Are you struggling to build lean muscle as you navigate the challenges of midlife? You're not alone! Many women over 40 find themselves asking, "How do I eat for muscle while managing my weight and energy levels? " In this enlightening episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I, Holly Perkins, BS CSCS, delve into the essential connection between nutrition and muscle growth, focusing on the unique needs of women in this age group. It's crucial to understand that building muscle isn't just about strength training; it requires a thoughtful approach to nutrition that prioritizes muscle development over mere weight loss.
Are you struggling to build lean muscle as you navigate the challenges of midlife? You're not alone! Many women over 40 find themselves asking, "How do I eat for muscle while managing my weight and energy levels? " In this enlightening episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I, Holly Perkins, BS CSCS, delve into the essential connection between nutrition and muscle growth, focusing on the unique needs of women in this age group. It's crucial to understand that building muscle isn't just about strength training; it requires a thoughtful approach to nutrition that prioritizes muscle development over mere weight loss.
Throughout our discussion, I share common pitfalls many women encounter, such as under-fueling their bodies, overemphasizing protein while neglecting carbohydrates, and following outdated weight loss strategies that can actually hinder muscle growth. I emphasize the importance of a well-rounded diet, as I believe that how to eat for muscle is a powerful tool for enhancing overall wellness. By adjusting caloric intake, macronutrient distribution, and meal timing, you can create a solid foundation for muscle building.
Did you know that carbohydrates play a vital role in fueling your workouts and preserving muscle? I explain why they are essential for energy levels and how they can enhance your performance during toning workouts. With practical tips and real-life client experiences, I encourage you to track your food intake to pinpoint areas for improvement. This process can lead to transformative changes in your approach to nutrition for women, especially during menopause.
As we wrap up the episode, I introduce the benefits of creatine as a supplement to boost your workout performance and aid in muscle recovery. Embracing a balanced approach to nutrition is key to achieving your fitness goals and enhancing your mental health. Remember, it’s not just about losing weight; it’s about building strength and vitality. Join me in exploring how to eat for muscle and discover how you can elevate your fitness motivation and wellness journey!
If you're interested in womens health, this is the podcast for you.
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Speaker #0 If you want to preserve the muscle that you have and protect it as you age, or build some new muscle now in order to create the strength that you need for the years ahead, you must eat in a way that supports muscle growth. Muscle is built in the gym. but it's revealed and protected in the kitchen. And a big mistake is eating for weight loss or to get lean. Muscle is like the engine in a Ferrari. You have to fuel it properly. If you're ready to learn how to eat for muscle and strength, keep listening. Hello and welcome. Thank you for being here. If you are new, I'm Holly Perkins, and I've got the 411 on how to improve your body composition. so that you are at least 70% lean mass, so that you can reduce your risk of disease and stay in the game of life and out of the rocking chair? What if I told you that the reason your strength training isn't working has nothing to do with your workouts? And what if the very way that you're eating, the salads, the low carb, the fasting, the being good, is actually the thing that's preventing you. from building lean muscle. And how surprised would you be if I told you that eating more might exactly be what your body needs right now? Today, we are talking about how to eat for muscle and strength for women, and it's especially important if you're over 40. If you're struggling with building muscle despite doing all the things, or you're confused by all the different nutrition info out. there to eat specifically to support lean muscle, or you feel like you're working out but nothing is changing, it's very possible that you might be unintentionally under-fueling your muscle. And that keeps you stuck in what I call the chronic dieter identity. If you're not intentional with your diet, there is a good chance that you'll unconsciously adopt a weight loss strategy. And even if your goal is weight loss, eating for weight loss tends to destroy muscle if you don't get it right. And I say this because women come to me every single week for coaching, and these are the trends that I see. As you continue listening today, keep in mind that eating for muscle and strength is very different than eating intuitively or even just eating to be healthy. And if you're over 35, it's actually... easier to lose muscle than it is to build it. So if you're someone who worries about getting bulky, and some women still