This Life Gets Good is the podcast for women over 40 who want to feel good in their bodies. In this community, we don’t just settle for “healthy”, we allow ourselves to feel good everywhere we go, work, home, and even while chauffeuring our kids around after school.
I'm your host, Lauren Melton, founder of This Life Uncluttered, and a single mom who realized life can get SO good over 40. Now I help other women lose weight, feel hot & healthy, and build confidence in all parts of their lives.
From perimenopause to parenting, from dating to deadlines, we'll chat about all the things life throws at us with a little humor, honesty, and hard-earned lessons to help you build a body and a life that feel as good as they look. Because feeling good in your body makes everything else better.
What does it actually take to change your body composition after 40 — not just lose weight, but genuinely build muscle and reduce body fat at the same time? In this episode, I pull back the curtain on my own training journey including why I hired a new coach in 2026 and what 12 weeks of being genuinely humbled in the gym taught me about what it actually takes to see physique changes as an experienced lifter.
I break down exactly what I changed, why the scale went up during a phase where my body was visibly changing, and what body recomposition actually means, including why most women who think they need to lose 10-15 lbs actually need to add muscle and reduce body fat to feel and look the way they want.
Plus, I share the story of my client who was religiously doing cardio kickboxing five days a week at 5:30 am and still gaining weight, and what the real problem was.
If you've been working out consistently and still not seeing the changes you want in your body, this episode is going to tell you exactly why and what to do about it.
Welcome to This Life Gets Good, the podcast where we talk about what it actually means to feel good in your body. Because around here, we don't just settle for healthy. We believe you're allowed to feel good everywhere you go, at work, at home, and yes, even whilst you're burning your kids to practice. I'm Lauren Melton, founder of This Life Uncluttered, mom of two, and living proof that life can get really good after 40. I help high-achieving women to lose weight, feel hot and healthy, and bring that confidence into every part of their life without doing more or burning out. So this year, I decided I was ready to work with a new coach. I had spent the prior two years doing some more functional work and support after experiencing the joys of the new perimenopause symptoms: bloating, brain fog, dizziness, that unexpected weight gain, constipation, and also some really debilitating joint pain. And that joint pain ended up setting me out of my workouts for three months. Yes. Three months in the fall of 2024. That was no fun. I was miserable. I wanted back to my workouts so bad. But my body was screaming at me to slow down, take a step back. And so I did that. And I'm truly grateful. I'm truly grateful that I listened and I did that. And my functional coach who supported me through all this, she was amazing. She helped me unpack all of these symptoms and we did some different types of experimentation to figure out what was going to work best for me. And we got me to a place where my symptoms were basically gone. And now I have this toolbox of support to use when I notice symptoms starting to flare up. I gained so much knowledge working with her. And I've been able to bring that knowledge back to help support my own clients too. And I'm not a functional coach, but she can even help me at times. And she's consulted and mentored me with a handful of one-on-one clients when they needed some more functional type support. And that has been incredible to have her in my back pocket for that. But as I entered 2026, I realized I was ready. Like I really wanted to push my body again. I was excited to see what I could do in my workouts now that I was feeling better. I wanted to see if I could take my body composition to a new level that I haven't really ever done before. And listen, I'm not talking like bikini model competitor level or anything. That's not for me. But I'm talking more like, can I get a little quad definition on my legs where I typically hold body fat, or could I build my glutes up a little bit more? You know, that kind of thing. So I hired a new coach who, let's just say, doesn't work with beginners. It has been a humbling experience and an incredible experience. I'm about 14 weeks in now, and it's amazing to see what I've done. I've pushed myself in workouts more than ever before. And I've seen physique changes in the first 12 weeks, growing my muscle and reducing body fat, which is called body reconp. And I've done this in a way that I previously thought wasn't possible for someone who was an experienced lifter, which I would consider myself to be at this point. But it turns out even experienced lifters can do this. And my coach does this all the time with other clients. And now I've seen that. So here's what I've learned from working with my coach and how I'm bringing it back to my clients and now to you too. When clients come to work with me and they're new to lifting weights and strength training, I have always told them about the beauty of newbie gains when you can both build muscle and drop body fat at the same time. And I was under the belief, and I have heard plenty of other well-experienced coaches share that this is only possible to do if you are one, new to strength training, two, obese, or three on steroids, all of which I am not. So I was surprised when my coach and her team have had such great success with body reconf for someone like me. And now I've seen them do it over and over. And this adding muscle and reducing body fat is what most women are usually seeking when they say they want to look toned. Because we can't actually tone our muscle. We can't turn fat into muscle. But what we can do is shrink the size of our fat cells and grow the size of our muscle and add muscle to give you that desired look. And muscle doesn't actually weigh more than fat. One