When I started my business I was one of those “crunchy” leaning health advocates who fought against the idea of losing weight as a goal on your health journey.

You see, I had my head stuck up my ass, as they say.

The thought of helping clients cut calories was absolutely NOT why I got into the functional nutrition world. I believed, and still do actually, that the best way to lose weight is to get healthy – not the other way around. In those early days I posted a lot on social about intuitive eating and how “tracking” what you ate wasn’t good for anyone. That the only thing you should be concerned about is fixing your gut health, reducing inflammation, reducing stress, and so on.

4 years into this business of mine and I’ve really embraced nuance. Not just nuance around weight-loss, but around food in general. I hate it when I see other NTP’s online say you can’t eat something because it has *gasp* a little bit of canola oil in it.

The answer is never black or white, it’s ALWAYS gray.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I believe I’ve finally settled somewhere in the middle and I’m really liking the view. I went from being ruled by diet culture (in my teens & early 20s) to the exact opposite during my nutrition training… all to eventually get me here.

I call this Sustainable Balance Land and it’s very nice to be here.

Here are my current views in a nutshell:

Body re-compositioning is a perfectly valid goal to have. Before you focus on it, however, you need to be metabolically healthy. What does that mean?

You need to be in a place where you’re eating enough nutrients to function properly. Your thyroid isn’t hanging on by a thread, your cycles aren’t a mess, your gut isn’t driving inflammation, and you’ve got enough protein in your system daily to sustain your strength.

If you’re not there, then you’re not ready to focus on weight-loss as a primary goal. There I said it, feel free to disagree but that’s the approach I take in my business. Doing so without taking care of the above will just land you right back where you started, most likely worse.

With all that nuance out of the way, let’s get to the primary topic of this post, my learnings from my first ever “healthy” fat-loss phase. I caveat it with “healthy” because of course I’ve crashed dieted before, this is not that. So let’s get to it shall we?

Why I decided to do a 12-week cut (fat-loss phase):

I’ve been putting in the metabolic work for a long time y’all. The past 6 years (post my 2nd baby) have been nothing but me hacking my health via labs, nutrient intake, and stress reduction. I take care of myself and have been for awhile now. At risk of pissing off body positivity advocates (which I’m all for by the way), I’ve been starting to get a little bummed out by all my hard work not shining through.

I wanted to feel super confident wearing my fun/sexy clothes. After a year of building strength via resistance training I wanted to see the hard work when I looked in the mirror. It just wasn’t happening though.

I ate mostly “clean” but certainly never in a deficit. My protein intake was high-ish but I was never clear on where exactly I landed.

After going on a Spring Break trip where I felt particularly gross in my skin I decided it was time to get serious. Many of my clients were also in a similar place, so I figured the best way to really learn how to support them through this, was to do it myself.

The approach I took:

I decided to do a 12-week cut where I reduced my typical calorie intake (between 2,200 – 2,400 daily) by about 10% while focusing heavily on upping my protein and reducing my fat (which is where most of my extra calories come in). I also wanted to keep my carbs closer to 150 grams to support steady blood sugar levels without dipping into low-carb land (which I don’t believe is healthy for “normal” cycling females).

For the first month or so my macros looked like this:

Protein = 140 grams, Carbs = 150 grams, Fat = 93 grams, Calories = 2,000

I allowed myself some wiggle room with fat and carbs because the only things that really matter are protein and overall calorie count when trying to augment body composition. After that first month I dropped down closer to 1900 calories, keeping protein grams the same.

I decided to weigh myself frequently so I could get an idea of the overall trend, but the true mark of progress was going to be in the way I felt and my DEXA scan results. I’ve been doing regular DEXA’s for awhile now because they are the most accurate way to measure body fat %, lean muscle mass, and visceral fat. I recommend that anyone looking to change their composition go off of a DEXA (or inBody scan) instead of tracking weight alone (more on this later).

I decided to use MyFitnessPal to do all my tracking. It’s a little pricey for premium but the features and in-depth food database of the platform made it worth it for me. I told myself I would track every single BLT (bite, lick, taste) for the next 12 weeks, which is quite the lofty goal imo.

My movement goals weren’t all that changed from what I had been doing in the months prior. Resistance training via SLAM Elite (from GetMomStrong) about 3x per week plus 2 runs (1 speed run & one long steady state zone 2/3 run with Mike on the weekends). I also upped my daily steps, trying to land above 7k most days and 10k on my rest days.

