Why You’re Not Losing Weight, Even When You’re Doing Everything Right

The number one question I hear from women over 40 is this: I'm eating clean, I'm exercising, I've cut the sugar, I've even cut the wine, so why is my body not changing? And the second question is always the same: What's wrong with me? Nothing is wrong with you. You have just been following an outdated rule book. When I hit my mid-40s, my body shifted too. It was my metabolism changing, and no one told me the rules had changed too. So today I'm going to break down the real reason women struggle to lose weight in midlife, even when they're doing everything right and doing all the things that worked before. We're going to look at your muscle, your protein intake, your blood sugar, your stress response, your hormones, and your gut. The things that actually drive fat loss after 40. Because once you understand what's really happening inside your body, you stop blaming yourself and you start working with your metabolism instead of fighting it. All right, let's get into it. We have to first confirm that you're actually stuck because before you assume your metabolism is broken, you gotta audit the basics. So the first thing you wanna start with is a macro audit. Are you really eating enough protein? Or maybe could you be overeating on some hidden calories? Remember, too much healthy food's unhealthy. Really easy to overload it on the nut butters or the ultra-processed food. So get yourself a food scale, use the Cronometer app, and actually weigh and measure everything, at least for a week. Next up, I'm sure you've already done this, but in case any are still around, get rid of those ultra-processed foods. Why? Because they wreck your satiety hormones and they can raise your blood sugar, even if they're like gluten-free, keto, all the things. The reality is ultra-processed foods have a way low thermic effect and a way high hunger effect. And the, the Combinations, bad news. Track your body composition. Make sure that you're actually looking at body composition, what your weight's made up of, not just your weight. Because if you are losing fat and putting on muscle, you might not see much of a change on the weight, but you might see it in your clothes. Remember, your jeans don't lie. Check your meal timing too. I want to make sure that you're eating actual meals. You're not just dripping throughout the day, especially don't drip your protein. Hit your 30 to 40 grams at each meal because that's going to help trigger that muscle repair. And what about hydration? Did you know that even mild dehydration, I mean 1 to 2%, you'll never notice that, can raise cortisol, make you store fat, and create cravings? And then what about NEAT? This is the biggest modifiable thing you can do for your overall total daily energy expenditure, and that's just that movement all throughout the day. Make sure you're getting in at least 8,000 steps a day. This is super important. Now, if you're looking for a little bit further of a breakdown on what NEAT is, I explain the science of it in this quick little 4-minute video, NEAT Explained: How Everyday Movement Boosts Metabolism, which takes us right into our next topic, muscle. Before you change your plan, make sure you're working with real data, not just assumptions. If you're doing this, then what else is going on? Well, it could be that you've lost muscle. You've heard me talk about this, that starting around age 30, we lose up to 1% of our muscle each year, but it's really about 3 to 8% per decade. And what happens when you lose that muscle? Your metabolism slows down, and you also become more insulin resistant. When you think about muscle, it is not about vanity. Sure, it holds everything in tighter, makes you look better, but it really is about having the— stoking your fire of your metabolism's engine. Okay, what about protein? If you're not eating enough protein, if you're undereating protein and overeating on carbs and fat, that can also wreak havoc on your metabolism. First of all, protein's the most thermogenic of the three macronutrients, right? But also, you need enough protein to trigger muscle protein synthesis. And we also know that if you don't eat enough protein, there's this thing called the protein leverage hypothesis, which your body will start to overeat in an effort to get enough amino acids. Remember, protein's what our body uses to build. It's not there as a storage macro, it's there as a function macro to really help us build and repair. And of course, as you know, protein is super satisfying. If you want to just shut your hunger down, eat protein first. Eat optimal amounts, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight, and just see how easy it is to stay on track. Speaking of staying on track, if your fasting insulin's high above 7 and your blood sugar is all over the place, you are going to block fat stores. If insulin's high, basically you shut the doors to your fat stores and your body goes into storage mode, not fat-burning mode. So what do we need to do to not have this happen? Number 1, you really want to eat by the plate. My trifecta for this is protein, fiber, and healthy fats. Let me break that down. So you're going to eat protein first. Again, we talked about that 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. You want to get 30, 40, 50 grams at each meal you're eating. 