Morning Routine for Fat Loss and Lifting After 40

Nikkiey: Good morning. Hi everyone, good morning. This is my pre-workout: the best pre-workout, breakfast, whatever you need to have first thing in the morning. I feel so well equipped with the knowledge I've obtained over the years helping women in menopause. You're not busy, you just need to make you and the gym and your health a priority. Let's get inside and let's go crush some shoulders and triceps, y'all.

What's up, guys? Hey, come in. Spend the morning with me. Watch what I eat, see how I train, and how I get my day started. Let's go. First things first, I've got to wash this face. I've got to do a little something to the face before we head to the gym, and brush my teeth. Hi, hey. You need some loving? Hi camera, hi everyone, good morning.

It's probably been four or five months since I started working out in the morning, and that was a really big transition because I used to be an afternoon workout person. Mornings are tough. I have a whole new profound respect for women that train in the morning. It is not the easiest, waking up, especially when you're in a comfortable bed. There are definitely multiple mornings where I hit the snooze button multiple times and I'm rolling out of bed an hour later than I actually wanted to, but I still make it happen.

Just getting up and getting out, washing the face and starting the routine is the one thing that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other. I talk about this a lot, but you don't always wake up feeling motivated to go work out, especially in the morning. Nobody's waking up every single morning like, I can't wait to go to the gym. What I've developed over the last 11 years is realizing that it's not motivation you have to look for. It's making sure that you're working on your self-discipline muscle.

The emotion of wanting to give up on a meal plan or not follow through on your macros is going to happen on a daily basis. You're not always going to feel like going to the gym or feel like intentionally eating healthy. So it's about developing that discipline, so that in the moment when the temptations rise to give up or to cave or to not go to the gym, you still show up anyway and you still get it done.

Getting this workout done in the morning is probably the best thing I have been able to do for my days, because now the rest of my day is wide open to do work, to do things, to be home at night to cook dinner. It has drastically helped, rather than going to the gym in the middle of the day and having to stop and pause if I'm in a flow for work. Don't mind him. It's just helped so much to go to the gym in the morning and get it done. And even 11 years later, it's still one of the hardest things for me to do, even though I've been so committed to going to the gym for so long. So if you struggle with waking up in the morning, I feel you. If you get up in the morning and you go and you just do it, I've got mad respect for you.

I'm putting on a little bit of makeup. I don't typically do this to go to the gym, but I'm vlogging for you guys and I know I'm going to cook my breakfast afterwards, so I feel like I need to look a little bit put together. Typically I will just roll out and roll to the gym.

Don't forget to drink your water. Here's another form of habit stacking for you if you don't drink water, or enough water: fill up your water bottle the night before and put it on your island. That way, when you come downstairs and walk into your kitchen for the first time in the morning, you see it there. It's an instant reminder to drink your water, not necessarily chug it, but just to drink it. What I do is fill it up the night before and bring it up with me. It's on my nightstand in case I want to drink it in the middle of the night, and within the first hour of being awake, this whole thing is gone.

You've got to go potty? Is that a yes? You've got to go potty? Yeah? We take out Mr. Mav before heading to the gym.

All right, next I'm going to make my coffee, because I need my coffee in the morning. And then I grab one of these. These Chobani drinkable yogurts are hands down the best, quickest pre-workout breakfast, whatever you need to have first thing in the morning. If you don't have time to cook, there's no excuse. This is your meal right here. It's 230 calories, 4 grams of fat, 18 grams of carbs and 30 grams of protein. Perfect.

This is what I put in my coffee: the Chobani zero sugar coffee creamer. I also have the Chobani sweet cream, but the majority of the time you will find me using this one. It has 1.5 grams of fat, less than one gram of carbs and zero grams of protein. So it's a light creamer, not full of all the things you don't need, and I just use the tiniest bit.

This is a requirement in the morning as well. Honey, love, come here. You know, guys, as you get older, this started happening to me maybe a year ago. I started recognizing the brain fog and forgetting things, and that led me down the path of getting my blood work checked out, and lo and behold, perimenopause symptoms were happening, essentially because my hormones were starting to shift. I'm grateful for the field that I'm in and the women we've served in WarriorBabe, because I feel so well equipped with the knowledge I've obtained over the years helping women in menopause that I know perimenopause happens years before menopause actually happens. Anyway, that led me to get my blood work checked. Sometimes I just need to scan everything and make sure I have everything, and I know there are women watching this who are like, yes, I do the exact same thing. If that's you, let me know in the comments below. Check, check, check, check. Okay, got everything. Let's go.

Pre-workout meal. Whenever I say pre-workout, I think of the pre-workout supplements a lot of people take. Personally, I don't take them. However, so much has changed pre-workout-wise for me in terms of how I go about getting ready and what I take and what I eat. When I first started bodybuilding, I was taking all the supplements. I was doing pre-workout, post-workout, intra-workout, nighttime sleep stuff. Whatever was popular, all the craze, I was doing it.

