We all want to feel tight and lean, right? If you have ever wondered what it really takes to get lean and stay that way, this episode is for you. I walk you through 5 habits that will help you shift the way you see your body and body fat. You will learn what to focus on instead of fat loss, the kind of nutrition that supports a lean body, the most important upgrade in your workouts, and my favorite anchor meal.I share the story of my friend who has incredible DEXA scans, great body composition, and crushes it at the gym. She looks like the picture of health, but even she found it tough to lose a bit more fat. It is not just about effort. It is about mindset. We have been taught to see body fat as a problem, and that can mess with how we approach fitness. At the end of the day, we are all chasing a feeling. That feeling is usually feeling good. And let me tell you, it feels amazing to feel good in your own body.Here’s the thing: focusing on fat loss alone doesn’t work. When you only focus on losing weight, you often end up using strategies that break down your muscles. That is not what we want. Instead, shift your focus to performance. Start to think like an athlete. You will see that as your muscle grows, fat comes off more easily. Get into the habit of tracking your workouts and increasing the intensity. When your fitness goes up, fat tends to come off naturally.Next up is the habit of worrying about what other people think. This is a big one. It is totally normal to care, but other people’s opinions should not control your choices. You might feel like you are being too rigid or making things awkward when it comes to food, but that is just your old programming talking. Your choices are your own. They are not hurting anyone, and they are not anyone else’s business. You do not need to explain yourself or argue. Just let the comments roll off your back. That is what freedom feels like.Now let’s get into food. Did you know it’s really easy to eat more calories than your body needs, and that exercise does not burn nearly as many calories as people think? Fitness trackers often exaggerate calories burned, so take those with a grain of salt. Remember, your workouts are not meant to cancel out last night’s dinner. They are meant to improve your body so you naturally burn more throughout the day.Start paying attention to your food, especially your protein. Track what you eat once in a while to get clear on your numbers. This is not about restriction or guilt. It is about awareness. Try different protein sources and remember that what works for someone else might not feel great for you.Which brings me to breakfast. A balanced breakfast sets the tone for the day. Each morning try to get a mix of about half your calories from carbs, a quarter from protein, and a quarter from fat. Yes, carbs belong at breakfast. All three macros matter and your body needs them to function well.And finally, the most important training habit is progression. If you want to change your body, you need to increase the weight you lift. For women over forty, this is especially important. Increasing your strength month by month builds the kind of muscle that sticks around and gives your metabolism a serious lift.If all of this feels confusing, it’s probably because you are getting too many mixed messages from the internet. The truth is actually simple. Build muscle with strength training, and get your nutrition right. That is the recipe for getting and staying lean.And if you are still feeling lost, go back and listen to earlier episodes! You already have what it takes to become everything you want to be.I hope you enjoyed this episode! You can get FREE access to my 4-week Strength Without Stress program right now! This program will help you reduce the systemic inflammation that’s caused by overly intense or lengthy workouts. It’ll help you build...
We all want to feel tight and lean, right? If you have ever wondered what it really takes to get lean and stay that way, this episode is for you. I walk you through 5 habits that will help you shift the way you see your body and body fat. You will learn what to focus on instead of fat loss, the kind of nutrition that supports a lean body, the most important upgrade in your workouts, and my favorite anchor meal.
I share the story of my friend who has incredible DEXA scans, great body composition, and crushes it at the gym. She looks like the picture of health, but even she found it tough to lose a bit more fat. It is not just about effort. It is about mindset. We have been taught to see body fat as a problem, and that can mess with how we approach fitness.
At the end of the day, we are all chasing a feeling. That feeling is usually feeling good. And let me tell you, it feels amazing to feel good in your own body.
Here’s the thing: focusing on fat loss alone doesn’t work. When you only focus on losing weight, you often end up using strategies that break down your muscles. That is not what we want. Instead, shift your focus to performance. Start to think like an athlete. You will see that as your muscle grows, fat comes off more easily. Get into the habit of tracking your workouts and increasing the intensity. When your fitness goes up, fat tends to come off naturally.
Next up is the habit of worrying about what other people think. This is a big one. It is totally normal to care, but other people’s opinions should not control your choices. You might feel like you are being too rigid or making things awkward when it comes to food, but that is just your old programming talking. Your choices are your own. They are not hurting anyone, and they are not anyone else’s business. You do not need to explain yourself or argue. Just let the comments roll off your back. That is what freedom feels like.
