5 Reasons Your Calorie Deficit Fails After 40

So you're in a calorie deficit, you're being careful with your food, and the weight just won't budge. I've been exactly there, and I promise you there's a real reason for it. A deficit stops producing weight loss for women over 40 for reasons most people never think to look at, and once you see them, it makes so much sense.

In this episode, I'm getting into what changes in perimenopause that makes losing weight so much harder than it used to be, and why the usual advice stops working the way it used to. A couple of these honestly didn't seem like that big of a deal until I cleaned them up, and they made a HUGE difference not only in my ability to lose the weight but also in keeping it off.

What you can expect in this episode:

• Why your deficit can look perfect on paper and still leave you nowhere
• The perimenopause shift that changes how your body responds to eating less
• A common "healthy" habit that could be slowing your results down
• The first thing I'd check before cutting your food any further

I lost 20 pounds in my mid-to-late 30s and have kept it off for 10 years now, through perimenopause and all of real life, and I'm a double-certified Nutrition and Fitness Coach. So everything I'm sharing here is lived and studied, not theory.

Resources Mentioned: 

🎯 Take the FREE ‘What’s My Metabolism Type’ Quiz that identifies your unique metabolism type and get empowered with a personalized plan to manage your weight confidently → Get it HERE 

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

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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

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If at the end of this episode you found it helpful and maybe even learned a thing or two, consider subscribing to the podcast. And if you have a few extra seconds, leaving a comment. It helps this podcast reach more women like us in our 40s and 50s. Okay, let's get into today's episode. 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 weight 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. How many times have you committed to a diet in your life? You were ready to lose weight. You had a nutrition plan in place. Maybe you started exercising. You followed the diet to a tea. You were making beautiful, healthy, home-cooked meals all week long. You were packing your lunch to take to work with you. You weren't mindlessly snacking. You were truly being so good. And yet, week after week, the scale either did not move or worse, it went up a few pounds. How frustrating is that? All of your efforts feel like they've gone to waste. Some of the reasons for that are that we are women. So our weight doesn't drop linearly. Unlike my husband, who can literally skip dessert one night and lose three pounds on the scale the next morning. But it's not only just because we're women. You might be surprised to hear that women who are actively cutting calories, who are eating in a calorie deficit, underreport how much they're eating at nearly twice the rate of people who are not dieting at all. That's from a peer-reviewed study of over 18,000 people. If you're over 40, eating in a deficit, and you're not seeing progress on the scale, those missing calories are just one of five common places that a calorie deficit breaks down. In this episode, I'm gonna tell you what these five things are and how they're costing you serious results in your weight loss efforts. And I'm gonna give you a solution for each one. Think of a calorie deficit as a system. If there is one part of that system that's off, no matter how small, that can stop the whole thing from working and producing results. Let's get into them. Reason number one that a calorie deficit breaks down is your tracking has invisible gaps. You think you're eating 1600 calories, but you're really eating closer to 2,000 calories. If you're cooking with oils, eating out at restaurants a few times a week, grabbing a handful of snacks at the office, or taking bites off your kids' plates, these are calories that are not free and they add up so fast. Research shows that the average woman who isn't tracking their food under reports by around 400 calories a day. Those 400 calories are your entire deficit gone. And likely you never even realize that it happened. The highest risk foods are the calorie-dense foods, like the fats, like oils, butters, nut butters, nuts, seeds, avocado, like any food that's predominantly fat, because they're the easiest to eyeball wrong and also the most calorie dense at nine calories per gram compared to four calories per gram for carbs and fats. So more than twice as calorie dense. A pour of olive oil that looks like a tablespoon is often closer to two. And that's 120 calories that you didn't account for. And sure, on its own, that may not seem like a lot, but add these types of increases up meal over meal, day over day, weeks over weeks. That's adding hundreds of extra calories to your diet. These high-fat foods are the ones that I recommend to weigh while you're in a deficit. Grab a kitchen scale, a measuring cup, measuring spoons. And when you're eating or cooking with these, weigh them out. It's a super simple shift to make, and the impact could be so significant to your diet success. And when you eat out at a restaurant, I would add a two to 300 calorie buffer to whatever you're logging or tracking for that day because of the oils and butters that they cook with and the fats from the proteins that they use. In my personal experience, when I eat out at restaurants multiple times a week for several weeks, no matter how healthy I eat at home for the rest of my meals or how healthy I order at the restaurant, I always gain weight. And I talked about this in my last video about getting summer body ready, how I've gained a bunch of weight recently because of this. These extra calories that you get at restaurants are often unavoidable. You don't even know you're consuming them, like no matter how healthy you order or how healthy you try to make the meal. So you just need to factor in that buffer into your total daily calories and account for it. Because when these extra calories are unaccounted for, it can keep your entire diet from working. You can literally eat less actual food every day and still be over your calories. Okay, reason number two that a calorie deficit breaks down is your body reduced how much it moves. When you cut calories, your body burns less all day long. This part is automatic, it's biology, and oftentimes you don't even recognize that it's happening, but I promise it is. Your body conserves energy by trimming the small unconscious