Fat Loss Shortcuts for Women Over 40 (That Actually Work)

Level up, level up. Level up, level up, level up, level up, level up.

Wow, that's quite the welcome. I was thinking this morning as I was getting ready about one of the first times I spoke on Chalene's stage. And I was super nervous and I walked out on stage and I was all excited and I saw my nipple pad fall on the ground.

And at the time I had big implants and it was the only thing kind of keeping me together. And there it was on the floor. And I remember thinking, one, did anyone notice that? Two, what if I step on it and is it going to make a weird changing of a noise today? I'm not worried about that, but I am worried about my estrogen patch falling off because it's on my butt. And when we get a little hot flashy, those things tend to, tend to fall off. So if you see that, just know. I warned you.

So today we're going to talk about fat loss as we age. Who's interested in that topic? Tell me, Anyone not interested in that topic? Who are you? I want to know. Things start to change as we age, don't they? Things that used to work, stop working. And then we start going into that self beat up thought, like, what's wrong with me? Or I should know this. And then what we do is we try to do everything that we used to do a lot more. We restrict our calories, like I'm gonna do more cardio, I just gotta go harder. And then the big one is I just gotta get myself motivated. Anyone feel that in their head, I just gotta get myself motivated. What I'm gonna tell you today is that doesn't work. We're not gonna just all of a sudden just find the motivation and, and working out harder and eating stricter. That's not the game plan. It changes as we age. So my first question before I get into some actual tactical things that I'm going to teach you today is do we have an open mind today? And I just want to hand up if you do hand up, yes, open mind. Because if you don't have an open mind, what happens is we get very stuck on old beliefs. That's what we're wired to believe. And then anything that I say or any speaker says today, we go, that's not my belief. And then things don't change. You see, we're the result in our 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond of everything we've learned up until right now. So we've got some work to do if we want to change beliefs and change results it's really important. So I'm going to take you back for just a minute.

These are people just like many of you that you maybe see yourself in a before or an afternoon. Maybe you're the before right now. Maybe you're the after. I want to talk to you about the foundation that happened before these transformations actually had change. Okay? And this is important. Now, I know when you ask someone, do you want mindset? They all say, no, I don't want mindset. But I'm going to give you a little tip of the mindset today, because this is critical. If you ask anyone, anyone who is fit and healthy.

Or anyone who is very successful in their business, successful in their relationship, anyone that's successful at anything that you want. If you ask them how they got there, they will start with two things. Number one, they made a decision. They decided, they absolutely decided that something was possible for them. This is important why? Because when it comes to fat loss and being healthy as we age, most women have decided it's not possible for them. They've decided it's too late for them. They've decided their genetics are broken. They've decided they're autoimmune, or their lab reads, or what their doctor told them is their new truth. They decided the wrong thing. So number one is they make a decision that it's going to be possible for them no matter what. It's a decision. I've decided I'm going to be healthy and fit. I've decided I'm going to age well. I've decided my labs are going to change. I've decided the cancer is not going to stop me. I've decided my autoimmune is not going to define me. I've decided. Number one, have you decided? Write that down if you need to. I decide. First thing I do with any client that works with me is get them into a firm decision. Number two, vision. Alicia just touched on it a little bit. Vision is deciding who that future version of yourself can be and you can dream. This is Nicole in the picture right here with the red dress. When I met her, she was in the black dress. And she said to me, I've tried everything. Nothing works. All the wrong decisions. And I asked her, what has she decided? And she decided she was going to be healthy and fit. But I asked her another level question, and I'm going to ask you right now. I asked her what her vision was. What's her possibility? Now Alicia touched on vision. I want to give you another level of that. Vision is getting really Clear on that future version of yourself and thinking through what that would feel like, look like, and be like. Nicole, for example, in the red dress here, when she had it was the one in the blue, the black dress she described to me with great detail. She would be the woman walking in a room wearing a red fitted dress. A1C out of the limits, super high, high risk for everything, high markers on all of her labs. Totally depressed, no energy. Had tried everything.

The story she had in her head was She's a type 1 diabetic. She has one autoimmune, it's led to another. She's now Hashimoto's. All these labels, it's not possible for me. This was her story. So she had to recognize, and I want you to recognize, too, that she had a false, assumed truth, the fat holding her back. And until she decided that she was going to be an example of that girl with two autoimmunes that bust through it and can get healthy. Until she recognized that nothing was going to change. So the next thing she had to do is start killing the fat. So a little takeaway for you is, and write this down. I'm going to kill the fat. Kill the fat means you're going to start paying attention to that voice in your head that's telling you why things won't work.