do, please know that it's actually very hard to build muscle for both men and women. One part of keeping the muscle that you have and building more is strength training, and more specifically, progressive resistance over time, increasing the weight loads that you're exposing your body to. But that's only half of the equation. The other half is nutrition and eating in a way to actually recover optimally from those workouts so that your body has the resources to build new muscle. So in this episode, you'll learn why weight loss eating and muscle building eating are completely different, the three biggest nutrition mistakes women make when they're trying to build muscle and a simple framework to start eating in a way that actually helps you lose weight. actually supports strength, metabolism, and longevity. I believe that women deserve to understand how their bodies actually work, and muscle is your greatest defense against aging. I also believe that when you start eating to build muscle or even preserve the muscle you have, instead of shrinking your body, you step into the most powerful version of yourself so that you feel unstoppable. every day. Eating for muscle will help you stay young, help you stay strong, feel capable, and have more energy than you know what to do with. I had a client come to me last year who was super frustrated. She was strength training four days a week. She was showing up, she was increasing her weight loads, and she was eating what she would call a protein-forward diet. When I audited her nutrition, I found that she was eating just under 1,500 calories, which you might not think that sounds too bad, but it really was too little for where her body weight was at the time, which was... 157 US pounds. And this is something I see on the regular with women who are trying to lose weight. Their calories are lower than really what they need to be and their calorie deficit is too big. But yet when you hear 1500 or 1600 calories, that seems like a lot. It's really not depending on your current body weight. Now I could see that she was front-loading her protein and she was getting around. I think it was like 49, 50 grams of protein at breakfast. And she was front-loading so that she didn't have to stress the rest of the day about getting her protein in. So her breakfast was only about 350 calories. And if you know the math of protein, fat, and carbohydrates, 200 of those calories were coming from protein. So while her protein intake for that meal was solid, She was barely getting any carbohydrates, and that was causing her to be hungry later in the day, have sugar cravings, and her biggest frustration was that she wasn't building muscle as quickly as she wanted to. Part of her frustration is that she believed she was actually being disciplined and doing all of the right things, but she was missing a few considerations that are very important when we're talking about supporting muscle. So I increased her calories, I increased her carbohydrates, and adjusted her macronutrient distribution in general, all according to what I'm going to reveal in this episode. And within a few weeks, her hunger was gone, her energy and her juice and her workouts was up, and she was able to get better workouts. So because of that, to no surprise, her body fat dropped because she actually had more muscle that was properly fed. And that is when it clicked for her and everything changed. Eating for muscle is different than eating for weight loss. My most successful clients will tell you there were three things that made the biggest difference for them. Number one, getting daily energy intake right. In other words, this is calories. Calories get a bad rap, but the truth is It's your energy that's coming into your body that your body is able to use to expend energy during the day. Getting their calories right was key. If you're eating too few calories, the odds are that you will lose muscle. Number two, getting enough protein alongside of sufficient carbohydrates. If you're eating for weight loss, there's a really good chance that you're either going low carb or that you consciously or subconsciously reduce carbohydrate intake. And number three, they get their macronutrient distribution right, and it's not what you think. Many coaches out there prescribe a high protein macronutrient distribution to facilitate protein synthesis. And while I would say that's not overtly wrong, I found in my practice, there's actually a better way. So let's get into it and address the three biggest mistakes that I see women making that's damaging their muscle. The biggest mistake by far, as I've already mentioned, is eating for weight loss instead of muscle and strength. This is a problem because if you're eating for weight loss, you're probably in a calorie deficit, and it's very hard to get sufficient protein for muscle repair and growth because you're just not eating enough food in general in the day. You absolutely can. build muscle and burn fat during the same training cycle. But if your calorie deficit is too big, it makes building muscle a lot harder in general. What I noticed personally is if I'm not eating enough, even if I'm not hungry, I recover more