why I have this credibility because I have done it. I have been there and I have done it and I've figured it out. And that's not to toot my own horn. I have just been lucky enough to have the energy to fine-tune this regimen to figure out how to make it work for me so that I can be the healthiest, hottest version of myself. Cause you know, aesthetics are important. I'm not going to pretend that they're not. But getting off that tangent, I see women all the time that are doing things that are making fat loss so much harder than it needs to be. And I just want to wrap them in my arms and tell them that there's a better way. And so that's what this episode is going to do. It's going to wrap you in my arms and say, there is a better way. There are five things that I want to talk about in this podcast that I see women in their 40s and 50s doing all the time that are making it more difficult to achieve their goal. And the reason why they're so hard to spot as wrong, or the reason why we think that they are the right things to do is because they all feel like the healthy choice. They all feel like they should be good for us. They all feel like they should be making an impact and helping us achieve our weight loss and weight maintenance goals, but they're not anymore. And in this episode, I'm going to talk about exactly what those five things are, why they're underperforming or just not even working for your body anymore, and what you need to do instead in order to propel your weight loss. Because, like I said, I've lived it and I've learned it. And we're all exhausted. Okay. So I want you to have the clarity so you can make the most of your time and your effort. Okay, let's get into it. Mistake number one is you're doing cardio for your workout and only cardio. And I get it, cardio feels productive. You can sweat a ton, your heart rate goes up, and you burn calories. That is true. But here's the problem: cardio only burns calories while you're doing it. Muscle, on the other hand, burns calories while you're literally doing nothing. Like I am burning calories right now, recording this podcast episode because I have a lot of muscle. After 40, your body naturally begins to lose muscle. This is due to sarcopenia, which is age-related muscle loss. And it starts in our 30s. And every decade past 30, we are losing 3 to 8% of muscle mass due to sarcopenia. This means every year that you skip adding strength training to your exercise routine, your body is losing so much muscle due to sarcopenia, so much muscle due to you not strength training, and your body becomes less efficient at burning fat. And cardio alone doesn't fix that. That's why it's more important now than ever after 40 to switch from doing cardio only or not working out at all to adding two to three strength training sessions per week. And these don't have to be long sessions. You can maximize your time at the gym. You can focus on compound movements that work multiple body parts at once. Exercise such as squats or rows or presses, these are compound movements that work multiple body parts. So you're getting the biggest bang for your butt. That's it. And you don't need to live in the gym. Honestly, 30 to 45 minutes per workout is all you need to build a significant amount of muscle that's going to make you healthier, stronger, lose more weight, and ultimately look better. Now, mistake number two connects directly to this because so many women are dealing with both at the same time without even realizing it. Mistake number two is you're eating less, you're in a calorie deficit, but you're still gaining fat. And I know it makes zero sense. And this is probably the most frustrating one out of them all. But here's what's happening: when you cut your calories too low, which so many women do, your body doesn't just burn through the fat stores, it goes into protection mode and holds onto that fat for dear life. And when you're also dealing with elevated cortisol from stress or hormonal changes or doing a lot of high volume cardio, your body doubles down on fat storage, especially around your belly. And here's a part that makes it even worse. When you eat less overall, your protein naturally drops also. Getting adequate protein is so hard because we're just not a culture set up for protein intake. We are a culture set up for fat intake and processed food and carb intake. So we have to be super intentional about it. But when you're eating less, your protein's dropping. And most women on a good day aren't hitting their protein targets. So you cut your calories without tracking, your protein drops significantly, and the protein is what tells your body to hold on to muscle. So without enough of it, your body starts breaking down muscle as energy. So you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down, and so does the fat loss. It's literally a revolving cycle when you're sacrificing so much to eat less and getting nothing in return. You're actually just eating so little that you're sabotaging your own fat loss efforts. To fix this, you need to know two numbers. You need to know your maintenance calories and you need to know your daily protein target. Now, protein target is somewhat easy. You should aim for 0.7 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, every single day. If you're on a weight loss journey and you have a goal weight, then aim for 0.7 to one gram per pound of your goal weight. That's what's recommended for us women over 40. And again, it's a lot compared to what we're used to. So we need to be really intentional about it. And when you have both of these numbers, your maintenance calories and your protein target dialed in, then you can create a small calorie deficit to give your body what it needs to burn fat while holding onto muscle at the same time. This is the sweet spot. This is why I talk about the fact that a severe calorie deficit is wrong direction for women our age. It does more damage than good. And it takes so much sacrifice and restriction and time and effort. Like, we don't have time for that. We're too old for that. Now, if you want help calculating your maintenance calories and your protein target and also a calorie deficit, I put together a free fat loss formula workbook that walks you through these step by step. And I will link that in the description. It's free and it has everything laid out for you to plug and play. Now, if mistakes one and two are happening at the same time, you're probably stepping on the scale, seeing a number that does not match your effort and feeling completely defeated. Let's talk about that. Mistake number three is using the scale as the only way to measure progress. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves with my clients. I say pet peeve like it's a bad thing against them. It's not. We are human. I am the same way. The minute I step on the scale and I see a number higher than what I expect, I get in my own head and I automatically see myself as like bigger than I am. So this is no judgment. But like I wish I could shake myself out of that, and I sometimes do. I wish I can shake my clients out of this because the scale is not the greatest measurement for progress because it measures everything. It measures your water intake, your muscle, inflammation, hormones, what you ate yesterday. Did you have too much sodium or carbs late last night? Whether or not you've gone to the bathroom yet today. It does not tell you specifically how much fat you've lost. And after 40, with hormones actively shifting all the time, the number on the scale can move for reasons that literally have nothing to do with fat loss. I've had clients lose two inches off their waist in a month, and the scale says that they are three pounds heavier. The scale said failure, that there was no progress, but the tape measure and the way that her clothes fit told the truth. It painted the real picture. So keep the scale if you want. I understand the need for it, but add other measurements as well, like how your clothes fit, how your energy levels are, how your strength progresses and lifting weights. Because one thing is for sure, the scale will never give you the full picture. And the worst part is that it can trick you into thinking that you're not making progress when you are. Okay, mistake number four is how you're approaching your training schedule. If you're working out, if you're lifting weights, you're going to the gym, and you're someone who holds yourself to a high standard or you're a type A personality, then this one is gonna feel familiar. Mistake number four is you're not being intentional about either your training or your rest and recovery. You might be surprised to learn that your body changes during recovery, not during the actual workout itself. The adaptation to your body, to your muscles happens afterwards. So when you don't recover properly, then you don't make progress, or at least your progress is much slower because your body stays tired and it stays deflated. And after 40, your body needs more recovery time than it ever did before because that's just how our physiology works now. And training hard without building in intentional recovery keeps cortisol levels elevated and then slows your results. But the other side matters just as much. Your training days need to count. Showing up at the gym and just going through the motions and using five-pound dumbbells when you know you could be lifting heavier isn't the same as training. You need to be present and you need to be purposeful when you're working out. You need to have a plan, you need structure, and you need to be increasing your reps or increasing weight over time constantly. So think about intentional training, intentional rest, because both matter and neither one of those is optional for your progress. Now, this last one has nothing to do with the gym or your diet, but it's arguably affecting both. Mistake number five is not prioritizing your sleep. And if you're like me, I never valued sleep. It was just something I did when I got to it. I would stay up late watching TV or going out or on my computer or scrolling on my phone or even just like reading. I just didn't want to go to bed because I didn't want to start the next day already. And I feel like a lot of us probably have that same problem. We're just not ready to end the day to start a new one. And so we stay up late and then we get up early. But when you're not sleeping enough, three bad things happen. Your hunger hormone goes up, your fullness hormone goes down, and your cortisol increases. And all three of these things are making it so much harder to lose fat. And after 40, I feel like I say that a lot, but you know, things change a lot after 40. Perimenopause is already disrupting your sleep. Night sweats, lighter sleep cycles, waking up in the middle of the night. So a lot of women are already in a cycle of poor sleep on top of going to bed late and waking up early, which is ultimately driving more fat storage. And fat storage is making hormonal symptoms even worse. Research shows that consistently sleeping less than seven hours a night is directly linked to increased visceral fat. And that is a fat that's around your midsection. As you're getting older and your stomach starts to get bigger or carry more fat, and we're not sure why. That's the fat that's wrapping around your stomach. So you could be literally doing everything else in your power to lose weight and undercut it all with getting under seven hours of sleep. The target is seven to nine hours. That is not a bonus or a luxury or a nice to have or something to catch up on over the weekend. It needs to be part of your weight loss and weight maintenance plan. Okay, that was a lot. And I hope that was helpful. I hope it allowed you to think about your own habits and whether or not you're making any of these mistakes that may be preventing you from making real progress towards your weight goals. So here's what I want you to take away from this episode. One, a lot of cardio is raising your cortisol and increasing your belly fat, or at the very least, keeping you from losing it. So instead, prioritize two to three strength training sessions a week as your primary workout. Two, eating too little, especially without protein, means you're losing more muscle than fat. Find your maintenance calories, your deficit calories, and protein target using the free fat loss formula workbook that's linked below. Three, the scale alone doesn't tell you what's happening in your body. It doesn't tell you how much fat you're losing. So you need to use multiple measures. Four, be intentional with your training and intentional with your rest and recovery. Have a plan for both because both really matter. And five, sleep is not optional. Seven to nine hours has a direct positive impact on your fat loss. None of this is necessarily complicated, but it is specific to where your body is right now, not 10 years ago. Because, like I've said many times in this episode, after 40, things change significantly for us. So we need to change our strategy and our execution accordingly and trust the process. Because one of the critical factors to my success was trusting the process and listening to my body and not doing the same things I've always done and expecting the same result because my body is different now after 40. Now, if you want to learn more about how to lose weight in your 40s and 50s and finally keep it off, because that maintenance part is so important. Listen to my free four-part permanent fat loss masterclass. It's episodes 50 to 53, and I'll link them in the description below. But it's going to walk you through fat loss and fat maintenance step by step to help you make the most progress on your weight loss and your weight maintenance journey. So again, I will link those episodes in the description below. And finally, before you go, I would love for you to become part of the behind the body community where every week I send out a newsletter talking about all things health, fitness, diet, nutrition, lifestyle for us women in our 40s and 50s. If that sounds good to you, you can sign up at behind the body.com forward slash newsletter. I would love to see you there. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend. And I cannot wait to chat with you next week.