Now let’s get into food. Did you know it’s really easy to eat more calories than your body needs, and that exercise does not burn nearly as many calories as people think? Fitness trackers often exaggerate calories burned, so take those with a grain of salt. Remember, your workouts are not meant to cancel out last night’s dinner. They are meant to improve your body so you naturally burn more throughout the day.
Start paying attention to your food, especially your protein. Track what you eat once in a while to get clear on your numbers. This is not about restriction or guilt. It is about awareness. Try different protein sources and remember that what works for someone else might not feel great for you.
Which brings me to breakfast. A balanced breakfast sets the tone for the day. Each morning try to get a mix of about half your calories from carbs, a quarter from protein, and a quarter from fat. Yes, carbs belong at breakfast. All three macros matter and your body needs them to function well.
And finally, the most important training habit is progression. If you want to change your body, you need to increase the weight you lift. For women over forty, this is especially important. Increasing your strength month by month builds the kind of muscle that sticks around and gives your metabolism a serious lift.
If all of this feels confusing, it’s probably because you are getting too many mixed messages from the internet. The truth is actually simple. Build muscle with strength training, and get your nutrition right. That is the recipe for getting and staying lean.
And if you are still feeling lost, go back and listen to earlier episodes! You already have what it takes to become everything you want to be.
I hope you enjoyed this episode!
You can get FREE access to my 4-week Strength Without Stress program right now! This program will help you reduce the systemic inflammation that’s caused by overly intense or lengthy workouts. It’ll help you build and maintain valuable lean muscle without the fatigue from other programs
To get free access to Strength Without Stress, post a Review wherever you’re listening. Grab a screenshot of your review before you post it and upload at: https://www.hollyperkins.com/review
This is a limited-time offer before it sells for $197–grab it while you can for lifetime access.
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Holly Perkins 0:00
No one gets lean by accident. In fact, you're hardwired to gain weight. It's all part of Mother Nature's homeostasis to make sure that you survive. So if you want to actually get lean this year, it takes a certain set of habits. After 30 years coaching women day in and day out, these are the five habits that you'll want to cultivate if you want to become lean. So keep listening.
Holly Perkins 0:37
Welcome to the Holly Perkins Health Podcast. If you're a woman over the age of 35 and have health, fitness, or nutrition questions for your body, you're in the right place. I'm Holly Perkins, a women's strength and nutrition expert with over 30 years of experience helping thousands of women transform their bodies to be stronger, more resilient, and more energetic inside and out. Every week, you'll walk away with a real plan for improving your body composition so you can feel better now, reduce inflammation, and create lasting health. So if you're ready to create the body that you need to keep up with the life that you love, let's dive in.
Holly Perkins 1:24
Hello, my friend, and welcome to my podcast studio in rural Pennsylvania. If you're new around here, I have converted an old barn on a farm in Pennsylvania as my office and my podcasting studio. And some days, we get a variety of wildlife and or farm equipment that just kind of adds some flavor to my podcast episodes. And today, we have a couple of birds just outside my office who are clearly having an argument or an in-depth conversation about something, because they will not stop talking.
Holly Perkins 2:03
And so I'm kind of on a timeline here, and I've been waiting for about a half an hour for these birds to stop their yapping, and they won't. So we're gonna roll with it. So if you hear the birdies in the background, welcome to Pennsylvania. How are you? If you are new, I'm Holly Perkins, and I am here to help you use strength training and intentional nutrition to improve your body composition so that you are at least 70% lean muscle, because that is the target where you reduce your risk of disease and where your muscle is more of a powerful contributor to your metabolism overall. This is going to keep you young, active, injury free, so that you can stay in the game of life and out of the rocking chair.
Holly Perkins 2:55
This week, I heard from a friend who has been admittedly crushing it in the gym and with her nutrition, and she is doing such a beautiful job of improving her body composition, but also improving her athleticism. In my professional opinion, she is kicking butt. She is doing great. But she said to me, quote, I tried to do a fat loss phase last month, and it was too destabilizing. I'm paraphrasing. And so she quit, and she said, so I'm going to try again next month.
