Ever notice how well you treat someone you love or something you value? Maybe it's your child, significant other, someone you look up to. Hopefully most of the time you lead with love, you are respectful, and you support them through trying times. Or maybe it's a brand new car you just bought yourself as an upgrade and are determined to keep it clean and rotate the tires when you change the oil on time. You want your car to look nice, run well, and last you a while because it is yours and you value it!

Now answer me this...how do you treat yourself? Do you love and respect your body and self as much as the important people in your life or do you talk shit about yourself? Do you do what is important for your longevity like you would your car or do you run it into the ground? Do you listen to it and make respectful decisions to honor its communication?  

I've been coaching nutrition for over 6 years and I would say over 50% come to me looking to change their bodies, but with words that sound more like they are hoping I can give them a body they can love. They think that if only I can lose the weight then I will look good enough. If only I can lose 10 pounds then I will be confident. If I could just see my abs more, then I will feel proud of myself. If I can lose some body fat, maybe my significant other will (fill in the blank).  

Unfortunately my dear friends, changing the exterior doesn't lead to a change in the interior. If you lack self worth, self love, or feel you aren't good enough currently, that won't suddenly appear 10lbs or 8 abs down the road. You will reach that destination and feel good for a little as you have after all achieved a goal! But then you will feel this blah sensation seep out of your internal pores that starts whispering that there is still more that needs to be done. That actually, we aren't there yet so we must continue. We must change this or that and THEN, we will make it. Listen up. The empty feeling you feel, has NOTHING to do with your exterior. That is your soul asking for love and attention. It is a call to action. Not an action to change your exterior, but to start working on the interior.

If this is hitting on something in you, don't worry that this means you shouldn't diet until you feel more self acceptance and worth, it just means that it's a good time to do some inner work if you hope to find true peace within yourself!  

Here are 3 exercises I have given clients to help create more self love:

1. What are you grateful for? Sometimes when we are able to shift our focus on what's wrong, what we don't have, and how unhappy we are to something more positive such as all the good we do have in our lives, we can help shift our overall mindset. Write down 3-5 things a day that you are grateful for.

2. What is your future self like? What does he look like, how does she feel, what does he do for fun, what has she accomplished? By meditating on this or journaling about it repetitively, subconsciously or more so consciously, we start making decisions that will lead us on the path to become who we want to be. Each morning, write down 10 goals you have that you are working towards, but write them as if they have already happened. These can define your future self!

3. What is one thing you like about yourself? Each morning as you are in front of your bathroom mirror, genuinely compliment yourself on something. Maybe it's your smile, your wit, your ability to love, or your biceps. Allow the compliment to sink into your soul. Feel the self love warm that awesome body of yours! After all, it does more than just exist to be critiqued!

What you consume and how your body handles it is so important.  Each body is unique and during times of stress, things can start malfunctioning more than usual.  Clients come to us with IBS, bloating, insulin resistance, constipation, inflammation, endometriosis, estrogen dominance, low testosterone, etc.  A diet is a big chunk of the puzzle.  It can worsen or be the cause of these issues, but a diet can also improve or take away symptoms as well. 

If you are having any hormonal imbalances, GI issues, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, etc it is imperative you hire a coach or dietician that knows how to work with these issues.  Through food, a lot can be accomplished so why not take the chance that maybe you can go back to living a symptom free life!

Our bodies are like your favorite 24/7 joint.  They don't close up shop after 5pm.  They don't stop burning calories, rebuilding muscle tissue, or going through all of its numerous metabolic processes.  During your sleep, your brain cells are rewiring themselves and forget useless information while your body is rebuilding tissue, releasing hormones, supporting your immunity, and so much more.  Those are a lot of functions!  

So no, I don't tell clients to stop eating after a certain time.  It still comes back to calories.  If you want to lose weight, eat less than your maintenance...but there is no restriction on time.  

Just keep in mind if you crush food before bed, you may regret it as it can leave you feeling super uncomfortable and impact sleep quality!

Weight loss can be an emotional journey for many. But sometimes when we arm ourselves with knowledge, we can talk ourselves out of anxiety, fear, or spirals due to a measly number on a scale. 