slowly, I feel more just drained in between my workouts, and everything in my body just feels hard. Everything is harder. To me, it almost feels like my system is handicapped and it's working so hard to burn off body fat and build muscle at the same time. You can do it. My clients do it all the time. I just find if the calorie deficit is too big, it's really uncomfortable and it's not metabolically efficient. And it's just very taxing on your biology. But when I increase my calories and I eat for muscle building, I feel like I had a good workout, but I don't feel drained. I wake up the next day and I see progress very quickly. So my suggestion for you here is to have a calorie target that isn't weight loss focused and track your food for a week or two. I know some people are really reluctant and don't enjoy tracking and logging their food. But if you're struggling, it could be the difference between that struggle and actually getting results. And sometimes all it takes is tracking for seven or 10 days to see what your habits are. A good place to start for calories is multiplying your current body weight in US pounds. If you weigh yourself in kgs, just multiply by 2.2. So your current body weight in US pounds by what's called a calorie multiplier around 14 to 15 calories per pound. In my experience, this puts most women at their energy maintenance to begin. And even if it is a slight calorie deficit, it's small to not destabilize you too much. So it's current body weight in US pounds times 14 to 15, and that's going to give you a general calorie ballpark to get started with. Number two, sometimes women will then compensate for a calorie deficit by eating too much protein relative to carbs, and therefore, they don't get enough carbs to support muscle. Remember, it's not just about the total amount of carbohydrates you're eating. It's also about the relative percentage to protein. And you could even be eating a low-carb diet but still not be getting enough carbs relative to protein to build muscle. By default, this puts you into a low-carb diet, even if you're not outwardly trying to be low-carb. And what we know, this is very interesting, chronic low-carb dieting, whether you're doing it intentionally or not, induces physiological insulin resistance. It is an adaptive mechanism. where your muscle preferentially burns fat. That sounds like a good thing, right? But it becomes resistant to glucose uptake. That's a problem. So if you're someone and you suspect or you know that you're insulin resistant and you've lowered your carbs to improve insulin sensitivity, but you're not getting any better, this might be why. I've had a handful of clients in the past 18 months Where this was the case, they kept lowering their carbohydrates to improve insulin sensitivity. Their labs and blood markers didn't get better until I increased their percentage of carbohydrates and boom, all of their biological functions improved. Your body actually needs carbohydrates, especially for preserving and building muscle. Too few carbs really is problematic. when you're wanting to eat for muscle. And number three, eating for weight loss is also a problem because a 2015 study done by the U.S. Army's Military Nutrition Division found that 25% of weight loss comes from muscle when you're in a moderate calorie deficit, not even an aggressive calorie deficit, a moderate one. This means that if you're in a calorie deficit and you lose, let's say eight. pounds on your bathroom scale, there is a very good chance that two of those pounds came from muscle. So in reality, you've only lost six pounds of fat and you might be happy for that six pounds of fat, but you lost two pounds of muscle. And that muscle is so metabolically important. And it's just too easy to destroy muscle when you're in a calorie deficit. And so you have to avoid that muscle loss. that usually comes from not eating enough in general. Now, I want to share something that I hear out in media quite a bit from other experts and influencers. When they talk about telling women to eat more, I find myself getting a little frustrated because that seems so vague. And so when I say, ooh, you have to make sure you're eating enough, a lot of women say, well, how do I know? And I do think it's important to at least be conscious to how much you're eating in terms of total food. but also your carbohydrates and your protein. And so to some degree, you can't just blindly start eating more or eating less. It's really helpful to have a target. So if you're someone who doesn't wanna track your food each day and you're trying to lose weight, but you aren't exactly sure where your daily calorie intake is, here are five signs that you're eating for weight loss instead of muscle gain. Number one, you are often hungry. especially in the late afternoon or just before dinner. If you arrive at dinner and you're hangry and you eat a very large dinner, this is an indication that you might be unknowingly eating for weight loss instead of muscle gain and or you don't feel satisfied after normal sized meals. Number two sign that you're eating for weight loss instead of muscle gain, you don't feel powerful and supercharged in your workouts. You