Lastly, you may be wondering what my plan was for food. I didn’t change much from my typical eating patterns beyond limiting sugar-y treats, alcohol, and reducing my mindless snacking. We also prioritized lean meats over fatty and I switched to low-fat dairy products. Overall I still prioritized nutrients and unprocessed whole foods.

So what happened?

My results:

I first want to touch on the results and then dive into my learnings, and boy did I learn a lot. Unfortunately my “before” DEXA scan was from a year ago. I really wish I had gone before I started the cut but I didn’t get around to it. Regardless I’m pretty confident that most of these results are from the past 12 weeks, prior to that I hadn’t really changed much.

My body fat % went down by 3%, visceral fat went down, and my lean mass went up by about 4 pounds. What is most interesting is that my weight is almost exactly the same. This is why weight is NOT a good measure of progress, unless there’s a lot of extra weight to lose. The closer you get to your goals the less accurate the scale gets as a success metric. We should all be prioritizing reducing visceral fat and increasing lean mass overall.

I’m really happy with these results. Not only can I see it in the numbers above but also in the way my clothes fit, my energy levels, and my ability to bust through a hard resistance training session. I would still like to see that visceral fat number go down a bit more, but I need a break from being in a deficit. It’s been a long 12 weeks y’all.

My thoughts & learnings:

Hunger

When I started this process I had a real aversion to the idea of “being hungry”. It’s like the last 10 years of focusing on my health had brainwashed me into thinking hunger was a bad thing. Prior to this if I felt even the tiniest bit hungry I’d think “oh shit, I need food now!”, but that really wasn’t true. My disclaimer here is that I’m NOT talking about disordered eating patterns, this is purely my experience and what I believe can be applied to the average person out there.

Working on my mindset around hunger was one of the first hurdles I had to overcome. There were times I was hungry but didn’t actually need to eat (my blood sugar was stable). In those moments I reminded myself that hunger is a normal human physiological state, it serves a purpose, and it’s good to know my body is actually functioning properly! Before you get worried, I wasn’t in this state for long periods of time. I’m talking the 30-60 minutes prior to my afternoon snack or dinner for example.

Tracking

Tracking can be really fucking useful y’all. The idea of weighing and measuring all the food I ate was incredibly intimidating, but truly after about a week, it became just another thing I did. I told myself it didn’t need to be perfect but I did have to track it all. The awareness you get from tracking is invaluable – you can’t improve what you don’t measure, as they say.

I learned that I am a sucker for BLTs, especially when it comes to my kids’ plates. You know, the extra tator tot or bite of mac and cheese on your kids’ dinner plates. Those things add up!

I also learned that I just cannot go long stretches without having a dessert of some kind. I ended up finding a couple of PB cup style chocolate treats that I’d have every night after dinner. I planned for it instead of trying to avoid them altogether.

As I move into more of a maintenance phase I’ve decided that I’m still going to track here and there just to make sure I’m where I need to be with protein.

Helpful Tips

Here are some things I implemented that helped me stick to my goals:

• Candied ginger: A hack for my sweet tooth! After lunch I’d always have a piece of candied ginger. The initial sugar burst was enough to satisfy my sugar craving, but then the spicy finish kept me from wanting to go back for more.
• Low-fat dairy: I’m truly sorry for those who can’t eat dairy because it’s such a good hack for hitting protein goals. Low-fat cottage cheese and yogurt have been my ride or die this entire time.
• Prepped chicken breast: Having shredded chicken breast in the fridge was so helpful for easy lunches. I tend to eat “bowl” style lunches where I throw together a protein, starch, and veggies. Having this ready to go kept me from making poor choices.
• Berries: I’ve eaten SO MANY berries the last 3 months. They’re my go-to for added nutrients in the morning plus they add a bit of sweetness without going crazy on calories.
• 50 grams of protein by noon: I front loaded my protein every day so it would be easier to hit in the afternoon. My breakfasts always have at least 30 grams, then I’d add protein powder to my coffee, and have another 30-40 grams at lunch. It makes the rest of the day so easy.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I’m so glad I did this and feel very proud of myself. I was surprised by how hard but also easy it was at times. I think the worst part for me was that it increased the “food noise” in my head by a lot. I felt like I was constantly thinking about food and what I was going to eat next, which isn’t where I want my brain power to be focused. I spend my professional life also thinking about food for other people, so this was really a struggle at times.

Moving forward I’m excited to share everything I learned with my clients (only the ones who are ready for it!). I’m planning to spend the rest of June and July at maintenance, then do another shorter cut in August and September. I’m determined to get that visceral fat number down even lower AND see my lean muscle continue to rise.

Got questions on the process or how I support clients in doing the same? DM me on Instagram or send me an email.