Scale feedback swings up and down and all around each day due to a ton of factors. I think it’s important to see how your body responds day to day so you can see what’s normal for your body. Are you super consistent, does your weight swing 3-5lbs a day, do you gain with your menstrual cycle, do you gain post competition? So many reasons!

Gathering data on this form of feedback can educate you on what to expect and why it may be happening.

Do I make client weigh in daily if it becomes a mental battle for the client? Heck no. At the end of the day it’s about what works for the client to make this an educational and life changing process...and no, scales aren’t always a part of the journey.

Where are you now, where do you want to be, what is blocking you from getting there?

Whether you are in your fitness/nutrition journey or considering starting one, here are 3 questions you may want to ask yourself: 

•Where am I now?

•Where do I want to be?

•What is in my way?

1. Asking ourselves where we are currently creates awareness.  It allows us to be honest with our current state and helps us better determine what goals we want to achieve.

2. Asking ourselves where we want to go shines a light on our destination.  It gives us space to create goals that are meaningful to us and helps set our trajectory. 

3. And finally, asking ourselves what is in our way allows us to be honest about what may be blocking our ability to be successful or circumstances that make the road a bit challenging.  If self limiting beliefs pop up, you may want to address these prior to starting or during your journey to ensure you set yourself up to be successful.  If a circumstance such as traveling for work on a weekly basis is your reality, you may just have to be more prepared/determined than most! 

Have you given thought to these questions? If so, what has come up for you?  We would love to chat about it!

I kind of touched on this on an IG post last week, but most of the emphasis was on setting yourself up for a cut. You can't buy a car without first earning the money, you can't plant seeds in soil that is total garbage, so nor will your body want to lose body fat when it isn't healthy to do so.

In order to set your body up to lose body fat, spend 3-6 months at your calculated maintenance. You can find this by going to TDEE.net and entering your info. Then click a multiplier based on activity level to find your estimated caloric intake for maintenance. This isn't 100% perfect, but it will give you a starting point! This lowers stress levels that have been brought on by eating in a chronic deficit. During this time, there should also be an emphasis on sleep quantity and quality, food quality, and lowering other stressors in your life.

After 3-6 months, then you should be ready to enter a cut! The more aggressive the cut, the shorter the time frame. The less aggressive, the more time you can be in a deficit without it impacting hormones and metabolism. How a cut is going is dependent on the body's feedback as well as how you feel during the process. The goal is to cut for a specific amount of time, then head back up to maintenance through a reverse diet if necessary.  

When at maintenance, the goal is to hang out, and maintain your weight loss while you enjoy not being in a cut! After a length of time, which is dependent on how the last cut went and when you feel mentally ready again, you can enter another cut if you didn't reach your body composition goals the first time.

What if your goal is gaining muscle? You need to be patient. This process shouldn't take less than 6 months as adding muscle mass isn't a quick process. You also need to be ok with gaining a little body fat during this process. I know it seems a bit scary, but remember, after you are done with your muscle gaining phase, you can then enter a deficit to lose the excess body fat and then head back to maintenance to maintain your new physique.

Have further questions about the process? Shoot me an email by clicking HERE !

If you received our newsletter last month, you will recall that we talked about our hormonal report cards, which come daily for men and monthly for women. We also mentioned that for women on birth control, they aren't receiving a true report card at all.

When on hormonal birth control (HBC), your body doesn't release its own estrogen or progesterone as HBC shuts down your ovaries and switches off hormone production. HBC consists of synthetic estrogen and progesterone progestin, progestin and natural estradiol, or progestin-only. Even though some may argue that there are better forms of HBC than others, you are still not ovulating every month and not producing your own progesterone.  

The first question you need to answer is why did you start taking HBC in the first place? If it was due to painful periods, heavy bleeding, acne, irregular cycles, PMS, etc, the pill may regulate your symptoms just as a bandaid covers a cut, but it will not fix your problem. If you don't spend the time to fix the actual problem, your problem will still be there if you decide to get off HBC, and there's also a great chance the problem has only gotten worse.