should be showing up, especially for your strength workouts, like a caged animal. You have so much energy that you want to dedicate to your strength training workouts. And if you don't, that could be a hint that your food is off. Number three, sugar and food cravings are strong enough that they distract you and that you have to muster up willpower to manage them. I see this a lot. And generally, the first cause is too few calories, but the second cause is not enough carbohydrates in proportion to the protein and the fat that you're eating each day. Number four, you struggle with increasing your weight loads during your strength workouts. Maybe you feel like you just can't push and pull more weight, like you don't have the just vital life force juice energy to be able to do it. I see this when clients say to me, I'm trying so hard, but I literally cannot get my weight loads up. This is often because your machinery just doesn't have the power and the fuel it needs to do that. And number five, you often feel tired and depleted even after protein forward meals. Now, if two or more of these sound familiar for you, it might be time to either increase your food intake for the day. Or do a diet audit by actually logging and tracking your food for 7 to 14 days. Or set a calorie target and adjust the percentages of protein, fat, and carbohydrates that you're getting. Sometimes all it takes is just getting a little bit more scientific about what you are eating and then adjusting your strategy a bit. Let me tell you, it works like magic. I always say, if you don't... know what you're eating. You don't know what you're eating. And so if you're struggling or you're having symptoms, this is the best place to start. Now, since I've mentioned energy during strength workouts and the need to be powerful so that you can increase your weight loads, because that's really where it's at, I want to express my deep, deep obsession love. for a supplement that has truly changed my life and the lives of my clients, and that is creatine. Now, if you don't know, creatine is a nutritional supplement, and it is a small nitrogen-containing compound made from three amino acids. arginine, glycine, and methionine. And those three amino acids are very important for muscle. Creatine's main role is to help regenerate what's called ATP. It's your cell's energy source during activity. It's almost like the gasoline to your Ferrari. And creatine regenerates ATP during short, high-intensity efforts like strength training. When you're doing a set of squats and the weight is heavy, or it can also apply to things like sprinting. Now, it doesn't build muscle directly. What it does is it helps you to train harder, which can lead to greater muscle adaptation over time. It gives you better quality workouts. I noticed that I just feel stronger when I take creatine 60 to 90 minutes before a workout. And I feel like I just have more resources in order to lift heavier. I feel better during my workouts. I don't feel as depleted afterwards. When I started using it, I noticed that it was just easier to get my weight loads up and I experienced way less muscle soreness after my workouts. So I was able to work out more frequently. I also feel a really big brain boost. And I think better and just more clearly when I've taken my creatine. So for me, it's really and truly a daily non-negotiable. I am super passionate about it. And I really, truly believe it's going to be the supplement of the next 10 years. So on this note, I want to tell you about one of my podcast sponsors. When it comes to creatine, there is one potential drawback that affects some women some of the time. And that's water retention. When you first start taking creatine, you might feel like your body is holding onto water more than usual. Now, this has never been the situation for me. And I would say 90% of my clients don't experience this, but some women do. In my experience, it happens very infrequently. And even when it does, the water generally will release off of you within 7 to 10 days if you stay consistent. But this is one reason why I really love Creatone by Brickhouse Nutrition. Creatone is radically different from the general guys creatine. It was created by doctors for women, and it's made with pure creatine and patented ingredients that help to reshape your body so that you look leaner and more toned without water retention. So you experience... no weight gain, and you don't feel like you're bulking up. It also boosts metabolism to help burn fat. And like I said before, creatine really helps make you stronger during your workouts, so your results are better. In many ways, I feel like creatone helps me look more toned and defined without actually having to change my diet and or increase my exercise. It simply compounds what I'm already doing. Let's get you started with 20% off your first order. Visit tonetoday.com and use my code HOLLYP for your discount. Again, use my code HOLLYP to save 20% at tonetoday.com. That's T-O-N-E today.com. So continuing from earlier. The second mistake I see frequently is eating too little or too much protein. And this is where I'm an advocate, again, for logging your food so that