And you're going to start rewriting that script. If you need help with it, find me today. Let me help you with it. But if you've got a story, whenever someone comes up to me and they list out all their ailments, I say this. And you can say this to your friends. And don't think I'm a bitch when I say this to you today, because I'm going to. I'm just giving you the warning. I'm going to say, do you want my empathy? Do you want me to validate how you're feeling and what you're saying? Or do you want to actually get results.

Period?

Okay.

Okay. Why do I share that stuff first? Well, if I could have my dream house, it would be on sand by the beach. It'd be pink with flamingos and palm trees. That would be my beachfront property. Right. That's my dream house. Now, the problem with my dream house is if you build something on sand, it could be the most amazing pink house ever. But if there's a storm or the weather changes or the tide comes up, my house is going to disappear. Right? Okay. This is what we do wrong with our health and our fitness. We try to do all these New habits. I'm going to diet harder. I'm going to do all these things. But we haven't fixed the foundation. The foundation are those things I mentioned to you first. It's those critical pieces about your decision and about your vision and killing. Those false, assumed truths. When you do that, and only when you do that, will your new foundation work. Okay. All right, let's get into some actual tactical things. Number one, to change your body, you have to. And I don't want to, but you have to become a health detective. Now, I know most of us didn't go to medical school. We think our doctors should just be doing this for us, but they're not. Most doctors are spending five minutes with you. They're reading through labs the way they learned in school. They're trained by pharmaceutical companies. Now, a lot of times, they're looking for, here's your lab marker, here's the symptom. You said, here's a pill, right? Who's experienced that? How many have been told, oh, you're in menopause or you're in perimenopause. Take birth control pills and antidepressants. Okay, that's not being a health detective. That's getting you out of their office really quick. Just gonna say it. You gotta be your own health detective. So let me just tell you a little bit about being a health detective. So I'm 53 right now. This was me two years ago. I wasn't overweight, but I was a lot heavier than I am now. Was it fat? Nope. It was inflammation. I was sick, and I knew something was wrong, but I was in my early 50s, and just like many of your doctors have said to you, well, it's just your age. You have to accept it. You heard that? Age. You have to accept it. It's just your hormones. You just need hrt. Anyone hear that? Yep. You're depressed. Antidepressants. Okay, I was being told all those things. I was even told my high blood sugar was now type 2 diabetes. I'm a fitness expert, thinking, how is this possible? I'm doing all the things I'm eating. Strict. I'm doing. What do you mean? Well, it wasn't that I had to be a detective. Now it's different for all of us. For me, it was a lot of inflammation. Because what happens as we age? A lot of things start catching up with us. You heard of toxic overload? Toxic overload. So, yes, everything's toxic. But as we age, things are starting to compound. So these are important things that we need to be looking at and not just accepting. My blood sugar's high. My gut test shows something not amazing. My thyroid's off. But asking why? Why asking why. And there's an order of operations for everything. And whoever you ask might have a different opinion. My order of operations happens to be gut health first, looking at your gut. If your gut's not working functionally, nothing else is going to matter. Your hormones are going to be a mess, your blood sugar, all of it. Next, I would say thyroid. Is your thyroid optimal?

After that, I'm going to say let's look at your blood sugar and your cortisol. What's happening there? No, an A1C in the mid 5s is not ideal. You want your A1C low 5s or even in the 4s, that's your blood sugar over a three month period of time. If your blood sugar is not optimal, we run the risk of type 2 diabetes, more cancers, dementia. So much linked to that.

Looking at our DNA, understanding how is our DNA not as an excuse, but are we wired a little different than other people? Do we methylate things differently? Maybe being a vegan isn't great for me. Maybe being carnivore isn't great for me. Understanding a little bit more of that. We have to be a detective. This isn't just slapping hormones on, it's being a detective and asking questions.

