Knowledge Bombs 💣
There’s a particular Facebook group I follow in which the number of posts asking the same half-dozen questions about weight loss and body composition has been through the roof lately. Me being me (that is, PA, nutrition coach, and high-performing athlete) — I created a lengthy post that I can plop in there every time I feel like we’re due for a group refresher. 😂 It’s getting a lot of attention, so I thought I’d put it here too.
Here we go:
🥩 Eat 1g protein per lb of bodyweight (or more). Forever.
🍚 Humans require roughly 150g of carbs per day just for brain function alone. CrossFitters (who require glycolysis to fuel activity) do better with a minimum of 180g a day. (High performers are almost always above 300g; teenage athletes CAN often be above 500g.)
💪 If you have healthy kidneys and care about your muscle strength and performance, take creatine.
🌀 You burn about 200 more calories per day in the luteal phase of your cycle than you do in the follicular phase. Eat more.
🥑 A minimum of 30% of calorie intake should come from fat, except for clearly defined periods of cutting (12 weeks MAX, twice a year MAX).
⚖️ FUCK THE SCALE unless you are cutting or reversing. Those are the only times it provides useful data. Gym performance, sleep quality, how we FEEL, and how we look naked tells us way more than our pull of gravity against the earth does. That number would be totally different if we were on the moon or on Mars.
⏰ Sedentary men often do quite well with intermittent fasting, and women with PCOS or who are in peri/post-menopause can SOMETIMES benefit from a GENTLE fasting window. Active women in their prime reproductive years tend NOT to tolerate it well from a stress hormone perspective, especially those who are CrossFitting (=jacked stress hormones already).
🥯 In other words? EAT BEFORE AND AFTER TRAINING. Something light and mostly carbs is fine for “pre”; afterwards, we want somewhere between a 2:1 to 3:1 ratio of carbs to protein (like 45-60c and 15-30p). The protein rebuilds our muscles, but the carbs reSTOCK our muscles (with glycogen) and also help the protein get where it needs to go. (Fun fact: insulin is one of THE most ANABOLIC hormones in existence; it is not something to fear… when leveraged properly, like with carbs after workouts, it builds muscle like crazy!)
📈 A reverse-diet is the way we work our way back up to maintenance after any period of deficit. Add calories in stepwise fashion, usually 50-150 cal at a time every 2-4 weeks (smaller amounts and longer intervals as you get closer to suspected maintenance). Going slowly like this is how we avoid weight regain. (You will be hungry during this process, and that’s a good thing — it means metabolism is speeding back up!)
🏋️♀️ Heavy weights and LOW-intensity activity (like walking) matter WAY MORE than metcons or cardio, both for overall health and for optimal body comp results.
🛌 TAKE YOUR DAMN REST DAYS. That’s when we actually get STRONGER from all the training we do. (A casual 5k run is not a rest day.) EVERYONE needs AT LEAST one full rest day per week; two is much better, and those of us near/past 40 should consider THREE, especially if we train for longer than two hours at a time.
🩺 Most active women are capable of maintaining well above 2000 cal unless they are very small-framed. If your maintenance calorie intake seems lower than you would expect it to be and you feel like you are eating to satisfaction, yet still carrying significant unwanted body fat, the top three medical things to check for are thyroid disorders, PCOS, and sleep apnea.
😴 Speaking of sleep. Get some. That’s when growth hormone gets released and all the recovery magic happens. Seven hours a night is the absolute minimum; eight is better; nine is amazing.
😵💫 If you are waking up at 2 AM unable to fall back to sleep, take a look at your overall stress burden. Hint: a calorie deficit, whether it is intentional or not, is a massive physical stressor. Eating enough food often massively improves someone’s sleep.
🍪 ALL FOODS FIT. Some foods are more nutrient-dense than others, true, but there is room for all of it. Food is not “good” or “bad,” and people are not “good” or “bad” for what they choose to eat. Food is many things, and they are not all physical. It is nourishment, workout fuel, social/cultural connection, and sheer pleasure. One thing it is NOT (ever) is a moral judgment.
🧬 Genetics matters more than anyone will admit. Some of us just won’t ever have visible abs no matter how lean we become. That’s normal.
😔 If you aren’t happy without abs, you won’t be happy with them either. Promise.
💪 Unless you are still within your first 6 to 12 months of training, you WILL gain fat when you gain muscle. That’s just how female bodies work; we don’t create one new type of tissue in isolation. Don’t be afraid to play the long game. Muscle takes YEARS to build; fat takes mere weeks to shed. Don’t miss out on the chance to find out how strong you’re capable of getting for the silly reason that you were afraid of gaining a couple pounds.
🗣️ Finally — anybody who speaks in “absolutes” around food — telling you carbs are evil, that artificial sweeteners cause cancer, that you need to cut out entire food groups, etc. — is probably not to be trusted. Use your common sense.
Hope this is helpful to someone. 💙