you can learn what you need to eat in order to hit your protein target. In popular media, when we talk about eating for muscle, there's an automatic default to just talk about protein, And while that is true, it's not the whole story because it's also important to protect your carb intake. When women come to me for coaching, I would say it's about a 50-50 split. Women are either eating too little protein or too much. Now, there aren't really obvious signs or symptoms when someone is eating too much protein, but there are a couple. And the two that I look for are, number one, digestive issues like bloating and constipation. If you're eating too much protein and therefore not enough carbohydrates or fiber, there tends to be some digestive upset. And then the second symptom. of eating too much protein is feeling like you're doing everything right, but you're just not seeing changes in your physique. See, in this case, it's not necessarily about the protein. It's those other considerations. Now, the signs that you're eating too little protein are a lot more obvious. Number one, you may notice weak hair and nails. This was the case for me before I got my protein right. And let me tell you, I have new hair sprouting. and I cannot keep up with my hair growth and my fingernails. It's really crazy. That is one of the biggest signs I see when women aren't getting either enough protein or enough protein variety. Because keep in mind, not all proteins are the same. There's a big difference between beef, egg whites, and fish. Number two, another sign that you're eating too little protein is fatigue, especially in the gym, as I mentioned earlier. Number three, sugar cravings and just a sugar dependency alongside of constant hunger. These are signs that you're not getting enough protein or you're not spreading your protein out enough throughout the day. And lastly, ongoing muscle soreness after your workouts. If you feel like you're always sore, no matter how gentle your workout was, there's a good chance that your protein intake is inadequate. So. How do you hit the sweet spot of getting enough protein without getting too much? Good question, right? So I have my clients first set a general calorie target, as I talked about earlier. It's really important to start there because of what I'm going to say next. Once you have a general daily calorie target, you want to set your protein intake between 25 and 30% of total daily calories. Now you. could also sit down and calculate out your actual protein intake per day in grams. You can do that. A lot of other coaches teach that, but I've got a much easier method, which I'm going to cover in a moment. If you're someone who wants to have that specific number in grams in mind for protein intake, you want between 1.4 and 2.0 grams of protein per kg per day. So if you're in the US, and you measure your body weight in US pounds, simply take that number and divide by 2.2, and you want to multiply your body weight in kg by 1.4 to 2.0 grams of protein per day. A 2018 study by Brad Schoenfeld and Alan Aragon, research links are in the show notes, suggests that getting 0.4 grams of protein per kg per mealSpread across four meals in a day is the ideal way to spread your protein out equally to get that protein synthesis. So this equates to about 25 to 30 grams of protein per meal for four meals a day for most people, give or take, depending on your current body weight. Now, as I said, you can do it that way, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret that I think makes everything so much easier. In my experience, I've got women who just want the simplest, easiest method to get things right, and then I've got women who really like the nitty-gritty details. If you simply set an appropriate daily calorie intake, as I've already said, you can then put your energy into hitting a macronutrient distribution of 50-25-25 for the day. So if this is new language for you, What this means is, You have a target of, let's say, 2,000 calories per day, and you want those calories to be divided up amongst protein, fat, and carbohydrates, where you get 50% of those calories coming from carbohydrates, 25% of those calories coming from protein, and 25% of those calories coming from fat. Most of the time. For most women that I consult with, these numbers are exactly the same as if you sat down and calculated out your body weight and your grams of protein. So instead of getting gram obsessed, which I do think can be a little triggering and I just don't think it's necessary for most people, I like to keep it more relaxed in general and just get close to a percentage each day. And as I said, 25 to 30% of daily calories generally yields optimum protein for most women in my experience. The reason why I like this approach to protein, calories, and macronutrients is because it also provides sufficient carbohydrates with the protein so that your blood sugar stays regulated. And this is another very important consideration for eating for muscle. and strength. It's not just about calories. It's not just about protein. It is about keeping your blood sugar regulated by pairing your carbohydrates with your protein. And that is a perfect