Holly Perkins 3:36
So in other words, she tried to go through a fat loss phase, but for a number of reasons, it just was not working. It wasn't successful. It wasn't the right time, and so she aborted the mission, if you will, with the intention of doing it again. Now, what you should know is that her body composition is already fabulous, and from a DEXA scan, I know that she is somewhere around 75% lean muscle, and to me, she's the goal. She's already won. She looks amazing. She feels amazing. She's achieving new max weight loads in the gym and in her workouts. She says she feels better than ever, and yet, there's a part of her that is still seeing things, i.e., her body, through a filter of fat.
Holly Perkins 4:31
Her perspective is that she needs to lose fat to get to her next level. And now, listen, I get it. Most people don't love the feeling of extra body fat, right? Most of us don't like that, whether it's around your tummy or the back of your arms or the back of your hips or your waistband, whatever it is. Sadly, we've been conditioned to believe that it's not a good thing, and it just doesn't feel good, however much fat you have.
Holly Perkins 5:00
Or she has, or I have. In general, it's something that we just generally don't like. So it makes sense that you'd want to lose the fat, right? Yes, of course. Makes perfect sense. We have been so programmed to demonize body fat, and it is so totally understandable to hate the fat that you have, or at least want to feel tighter or leaner in general. I'm really acknowledging this concept and this goal, but today, I want to share some habits that help to reframe how you look at your body and how you look at body fat in general, so that you can more easily shift to a place that's, number one, medically healthier, and number two, where you want your body and your body fat to be. So in this episode, you'll learn what to focus on instead of fat loss, what to focus on in your diet to get lean, the most important progression in your workouts, and my secret weapon anchor meal of the day.
Holly Perkins 6:17
Here's the thing: if you had a choice, wouldn't you choose to feel tight and lean and energized, either right now or next week or down the road? Wherever you are, whatever position you're in, wouldn't you choose that? I think most of us would, regardless of where you are right now. That is something that most women aspire to, especially the women in my community, which tends to be women mid 30s and up. The bulk of my women are probably 40s and 50s, definitely some 60s.
Holly Perkins 6:49
And I've got lots of women older than that too. So it really does span a lot of decades. But in short, my community is definitely all women. And here's the thing: feeling tight and lean at any size feels good. It feels good when you love the way that your clothes fit. I would argue, regardless of what that size is, while you might think you're hung up on a clothing size, the truth is, in my experience, people are really hung up on achieving a feeling, right? Feeling better, loving the way that you perform all day long, and feeling good in your body right now. It feels good when you can go up and down stairs with ease and when you can lift heavy things that other people can't, right?
Holly Perkins 7:45
So let's get into the episode so that you can learn the five habits you must master in order to become lean so that you can feel fabulous and awesome and strong at any size, like my friend. So many women make the mistake of focusing on fat loss in order to lose fat. And as completely nonsensical as that sounds, hear me out. It makes perfect sense to focus on losing weight in order to lose fat, okay? Perfect sense, right? If you want to lose fat, you're probably gonna lose weight, right? When you do that, you end up adopting strategies to that end—a loss. But see, these strategies really can get lumped into a category of catabolism. Catabolism is the metabolic breakdown of something in your body so that it can create energy for something else. And catabolism is something that's happening all the time. There's different kinds of catabolism, but the one that we really don't want is the breakdown and the destroying of muscle. We don't want muscle catabolism. In my experience, this takes you down a much harder path that often ends in frustration or, even worse, muscle loss.
Holly Perkins 9:17
So any of the strategies, protocols, behaviors, diets, workout programs, etc., that you would adopt to lose fat or lose weight are a strategy that tends to be tricky and more problematic than it's worth. In most cases, fat loss requires a calorie deficit. Now, not in every single case. There is an argument for how we can convert deep, visceral adipose tissue fat without actually losing weight. But let's not get too argumentative or tricky here. For the most part, fat...
