I'm sure you've heard my mantra before...
Metabolism FIRST, weight loss SECOND!
Why is this so important? Because 99% of the women out there have it all wrong...and it saddens my heart.
See, to get lean and healthy at any age, ESPECIALLY over 40, it cannot be any other way around. Patience, resilience and a changed lifestyle in body and mindset, is required.
But this is the real challenge.... The weight gain and weak metabolism is not the problem, it is the symptom.
It is due to your lifestyle over the decades: your colourful diet history, your over-the-top or never-consistent exercise routine, your stressful life, irregular or poor sleep, lousy job, lousy marriage, lackluster career, lost dreams, and oh yes, hormones that are not balanced....
Decades living from in this place has caused your body and health to be where it is now...it didn't just happen....
It's not ageing. It's an accumulation of years of habit...and your body and its metabolism has 'adapted' to this normal. Basically, you've taught your body, your biochemistry and your metabolism how to live from this place. You parented it in this way, from this set of standards...
But you can change it.
But to throw another diet or calorie cut or more cardio or cutting out food groups at a weakened metabolism, in an attempt to simply lose fat, compounds the issue even more.
Sure, you may lose a few 'pounds' on the scale, but it is likely mostly muscle and bone and water loss...
It's like whipping a tired, old horse to get to the finish line....you need to fuel him up, so he CAN run and he CAN win the race.
So when you resume normal life, you find the scale slowly goes UP again...and goes above and beyond where your original weight was. It's a slow moving train out of control, a roller coaster you can't get off of, and yet, you repeat the same pattern year after year...
But this only re-creates another metabolic maladaptation, signals starvation and stress in your biochemistry, your cortisol levels stay elevated for too long (they are supposed to go up and down in a healthy, responsive way....continuous raised cortisol level eats away at tissue, creating an acidic environment in the body and a chaotic, tightened mindset rooted in 'struggle, fear, resentment, frustration'... Sound familiar?
Then throw in hormonal imbalance and more stress is created when hormones are out of whack (again, often due to lifestyle choices over the years, NOT your genetics. Hormone imbalance gets blamed for waaaay too much!) everything is exacerbated, over and over and over again.
And the circling of the drain continues....down that rabbit hole she goes, once again....
And this is how most 40+ women are living, year after year. And they think it's because they're not trying hard enough, they're not compliant enough, they need to up the exercise, cut the food, have more 'willpower', be more 'motivated'.
Wrong. It's all wrong. It's all backwards. (And no, men don't go through nearly as much of this, due to their genetics, hormonal profiles, and their lifestyle. So yeah, your hubby can gain and lose way more efficiently! It's not that he necessarily has more motivation).
To turn that runaway train around, we MUST build health first. All the signs of an over stressed body whose sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive is there...and it has been for years. And this is causing you to live from where you are living...excess weight, lousy metabolism, poor sleep, lack of joy, feeling frustrated, perplexed, overwhelmed by it all....
And still, women push on. They hire trainers, or a dietician, or a so-called coach (without checking credentials, because, well, she looks good, and she is winning shows....) 🙁 And the 'diet industry' is perpetuating all of these problems...and they don't even know it.
In fact, few coaches recognize this, and fewer teach it. Because they don't know how. And alot of the responsibility lies with the client...she is impatient, she wants to lose the fat, she wants to see the scale move. If it doesn't move that day, she goes into panic, struggle, the self sabotage starts, the inner voice turns critical...
She does not know that she needs to turn down her nervous system, she needs to stop the surge of cortisol output, she needs a mindset shift to get her out of panic and 'this is hard' and 'I'm a looser' and all the other Mindtrash that she tells herself quietly, at night, or she wakes up to this trash every morning...
Do you see where I am going here?
- Metabolism first, weight loss second.
- Healthy body first, weight loss second.
- Healthy outlook first, weight loss second.
Coax the body and it responds. Force the body and it rebels. - Scott Abel.
This is why real coaching is so vital, coaching that coaches through these pitfalls in a way that offers a very different approach outside mainstream, a changed lifestyle, a changed mindset and full-on accountability and support over the long term.
Sadly, most clients want it now and they want it for free...so they keep scouring the internet, borrow diets from friends, they watch YouTube, they do HIIT or circuits or more cardio (the WORST for the 40+ woman), or they try lotions and potions and the next best protein powder or fat burner... Or Octavia, or Weight Watchers or Keto or whatever other 'diet of the year' is floating around...
But she's missing the point, each and every time....
My goal is to stop the nonsense, bring women the TRUTH, and show the another way, a joyful way to build health, self love, body love, to live lean, strong, and empowered.
Because we can. But not in the way that most women are going about it.
And that's why they are in the mess they are in, because they' don't know what they don't know.
It's about creating a New Normal out of the ashes of the old. Let those old habits, old conditioning, useless information die away, and let's embrace a new way, the Warrior Woman Way.
Book a free Body Breakthrough coaching session, or watch my FREE Masterclass, the 5-Shifts To Total Body Transformation on my web site, to get a feel for how WE do things here, at McCoy Fitness.
It's time to work differently, NOT harder. You've already been working things too hard, and in the wrong direction. :)
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XO!