Some of you are probably wondering, what's the timeline for a pre-workout meal? When should I eat it, and when is it good to go work out? For something that is fast acting, like the yogurt or a protein shake in the morning, you can go work out within 30 minutes. This has carbs in it, and if you have fruit with it as well to get your carb intake up a little bit, those are fast-acting carbohydrates, meaning they're going to give you the energy you need immediately. They're going to spike your glycogen stores so you can use that energy for something, which is the workout inside the gym, so it won't get stored.

Things like oatmeal take a little longer to digest, so I would recommend somebody wait upwards of an hour to 90 minutes before working out. Usually I would say an hour; 90 minutes is pushing it, because it's a complex carbohydrate. So I'm talking about the difference between a simple carb and a complex carb. Complex carbs take longer to digest, but give you more sustained energy during your workout, so you won't feel a crash early on. Some people can feel that when they're eating just fruit or a simple carbohydrate.

Right now I'm just thinking about all the questions you guys would be asking me. So, for macros: for those of you that track macros and are in that stage of your journey, and not everybody is there, if you're not there, I would just focus on having a good protein source and a good carbohydrate source. If you're somebody that's paying attention to your macros and you're thinking, okay, what's the ratio of macronutrients I should be eating pre-workout and post-workout, I say make sure you have anywhere from 20 to 30 grams of protein pre and post, and 25 to 35 grams of carbs pre and post. That's going to give you the fuel you need in your workout, and it's also the fuel you need to help the recovery process.

Please, you guys, I would recommend, especially if you are somebody that wants to build muscle, to get toned, to change your overall body composition, that eating and providing your body that fuel before your workout is the best thing you can possibly do for that type of goal. For those of you that go fasted, I'm not saying that's a bad thing to do. I would say it's probably for people that are a little more established with their body composition and further along in their journey. But it's kind of counterproductive, because internally your body is going to try to find energy from something to provide the energy you need for the workout, and the first thing it's going to do is tap into that muscle store, that muscle tissue, because muscle is metabolically active. So just keep that in mind. What energy do you want to give your body during your workout? Do you want to give it energy from food, or do you want to give it energy from your muscle?

We have arrived, and today we've got a quick shoulders and triceps workout on deck. I've only got about 45 minutes to crush it in here and get on with my day. I hope this vlog helps anybody that feels like they're busy and has a hectic work schedule. You know, guys, I'm an entrepreneur. I lead a very big business. I have meetings on meetings on meetings for the rest of the day. So I hope this inspires and encourages anybody that thinks they're busy: you're not busy, you just need to make you and the gym and your health a priority. Knocking this out first thing in the morning means I have the rest of my day, like I was saying. So let's get inside and let's go crush some shoulders and triceps, y'all.

So I realized I said in the car that I was doing shoulders and triceps, and I just did chest. What I meant to say is I'm doing a bit of a full push day. I'll really only do one exercise for chest and that is it. The rest of this workout will be shoulders and triceps.

[Music plays during the workout]

That's a wrap, guys. We are in the posing room. 45 minutes. And I could have banged that out in 30, but I was putting the camera down and making sure the angles were good. Anyway, that was a great workout. Sometimes I like to come in here and just have fun posing, because this is what I used to do back in the day. It's really cool to look at the physique and know where I came from: skinny fat, frustrated, trying all the things, getting no answers, spinning my wheels on the hamster wheel, wondering how I could get to where I wanted to be. And seeing now, 11 years later, the physique that I built. This is what consistency looks like compounded over time. So don't give up on your journey, continue to seek the answers, and you shall find them. Now let's get home and make some breakfast.

I just got home from the gym. Honey is on work meetings, so I'm going to let you know what I'm doing right now. I'm going to go inside and make a breakfast that I've had for probably two years straight, with a few differences here and there. Maybe I've had protein pancakes or some Dave's Killer Bread, but the majority of the time this has been my breakfast: a Dave's Killer Bread bagel, the Cinnamon Raisin Remix, 150 grams of egg whites, and usually one whole egg. I'm not going to do the whole egg right now, because what you want to do around your workouts is keep your fat content on the lower side so your body can absorb and digest the protein and the carbs, because those two macronutrients are going to help with your recovery. Fats will just slow it down, because fats take twice as long to digest. And then of course I'm going to put a little bit of cream cheese on my bagel.

So this is what I do when I log it in MyFitnessPal: overall it's 427 calories, 53 grams of carbohydrates, 10 grams of fat and around 30 grams of protein. This will be my post-workout meal. I know I said earlier that, broadly speaking, you should get 25 to 35 grams of carbohydrates. I eat so many carbs in a day that I have more carbs in each of my meals, just for reference, to close that loop from what I said earlier. Now we're going to go inside and make that breakfast. Let's go.

All right, fam: bagel, 150 grams of egg whites. I'm going to eat this breakfast and get on with the rest of my day: shower, do my hair and makeup, get on meetings. Thanks for hanging out with me this morning. I hope you had fun, that you learned something, and that there were some takeaways you can implement into your life. I'll see you in the next video.