Eating Less Isn't Always the Flex You Think It Is After 40 🚩🚩

7 signs you may be under-fuelling your body — and why less food isn't always better for fat loss, strength and muscle in midlife.

For years, women have been taught that weight loss is pretty simple:

Eat less. Move more.

So when progress slows down, what do we do?

Eat a little less.

Cut out a few more foods.

Skip breakfast.

Make lunch smaller.

Add another workout.

And before you know it, you're trying to get through a strength workout on a yoghurt, two coffees and the promise of dinner.

Now, let me be clear before we go any further.

If your goal is fat loss, energy balance matters. I'm not going to tell you that eating more food magically makes you lose weight, because it doesn't.

But there's a big difference between creating a sensible calorie deficit and simply trying to eat as little as possible.

Especially if you're a woman over 40 who also wants to build or maintain muscle, get stronger, train well, recover properly and actually have enough energy left to enjoy her life.

And this is something I see with women all the time.

They're exercising. They're trying really hard to "be good" with their food. They're eating less because they want to lose weight...

Yet they're exhausted, hungry, struggling with their training and wondering why the whole thing feels so bloody hard.

Sometimes the answer isn't to cut back even further.

Sometimes it's worth asking:

Am I actually giving my body enough of what it needs to do what I'm asking it to do?

So, here are some of the red flags I think are worth paying attention to...

🚩 1. You’re constantly hungry or thinking about food

If you spend half your day thinking about what you’re going to eat next, trying not to snack or counting down the hours until dinner, it might be worth looking at how much you’re actually eating.

Hunger isn’t a lack of willpower.

Your body has systems specifically designed to encourage you to eat when it needs energy. And if you’re regularly training while heavily restricting your food, it’s hardly surprising if food starts taking up a lot more space in your head.

This can also create a pattern I see all the time: eating very little during the day, feeling incredibly virtuous about it... then getting to the evening absolutely ravenous and eating everything in sight.

Or being “perfect” Monday to Friday, only to feel completely out of control at the weekend.

Then comes the guilt, followed by another promise to be really good on Monday.

And round we go again.

Before blaming yourself for having no self-control, ask whether you’re simply asking your body to run on too little fuel.

🚩 2. Your strength and training performance are going backwards

If you’re strength training, one of the things I want to see over time is progress.

That doesn’t mean adding weight every single week, but generally you should start to notice that exercises feel better, your technique improves, you can manage more reps or the weights gradually increase.

If the opposite is happening — your usual weights suddenly feel ridiculously heavy, you’re struggling to finish workouts or your performance is consistently dropping — it’s worth paying attention.

Strength training requires energy.

And while protein gets most of the attention when we talk about building muscle, your body also needs enough overall energy and carbohydrate to support training and recovery.

You can have the best strength programme in the world, but if you’re continually trying to train hard while eating as little as possible, you’re making the job considerably harder.

Your workout isn’t just there to burn calories.

It’s there to give your body a reason to get stronger.

And to get the most from that training, you need to fuel it too.

🚩 3. You’re exhausted and running on empty

Now, obviously, feeling tired in midlife can have lots of causes. Poor sleep, stress, perimenopause and menopause symptoms, work, family, health issues — sometimes just having too much bloody stuff to do.

So feeling tired doesn't automatically mean you need to eat more.

But if you're regularly skipping meals, drastically cutting calories or trying to survive until dinner on very little food, under-fuelling certainly isn't going to help.

Food is energy.

And if you're asking your body to work, walk, think, train, look after everyone else and generally get through a busy day, it needs enough energy to do those things.

If you're constantly hitting an afternoon slump, dragging yourself through workouts or finishing every day completely wiped out, take an honest look at how you're fuelling yourself.

Sometimes women are so focused on eating less that they've stopped asking whether they're eating enough to actually feel well.

🚩 4. You’re struggling to recover from your workouts

A good strength workout should challenge you.

But you shouldn't feel as though you've been hit by a bus for three days afterwards. 😂

When you strength train, you're creating a stimulus that tells your body it needs to adapt. The actual repair and adaptation happens between your workouts, which is why recovery matters just as much as the training itself.

That means adequate food, enough protein, carbohydrates, sleep and rest all play a part.

If you're constantly sore, your muscles feel heavy, you're going into your next session still exhausted from the last one or you feel like every workout takes more out of you than you get back, it's worth looking at the whole picture.

You may need to adjust your training.

You may need more recovery.

And yes, you may need to look at whether you're actually eating enough to support what you're asking your body to do.

