Why Losing Weight After 40 Makes You Look Worse

Weight loss after 40 can leave you smaller and softer at the same time, even at your goal weight. In this episode, we're talking about why losing weight makes some women over 40 look worse, what "skinny fat" really means, and how to lose fat without losing your shape.

You can chase a number for two years, finally hit it, and like what you see in the mirror less than the day you started. The weight came off, but the body you pictured didn't. There's a reason for that, and it has almost nothing to do with how much you lost.

Inside this episode:

• The one number that decides how lean you look, and it isn't what you weigh
• What "skinny fat" means and why it shows up more after 40
• Why each round of dieting tends to be harder than the one before it
• My honest answer to "won't lifting make me bulky?"
• How to know it's working during the weeks the number won't move

I lost 20 pounds in my mid-30s and have kept it off for over 10 years, and I spent 20 years making this exact mistake before I figured it out. This one's for every woman who got skinnier and still didn't recognize the body looking back.

Resources Mentioned:

💪🏼 The Strong Core Method: a 4-week, step-by-step core program for women over 40, every level, that includes 12 guided workouts, video demos, and a simple plan to help you build a stronger, more defined midsection in just 20 minutes, 3 times per week.

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

🎯 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.

💌 Stay Connected: Join my BTB Newsletter for weekly insight

🎧 Listen Next: What I Stopped Doing to Lose Weight Over 40 (And Keep It Off)

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👋🏻 ABOUT ME: 