Holly Perkins 10:00
Fat loss requires a calorie deficit, okay? Because through catabolism, your body is breaking down body fat to use it for something else. It's creating energy from the breakdown of the body fat so that your body can use that energy elsewhere. It's catabolism, and that might sound great, right? And the problem is, a calorie deficit also tends to destroy muscle tissue. Because with weight loss comes muscle loss most of the time. And in my experience as a coach, it happens more times than not. I will often reference the Army Research Study, where they looked at a group of people under an active environment. And in this study, as much as 25%
Holly Perkins 10:56
of the weight lost came from muscle. And in my experience, because I'm looking at DEXA scans, I will often see as much as 30% of the weight loss comes from muscle loss. And that's a problem, because that happens more easily than you realize. You have to be vigilant. Now, if you do it right and you don't actually lose muscle but you do lose weight and or lose body fat, you still will be handicapping your ability to build muscle.
Holly Perkins 11:35
Okay, so even if you don't lose muscle, you're hindering the building of muscle. So as a rough example—and I have seen this in practice with my clients—if you were to be in a calorie surplus, meaning you're getting more energy than your body actually needs, you might be able to add, let's say, five pounds of muscle over a three to six month program. And it could be more or less; I'm just using this as a very general example. But if during that same phase you're in a calorie deficit, meaning you're expending more energy than you're taking in, you might only gain one to two pounds of muscle.
Holly Perkins 12:20
And so in one situation, you're going to lose fat or not, but in the other situation, you're going to gain more muscle. And that's because a calorie deficit, even if you do it right, still makes it hard to build muscle. So it may sound like I'm creating an argument for a calorie surplus. And I will say that if you've got at least energy maintenance or a slight surplus, it definitely makes it a lot easier to build muscle. And so if someone comes to me at a reasonable body fat percentage, or they have the last, let's say, five pounds of body fat to lose, I generally will try to put them in a maintenance or maybe even a little bit of a surplus, because I know those last few pounds of body fat will come off as your muscle goes up.
Holly Perkins 13:10
I know all of this because I have all of my clients get DEXA scans, or at the bare minimum, an InBody-type body composition scan, so that I can actually see what's happening to their muscle throughout the program, so that I know if I have to add or subtract calories. And I see this all the time. By the way, the women who are in a calorie deficit, even if it's a small deficit, struggle to add muscle. And those that are in too big of a calorie deficit, they will lose weight on the scale.
Holly Perkins 13:47
They will lose body fat, but they also lose muscle, and I see it. So the first habit that you must master in order to become lean is to adopt a complete mental reframe away from fat loss and towards performance. Put all of your effort into and use the strategies for increasing your fitness and up leveling your athleticism and your performance. Become an athlete. Focus on performing instead of a fat loss phase. Can you see the difference? In other words, don't try to lose fat, don't try to lose weight, try to get super fit. And this means, number one, becoming obsessed with tracking your workouts so that you can ensure that you're actually increasing your weight loads month after month. Number two, increasing the effort and the intensity of your strength workouts in general. And this also means learning more complex strength training protocols and
Holly Perkins 15:00
into exercises. So maybe you start to learn a Z press or a snatch or a hang clean or other moves that aren't just your basic dumbbell hammer curl, right leg press. Now, the basics and the foundations are foundational and important. They are. And at some point, if you really advance and cap out, it might mean you've got to learn some of these more advanced movement patterns so that you can keep progressing. When your goal is to become an athlete, you'll improve everything, not just your body fat, and that will naturally burn off any of the extra body fat that you don't want without you ever having to go into a fat loss phase.
Holly Perkins 15:55
The second habit that you must master to become lean is to overcome your tendency to be influenced by other people's opinions and comments on your choices and habits. Now, if you are one of my avid podcast listeners, this is something we haven't really talked about, but it is something I talk about a lot inside of my coaching programs like The Body Composition Project and with my private clients, because what I have found through my own journey, but also working with women, is we are so susceptible and have such a tendency towards what other people think of us.
Holly Perkins 16:34
By the way, that is not a weakness, it's not a character flaw. It's part of being a human. I also think it's part of being a woman. I think it's part of our psychosocial makeup, and I think that it's just who we are, and I think most of us have a bit of it. If you didn't, you'd be a psychopath, right? So to not care at all what anybody thinks is unusual and is a problem. But in this conversation, it's going to help you if you can really choose to let go of the ideas, opinions, and comments that come at you from other people about your efforts. I see this most when it comes to food.
