Cutting Calories Is A MISTAKE If You Want To Burn Fat After 40

I meet women every day who say, "I barely eat. I work out all the time and nothing works anymore. Not like it used to." Calories are information, but hormones decide what your body does with that information. Okay, so what is the biggest lie women have been told about why they can't lose fat after 40? What do you think it is? It is move more, eat less. It stops working at midlife. Like, we're more disciplined than ever. We know more than ever. But the reality is we've been gradually losing muscle, which drops our resting metabolic rate, and we're moving less, which lowers our non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is really the biggest thing we can do. Those two things to drive our metabolism. And if we start exercising a lot more and eating a lot less, we could bump up the cortisol. And by the way, if hormones have gone down, insulin resistance is probably happening, which is making us hungry. All of that means storing fat around the waist. More on that in a moment. So what's going on? Well, estrogen's going down. It counter-regulates cortisol and insulin. So if estrogen's going down, guess what's going up? Cortisol and insulin. Now you want cortisol to go up throughout the day. Like wake up in the morning, you want cortisol up. You want it to then gradually go down throughout the day. If it's up all the time, that's not a good thing. It's gonna raise your blood sugar, it's gonna raise your hunger, and it's gonna make you store more fat around your waist. If you've got lower estrogen, you got higher insulin, which is pro-inflammatory And also, when insulin's high, your fat cell doors are locked. You can't access stored fat for fuel, so you're hungry. And then since insulin's high, when you eat, it's easier to store that as fat. Then progesterone's going down, which is messing up your sleep along with the hot flashes from the estrogen. And what happens when you don't sleep well? You're more insulin resistant and you're more stressed. Cortisol's going up again. And then for so many of us, the first sign of all of this is low thyroid function, which thyroid and estrogen, when those are low, hard to build muscle. Add in testosterone, the trifecta for accelerating that muscle loss. You look at all that and you go, you can see how your hormones can override the calorie math, you know, can make it so that your body is not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. And it can also be the reason why you and a friend go on a trip together, do exactly the same things, you eat the same, you exercise the same, you sleep the same, everything the same, and somehow you're gaining weight and she's staying the same or losing. Obviously, we gotta consider hormones when we're considering losing weight because remember, you don't lose weight to get healthy. You have to get healthy to lose weight. And that means balancing your hormones and improving your metabolic health. Super duper important. And I'll tell you the crazy story that happened to me 'cause I will honestly, I will, this, this is not a top 10 life experiences. This is like a, this is like one of those ones that I just remember just the dread, the awfulness of. So I was in Palm Springs with my then-boyfriend of, I think, like 2 years. I still remember asking him what he wanted. You know, he was just kind of depressed that weekend. I was like, well, what is it you want in your life? You know, what's going on? Uh, and careful what you ask, right? What would you like? What do you want your life to look like? And he's listing out the things that he wants in his life. And you know what I noticed when he was listing these things is that I was not on the list. So being the direct human that I am, I said, I noticed that I was not on this list. He goes, well, I was gonna talk to you about that. I'm like, oh. And so he broke up with me. We then went to the pool because we still had this awkward, weird weekend together where we'd broken up. And so we're sitting at the pool and I not only feel rotten about that, I just got dumped, but I also feel rotten about my body because I hadn't changed anything. I wasn't doing anything different. I was doing everything right, right? I was eating healthy, I was exercising, I was sleeping well, and I was gaining weight around my midsection. In fact, I went and got a pregnancy test. I was like, I must be pregnant. I mean, what is going on? It was that Weird. My energy was funky. I wasn't sleeping well. I was craving. I was like, I know what this is. Well, I was wrong. It wasn't pregnancy, it was perimenopause, right? And it was causing me to store more fat around my belly even though I hadn't changed anything. My body went into storage mode, not balance mode. And it really helped me realize I'd been saying for years, your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. Now, Calories count. Do not get me wrong here. You can't just go, oh, they're healthy, I'll eat as much as I want. Too much healthy food's unhealthy. But it made me realize, like, if your hormones have shifted you into a storage mode, you could be doing all these things right, and your— now metabolism has dropped a little bit as your estrogen's dropped, and you become more insulin resistant, and your body's like, cool, let's just store some fat. And that was what was happening to me. So I'll never forget lying on the beach chair just trying trying to, you know, the lying on the beach chair with your legs up because then you'll look a little better, like your stomach will suck in a little bit. You've got like a book over your— so you're doing