Vibrant Body Fitness

You're eating healthy. You're still not losing belly fat. Here's what's actually going on.

Sometimes sitting down to talk to women about their body goals feels like taking an order at Burger King. A lot of women think they can have it their way. They want to get rid of their stomach, their back fat, their flabby arms, or reduce fat in specific areas of their bodies. Belly fat is number one on the list, every time.

Here's the truth. It's not about willpower. It's not about healthy eating. There are no special teas. There's no amount of ab exercises or crunches that will do it. It's about the math, where you're starting, and subtracting 300 to 500 calories less than that. Fat only leaves the body when you eat fewer calories than you burn.

Stop aiming at your abs. Start aiming at the number.

That's exactly what I walk women through inside of Vibrant Body Fitness. Comment VIBRANT and I'll get you the details.

Coach Arprentiss 💜

Flabby arms is one of the biggest concerns I hear from the women I coach and potential clients.

And I know the solution, but it's something they often run from.

They only lift light weights, if they lift at all, because they believe heavy weights will make them bulky.

The problem is, light weights alone don't rebuild muscle that's already shrinking with age. And too much cardio without enough food or rest can actually make your body break down muscle for fuel instead of protecting it.

The reason it backfires: without a real strength signal, the muscle underneath stays small, so the fat and loose skin above just keep sagging with nothing to hold them up.

Instead, pick up weight heavy enough to actually challenge you, or slow your reps down and stay under tension longer. Either one tells your body to rebuild what it's already losing.

Save this before your next workout.

Coach Arprentiss 💜

Here's why you're working out and not seeing results. Because you're just working out. And I'm not knocking that. Exercise is self care. Keep showing up. But there are levels to this. Simply working out is a great place to start. If you want your body to actually change, random workouts aren't enough. You need structured strength training with progressive overload. Structured strength training is what leads to transformation. Ready to add structure to your routine? Try me free for seven days. No commitment, no obligation. Link in bio.

The reason you keep starting and stopping your fitness journey is because you think it's exercise for weight loss. But it's not.

I started working out in my twenties to lose baby weight. Around that same time, my mother was diagnosed with type two diabetes. I didn't know much about the disease, but I knew enough to know I didn't want anything to do with it.

My weight fluctuated ten to twenty pounds over the years. It never once occurred to me to stop working out.

You'll stop struggling with starting and stopping once you accept that fitness is self care.

The scale said I only lost 5 lbs.

This dress said something different.

The number on the scale isn't just fat. It's fat, muscle, bone, and water, all mixed together. And that number can bounce around more than people realize. Your weight can shift 2 to 5 pounds in a single day just from water, food, sodium, and hormones. And if your period hasn't stopped yet, water retention before it can add another 1 to 5 pounds that has nothing to do with fat. In perimenopause and menopause, hormones swing even more unpredictably, so that water retention can hit at random.

So when you weigh yourself and the number is up, or it's just not moving, that's usually water talking. Not fat. Not failure.

Here's the real story. I'm down 10 lbs of actual body fat. The scale barely reflects half of that.

If you've been putting in the work, eating well, showing up for your training, and the number isn't moving the way you think it should, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just reading one thing and ignoring the rest.

53, post-menopause

My younger self would be so proud of me.

I started working out in my twenties. I wanted to lose the baby weight after having my first son.

I kept going because my mom was diagnosed with diabetes. I did not want that for me.

My weight went up and down for years. Sometimes 10, 15, 20 pounds. But I never stopped working out. I never stopped showing up for myself.

I understand now what I work so hard to teach women today. Fitness is self care.

I'm so glad I understood that fitness was how I took care of my body. I never gave up, even when I struggled to figure out how to keep that weight off.

I'm also so glad I learned that fitness for women is more than cardio. I found strength training, and I love it now.

Then I learned the last piece. All diets do the same thing, they put you in a calorie deficit. So I stopped chasing new diets. I kept doing what I was already doing, strength training, walking, and being active. The missing piece was understanding calorie balance.

I'm 53. Post-menopause. And in the best shape of my life.

This is the same approach I teach every woman I coach. Strength training as the passenger, nutrition as the driver. It works.

Coach Arprentiss 💜

Woke up one day with a belly that wasn't there before. Feeling like weight loss got harder overnight, at the exact same age and stage where it used to be easy. Here's what's actually happening. Starting in our thirties we begin losing muscle, and that loss speeds up as estrogen declines through perimenopause and menopause. Muscle plays a big part in your metabolism, so as it goes down, your metabolism goes down with it. You may not have changed a single thing about how you eat, but what used to be your maintenance is now a surplus, because that energy has to go somewhere.

I'm Coach Arprentiss, an online fitness and nutrition coach for women forty plus. I'm fifty three and postmenopausal myself, and I use what I've learned in my own body along with my training to help women figure out exactly what's going on at this stage of life, and what to do about it.

Comment VIBRANT and let's chat. Share this with a friend who needs to hear it, save it for later, and follow for more.

Coach Arprentiss 💜