pound of muscle is one pound of fat because a pound is a pound. It's just a unit of measurement. But muscle is much more dense and it takes up less space. And that's why you look more toned when you add muscle and drop body fat. And often the majority of women who come to work with me think they need to lose 10 to 15 pounds, but really they need to add 10 pounds of muscle and drop 10 pounds of body fat to feel their best in their bodies and look fundamentally different. Like seriously, I have three photos of me at the same exact weight over the past six years. And I look so different in each of them because my body composition has slowly transitioned, adding more muscle and dropping more body fat. But yeah, I thought I was past those newbie gains at this point, and I would have to focus on one or the other until my coach showed me how mostly anyone other than pretty, pretty, pretty elite levels could do this too. So here's how I'm gonna break it all down for you today. First, you have to push a lot harder in your strength workouts. And I mean real strength workouts. I'm not talking about boot camps, hit, orange theory, sweaty sessions. I'm talking you have to follow a real strength workout with weights much higher than you are today. And listen, the research will tell you that you can build muscle really at any weight using lower weights, kind of middle weights, or heavier weights when it comes to the load you're using. This is true. But the part they aren't emphasizing is you have to push to failure or pretty darn close. And the number of reps it would take to get you there with five and 10 pound dumbbells, I'm sorry, friends, but you don't have time for that. And that may grow muscle, but it's not going to improve your strength. So learning to go heavy is going to be the key to optimizing your time to get gains in the gym. For me, this meant increasing my dumbbell RDLs from about 50 pounds in each hand to 95 pounds in each hand. Yes, seriously, I'm impressed with this myself. I used to be impressed that I was doing it with 50 pounds. And now I've almost doubled that. And I've done that in 12 weeks. And if you're just starting out, don't get discouraged by this. You may hear that and be like, are you kidding me? You will see gains at lower weights. But if you've been lifting for years and you're hanging out in that 10 to 30 pound dumbbell weight range, this message is for you. My coach says, if you're not questioning your life decisions at the end of that second set of Bulgarian split squats, you're doing something wrong. So learning to really push myself way past where I had previously and learn to go to actual failure has been so key to the changes in my body composition. And bonus, I feel like such a badass. We'll talk a little bit about that later. The next thing you have to improve your form. I thought my form was pretty good for a mom in her 40s with not the greatest mobility. But now, after getting feedback on one lift from each of my workouts four times a week, let's just say it's been a humbling experience. My coach has helped me fix my form on both upper and lower body moves, and that's helped me to get the most out of the movement to build muscle and also helped me improve my mobility and it's reduced my joint pain. Seriously, I have not felt better in terms of joints and lack of joint pain than I have in the past three months. And it wasn't through yoga or stretching. What the past 12 weeks have done for me when it comes to mobility and joint pain has been incredible. I've always encouraged my clients to take videos for form feedback. And I have a space set up in my app dedicated just for this. But now I'm really pushing my clients on this, especially the ones that I know will benefit the most from it. Take the videos, get the feedback. If you have a coach who can help you not only do move safely, but also get closer to failure and improve your overall mobility and movement, take advantage of that. And last, I've had to be much more specific about how I feel my body. I've eaten well for a while, I've tracked macros for a while, right? I've done all that, but I've had to make some adjustments about how I feel myself around my workouts. So pre-workout snack plus a post-workout meal have been much more important so that I have enough energy to really push in those workouts. And now listen, I'm a busy single mom who runs her own business. So I can't go crazy with eating exactly at the same exact time every single day. And sometimes my workout time moves around a little bit, all that stuff happens. But I've been much more diligent about getting protein and fast digesting carbs pre-workout and a very balanced post-workout meal. I have a specific plan and I follow it to a T. So I don't have to question anything. I have the same pre-workout meal, the same post-workout meal, no thoughts, no decisions. It's just easy to execute again on repeat. And of course, I've had to do other basics, right? I'm still getting in my steps, I'm still focusing on my sleep, I'm still focusing on how I support myself with stress and hydration. But these three levers that I talked about today, they have been the key to the most recent body composition changes I've had. Following the same strength workouts, really pushing myself to failure or close to failure as much as possible, getting feedback from my coach, making sure that I'm getting the most out of the moves that I'm doing in my workouts and properly fueling my body to push in the workouts. That's been the key. And it's worked. This scale, it's actually up after the first 12 weeks. But my coach and I, we weren't worried about it because my progress photos showed the real story. More glute definition, more back definition. And dare I even say some quad definition. And now I'm in a fat loss phase where I'm working to reduce a bit of the body fat and reveal more of the muscle that I grew in those first 12 weeks. It won't be a long fat loss phase. And after we'll get right into a lean build, which I cannot wait for. Having more fuel to push in my workouts and learning to push myself to this level has felt really badass, I have to admit. Like