movements that add up over the course of a day. So you sit a little bit longer or you take a closer parking spot, you skip the stairs without even thinking about it. This activity is called meat, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And research shows that it can drop by 100 to 300 calories per day when you're in a deficit. So you have a calorie target or a deficit that stays the same, but now your body is moving less and burning fewer calories. But one way you can stay on top of this movement is to track your steps. Create a step goal and treat it as a non-negotiable in your daily routine. You can use your Apple Watch or download an app like a PACER app, which is what I have. And it's an app on your phone and it's on my watch on my home screen to track my daily steps. And schedule two walks a day, ideally after a meal when you can bring your blood sugar down and try to stay consistent. Force yourself to take the stairs, park further away, and standard pace when you're on phone calls. I know this doesn't seem like a lot. None of it feels like a workout or even like it's that impactful. But together, it helps replace that one to 300 calorie dip by replacing the movement that your body stopped doing and it keeps you in calorie burning mode and makes sure that your current deficit is still working. Okay, reason three is the one that most directly affects your metabolism. And if you follow me, you will not be surprised that this one is on my list. Reason number three that a calorie deficit breaks down is your protein is too low. So many women eating in a deficit are not eating enough protein to prevent muscle loss. And here's why it matters the research on holding onto muscle during weight loss consistently points to a floor of about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of your goal body weight per day. If you eat below that, your body doesn't have enough protein to maintain muscle. So it starts breaking that muscle down to use it for fuel. I like to think of muscle as expensive real estate. When you're eating fewer calories and your body's trying to conserve the energy, right? Because it doesn't want to starve, it starts by breaking down muscle first, because muscle is heavier than fat. And when you have less muscle, your body burns fewer calories at rest. And when you burn fewer calories at rest, the same calorie deficit that was working slowly starts to do less. So if you're in a calorie deficit at minimum, aim for at least 0.7 grams per pound of your goal body weight. If you have more than 10 pounds to lose, if you have less than 10 pounds to lose, or you're at maintenance, then eat 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight minimum. So if your goal weight is 150 pounds, that's 105 grams of protein minimum a day, or roughly 35 grams a meal if you spread it across three meals. And I know what you're probably thinking, because I used to think it too. Like I eat chicken, eggs, Greek yogurt, and you've always figured that you get plenty of protein. But most women eating a healthy diet, meaning a diet with minimally processed foods, lands somewhere between 55 and 75 grams a day. That may work at maintenance, but when you're in a calorie deficit and when you're over 40 and already experiencing age-related muscle loss, it's not enough to protect your muscle. The gap between 70 grams and 105 grams is about one extra protein serving. And it literally changes how your body handles eating less. So next time that you sit down at a meal, put protein on the plate first. I call this a protein anchor concept. You put protein on the plate first, and then you build everything else, your carbs and your fats and veggies and fruit, around it. And if you want your exact numbers, I have a free fat loss formula workbook in the description that walks you through step by step to calculate your calorie maintenance target, your protein goal, and a calorie deficit all in one place. Okay, reason number four is the one that most women are closest to quitting over, including myself. Reason number four that a calorie deficit breaks down is the scale is lying to you. Tell me if this has ever sounded like your experience. You've had three strong weeks of consistently eating healthy and in a calorie deficit. And the number in the scale has not moved. Maybe your clothes are fitting a little differently, but you don't really know. You can't tell because a scale is telling you one number that's not what you expect to see and it doesn't match your efforts. Both things can be true at once. But stress, sodium, hormones, water retention, like all of those and more, can hide three to five pounds of real fat loss on the scale at any given moment. Your body is changing if you're in a calorie deficit and you are following your plan, especially if you're also working out. But the scale just hasn't caught up yet. And that's normal. Your daily weight is the noisiest number and can be the biggest distraction on your weight loss journey. We use it to validate that what we're doing is working, but then also treat it as a sign of failure when it doesn't show us what we expect. It can swing two to eight pounds in a single day just based on water alone. The best thing that you can do for your sanity and for your success is stop making decisions based on it. Use two other things instead. Your weekly average, if you must weigh yourself, and a weight measurement. For the weight average, weigh in every morning and average seven numbers at the end of the week. For your waist, measure at your belly button at the same time each week. Do these both before you've had anything to eat or drink and after you've gone to the bathroom. For me personally, I almost never weigh myself. Again, I've been in maintenance for 10 years, but recently I put on a few pounds. If you saw my last video about getting summer body ready, I am going into a small little cut to help slim down and tone up a little bit before summer. And I didn't weigh myself beforehand, and I won't be weighing myself throughout this cut. And the reason is is because I am so influenced by what the scale says. So if the scale says I'm down a few pounds, then I'm so happy. I celebrate, I'm motivated. But more often than not, it tells me I have not lost any weight or I'm even heavier. And that derails me mentally. It makes me see myself different and it makes me approach my weight loss efforts a little differently as well. And I don't like that mental shift that I get. I know now through a lot of years of experience and working with clients that if I do the right things and I follow my plan, the fat loss will happen. It has to. I trust the process, I know biologically what works, and