I'm Andrea, a double-certified NASM Nutrition and Fitness Coach and founder of Behind the Body. For 20 years I under-ate, avoided weights, and lived on cardio chasing skinny, and none of it gave me a body I was proud of. In my mid-30s I changed my approach: more protein, real strength training, and a plan that fit my life. I lost 20 pounds, and 10 years later, at 45, I'm still maintaining it through perimenopause. I help women over 40 simplify their approach, build real strength, and get results that 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 content 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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Did you know that about a quarter of the weight that you lose on a typical diet is muscle? And after 40, your body is giving that up so much faster than ever before. So you can hit the goal weight that you've been chasing for the last year, look in the mirror, and like your body even less than the day you started. Today I'm going to talk about why that happens and how to lose the fat without losing your shape. There's one number steering how lean and how good you look, and it matters far more than the one you're probably watching. When you step on the scale, it weighs everything that you're made of at once, which means fat, muscle, water, and bone all get rolled into a single number. The scale can tell you that you got lighter, it can tell you that you weigh less, but it has no way of telling you what you've lost. And after 40, what you lose matters so much more than how much you lose. Let's talk about why the number in the scale drops while your body looks softer. When you cut your calories and you pile on a ton of cardio without a real plan or strategy to hold on to your muscle, your body burns through some of that muscle right alongside the fat. So you end up lighter, but with less of that muscle that was giving your arms, your stomach, your legs their shape. So you look smaller and less defined at the very same time. That's the exact feeling of catching yourself in a photo at your goal weight and you're so happy because you're smaller and you're thinner. But in that picture, you don't even recognize the body that's looking back at you. And I'm not guessing about how that feels because I did this to myself for 20 years. It was before the GLP ones, but I was trying to accomplish the same thing by under-eating significantly and basically doing cardio like my life depended on it. And I hit some of the lowest weight of my adult life without ever liking what I saw. I was lighter and I was softer at the same time. And I couldn't figure out why I didn't like my body and how being skinnier and softer could be true at the same time. I remember looking at photos of myself and thinking, that does not look good. I don't look good. I was so in my head about the fact that I was sacrificing and doing so much to be thinner, but yet I was so unsatisfied and not confident with my body. And after 40, this muscle wasting speeds up. And it's worth understanding why. As your estrogen starts dropping through perimenopause, your body gets worse at protecting muscle while you're eating in a deficit. And even when you're not eating in a deficit, we suffer from something called sarcopenia and it's age-related muscle loss. It happens in our late 30s, but every decade, starting at 40, we lose about 3 to 8% of muscle mass if we're not actively protecting it. So after 40, our muscles trying to get off our body no matter what, but especially so when we're eating in a calorie deficit. So the same approach that slimmed you down at 32 now takes muscle right off the top every time that you use that approach. And you get that win, that number on the scale while losing the body, the shape that you were working towards underneath it all. I want you to picture something because this is literally real life. Picture two women who both weigh 165 pounds and who have both been training for six months. One of the women dieted hard. She's in a calorie deficit and did cardio as her only workout five days a week, while the other woman lifted weights three days a week and prioritized eating enough protein to protect her muscles. They weigh exactly the same and they look nothing alike. One woman who was doing a ton of cardio and eating in an extreme deficit looks soft, deflated, tired, and the other one looks lean, defined, and healthy. And that number on the scale swears up and down that they are identical. The approach you take for weight loss, especially after 40, is written all over your face and your body. And if you are like me, you probably have seen people, acquaintances, colleagues, friends, maybe even family members who have lost a significant amount of weight, let's say on GLP1, since that's all the rage right now. And you see them maybe for the first time after so long, and they look strikingly different. They look so much thinner, but something about them just doesn't look good. Something looks unhealthy, something looks unnatural, like they're not meant to be that thin. And I can guarantee in many of those cases, it's because they've lost so much muscle that their skin sags a little bit, that they look a lot softer, that they're not feeling out their clothes, that they just look like a different, less healthy version of themselves. That's what losing muscle with a calorie deficit can do to you. And this is the part that gets me a little like fired up because women our age in our 40s and our 50s and even 60s resort to the old approaches of weight loss, which is just eating in a calorie deficit and if working out, doing a bunch of cardio to burn calories. And so many times these calorie deficits are very restrictive. And those approaches just do not work anymore because those approaches are stripping the muscle that these women in our 40s and 50s and 60s need the most right now. And the problem is that these diets create a reward the whole way down, meaning that the scale goes down and the weight drops, and that's motivating, and we think that's a good thing. And that's what makes it so easy to get wrong because a lot of that weight loss that the scale is reflecting is also a ton of muscle. And when you hear the term skinny fat, this is what it's pertaining to. Skinny fat means carrying too little muscle for the amount of fat on your frame. And that's no matter