everything to cover everything up, right? Like book over stomach, you know, whatever you can so that you don't feel like you're just kind of the beach dwell on the, on the pool chair. Maybe you can relate to that. Hopefully you can't. Hopefully you go, I have no idea what you're talking about, JJ. And hopefully I will prevent you from ever having to feel like that. But these are just the things— I mean, I know what happened to me, and I remember being out in Palm Desert. I was a member of a club where I could take my kids because they had a good kids club, sitting in the pool listening to women complain about perimenopause and that one of their doctors put them on birth control, one of them put on Prozac, and they just feel like they're bloated. So I, I know it wasn't just me, and I know from hearing over and over and over again that it's— that, that we're struggling. And I see these patterns over and over in women over 40. They go and they're like, okay, what I'm doing isn't working, so they figure they need to do more. What used to work was cutting calories and doing cardio, so I must just need to cut calories more and do more cardio. First of all, not sustainable. Second of all, won't work. And what's wild too is your body, you know, if you cut calories for too long a period of time, your thyroid will downshift. We know that. But also a high caloric restriction diet causes a lot of muscle mass loss. We're paying so much attention to that now with the GLP-1s, but the GLP-1s are not what's causing the muscle mass loss. It's the poor diet, right? But here's the other thing. If you start to do a lot of cardio, do you know what you stop doing throughout the day? Moving as much. And this has been documented in the literature that people, when they exercise, tend to steal from their non-exercise activity thermogenesis. They move less, so they compensate, so they stay the same. So, you know, that's why whenever I work through a program with someone, I always start with, we're going to keep your NEAT up. We always start there. Now, it's interesting because Weight gain, fat gain in your 40s, this looks totally different than fat gain in your 20s. In your 20s, when you gain weight, you would gain it in your butt and thighs, which nowadays everyone seems to want. But you can't, you can't preferentially decide where that fat's going, as we've always learned. Um, when you start to become low estrogen, high cortisol, insulin resistant, the fat goes to your belly. You probably noticed it's very different hormonal fat gain because we have these receptors, hormone receptors around that area. And this is also risky fat gain because this, a lot of this is something called visceral adipose tissue. In fact, one of the great ways you can kind of tell if this is an issue for you is through just a very simple, very cheap waist, hip, and height measurement, where if your waist is bigger than 0.8 compared to your hips and your, your waist is more than half the size of your hips, your height, you are in trouble. That is showing more visceral adipose tissue. So very important. But that's an easy way to do it. Of course, I love, love a DEXA, love a bioimpedance scan to really get you better metrics. But that's a great way to start. Now, I'm not saying don't cut calories. I think that there's a progression to doing this, which we'll talk about in a moment. So stay with me. I'm going to talk about that. But just going for this extreme caloric Cutting can be very problematic. And then let's say that you are stressed, like what happened with me when the boyfriend dumped me. That just was another nail in the stress coffin. I had a lot of stuff going on. Crappy divorce, son with some emotional things going on, just stuff, you know. I— we all have life, right? That means like poor sleep, elevated cortisol, higher blood sugar, and I could see it, you know, when I got my blood sugar test. I'm like, why is my blood sugar 100 when I'm eating healthy and exercising? And when you've got higher blood sugar, it will lead to higher insulin resistance, it will lead to more fat storage. And of course, we also know that cortisol leads to more fat storage around the waist. So around and around and around we go. And the bummer with all of this is the emotional toll that it takes on you, because you're like, what the heck? I'm doing everything. I might as well just knock it all off, sit on couch and eat cookies and drink champagne, right? It's not working anyway. For me, it would be cheesecake. But you just— you're frustrated. But I also remember feeling that it was beyond frustration. It was just— it was moving into desperation. It was just a really horrible thing because, you know, you're looking, going, nothing's working. You know, I feel like I look at food, I gain weight. My body feels like it's like at war with me. I'm hardly eating. What on earth do I do? And I'm glad you asked because let's talk about that. Because if calories aren't the lever or aren't the only lever. What is? And I always like to say, you know, calories count, but where they come from and when you eat them and how much of different macros matters. And if you are doing caloric restriction, there's techniques to do it like caloric cycling that can make a difference and not trash your thyroid. I don't believe women should suffer. I don't believe anyone should suffer, but especially in terms of hormones, I think it's a, it would behoove you to investigate hormone replacement therapy with someone who's trained in menopause. Wildly enough, not every OB-GYN is trained in menopause. It's bizarre. It's an actual extra education. But I would