I feel really strong. I feel really hot. The other day, a trainer in my gym, a dude in his late 20s, stopped me when I was walking in and he said, Hey, I saw you the other day. I saw you doing those 95-pound dumbbell RDLs. Damn, you're strong. And let me tell you, this 46-year-old mom felt like the hottest badass woman in that gym that day. I did. So listen, if you're just starting out or if you're more experienced, I want you to know the learnings I have had the past 12 weeks apply to all of you. It's really pushing at the level you are now and having the right support to focus on the levers that will get you results. For some, that means starting your workouts with just your own body weight. That's a great place to start. And I have several new clients doing that right now and seeing great progress. And for others, it means I have to tell them go pick up the heavier sets of dumbbells or go buy a new pair for their home because they've been using the same set for the past five years. And it is time. It is time, my friend, to go heavier. Either way, having someone to pinpoint this for you is so helpful. Having someone to look at your workouts and tell you, yeah, these are good. Or listen, these workouts, they are not going to get you the changes in your body that you want. Working out is always good, but they're not going to get you the desire you want in your body. And sometimes I have to be the bad guy that does that, like I did for my client Courtney. Courtney was addicted to her cardio kit class. She would wake up and she would religiously go five days a week at 5:30 a.m. That's right. She did this for years. But she had gained some weight and she was frustrated and uncomfortable in her body, and she couldn't figure out what to do. And she didn't have a lot of nutritional levers to pull. We had some and we were working on them, but I knew changing up her workouts and getting her to follow a true strength training routine was the key. And I knew she would benefit by taking videos so I could make sure that she was getting the most out of those workouts to see the changes in her body. And she's doing that. And it's working. It's incredible. She sent a video over the other day and she's like, I am shocked. I thought I had a good RDL. And it turns out I didn't know what I was doing. And she's not alone. I have been schooled the past couple weeks on my RDL. I have learned how to properly hip hinge, probably for the first time in my life. And I'm a coach and I do this all the time and I help other women improve their form. But when you video yourself and when you get that feedback from a coach, it changes everything. And it can be a bit of a slower process, right? Compared to that immediate gratification you see, right? When you step on the scale and you're in a fat loss phase and you're like, oh, look, it's not gonna feel the same as that. But one day you're gonna put on that old pair of jeans that you've been saving and be like, damn, I look good. My butt looks good in these jeans. Seriously. I got that note the other day from a client. And I want this for you. If you've been frustrated that you're working out but not seeing changes in your body that you desire, let's get on a one-on-one strategy call so I can help you pinpoint exactly what you can do to start seeing those physique changes. Like a recent one-on-one call I had with another mom in her 40s. This is a woman who, again, was working out religiously five days a week, following another program. I'm not gonna mention the name of it, and not seeing changes in her body, right? And when I asked her for a copy of the program and kind of looked through it, because I'm gonna be honest and up front, like, is this gonna get you those changes she wants? And I know I knew immediately it was a lot of volume, it was a lot of hit, it was changing every week. And I knew it didn't have what she needed to drive those physique changes that she desired. And so I had to be up front with her and tell her that and said, Look, you can keep doing these workouts. Working out is gonna add benefit to your body. It's not gonna change how your body looks if you keep following these workouts. And while it's probably not what she wanted to hear, I knew it's what she needed to hear. And I gave her a copy of mine. And I said, Hey, try this out. Try this out for the next couple weeks. Tell me what you think. And listen, I don't have the exact changes just yet because this work, it's not like stepping on the scale. Like I said, it's gonna take a little bit more time. But I can tell you this, I know it will for her because I've seen it for so many others and for myself. When you follow a formal strength training program, when you learn to get that feedback on your form and really push your body, you will see those changes. And again, newbie gains or not, it is possible for all of us when you have the right program with the right support. So glad I was able to connect with that woman. And I can't wait to see where she is in another month from now. And I still have some one-on-one strategy called spots open. So head to the show notes and grab one of the spots left on my schedule this week. I limit the number of openings so that I can properly give you the right amount of dedicated time and attention and leave knowing exactly what to do to start seeing results. You can feel incredible in your body by summer too, because around here, we are not accepting feeling crappy in our body for the next 40 years. That is not how we roll. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of This Life Gets Good. I am truly grateful you chose to invest your time to listen. Your feedback matters here. And if you found this podcast to make a difference for you, please take a minute to share a review. Once a month, I'll select one lucky listener who shares a review to win a live one on one strategy call with me, where I'll personally coach you on your exact next steps to see weight loss results and finally feel hot again. And if this episode made you feel seen, share it with a friend who deserves to feel that way too.
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