3 meals a day. So you eat that first. Next up, get in some non-starchy carbs and maybe some soluble carbs. And what I'm really looking for there are the polyphenols and the fiber that feed your gut microbiome and slow blood sugar response. So we've got slow release of blood sugar, avoiding the spikes, but you also have the fuel that your microbiome needs in order to be able to better absorb protein and nutrients and not store them as fat. Do you know that if your gut microbiome is disrupted, you can actually extract more calories from the food you eat and store them as fat. Wild. And then healthy fats. Now here's the reality: animal protein comes with fat. You are what you eat. Eat. So make sure you're getting clean protein from animals and you're eating lean protein from animals. I prefer to, to get lean, like lean grass-fed beef, lean chicken, pastured chicken, and then I may add a little bit of fat in my cooking. So the first thing I do is I count the fat that I got from my animal protein, and then I'll use probably a little bit of fat in my non-starchy vegetable goals, maybe a little extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, ghee. And then once I've gotten through that, I see, do I need any more? I'm really looking at fat as a way to control inflammation. One of the most powerful things you can do is make an oil change, right, and improve your omega-6 to 3 ratio so that you've got great inflammatory control. When you eat like that, that plate— a protein, fiber, right, from plants and phytonutrients, and then the healthy fats. I call it the satiety trifecta, but it's also super important for keeping that blood sugar nice and stable. One other thing you can do— I'll show you a couple— but one other thing that's really easy to do to help keep that blood sugar balanced is move after you eat. Now, this could be going out to take a 10 to 20 minute walk. I especially like that after dinner because I think it really helps you prepare for better sleep. But I also love even just air squats. When you do something that's full body, like an air squat or a step-up or a lunge, it basically is going to suck that sugar into your muscles and it's going to lower the blood sugar response. So remember, we're boosting that NEAT all throughout the day. Everything counts. So throw in that walk, throw in that— those air squats after you eat. That's super helpful and an easy way to keep your blood sugar stable. Another thing that can keep you stuck is, and this is going to be the big challenge one, I think you're stressed, you're not sleeping. And by the way, if you're not sleeping, That's a form of stress. And generally when you're stressed, it impacts your sleep. So round and round we go. What do we know about chronic stress and poor sleep? They're raising cortisol. Now cortisol comes up every day. You wanna go out, see the sunshine in the morning, get that cortisol going. That helps wake you up. No cortisol, we're in deep doo-doo. But you don't want elevated cortisol all throughout the day, and especially later in the day and evening when it's supposed to be coming down and helping prepare you for sleep. Chronically elevated Cortisol makes you store more body fat. It can lead to leaky gut. It can impair your thyroid function. It can lower progesterone, creates a whole host of problems, breaks down muscle, right? So the reality is you cannot out-train or supplement a stressed-out nervous system. You really got to focus on recovery. Having said that, of course, there are some things that can help with stress. The big one, meditation, biggie. Sleep, biggie. And if you're having challenges with your sleep, I will do a big shout out to my Sleep Candy product that I do not go anywhere without, with some melatonin and theanine and 5-HTP and inositol that can help you fall asleep and stay asleep. And then I think magnesium is another great winner here to help you with sleep. And again, sleep is a huge priority. Like, if I could think of one thing that could get in the way of you losing weight and cause you to gain weight, it is poor sleep. So make sure you're prioritizing this. Now, of course, one of the things we know is that as you start to get into perimenopause, hormones start to go sideways, and that can really mess things up. You'll see it in your sleep. Progesterone goes low, it impacts your sleep. Estrogen's bouncing all over, giving you hot flashes. So that's one thing. If you're fasting, insulin's going up. As estrogen comes down, insulin goes up, and then that starts to create more fat