totally look for someone who's trained in menopause and investigate whether hormone replacement therapy is the right thing for you. There you go with that. That's a little plug. Case in point, you know, post-pool experience for me. I got on hormones and what a change, what a difference. And so I've been on hormones since my, like, late, like, late 40s. And you'll have to pry them. My girlfriend, Dr. Tina Moore, says you'll have to pry my estrogen from my cold, rigid fingers. I'm like, I feel the same. Estrogen and progesterone and testosterone are dropping. It's going to be hard to build muscle. It's going to impact your sleep. It's going to make you more insulin resistant, you're going to be more stressed, and maybe thyroid issues are going on. If you've got thyroid issues, you got to get those fixed. Low thyroid can lead to bone mineral density issues, etc. So that's always the first thing is let's work on thyroid and cortisol first, get those suckers stabilized, get them stabilized. And for thyroid, likely that'll mean some type of replacement, although sometimes with Hashimoto's— and I highly recommend my girlfriend Dr. Isabella went is Hashimoto's Protocol. You may be able to do it with dietary shifts for an autoimmune diet, and then really paying attention to cortisol. If I could go tell my younger self one thing— there will— there'll be a lot of things, but one of the things I'd say is stress is not a badge of honor, sister. Like, no one said you need to be Superwoman. So stress is like the key thing here. The less stressed you can— and it's not about like you're not going to have stress, it's about how you respond to the stress. We're all going to have stress. The winners, the people who are successful, become super stress resilient. They just can tolerate more because they train their body to be able to do it. It's one of the reasons I love doing hard things in exercise. It trains your body how to handle stress and recover. You can do a lot with insulin sensitivity by focusing on sleep, doing resistance training, and building that muscle because that's the first place we can start to restore that insulin sensitivity. By shifting your food to eating protein first and then fiber comes along for the ride. Protein and fiber are like your Beautiful duo for blood sugar balance. Eating at the right times, eating an hour or two after waking up, stop eating, you know, at least 2 to 4 hours before bed. I think 3 to 4 hours is kind of sweet spot. And then not snacky-poo all day long. No dripping, no dripping food. Just have breakfast, have lunch, have dinner. If you really need something in the afternoon, okay, you can have a little snack, maybe a cup of bone broth. How about that? Little bit of berries. I mentioned eat protein first because pro— you need protein to build your hormones. And your neurotransmitters. But also when you eat protein first, it is so filling that like you eat protein first, then you go into your non-starchy vegetables and your fiber. And I dare you to try to eat more than you need because you will be full. It will stabilize your blood sugar. It's more thermic, burns more calories than protein or fat. It's super satiating and satisfying. Like no one ever has told me in 40+ years of working in the field JJ, I lost my mind and I pigged out on chicken or salmon or eggs. It's just never— it's never happened. The other thing that protein helps you do, which is really important as you're starting to get into perimenopause because you're starting to produce some of the, uh, bad hormone metabolites, is, is protein and fiber are super mission critical for detoxification. Now, I think of muscle as a hormone regulator for a couple different reasons. Remember, when, when muscles contract, they actually release hormone-like messengers called myokines. These things can actually— while you're exercising, your cortisol might go up, but then has a compensatory drop afterwards, so it's lower. It can help boost testosterone. It helps improve insulin sensitivity. So it's really key for helping you with getting better hormone balance. But also remember, as you're going through all of this, your muscle could start to go down. So We want to do more than what we used to do, not less. You might hear, oh, take it easy, you're getting older. Knock it off. You get older because you're taking it easy. Don't do that. Sleep is one that you really— this might, this might send you running to get the hormone replacement therapy because it's really hard to counteract a hot flash. I mean, there is that sleep, um, chili pad that you can sleep on that's cooling, so that's kind of cool. So that's an option. And sleeping with the— you want the air turned down to 65 to 68 anyway, but you really got to make yourself sleep through the night. I've been using— I have a product I developed called Sleep Candy, which is a blend of melatonin and L-theanine and 5-HTP and inositol and B6. So I take that and my magnesium body calm every single night without fail, even travel to the Amazon with it. Like, I never miss it. But during this time, you might need a little more than that. You might need to just start looking at your progesterone at night because that can make a big, big difference. Because one night, poor night's sleep, you're more insulin resistant, your cortisol will be higher. And did you know that one poor night of sleep— well, actually, no, chronic poor sleep, not getting the 7 to 9 hours of sleep, even if you're eating well, even if you're exercising, sets you up for obesity, puts you at risk for obesity because of its impact on insulin and cortisol. So go outta sleep, gotta