Then let's get into the obvious. And I'm going to talk about these obvious things. And some of you might roll your eyes and go, okay, this is basic, Natalie. But I'll tell you from my experience, and I've helped hundreds of thousands of women, they're not doing this. They are not doing this. So, number one, are you eating primarily an unprocessed natural food diet? Primarily an unprofessed. What does that mean? That means foods that once grew, foods that you can pronounce the ingredients. If you are living off of shakes and bars. That is not an unprocessed food diet. If you're just reading labels and looking at calories and fat content and protein, not an unprocessed food diet. Unprocessed, natural. Real food makes a big difference in our bodies. This is meats, this is nuts. This is seeds, this is vegetables, this is fruits. Are you eating unprocessed natural, Real food. Really important. Don't skip that step. Most people will drop pounds just from switching to that. No calorie counting, no macros, just from switching to that. Next. You've heard it before, but protein is king. If we do not Eat enough protein, we lose muscle mass. If we lose muscle mass, our metabolism slows down at rest. The more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns at rest. Also, muscle help. Sorry? Protein helps your brain. It helps regulate your blood sugar. It helps you not have cravings, it helps you not be hungry. And no, you're not getting enough protein from quinoa and beans. I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. Your protein needs to be pure forms of protein. So quinoa and beans, not the right way to get ideal. You've got to supplement. If you're doing just that, okay, you've got to be adding in. Protein is king here.

How much protein? Well, I'd love to see people having about 30 to 50 grams per meal. Now, that sounds like a lot, right? I know, but it's a lot easier than you think when you start forward focusing with your protein at each meal. You got to think of muscle as your metabolism. Muscle is your metabolism. We don't just get muscle and maintain muscle from lifting weights. We've got to feed it so protein for that 30 to 50 grams per meal. And it's also your massive blood sugar regulator. If you lead your meal, you all have seen it. You wake up for breakfast, you have maybe eggs and sausage and some fruit, you feel full all day, you wake up and you have both cereal or oatmeal, you're hungry an hour later, right? We're spiking our blood sugar and we're creating an issue there.

Okay? Combining food groups. I don't love saying count macros because I think it stresses us out, just like counting calories would. But combining your food groups, meaning combining your proteins, your carbs and your fats. Now, carbs. I know there's a lot of people that stay away from carbs. We need carbs. My preference on carbs personally and what I teach clients is to lead with vegetables and fruit for carbs. For me. Now, I am not against things like potatoes or other starches, but I'm going to explain that in just a minute. If you're in fat loss mode, we want to focus on protein, healthy fats and carbs. The more vegetables, the more low glycemic fruits, the better. Really important. Also not a fan of a lot of the extreme carnivore or keto. And I'm going to tell you why right now. I'm an age optimizer and we need antioxidants. We have oxidative stress coming at us in every single direction. Antioxidant is the opposite of that. Without fruits and vegetables, we cannot heal things. We cannot heal things and we are going to have rapid aging if we completely eliminate fruits and vegetables. I don't buy it. When someone says, I changed my whole life, I feel totally better. All I eat is protein and organs. Okay, talk to me in a few years. I think what's actually going on is you have a poor gut and now your gut's not tolerating anything but protein, so you think you're bypassing something, but you never got to the root of the problem. So we need fruits and vegetables.

Grazing's also out. How many of us learned in the fricking 90s to eat every two hours or your body was gonna eat its own muscles? Anyone learn that? Yeah. Okay, that came from the bodybuilding world. And the reason that came about was to put on muscle. We wanted to be able to digest and process enough muscle, enough protein at a given time to build, add weight. Okay? But grazing, I want you to picture my cow. Every time you think of grazing now, cows graze. We don't want to look like a cow, okay? When we go to fatten cows up, we feed them food all day, grains all day, right? Let's not graze. Every time your body's eating and grazing, you're secreting insulin. When you secrete insulin, you're not burning fat. You cannot burn fat while secreting insulin. So grazing is out. What I'd love to see is modified fasting between meals. So what does that mean? Well, there's a lot of science behind fasting. I'm going to be careful not to run over my time. So I'm not going to get into all the science here, but the ideal number is you want to go at least 12 and a half hours, at least 12 and a half hours overnight of not eating. That gives your body enough time to start to rest, digest and utilize everything, all the good nutrients you put in and heal your body. So we need at least 12 and a half hours. Now, that's not hard to do. That means your dinner's at 6. You don't eat breakfast again till 6:30. We can all do that, right? I would love to see you push it a little more and have like a 12 and a half to a 16 hour window. If you get in the habit, it gets easier than you think. Most of us are naturally either not hungry at night or not hungry in the morning. Listen to your body. I think we trained our bodies wrong years ago that we have to eat as soon as we wake up. And eat right before we go to bed and eat every two hours. So it's a little untraining, but once you can actually stretch it out, you're gonna have a lot of cellular repair. You'll have insulin regulation and the fat starts to really come off. You'll notice that you're more focused, you're more energetic, you feel better when you actually can stretch out and add in those fasting windows. Really important. Another thing I'll tell clients is go longer between meals. Skip the snack. Just go longer between meals. I'll tell you. I personally, because Chalene said say what you personally do. I personally, I eat about two for me, two really big focused meals, protein heavy meals a day. And then at other times I'll add in some additional protein. Okay.