what you weigh. That's why two women who can both weigh 165 pounds can look like completely different people, depending on how much of that weight is muscle versus fat. And this is also why dieting the old way with the old strategies tends to dig a hole that's a little deeper each diet round. Every time you drop weight without intentionally protecting your muscle, you finish with slightly less of it than you carried going into that deficit. And muscle is a tissue that burns calories for you, even while you're sitting still. So the less muscle you carry, the fewer calories your body uses at rest. And then the next diet has to be a little stricter just to get the same result. So if we don't want to look softer when we're losing weight, or if we don't want to look skinny fat, here's what we need to do instead. And the whole thing rests on one idea called body recomposition. You may have heard this before, but if you haven't, in simple practical terms, all it means is that you lose fat and build muscle at the same time, simultaneously, rather than losing the weight first and then trying to firm up your body later. The reason that that's even possible is that fat loss and muscle gain run on two separate switches. Fat loss comes down to eating less than your body burns, while muscle comes from giving your muscles a reason to grow by challenging them with resistance through strength training. And because they're driven by different things, you can run both at once when you set your eating and training up to support each other. In real life, body recomposition can look and feel a little strange at first. Your weight might barely move, or it might even tick up slightly, even as you're visibly getting leaner and tighter in the mirror and your clothes are fitting better. That's why what you weigh on the scale becomes close to useless during this phase. What tells you that it's working is a different set of signals. Like you're lifting more weight than you did last month, your measurements are shrinking, your clothes are fitting better, and your energy is steadier throughout the day. When I first started my body recomposition journey in my mid to late 30s, I had been previous to that just eating in a calorie deficit. If you've listened to my other podcast episodes or seen my YouTube videos, I talk a lot about how I was just always in a diet, eating less and less and less, priding myself on as little as I can eat for a very long time. And I was burning the candle on the other end with a ton of cardio. So I was doing all of the strategies that are absolutely horrible for me now in my 40s. But I decided to start recomping and switching from a low calorie deficit and doing a ton of cardio to strength training, not to build a ton of muscle, but just to like get stronger and just as an approach that I felt was different than what I could not sustain the other way. I just could not live in that calorie deficit ton of cardio life anymore. And when I started recomping, this is probably about four or five weeks in, I would weigh myself the entire time because I was obsessive about weighing myself as I was just trying to be skinny. So that was my metric for progress, my metric for happiness, my metric for, you know, to validate the effort that I was putting in. So about four or five weeks into my weightlifting efforts, the scale was going up and I freaked out. I almost quit weightlifting altogether. In fact, if I if I really remember back to that time, I'm sure I did, or I'm sure I scaled it back. I didn't want to get bigger. And I thought the scale going up or staying at least the same meant that I was getting bigger because I was eating more food. And I was scared of that. But I trusted the process. And I'm so thankful every day now at 45 that I did because what that created was a body that is so strong that I'm so confident in, that I'm so proud of, that I love, without giving a care about what the scale says. And that is a very liberating place to be. And I didn't mean to go on a fun a tangent, but I just wanted to paint the picture that I understand this obsession. Maybe this validation is a better word for it, with the scale and it measuring our progress, our efforts, our worth. But when you start recomping your body, what's on the other side of that is so much gratitude for the process and for yourself and for your body and for your efforts that trumps what the scale says any day. And now I barely weigh myself because who cares? Because I like the way that my body looks in the mirror. I like the way that I look naked. I like the way that I fit into clothes. And if my clothes start to feel a little bit tight or I feel myself gaining a few pounds, I know to scale the food back a little bit and not a lot and do a ton of cardio to punish myself like I used to. And I know when I talk about weightlifting to women, I get the same objection almost all of the time. Or at least, I don't know if it's an objection, but the same concern. Women are scared that they're gonna get bulky, that they're gonna put on so much muscle. And if you are one of these people that does not work out, you may be thinking about it, you would like to, but you're worried about bulking up. I'm going to tell you something. Bulking up takes so much time and effort. It has to be intentional for you to get big, like a muscular bodybuilder. You have to eat in an incredible surplus, you have to do that for a very long time, and you have to lift extremely heavy weights all at the same time. And that's not the kind of muscle that you need to put on. Not to mention that we don't carry anywhere near the testosterone that it takes to get big and bulky quickly. When you lift consistently and you eat enough protein, what you do get is a tighter, more defined version of your own body rather than a larger one. This approach gives you that shape, which means a bit more muscle, noticeably less fat, better posture, stronger joints, and a body that burns more calories at rest. And honestly, you get to a certain point where you stop training just for the aesthetics, just for what you look like in the mirror, because it feels so good. And you realize I'm not training just to look good, although that is a part of it. So we're not gonna lie here, but I'm training for the future version of me, like the aged version of me in 20 years from now, because I want her