Holly Perkins 17:19
There's someone in your life that will comment about what you eat or what you don't eat, and they will express what they think about your choices, whether you asked for their opinion or not. Am I right? Give me a heck yes if you know what I'm talking about, because pretty much every single one of us has had one of those people in our life. I've had a lot of them. This is a big, big edge for personal development for me, and I can tell you, once I got it clear within myself, everything changed, and oh my goodness, it is the most liberating place to be when it can have its place in your brain.
Holly Perkins 18:05
Most of the time, the comments, the things that people are saying or expressing about your choices, are not really supportive, right? If they are, great, welcome them. Those are the people that you want around you. But a lot of times, you'll get cues, hints, and outright comments from people along the lines of, why aren't you eating dessert, or why aren't you drinking alcohol? Oh, you're being an angel tonight and you're not drinking. Well, you're being healthy, aren't you, because you're not having dessert. And regardless of the person's intention, regardless of their meaning behind it, because I like to believe it's not ill-intentioned, right?
Holly Perkins 18:55
There are some people that just aren't even aware of how their comments come across, and it's always a reflection of their own internal conversation. But there is a negative connotation behind it, usually, and it can make you feel that you're rocking the boat, like you're doing something wrong, like your behavior is somehow causing someone to have an opinion or a feeling that's not positive, right? So you cave because you interpret your actions and your choices as being problematic or rocking the boat or making someone else unhappy. And a lot of this can happen instantaneously. It's always subconscious, and you might not really even see how much it's influencing you, but you cave and you cave into whatever direction they're commenting in. Does that make sense? So
Holly Perkins 20:00
maybe you do have the glass of wine, or maybe you do eat more dessert, or maybe you don't cave, but the comment feels like a judgment against you and a feeling of being cast out, and that destabilizes you internally. On some level, it rattles you. On some level, it's triggering, and therefore it influences you in some way. Am I right? But I also see this play out in reference to your exercise habits or your fitness in general. If you only knew all of the foreboding comments that I would get from people when I was super lean, you might be led to believe that my level of fitness was actually a problem. But the irony here is that my fitness level is only a problem for the people who couldn't understand it, because they will miss out on experiencing what life or their health could be like if they would become super fit.
Holly Perkins 21:11
Also, I would get comments like, you're too skinny, or aren't you worried about your knees with all of that running, or are you sure squatting that much weight is safe, or do you really think that much exercise is good for you? And the thing is, from the person, it's coming from a place of caring. They care about you, and so they share their worries about your habits, but it's going through the filter that they have. And in order to become lean, you've got to stop being impacted by people's comments and opinions about your body and your choices. And on some level, it is none of their business. And I don't care if this is a family member, a spouse, a child, a parent. I don't care if this is one of your most nearest and dearest. In many ways, your choices and your body is not somebody else's business.
Holly Perkins 22:21
Now, of course, if you're harming them or if you're harming yourself, this is a different conversation. But in general, in my community, the issue here is when people are sharing their worries about your choices on some, let's say, not so worrisome level, but you let their vibe in, right? Does that make sense? And the truth is, you've got to be immune to what other people think, what other people say, because the truth is, they don't understand. It is not their body and it is not their life.
Holly Perkins 23:02
You've got to be able to take comments in and just let them roll right off of you without any charge, with no emotional blip at all, because the truth is, they don't get it. They are not you, and therefore their opinions do not matter. You don't have to be combative, you don't have to be judgmental in return, you don't have to be insulted. It literally needs to be the situation where whatever people offer you in terms of nonverbal cues or outright comments about your choices, you have to just let it be without it influencing you at all. And if you can get there, my friend, wow, everything changes. That is liberation. That is empowerment.
Holly Perkins 24:05
Up next, I'm going to share what to focus on in terms of your nutrition habits in order to get lean. But first, as you probably already assume, yes, how you eat is a huge factor in becoming lean. The truth is, you really can't outrun a bad diet. And if that's a new concept to you, let me explain a little bit more. Some people think, and maybe even subconsciously, that if they overeat one day, they can exercise more the next day and burn it off, or that it's possible to burn off all the bad foods that you ate yesterday.
