Welcome to Part 1 of my personal weight loss diary.

For the first time in over 3 years, I'll be embarking on a structured weight loss program and I'm taking you all along for the ride. While I don't personally have an urgent need to lose weight, I decided to sign up as a participant in a scientific study on effective strategies for maintaining weight loss.

I did this for two main reasons: to contribute to science and to build empathy for my clients. While I (like almost everyone) have dieted for weight loss before, it's been quite a while, and it becomes harder over time to really remember how it feels to be in a caloric deficit. Many of my clients have weight loss goals and I know I do best as a coach when I can truly put myself in their shoes.

So over the next 4-5 months, I'll sharing all the dirty details of my experience, while hopefully folding in some insights on how I approach weight loss.

But first thing's first: How do you even know when you're ready to start a weight loss program?

Sure, motivation is key and having a plan is crucial. But I'd argue that the two most important ingredients for successful weight loss are support and consistency. If you aren't solid on both before you start a diet, then don't expect either to come together after you start. In my experience, the people who forge forward with insufficient support and who haven't developed a consistent routine or consistent habits are the ones who are most likely to fall off the wagon.

Support

We like to believe that we can do everything on our own and that we don't need any help. And sure, we are all capable individuals. But also, life happens.

A support system can mean many different things. The most obvious one is having a trusted team of people to lean on. It could mean having a coach who keeps you accountable, checks in on your progress, and reminds you of your why when times get tough. It could mean having a workout buddy or a family member who cooks healthy meals with you. The key is having one or more people by your side who know about your goals and have your back when the going gets tough.

Support can also come in the form of your environment and the systems you create for yourself. Is your kitchen well organized and stocked with staples that you love to cook with and support your health journey? Do you have time and access to incorporate physical activity into your day? Did you set up a reminder on your phone to put it away in the evening before you wind down for bed?

Consistency

Consistency is the single most critical yet overlooked aspect of dieting. Most people believe that they will develop consistency once they start following a diet plan, but this is like willing yourself to swim in open water when you haven't yet learned how to swim in a pool.

While there's no need to be perfect, you should have relatively consistent habits around nutrition, exercise, and sleep long before you even consider starting a diet. Ask yourself:

• Do I consistently prepare the majority of my meals at home?
• Do I eat similar amounts of similar foods at similar times of day throughout the week?
• Do I consistently challenge my body physically at least 3 days a week?
• Do I sleep and wake at similar times of day throughout the week?

If you haven't yet mastered the basics, then do yourself a favor and get your consistency down before you start trying to lose weight.

How did I know that I'm ready?

Here are some of the things that gave me confidence in my own readiness:

• I haven't been on a diet in years, so I have had ample time to recover physically and mentally from caloric restriction.
• After shifting my exercise routine from mostly running to mostly strength training, I have put on some weight and am sitting on the higher end of my usual weight range.
• I'm currently in graduate school and have a flexible schedule that allows plenty of time for meal prep and exercise.
• As a nutrition student and health coach, I get positive reinforcement about healthy habits on the daily. My peers and my family know about this project and are completely supportive.
• I am very well versed in measuring food and tracking calories, and I have lots of experience following nutrition plans.

Obviously, this is a very personal decision, and only you know how to assess where you're at mentally and physically. But be honest with yourself as you consider your time commitments, your emotional energy, and your relationship with your body.

As always, let me know how I can help! And stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, where I'll talk about the "diet before the diet" and setting initial nutrition targets for sustainable weight loss.

Engineers have a tendency to identify opportunities for optimization everywhere. It's only natural, because the whole point of engineering is to develop robust, efficient systems.

When I was a software engineer, I couldn't help but let my approach to work seep into my life outside of work. If I could design my code to run smoothly, quickly, and without errors, why shouldn't I be able to do the same with my personal life? If I just made the right choices at the right times, I should be able to change myself into the fittest, most accomplished, and happiest version of me. And thus, I got sucked into the rabbit hole of productivity maximization.

My life started revolving around a series of short and long term goals, and I coupled my happiness to my accomplishments. In my rational mind, more structure was always better. More planning was always better. More predictability was always better. I wanted my daily routine to run military style – perfectly engineered to help me achieve my maximum potential.

It's not that this mindset didn't help me. It definitely did, and indeed, I still advise people to utilize goals, plans, and systems to increase their life satisfaction. And it works, but only when applied in good measure.

The problem with engineers – and other systematic, logical types – is that they often overdo it. We often choose to ignore the fact that humans have different limitations and also different abilities than machines do. We're built differently, and the whole notion of "optimizing" ourselves just doesn't serve us in the way we might expect it to.

See, software products can always be improved by changing some keystrokes, by refactoring some files, or by adding more servers. In general, the effort you put in is proportional to the output. The more you give to it, the more it gives back. But with our bodies, the same principle doesn't apply.

Hustle culture encourages us to do more, promising higher returns for the effort. But when it comes to physical fitness, we know this isn't true. It's not the effort that is directly responsible for our gains, but rather the recovery afterward. Most of my clients come to me believing that they are not working hard enough, while instead, they would benefit most from working less and managing their stress.

When it comes to nutrition, you might think that there is an exact formula of macros and foods that can provide your body with exactly what it needs and nothing more. But surprisingly, following an exact, "optimal" protocol when it comes to food causes more harm than good. Just ask any bodybuilder.

Sure, your body might the physical components it needs to thrive, but we as humans are so much more than the molecules that make up our bodies. Restrictive eating patterns can lead to serious mental disorders such as orthorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive disorder, and body dysmorphia. Ironically, people choose to start strict diets to improve their health and self-esteem, but can end up in much worse overall health and feeling more down on themselves than ever.