Okay, let's talk about sugar for a minute. Cannot be healthy or lose weight adding sugar in your diet. So number one, we gotta remove added sugar. Does that mean I'm perfect and never eat sugar? Absolutely not. I'm human. Definitely known to have some Nutella or yogurt covered gluten free pretzels. I will tack the bag if you have them. I definitely do it. It's not my signature staple. It's not a lead in in my diet. If you're having sugar cravings, you got to look ask the why. Why do I have the sugar cravings? Tell you. Gut dysbiosis, massive way to crave sugar. You have parasites, you have things going on in your gut, it's going to crave sugar. You have low thyroid, you're going to crave sugar. Your hormones are out of whack, you're going to crave sugar. So ask the question, why do I crave sugar? One of the simple reasons we crave sugar is we're not eating enough protein and fats and fiber. So we're spiking our insulin and now we crave more. So pay attention to that and go, why am I craving the sugar? We don't need to crave sugar.

Next. I know this is controversial lately, which is funny to me because I wrote this in my first book years ago, but about seed oils, seed oils, no bueno. We've got to get rid of seed oils, those safflower, cottonseed, all of those oils. Highly inflammatory. I personally believe that they're cause of many, many diseases. I think we've been misled massively believing that saturated fat was dangerous. It's not the saturated fat. What's dangerous is the sugars in the seed oils and they're in flippin everything, y'. All. They're in everything. You got to pay attention. And I am that crazy person at the restaurant that asks, how is it cooked? I carry my own olive oil with me.

You want to ask for olive oil? Avocado oil, you want to ask for coconut oil, real butter, the seed oils. We'll see that slowly change over the next few years, I really hope. But you go down a whole rabbit hole researching Kate Shanahan. Great book to read. Dark calories, by the way, should give you the whole science background on seed oils. But we've got to avoid. It's in everything. I mean, you can't avoid them at Whole Foods. It's in everything. And I think it'll start to gradually change. But think about cooking at home, carrying your own oil.

Kate Shanahan's cat E. It's dark calories. Phenomenal.

Okay, here's the dirty seven, if you want to write it down. Canola or take a picture. Cottonseed corn, sunflower, soy, rice bran, and grape seed. These are the dirty ones. They're in everything, y'. All. Now, this does not mean you can't eat sunflower seeds. That's not what I'm talking about here. This is the highly processed oxidative oils that are killing people. I believe this is why there's such a big uprise in heart disease and cancers and everything. Seed oils are everywhere, and they oxidize fast in our bodies.

Okay, let's talk about inflammation while we're on that. So people don't like when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's the truth. If you want to get inflamed and untoxic and lose weight, you got to give up three things. You got to give them up right now. Not forever, but right now. Grains, dairy, sugar.

Sorry, I know some of you don't want to hear it. I didn't either. Okay, they are highly inflammatory. Now, can you be a freak of nature and not have issues with them? Yes. My husband does not have issues with any of these. He can eat as much as he wants. Okay, Some of us, that's the case. Most of us, it's not, especially as we age. So I'm not gonna ask you to give them up forever, but I want you to give it a try. If you can eliminate these things a week, two weeks, even a month, you are gonna notice massive changes in your body. Notice? I didn't say give up carbs. I said greens.

So highly inflammatory. Now, some people, once your gut's dialed in and you're healthy, you can absolutely add things back. I can eat dairy, no problem right now, no issue. But when you are learning to get your body healthy, you got to give them up. Especially if anyone in pain. If you're in pain with autoimmune. Autoimmune or pain, they have to go. They have to go. It'll make a huge difference in all of your pain, your inflammation, everything. Okay, let's talk about deficit for a minute. Everyone loves to calorie count and talk about deficit. So the fact is, yes, it takes 3,500 calorie deficit to lose a pound of fat. That's kind of science fact. 3,500 calories, which is about 500 calories a day, you lose a pound of fat. The issue is, this is a few things I want you to note about calories. Number one, most people grossly underestimate how many they're eating, and they overestimate how many they're burning. Most of you are not actually burning 500 calories on your treadmill, even though it told you you did. Okay, so we are underestimating how many we are eating and overestimating how many we're burning. So that's number one. Two, you can't. It's not really that easy to tell exactly how many calories are in something. You pick up an apple, how many calories depends on how ripe it is, how big it is. There's no way to completely accurately track. But yes, you do need to be in some sort of a deficit to release weight. But all calories are not created equal. So eating chicken and vegetables and healthy, unprocessed food is going to get you a very different outcome than eating 1500 calories of junk food in a day. Because what comes along with the food you're choosing is how you're feeling and your energy and the inflammation and what's happening in your gut, all of it goes together. So, yes, be aware of the deficit, but don't obsess on it, because that is the lesser of the issues. Portions still matter. Portions still matter. But when you are in a good, healthy state, balancing the right things, the goal should be never hungry, never full. So you just feel good. You just feel good. Never hungry, never full. So deficit, be aware of it. Don't hyper focus on it.