I know a lot of women who decide one day to start a family so get off their HBC, only to spend months to years at times struggling to regulate their cycles/hormones and ovulate. The estimated time it takes to normalize your cycle is 1 month for every year on birth control. For some of us, that easily equates to 6-12 months. Is that the golden rule? No! Some may get off the pill and be completely good to go. But for those who took HBC to mask their previous symptoms, they will most likely have to dig a bit deeper to solve the problem they had back then.  


If you are looking to get off of HBC, you maybe wondering what your other options are:

1. Fertility Awareness Method (FAM)- women are only fertile 6 days each month (5 days leading up to ovulation, and 1 day post ovulation) as sperm can only live inside a female's reproductive tract for 5 days. That means, to avoid pregnancy, you need to determine which days you are fertile and on those days, use a barrier method or abstain from vaginal intercourse. Two easy tracking methods for ovulation are waking body temperature, cervical mucus, and cervix position. These can be done on your own or you can use an app. Daysy is a popular thermometer that will tell you if you are fertile or not and has an app associated with it to track fertility. I tend to breath through my nose and mouth when I sleep, so I knew I didn't want to track mine via an oral thermometer, so I use the Ava Band. It is a watch band you wear at night that uses a green light to read temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, sleep, and HRV ratio (there are $20 off coupons online).  

• Temperature- First thing in the morning before you even get out of bed, take your temperature by putting a thermometer under your tongue. Your thermometer should read to at least one decimal place and should be of good quality. By tracking temperature, you will be able to detect when you have ovulated. Progesterone which increases and signifies the end of ovulation, increasing your body temperature by about .5 degrees. Your temperature should remain elevated until the end of your cycle. If temperature does not increase, progesterone may be low.
• Cervical mucus- Now to determine your pre ovulation fertility window, you will track cervical fluid. This is vaginal discharge that looks and feels like raw egg whites- clear, slippery, stretchy. Cervical fluid helps rapidly transport sperm to the egg. What I have found tracking my own has been a distinct transition from not much going on down there, to a distinct increase in fluid, which then goes away post ovulation (no such thing as TMI kids). Something to note is that if you notice you still have cervical fluid post ovulation, your body may not be creating enough progesterone.
• Cervix position- Normally your cervix is about one finger length inside of your vagina and is hard. In the days leading up to ovulation, your cervix is higher and softer.

If you are curious as to how to go about getting off of HBC but are afraid of experiencing the symptoms that made you decide to get on HBC in the first place, please reach out to us as we would love to help you through this process. From acne, endometriosis, or extreme PMS, we have the experience to get you back to having a symptom free period.


Also a great resource is The Period Repair Manual by Lara Briden.

If you missed it, I went through a short mini series on hormones over on our Instagram page as well as our newly formed blog on the website !  

Now let's dive a bit deeper...

Did you know that men basically get a daily hormone health report card?!  Each morning, whether they wake up with an erection indicates if they are "good to go" in the hormonal sense. Waking up without an erection or noticing a change in frequency?

Ask yourself these things:

• Am I consuming enough calories?  
• Am I drinking alcohol a bit too much?
• Am I sleeping enough (8+)?
• How are my stress levels?
• Am I pushing it too much in the gym?

Typically you should be able to pinpoint something that is a bit out of place or has been creeping up on you lately that you need to reign in a bit more. After adjusting some lifestyle factors, your morning erections should be back in no time, assuming you haven't let this problem go on for too long, in which case, it may take some patience.

How about for the women? We get monthly report cards. But there are two things to note. The first is that it takes about 100 days for your follicles to mature from their dormant state all the way to ovulation so if you experienced high levels of stress or something that caused unhealthy follicles, it may not show up as a period problem until months later. The reverse is also true in that if you make changes to your lifestyle for the better, it may take months to see it positively impact your cycle.