sleep. Now, it's interesting, speaking— when I think of sleep, it's really, I also want you to sleep during the normal circadian rhythm. I just had Dr. Deanna Minich on Well Beyond 40, and one of her line that I was like, this is the best line, is get your light right. Sleep when it's dark, eat when it's light. It's that simple. Sleep when it's dark, eat when it's light, right? So should we eat at midnight? No, 'cause we should be asleep 'cause it's dark. Should we eat at 8 in the morning? Yes, it's light. So this of course doesn't work in Iceland, but I'm assuming most of us are living in the United States. You wanna also make sure that you dial in that meal timing like I talked about. And you know, where I see the biggest problems here is just make a hard and fast rule. With yourself that you do not— you are not a snacker and you do not eat after dinner. You close the kitchen, you lock the door. In my world, if I could have like, uh, like a special little thing that happened every night where the— not, not for me because I've made this a hard and fast rule. It took a while though, wasn't— I was not perfect overnight. This took time. But what would be great is like just at night there was like this, um, automatic lock to your kitchen, to like fridge and pantry, and you could not get in. Do not go back in unless it's for a little water. Water can shut down evening hunger pangs. Just don't do so much you have to pee throughout the night. But make sure that you stop eating after dinner and stop eating minimally 2 hours before bed. 3 or more is better, better, better. If you want to recomp, which is build muscle, lose fat— notice I said build muscle, lose fat. I want you to always take a muscle-first approach to this. Build muscle first. Muscles where we burn fat. Muscles where we can target and raise metabolism and improve insulin sensitivity, and then we'll start to burn fat. But if you're not— if you're staying the same, nothing's happening. This is where you can factor in some cycling caloric restriction, a technique, a tool that I learned from the fabulous Dr. Bill Campbell, who runs the only physique lab in the country. What he has discovered there is that if you do caloric restriction, so you know what you're eating every day because you've tracked it on a food app. I like the Cronometer app. We'll link to it in the show notes. What you do is you take your maintenance calories and then 5 days a week eat 25% less than that, and 2 days a week eat maintenance. Nope, I did not say eat 2 days a week as cheat days. We never do that. That is the silliest thing ever. A cheat day becomes like a cheat meal becomes a cheat day becomes a cheat week becomes the way you live. Like, don't do that. It's okay to have a bite or two of something that you love. It's okay to have a piece of cake here and there. This is not going to like blow the, blow the world. That's diet thinking that's, that got us in trouble in the first place. But cyclic caloric restriction can work well. Your thyroid's not going to get impacted. You're not going to get diet fatigue. And it can help you get off some of that like body fat if it's just like holding steady on there. But again, we are doing this judiciously. We're not overdoing it. You can't lose more than 0.5 to 1% of body fat a week anyway of your total weight. Weight as body fat. So we're being careful. Super important. First, before you ever think about losing fat, could we pinky promise to first focus on building muscle? It would change everything for you. Everything for you. It would be amazing because the reality is your muscle supports your hormones. When your hormones are supported, fat loss is like just like the side effect. It just happens. It's almost automatic, effortless. It stops being a fight. Instead of asking like, "How many calories should I eat?" And yes, I'm not going to say calories don't matter, but what I'd really love you to look at is instead of how many calories, what are the things that I need to eat? And especially in terms of my macros, in terms of protein, in terms of fiber, in terms of the different plants for my gut microbiome, in terms of the healthy fats for controlling inflammation. What do I need to eat to really support my hormones and to help me build muscle? That's the, that's the bigger question. And what an empowering question. And if you want to look at like one thing that you could do right now, take from this right now, if you want to take the biggest thing to support your hormones right now, it would be please, please, please prioritize sleep. I bet you thought I was gonna say protein. This all matters, but if your sleep sucks, everything sucks. If you take one more thing from this video, here it is. Ready? You, my friend, are not broken. Your body is not failing you. It's responding the signals it's getting. Stress, poor sleep, underfueling, overtraining, blood sugar swings. You see, those things, they don't tell your body to burn fat. They tell your body to store it. And this week, make one simple shift. Protect your sleep, build a little strength, eat optimal protein so you send a safety signal to your body that you have enough. If you want more science-backed real-life strategies to build muscle, balance hormones, and age powerfully after 40, make sure you subscribe to this channel because I share new videos every week to help you stop battling your body and start building a stronger, leaner, more resilient one. And if you know a woman who's stuck in the eat less, exercise more cycle, and I know you do, Be sure to send her this video because this message can change everything. I'll see you in the next one.