Holly Perkins 24:47
Maybe you had a big dinner last night and you overindulged, even if it was healthy food or too much dessert or too much bread or too much alcohol. Whatever it was, it was too much. And so today, you're going to do more cardio, right, to burn it off. Or maybe you're going to eat less today to try and balance it out, balance out those calories, to quote, unquote, make up for your indiscretions, if you will, yesterday. And while this does absolutely make sense on paper, it actually doesn't work. Trust me, I tried it over and over for 10 years until I finally woke up to the fact that it wasn't working. And once I got clear on this, so much changed in my body composition because it just doesn't work.
Holly Perkins 25:34
Number one, here's why. It is real easy to eat a ton of calories, and you may not realize that depending on the foods that you're eating, especially if it's in a restaurant, it is so easy to get way more calories than you actually need in a day. And two, exercise doesn't burn off as many calories as people like to believe. It doesn't. All of those calorie trackers or biometric devices that you use that tell you how many calories you burned in your workout, they all lie. They are all grossly overestimating the calories that you burn in a workout. And you might think, oh no, but guess what?
Holly Perkins 26:18
If you're a listener of mine, you would know the point of your workout is not to burn calories. The point of your workout is to change your machinery so that you burn more calories and you burn more energy 24/7 outside of your workout. Your workout is to work you out. It's not to burn calories. And your body can't sustain the sudden increase in exercise volume that it would take to burn off the extra one or two thousand calories that you may have taken in the day before. And do you know that it's actually super, super easy? It's easy to eat as many as two or three thousand calories in a meal. I've done it myself. It's possible. Your physical body can't sustain what it would take to burn off all of those extra calories the next day.
Holly Perkins 27:15
So it's really sloppy math, and it just doesn't work. So rather than using exercise to manage your nutrition, use your brain to supervise your energy. And when I say energy, I mean energy balance in terms of the energy that comes in through food and the energy that goes out through activity. The third habit that you must master to become lean is to fine-tune the calories that you eat each day and fine-tune your protein sources. And this is all in contrast to worrying about if you're eating seed oils or not, right? This falls under that conversation of managing the food items that you're eating.
Holly Perkins 28:11
This is good, that's bad. Protein is good. Carbs are bad. Grapes are bad. Brown rice is good, right? That's managing food sources and food items. And really, what I'm talking about here is getting good at managing your metrics, your calories, while also managing the sources of protein. On some level, your body responds to numbers alone. I do believe that eating too many calories from avocado has the same outcome as eating too much ice cream. On some level, if you're getting too many calories from any food, you're going to struggle getting lean.
Holly Perkins 29:01
So instead, put your effort into tweaking your calories. Let me ask you this. Do you know how many calories you ate yesterday? Roughly, not down to the calorie, but in general. If so, it's time to start measuring your food so that you know if your halibut is four ounces or eight ounces. I'm not talking about getting hyper-vigilant or over obsessive-compulsive. I'm talking about taking a few rounds of a food scale or measuring cups and such to know how many ounces of protein you're eating, how many sweet potato calories you're actually eating. These things so matter. And having an accurate commandment of the metrics of your food is what's going to move the needle. And you can do it in a way that's really just knowledge. It's just a choice. It doesn't have to be emotional, it doesn't have to be restriction, and it doesn't have to be overly consuming. It's literally getting smart about your metrics like you would anything else.
Holly Perkins 30:23
If the gas in your vehicle is at a quarter of a tank, you're going to start to look for a gas station, right? There's no emotional trigger on it. You're just looking for a gas station. You need to get gas in your vehicle. It's the same quality within you. Then once you know your numbers, start fine-tuning your protein sources. I do believe that number one, it's important to experiment with different kinds of protein sources. It's not just about getting more protein. Protein, protein, protein of any kind. It's helpful to cycle your protein sources so that you're not eating chicken and collagen powder for every meal, right? And three here, different bodies respond differently to different types of protein.
Holly Perkins 31:17
So for example, for me, I do not feel well when I eat chicken. So instead, I eat turkey. And because it would be real easy for me to eat turkey for every meal, I make a concerted effort to make sure that I rotate in and cycle through beef, shrimp, salmon, protein powder, a little bit of cottage cheese, some egg whites here and there. I cycle through different kinds of protein. So have your chicken, but rotate it with all the other sources of protein.