I don't want to skip sleep. I know that's not nutrition, but sleep is the only time that your body is truly resting and repairing. So really treat sleep the way you would everything, treat it the way you would do Meal prepping, the way you do your work, the way you do your recovery, the way you do everything. Sleep is hyper important. Now. I know in midlife, a lot of us, we wake up at 3:00am Anyone experiencing the 3:00am thing? Okay, yes. Let me tell you, it's fixable. You know why people wake up at 3am? One, low thyroid, two, high cortisol. So blood sugar issues. Three hormones out of control. That can do it. Hot flashes.

Possibly. But even with drinking a lot of water, if everything else is in order, you could sleep through the night. So typically it's hormones, thyroid, cortisol, blood sugar, dysregulation, eating too much before bed. We'll do that with the blood sugar. Okay. Also, gut, Any gut dysbiosis, gonna wake you up at 3am stuff is most active around 3am with that. So fix your sleep, but don't just ask why. I mean, don't just fix your sleep. Ask why. You have to understand the why. Because just taking something to go to sleep, which is great, we could take progesterone, we could take magnesium, we can take all the things to go to sleep. But just taking it doesn't fix the problem. So ask why and really be that health detective. Understand what's going on with my sleep. One thing I didn't mention, but I'm going to do it, is the importance of blue light. Like, we're in a lot of artificial lights right now. At nighttime, you want to make sure you're not in that artificial light. So whether you're wearing blue light blockers or you're changing out your overhead lights to use red lights in your house, you want to be really aware because light does affect our cortisol, it affects our melatonin production. So I know people think it's wacky when they see some of this online, but it is true. For years. If you think if you went camping. I'm pretty sure most people in this room don't camp, but somebody might. I actually did last summer with my husband. It's very memorable.

But if we go camping, if you were outside in the middle of nature, nowhere, you would naturally get tired at night because the sun's setting, no blue light coming in. You would naturally wake up earlier because of the natural light coming in. So really important we can mimic that in our own homes and get better sleep. Okay. What about supplements? I'm a huge fan of supplements. I don't believe we can get everything from our diet these days. We can get a lot from our diets. It's important. But Adding in supplements is another level. So key things that I add and advise for most midlife women, there's lots of things that you could work with, but one, minerals. I think we've got trillion. I know we've got trillions of cells in our bodies and we're mineral deficient these days, so. So minerals are really important. If you're buying bottled water, buy mineral water, by the way, not distilled or purified tap water. Buy mineral water. It's one way to get them, but you can also add them. Enzymes. Digestive enzymes. After age 35, we lose digestive enzymes. We break down food less efficiently by adding in enzymes. You're going to actually utilize more of your protein in your body that you're eating. Vitamin D. Most of us are lacking vitamin D, so getting a little bit of real sun, but also supplementing with vitamin D every day will totally change your mood and your body and your composition. Probiotics. Most of us have poor gut health. As we age, toxic overload happens. So adding in probiotics and then creatine. Creatine is not just for bodybuilders. It's super important right now. Super important. That was a lot of information really fast. But just kind of like, just to recap, sort of your Monday marching orders, just to go back. Number one, make a decision. I've decided. I've decided. Everyone enrolled in that. I've decided. No longer your old identity. I've decided. Number two, vision. Get really, really clear on the future version of yourself. Who do you want to be a year from now? What does that look like? What does that feel like? Who is that person?

Number three, the actions. What are those actions? Being a health detective. So starting to ask why, why, why, why? Go deeper on those questions. Making sure you're eating primarily unprocessed, natural, real foods. Are you combining foods, protein, carbs and fats at each main meal? Are you eliminating those inflammatory things, grains, dairy, sugar, at least for a little while so you can see. And are you prioritizing sleep? I'm Natalie. Jill. Thank you, guys. Thank you, thank you.