Training harder while simultaneously eating less and less isn't always the winning combination we've been led to believe it is.

🚩 5. You’re losing weight… but you’re also getting weaker

Seeing the number on the scales going down can feel like progress.

But what are you actually losing?

When weight loss is the goal, we ideally want to lose body fat while preserving as much muscle as possible — particularly as we get older.

If you're eating very little, losing weight quickly and your strength is dropping at the same time, that's not necessarily the result I'd be celebrating.

Muscle matters far beyond how "toned" you look. It supports your strength, physical function and long-term health, and it becomes increasingly important to protect it as we age.

That's why I'm such a big advocate of strength training alongside adequate protein and sensible nutrition rather than simply chasing the lowest possible number on the scales.

The goal isn't just to become a smaller version of yourself.

I want you strong too.

🚩 6. You’re “good” all week… then everything goes out the window at the weekend

Monday arrives and you're back on it.

You cut back, eat really well, avoid the foods you've decided are "bad" and perhaps even skip meals to make up for the weekend before.

By Friday?

You're starving, fed up and ready for the wine and whatever you've spent all week telling yourself you can't have. 😂

Then Monday comes around and the whole thing starts again.

If this sounds familiar, the answer might not be more discipline.

Sometimes the problem is that what you're trying to maintain Monday to Friday is simply too restrictive.

Of course weekends can involve more meals out, alcohol and treats — and there's nothing wrong with being mindful of that if fat loss is your goal.

But there's a huge difference between enjoying your weekend and feeling completely out of control around food because you've spent five days trying to eat as little as possible.

A way of eating that only works when life is perfectly controlled isn't particularly sustainable.

And you shouldn't need every Monday morning to recover from the way you ate the week before.

🚩 7. The thought of eating more actually scares you

This is one I see a lot, particularly in women who've spent years dieting.

We've been taught for so long that less food = better results that deliberately eating more can feel completely wrong.

A proper breakfast instead of skipping it.

Adding carbohydrates to a meal instead of avoiding them.

Eating something before or after training.

Increasing protein rather than simply trying to make every meal smaller.

Even when there's a perfectly good reason for doing it, that little voice can still say:

"But won't I put weight on?"

And I get it.

When you've spent years measuring success by how little you can eat or how quickly the scales go down, changing that mindset isn't always easy.

But fuelling your body isn't the opposite of looking after your weight.

If you're strength training, you want your body to have what it needs to perform, recover and maintain the muscle you're working hard to build.

That doesn't mean eating everything in sight.

It doesn't mean calories suddenly don't matter.

And it certainly doesn't mean that eating more automatically makes you lose fat.

It simply means moving away from "How little can I eat?"

and towards a much better question:

"Am I eating in a way that actually supports my goals and what I want my body to do?"

So… does this mean you need to eat MORE to lose weight?

Not necessarily.

And I want to be really clear about this because there's a lot of confusing information online.

If fat loss is your goal, energy balance still matters. You generally need to be consuming less energy than your body uses over time.

But there's a big difference between creating a sensible calorie deficit and simply trying to eat as little as possible.

The goal isn't to see how little food you can survive on.

It's to find an approach that allows you to make progress while still having enough energy to train, recover, get through your day and support the muscle you're working hard to build.

And after 40, I think that's an important shift.

I don't just want women focused on becoming lighter.

I want them thinking about becoming stronger.

About protecting muscle.

About supporting their bones.

About having energy.

About building a body that will serve them well for the next 20, 30, 40 years.

So if you've recognised yourself in a few of these red flags, don't panic and don't suddenly double your food tomorrow. 😂

Just take a look at what you're currently doing.

Are you regularly skipping meals?

Are you getting a good source of protein across the day?

Are you fuelling your workouts?

Are you constantly hungry, exhausted or struggling to recover?

Are you stuck in a cycle of restriction followed by overeating?

Sometimes the next step isn't another diet, cutting out another food or adding another workout.

Sometimes it's learning how to fuel your body for the result you actually want.

And for me, that's the real goal in midlife:

Not simply taking up less space — but building a stronger, healthier body that you're confident living in.

Want a little more help?

I've got a few free resources to help you put this into practice:

🥩 High Protein Cheat Sheet — simple ways to get more protein into your day.

💪 Midlife Strength Made Simple — what really matters if you want to feel stronger and more toned after 40.

📖 GLP-1 Guide — practical support if you're using a GLP-1 weight-loss medication.

Choose the one that's most useful to you below.