The second piece is that if you are on the pill, you aren't receiving a monthly report card as a pill bleed is not a real period bleed. Hormonal birth control shuts off your body's ability to produce it's own estrogen and progesterone which shuts down ovulation and can also impact mood, metabolism, bones, thyroid, and muscles development. So as you can imagine, without our monthly report card, we really have no clue as to our current hormonal health state. **We will dive into birth control and alternatives next month so stay tuned!**

But for the sake of this article, if you aren't on the pill and are struggling to regulate your cycle, there are a few things you can implement. And men, this list is an unpacked version of the questions above, so no, this doesn't apply solely to women:

1. Diet:

• Consuming enough calories--figure out what your maintenance calories should be, and if you are pretty far off, work your way up to maintenance and then stay there for 3-6 months..health takes time!
• Consuming enough carbs and fat--you don't need a ton of fat in your diet, as most women are typically ok consuming 60-70g a day and men, 65-85g a day, but fat does help produce hormones so it is important. Your hormones also like carbs. Carb consumption is perhaps even more important for women who tend to be less hormonally resilient in comparison to men. Consume at least 150g a day.
• Severely limit sugar and alcohol consumption.
• Eat an anti-inflammatory diet--starting with gluten and diary is a great start!

2. Rest:

• Go to bed at a reasonable hour (ideally 10pm or earlier) unless you do shift work, then sorry. Just do your best to get the best sleep possible and make sure to manage all other stressors.
• Get 8+ hours of sleep a night.
• Sleep also needs to be good quality--if you are waking up constantly, your sleep needs improvement and how to fix sleep can depend on several factors so may be best to seek a professionals opinion (me!).

• Move--get in those steps! Your daily goal should be 10,000 steps.
• Workout, but watch intensity--Exercise is great until it's not. Training with high intensity all the time is a surefire path towards hormonal disturbances (if you aren't able to recover from it). Decrease intensity and shoot for a more aerobic pace.

• Perception is everything, or almost--How you perceive things is half the battle. Being able to quickly destress, let go of things outside our control and self sooth are ways to reduce stress.
• Minimize external stressors--What are the stressors that you can remove, decrease, or limit in your life?      

• Supplements are individual--I am not a fan of blanket recommendations even when it comes to basic micronutrients.  Symptoms or testing would indicate what supplements may be more beneficial for your specific case. But if I had to pick three that are probably the most impactful when it comes to hormone health, it would be zinc (citrate-20 mg for women, 30mg for men after food), magnesium (glycinate-300mg for women, 400mg for men after food), and vitamin D (about 2000IU for women, 3000IU for men after food if deficient).  
• Seed cycling for regulating cycle- I posted about this on our blog so click to read more.

When you go to take a test, do you spend time studying beforehand to make sure you are prepared?   When you plant seeds for your summer garden, do you prep the soil and water regularly to ensure your seeds have the proper environment for growth and producing fruit?   Then why would the human bodies be any different?

98% of clients come to me hoping to achieve their body comp goals in 3 months time.   It’s not that the time frame is unrealistic, it’s that most don’t spend time leading into a cut preparing their bodies to lose body fat in 3 months.   They show up with the equivalent of clay soil and hope to grow plants.   The body is underfed, over stressed, and the last thing it wants to do is lower it’s guard and loss excess body fat (it’s survival tactic!).

No matter how much money you throw at your coach, they won’t be able to make miracles happen.   The way I see it, you have two options: spend 3-6 months minimum eating at maintenance prior to hiring a coach, or hire a coach and have them lead you through a similar process prior to your cut.   However you decide to go about it, the theme stays the same.  

Work on decreasing stressors, clean up your diet a bit, reduce alcohol and sugar intake, sleep 8+ hours a night, and eat at maintenance.   Then after you have done that for 3-6 months (minimum), there’s a chance your body may be ready for a cut (body willing).  

Not sure how to calculate maintenance?   Go to tdeecalculator.net and enter your info and find your estimated maintenance and stick around there.   If you find yourself hungrier or losing weight, eat some more.   If you have been eating 500+ cals less than your TDEE, then add a few hundred calories to your intake from where you are currently and then continue to add 100 cals/day per week until you get there.   And then hang out.   Focus on what matters- your day to day energy, incorporating things that give you joy, movement, and listening to your body.   Then after 3-6 months, reach out…we’d love to help ;)