I put my faith in that. And so the scale for me is not a measurement of success or of my weight loss. And the reason I like the measurements is because fat loss shows up in your measurements and even your weekly weight trend before it shows up as a steady drop on the scale. Over time, you can assess if your weekly average is sliding down and your waist is getting smaller. Then what you're doing is working, no matter what this morning's scale number said. And if it's not, go back and evaluate numbers one and two on this list. I had a client on a weight loss journey send me pictures of her scale several times a week, so frustrated that it was going up. Every single picture was going up while she was working so hard to eat well and stick to her deficit. She questioned whether we had the right plan or if it would even work for her if she was like not able to lose weight. If she was truly following the plan and everything we had laid out on this list, then I told her she needed to trust the process as well and that the scale would eventually catch up. It took six weeks for the scale to finally show her weight loss progress. Some people might be sooner, some might be later, but if you trust the process too, it will eventually catch up. The last reason, number five on this list, is the one that sets me back every so often, especially lately, which again I covered in my last episode about getting summer body ready. I mentioned how I'm struggling with this. Reason number five that a calorie deficit breaks down is your flex meals or your cheat meals, whatever you call them, are canceling out your deficit. This one comes down to a simple trap. You eat well and on plan Monday through Friday. So in your head, you think it was a win. The week was a success. So you give yourself a little permission and some flexibility on the weekends to go out for brunch, have some drinks, and eat off plan. But a calorie deficit isn't a weekday thing. It doesn't just exist Monday through Friday. It's a seven-day total. And the handful of bigger meals and drinks that you have on the weekend can add up to even more than everything you've saved during the week, which lands you right back at zero, or even in a surplus without even realizing it. Say you're eating in a 400-calorie deficit each day. That is 2,000 calories saved across five weekdays. And you feel great about that and you should, because that's a big number. Now, picture the weekend. You go for a dinner out with your husband and family, maybe a brunch, a couple meals where you're not really tracking. And we've already talked about the calorie expense of eating out at a restaurant. If four of those off-plan meals runs about 500 calories over your target, which is really easy to do when you're eating out, then that's 2000 extra calories just right there over the weekend. Your entire week of careful eating was literally canceled out, just like that. And then add two glasses of wine one night for about 250 calories and maybe a couple cocktails on the second night for another three to 400 calories. And you've actually closed the week in a surplus, even though you've been so good and consistent and eating well five days out of the seven. And don't get me wrong, cheat meals are totally fine during a diet, but off-plan meals need to be treated as part of the plan rather than the exception. So here's what I recommend, and this is what I do myself. If you're gonna go eat out at a restaurant, decide what you're going to eat before sitting in front of it. You can do this by pulling up the menu ahead of time and choosing what you're gonna have before you're even at the restaurant where you're hungry and everything smells good and you're seeing all the food and they put the bread basket in front of you. And when you order, make some concessions, like ask for dressings and sauces on the side so that you can decide how much goes on or ask for your food to be cooked without butter, which I do all the time. These preparations and modifications can literally save you a few hundred calories on their own. And then maybe have one drink instead of two or three and opt out of the dessert if it's not something you really love. And if it is, then share it with someone. None of that is necessarily a restriction, right? It's literally just planning and being intentional. You can run a flawless deficit five days a week and still lose zero pounds because a deficit is the entire seven days of the week, not just the part that you bothered to track and account for. Every one of these is really the same problem wearing a different outfit because the deficit only works when all five parts are accurate. And one part being off is enough to literally stall the entire thing, no matter how hard you're trying. And the thing is that dieting as a woman over 40 is so hard. Results are so slow. And we're often left wondering like why it's not working for us and if it ever will. I'm here to tell you that it absolutely will. Yes, it requires more diligence and adherence to doing the right things. That's just our reality at this age. But the great news is that we can still lose weight effectively and be our healthiest, hottest selves at this age. The genuinely hard part isn't fixing these five things to improve our efforts. It's figuring out which ones are actually yours and where you can make the biggest changes for the biggest impact. Since most of us women are probably dealing with two or three of these things at the same time without even realizing it. If you want to know other factors that could be stalling your fat loss right now, take the free metabolism type quiz. It asks you how you're eating, moving, tracking, and then tells you where your deficit is most likely leaking and what to fix first. It's free and it only takes about two minutes. The link is in the description. If you enjoyed this episode and you found it helpful, follow the show so that the next one lands in your library automatically and leave a quick reading if you've got a couple seconds. It's the single biggest thing that helps women like us find this podcast. And if you want more on all things health, fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle for us women over 40, come and join the behind the body community. Every week I'll send you something right to your inbox to help you keep making progress. You can sign up for free at behind the body.com forward slash newsletter. And if you want to know what I'm currently doing to get summer body ready, then check out episode 63, your best summer body after 40 starts here. I'll link the episode below. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend, and I can't wait to chat with you next week.