segue to the third mistake that I see, and it can be deduced from everything that I've already said, and that is being afraid of carbs. You cannot be afraid of carbs if you want to preserve and build muscle. Even though this episode is specifically about eating for muscle, it's assumed that you understand that if you want to keep the muscle you have and or build more, you must be strength training. I already said it, but I will go to my grave preaching that from the hilltops. Strength training is powered primarily by muscle glycogen, which comes from the carbohydrates that you eat. So in... order to get quality strength training workouts, you have to have glycogen in your muscle, your liver, and your brain, and also floating in your bloodstream so that you can get a good workout. When carbs are too low, workouts are hard. I've been there. I know this very well, and I consult women all the time. When your carbs are too low, you fatigue faster. You bonk faster. You can't lift as heavy. and your general volume drops because you get to the end of the workout and you leave instead of having the energy to show up for one more set. Less performance equals less mechanical tension, which equals less weekly volume, which equals less stimulus for muscle growth. If progressive overload is the goal, and it should be, carbs are your fuel source to make that happen. Another reason why carbs are so important is that they spare protein so that it can be used to build muscle. If you don't eat enough carbs, your body is most likely going to convert protein into glucose for energy. This is called gluconeogenesis, and it's your body breaking down protein, i.e. your muscles, so that you have the glucose that your brain must have. and that you can have to get you through the day. This means that protein gets used as your fuel instead of being used for muscle repair and growth. When your carbohydrate intake is adequate, protein can do its primary job, which is repairing and building muscle tissue in general, but more specifically after a challenging strength workout. And carbs support what's called an anabolic environment, where your body is actually able to build muscle. Carbs increase insulin, and insulin is not the enemy. It's actually anabolic. Insulin gets such a bad rap these days because of this conversation around insulin sensitivity. But insulin helps to shuttle amino acids into muscle cells. It also reduces muscle protein breakdown and it supports recovery. This is important to understand because there is so much popular media that tells us to avoid insulin spikes. And While for the most part that's true, around your workout, a bit of elevated insulin and or a bit of elevated carbohydrate in your diet is an important part of signaling muscles to grow and recover. One of the best habits that you can cultivate in order to eat for muscle and strength is to fuel up before your workouts and do it strategically. More specifically, this means, number one, you want to pair protein with carbohydrates before your workouts. And do not go into workouts fasted. I always say fasted workouts are the fastest way to gobble up the muscle that you're trying to build and keep. Number two, before workouts so that you can get a good workout, choose easy to digest, low fiber, low-fat protein and carbohydrates. This allows the resources from the protein and the carbohydrates to be quickly available to be used by your muscles during your workout, and the fiber and the fat aren't there, slowing down the digestive process. This is specifically the case for fueling before your workouts. And number three of the best habits that you can cultivate in order to eat for muscle and strength is to eat a meal one to two hours before your workout or a snack 30 to 60 minutes before. And like I said, rule number one is to avoid fasted workouts. So to wrap up, I know this might seem like a lot of information, but if you know me, you know I tend to over deliver. And I can tell you this. Apply these things that I've outlined and you will see a difference in your ability to preserve and also build muscle. Now, it might take a couple of weeks depending on how consistent you are, but you will notice a difference. Now that you better understand how to eat for muscle and strength, you might want some insights into the best strength training exercises. So up next, I want you to check out my podcast episode 89. Science just proved these are the three best ways to prevent muscle loss and build lean muscle for women because it is a great compliment to this episode. I will link it in the show notes. But it's episode 89 and you can just come to my website, hollyperkins.com and go to the podcast tab. You might be tempted to think that it's confusing and this is a lot of information for eating for muscle and strength, but I promise you. If you just take it step by step and apply one or two of the things that I covered today and you stick with it and you stay consistent, the human body has an incredible ability to adapt and to provide the progress that you're looking for. I hope you enjoyed this episode and please stay tuned for another brand new one on Tuesday of next week. Stay strong, my friend.