getting up off the floor and carrying her own groceries and walking up a flight of stairs without help. You know, the way my body looks today is really just a side effect of building towards that. Okay, now let's talk about the practical part of body recomping, because I want to be very specific, like you're my best friend or you're my sister, because vague advice has never changed anyone's body. The first move is to set your protein target. This one matters most because protein is the raw material that your body uses to hold on to and rebuild muscle. The goal to aim for is 0.7 to one gram of protein per pound of your goal body weight each day. Now, I say goal body weight because that's what we should be using as our target if we have more than 10 pounds to lose. If you have less than 10 pounds to lose or you're maintaining your weight as is, aim for 0.7 to 1 per pound of body weight. So if your goal weight is 150 pounds, you're looking at somewhere between 100 and 150 grams of protein per day. Most women are actually getting closer to 60 to 70 grams of protein a day, which means for a lot of us, that very first step is close to doubling the protein that you're eating now, which is a lot. And even if you're less than doubling your protein, getting that much protein takes intention. It doesn't happen naturally. We are not a society built around protein. We are a society built around carbs and processed foods and fats, and protein is an afterthought. I get it. Protein is not my favorite macronutrient. I would much rather have a bunch of carbs or fats instead of protein. I have to be super intentional about it. What that means is every single meal or snack that I eat throughout a day, I'm thinking about what my protein option is first. I build my plate around that protein option. So everything I eat is protein-centric. That doesn't mean I can't have carbs and fats. I absolutely do. But I balance the plate with protein first and that makes all the difference. I call this a protein anchor. So use the protein anchor concept with your diet and that will help you reach that goal. And if you need any help with any of this math, like your protein, your maintenance calories, your calorie deficit number, I have a free fat loss formula workbook that walks you through these step by step for your specific body. I'll link that down in the description and you can download that and work through it to get your exact numbers. Okay, the second move to make is to trade some of your cardio if you're even doing cardio for strength training. Now, I know that so many people are not into strength training and I understand. I get it. In my last episode, I talked about my sister who's my best friend, nine years older than me. She lost about 150, if not just slightly more, weight over the last couple of years. And I cannot get her to lift a weight to save her life. Some people just do not want to do it. And if that's you, I hear you. But if I could be your best friend right now, giving you the most honest advice, you are doing yourself an absolute disservice by not lifting weights at this age. The value that it has on your well-being, on the way that your body looks, on your mental capacity, on your ability to handle stress, on your mood, on your energy, it literally affects everything in such a positive way. And the great news is you don't need a ton of time in the gym. In fact, you don't even need to go to the gym. If you could do three workouts per week for 30 minutes of weightlifting each workout, that would make immense progress. And you would absolutely see that and feel that change. It doesn't have to be complicated. There are a ton of workouts on YouTube. There are a ton of apps that you can download. That's if you want to work out at home or go to the gym. If you're at home, you just need a couple sets of dumbbells. Order those on Amazon. It's so simple. And if you want some help, I have a specific workout for your core. It's called a strong core method. It's three workouts a week, 20 minutes or less. I'll link that down below. If that interests you, check it out. But workouts do not have to be super time intensive and they do not have to take an immense amount of effort. Three times a week for 30 minutes. Everyone can find that time. I'm just being honest with you because I care. Okay, let's move on to the third move. The third move I want you to do is to change what you measure. What I mean is stop weighing yourself as your main check-in or your main beacon of progress and start tracking the signals that reflect what your body is genuinely doing, like your strength and weightlifting, your waist and your hip measurements. I measure my waist and my quad because I have I tend to hold more fat in my quads once a month just to see how they're tracking. And that tells me so much more than the scale does. And then use the way that your clothes fit. That is literally the best benchmark. I bet you have a pair of pants or shorts or something in your closet right now that has fit a little too tight. If you're on a weight loss journey, use that as your benchmark, as your foundation for progress. Try those on every couple weeks and see how they're fitting. And that will tell you if you're getting closer to your goal. So if you take a step back, this whole thing comes down to this. What you weigh is a single data point. And on its own, it's a pretty poor one. How much muscle you carry compared to fat is what decides how lean you look, how strong you feel, how your metabolism treats you for the next 20 years. Lose weight the old way using the old strategy, and you can shrink yourself into a body that you like even less. But build muscle while you lose fat and you finally get the body that you've been picturing the whole time. And that's what I want for you. If this was helpful, I would love for you to follow the show so that the next one lands in your library automatically. And if you have 10 seconds to spare, I would so appreciate a quick rating. It's the single biggest thing that helps other women find this podcast and find these episodes so they can help them too. 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 to help you keep making progress. And you can sign up for free at behind the body.com forward slash newsletter. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend. And I will chat with you next week.