Holly Perkins 31:49
And if you don't know what foods are protein dominant, spend some time there. The fourth habit to master in order to become lean might not be news to you, but I continue to be surprised by how many women hear me say it, but they don't actually do it. And it is, eat a balanced breakfast, please. And by balanced, I mean choose the healthiest foods that you prefer, okay? The healthiest version of the foods that you prefer. If you eat grains, choose healthy grains. If you eat vegetables, eat the most nutritious of the bunch. If you like Greek yogurt, awesome. If you prefer turkey bacon as your protein, great. But choose your foods and adjust their quantities so that the calories of that meal are balanced to 50 25 25, meaning 50% of the calories of that meal are coming from those healthy carbohydrates that you prefer.
Holly Perkins 33:00
25% of those calories of that meal are coming from the protein and the fats that you prefer. This ensures that you're getting the minimum effective dose of all three of the important macronutrients, because protein is important, so are carbs, and so is fat. Getting 50% of those calories from carbs gives your brain the glucose that it needs to perform all day long, and it gives your body the energy it needs. 25% of those calories coming from protein help to balance your blood sugar against the carbs that you ate.
Holly Perkins 33:39
It helps to reduce hunger and appetite and build muscle. And 25% of those calories coming from fat satisfy you and provide the fat that you need to absorb some nutrients and are the precursors to produce certain hormones. When you eat breakfast this way, your body will burn fat better all day long. And if you're like, okay, Holly, I love your four tips, but I am just gonna fast until two o'clock every day in the afternoon, just try it. Because I promise you, as soon as people start to adopt this habit, your leanness improves almost instantly.
Holly Perkins 34:19
And, oh, by the way, you feel better all day long anyway. And the last habit that you must master in order to become lean is prioritizing weight load as your progression in your strength workouts. If you spend any time on the internet, you're gonna hear a variety of experts like myself talk about progression in your workouts. Progressive resistance strength training is what's absolutely necessary to improve your metabolism and build muscle. But progression means several different things. It could be longer, slower reps. It could be more reps, so that you're improving your time under tension.
Holly Perkins 35:08
It could be more volume in general. There are a number of ways that you can progress each week. What I'm saying is that the most important progression of all for women, especially over 40, is weight load full stop. Instead of working harder in general in your workouts, or just doing more or going at a higher intensity, get laser focused on one thing: ensuring that you are actually increasing your weight loads every single month. In my opinion, that is the only progression that truly matters for women over 40.
Holly Perkins 35:51
So right now, I ask you, if you look back at your workouts over the past few months or the past few weeks or whatever, what exercises have you actually increased your weight loads on? Think about that. Because a lot of times, you might think, I'm working so hard, but are you actually increasing your weight loads? Can you say definitively that you have increased the weight load that you're using on your leg press or your deadlift or your dumbbell curls? While there are many ways to progress, increasing your weight load means you are building muscle through myofibril hypertrophy, and this is the type of muscle that sticks around for a long time and packs a real punch to your metabolism.
Holly Perkins 36:43
And it's time to be honest with yourself, because you might be going to the gym and working hard, really hard, every single day. And for that alone, I acknowledge you. Great job. But more and harder isn't necessarily effective. But if you can tell me that you added 50 pounds to your leg press this year, I guarantee you'll be leaner. There you have it. My top five habits to focus on if your top goal is to become lean. You might be tempted to think that this is all so confusing, and that's probably because you're getting a lot of mixed messages from the internet and social media in general, and that you're applying too many different philosophies.
Holly Perkins 37:32
But the truth is, in many ways, getting lean really just comes down to two simple things. Number one, building muscle through progressive resistance strength training. And number two, getting your nutrition right. And while there are a million experts out there who will tell you what right means, I can say that after 30 years in practice coaching women, I know what works. This works. So if you feel lost, please go back and binge all of my podcast episodes, because I can tell you right now, without a doubt, you have what it takes to become as lean as you desire. And the things that I teach in the Holly Perkins Health Podcast will help you get there.
Holly Perkins 38:16
You've got this. Thank you for listening. And if you are still here at the end of the episode, my friend, you're a bestie. I hope you enjoyed this one, and stay tuned for another brand new episode on Tuesday of next week. Stay strong, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. I am so happy that you're here, and I hope you loved it. If you did, please take a moment to subscribe, share with your friends, and leave a review. And if you want more from me, check out my blog and coaching programs over at hollyperkins.com. That's all for now. I'll see you next week.