storage. Both insulin and cortisol can create more belly fat. One of the other things that starts to happen is your thyroid starts to go down, and especially the ability to convert to active thyroid, T3. That's why when you're doing a thyroid panel, make sure you also get a free T3 to see how that's working. As estrogen, progesterone start to decline, again, progesterone, you'll probably notice a lot with your sleep. And estrogen, you'll notice that you just can't work out like you used to and you can't build muscle like you used to. And all of a sudden you're gaining fat in your gut and your belly rather than your butt and your thighs. And then of course, all the chronic stress, all these hormones, as they start to do this, are basically giving your body the wrong instructions. They're telling your body to store fat. Break down muscle, right? Just none of the things that we wanna tell our body to do. So this is where you work with a great hormone-trained doc to help you get those things back in balance. And, and a lot of the things that you can do will help here too. Lifting weights, managing your stress with meditation, going out for those walks, dialing in your diet, all those things help. But when your hormones go down, best thing you can usually do is get your hormones back optimized. And that's where you wanna go have a conversation with a well-trained hormone-focused doc. Now, I mentioned earlier the trifecta in eating fiber and phytonutrients for your gut microbiome. Stress trashes your gut, as you know, can lead to leaky gut. But your gut microbiome, if it's not working well, it's not going to absorb protein well. And bad microbiome can actually store more calories as fat. One of the things that I love, and I just recently got to be on a panel with Dr. Tim Spector, who's the proponent who's really pushed the idea of eating 30 different plants a week out into the world because they did all the studies with Zoe Nutrition and found that was really the sweet spot. So 30 plants a week, that sounds daunting and crazy until you realize that things like herbs count. So a teaspoon of dried herbs count. So that can make it pretty easy and fun to play around with all these different things. So that's one of the things that I do when I'm tracking my food is I now become very aware of getting in 30 different plants a week. And I will tell you that once you start to do this, it's not as hard as it sounds and it's actually kind of fun and it will make your food more interesting. Okay, so here's the big reframe. It's really not about willpower. It's about biofeedback. See, your body is constantly giving you data. It's giving you cravings, fatigue, bloating, stubborn weight. That's feedback. That's not your body being mean to you. That's body saying, hey, things are not working here. Help! Best things you can start to do are track. Track your diet. Track your body composition. Track your blood sugar with the CGM. Track your recovery, your HRV. Track your sleep metrics. Just track, be curious, don't be judgy. Just be curious because that data doesn't judge. It's just there to guide you. Once you have that, then here's the fix. It's my metabolism fix framework. Here we go. First, number 1, eat by design, not default, right? Eat protein first and then do the satiety trifecta. Train for strength, not calorie burn. Focus on putting on that muscle. It's your metabolic Spanx. Build that stress resilience. This is where I love high-intensity interval training and things like meditation. Shout out to my buddy, Dr. Joe Dispenza. Recover like it's your job. Sleep is super mission critical. It's queen here, right? And then track your wins. We do not do this enough. We need to give ourselves a trophy, right? Track shifts in your body composition, in your energy, in your strength. Don't just track that number on the scale. In fact, ditch that scale. Only use a bioimpedance one. When you shift from fighting your metabolism to partnering with it, that's literally when everything changes. So I also created something to make super easy to get started because the first piece of the metabolism fix is eating protein first. I created a 7-day Eat Protein First Challenge, free, that we will link to, jjvirgin.com/proteinfirst. So jump into that. And remember this: if you're not losing weight, it could just be that your metabolism is responding to changes in muscle and protein and blood sugar and stress and hormones and gut health. Once you work with these systems instead fighting them, your body finally starts to respond. Now, if this helped you, hit subscribe, share this video with another woman who needs it, help a gal out, and drop a comment with what you want me to cover next. And if you want a deeper roadmap, watch episode 1, Muscle First Metabolism: The Key to Midlife Weight Loss for Women 40 Plus, from my Metabolism Makeover series. And really follow along through the series to learn more about how you can optimize your lifestyle.