With software, you can get the best results by applying ruthless precision. But with your body, the best results come from taking a gentle approach that allows for plenty of flexibility.

Whether you like it or not, we are human. We can be messy, emotional, and unpredictable. But we are also creative, adaptable, and intuitive. We are on one hand, incredibly distinct individuals, and on the other, a part of rich cultures and communities. Machines are not. To boil our value down to measurable outputs, and to define our growth by our productivity, is an insult to everything else we are.

Let's change the game and incorporate more compassion and self-care into the process of self-improvement. Let's embrace the fact that we are so much more than just molecules and processes. Let's stop looking for someone to hand us a formula for the optimal lifestyle, and learn to trust our own experiences and intuition in this journey.

Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse, observed that many of her patients had similar regrets in their final days. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common regrets was:

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

No matter what phase of life you're in, you may already identify with this sentiment – with the simultaneous ease and discomfort of living a life that feels inauthentic in one way or another. I sure have, for most of my days since I was in my teens. It's taken me quite a while, but I have finally climbed out of my self-made pit of existential dread.

Part 1: My School Years

Let's just start by saying that I did not fare well in high school or college.

Being a nerdy Asian American teenager doesn't exactly give you social cred in suburban Colorado. But add years of untreated mental illness to the equation and you've got a real doozy. When I was in high school, there was an app on Facebook where students would score their classmates on various superlatives. Ironically, I got voted "least attractive", but also "most likely to succeed".

Even though I didn't experience any particular trauma, I was socially isolated and depressed in my teens. My sense of self-worth plummeted. My life felt empty and directionless. Academics became my only source of purpose.

To be honest, I never loved school, but it did give me the motivation I needed to get out of bed in the morning. I liked that my academic accomplishments were directly proportional to the effort I put in. It was a way for me to get external validation, not from how I was perceived as a person, but purely from my output.

In college, my focus on my studies escalated to a fever pitch. I lived in the library basement. I went days without speaking a single word to anyone. I subsisted on coffee and pastries from the cafe. I developed a nasty habit of binge eating at night whenever I felt bad, and put on over 20 lbs.

My physical and mental health reached an all time low, but I was fueled by the need to achieve. I was convinced that my value as a human being depended on it.

Part 2: Living for Work

After graduation, my drive to excel in school evolved into a drive to excel in the workplace. But this was a different game with different rules.

I quickly learned that success in the real world didn't depend on hard work as much as it depended on social currency. And the payoff wasn't in ideas and discoveries, but rather in salary and influence. I found myself in a system designed to reward the people who gained the favor of the men at the top. And since my identity was so tightly bound to my work, I was determined to win.

After years of hermit life, I really didn't have many social skills. But luckily, I started dating a guy with a political science background who showed me the ropes. (I later married that guy!)

With all the effort it took to hone my technical skills as an engineer, it took me 10 times more to develop communication skills, emotional intelligence, and empathy. But let me tell you, it was well worth it.

My life revolved around work in my 20s. I worked days and evenings and weekends, and even when I wasn't working, I was thinking about work. I climbed my way up the corporate ladder and at first, it felt great. After I had hidden in the shadows for some time, I emerged as someone who was respected (and maybe even liked) by my peers.

The only thing was that everything depended on me continuing to perform at the top of my game and continuing to prioritize the needs of the business.

Part 3: Coping with Work

One thing was clear to me from the start – If I wanted to be successful as a woman, I could not be fat. I had to put an end to my binge eating habit and find a different release valve for my stress.

So I traded one coping mechanism for another and became obsessed with fitness.

In our society, overeating is shameful, but overexercising is admirable. So I was quite proud of myself for this change. I bought into hustle culture and emulated every strong male leader I looked up to. I wanted to feel powerful in the gym and in the office.

Plus, beating myself up physically helped me feel like was offloading my problems without having to address them. When I exerted myself, I took out all my frustrations about my boss, my coworkers, and my projects. When my muscles and lungs were burning, it distracted me from uncomfortable feelings. After all, I could handle physical discomfort, but I couldn't handle emotional discomfort.

Part 4: Trusting Myself

When you don't value yourself, it's really hard to hear yourself. You lose your unique voice and instead, you focus on what everyone else wants and expects of you.

For too long, I let my job define all of me, when it should have only been a part of me. I didn't allow myself to find myself or be myself, because I had no idea who I was outside of my career. I was afraid that if I found out who I really was inside, I wouldn't like her very much. I missed out on so much joy in life, because I didn't believe that I deserved it.

While work and fitness held me down for a while, they were also major factors in lifting me up. As I gained confidence in both my professional and athletic skills, I gained confidence in myself. As I recognized my value, I became comfortable asking other people for what I wanted. And as I got more of what I wanted from others, I began to ask myself what truly mattered to me. External validation aside, what did I really care about?

Truthfully, it wasn't money or status or influence. All of my most treasured moments have one thing in common, and it's finding real connection with other human beings. Perhaps it's because I was starved of friendship in the past. Perhaps it's because friendship was always the most important part of my life before the depression hit.

All I know is that I love talking to people about their hopes and dreams and fears. I love learning about their core values, their motivations, and their unique perspectives. I love learning about their past, present, and future. These conversations are what I seek above all else.

Even at the highest points of my corporate career, I would get the "Sunday scaries". Even when I was performing well, I would get this pit in my stomach before I had to go to work on Monday. I would tell myself that I loved my job, because it was challenging and engaging work. Or that it was a privilege to work with people who were as smart and talented as my coworkers. Or that the financial incentives were unbeatable and would secure my future. My work was so important to me that it overwhelmed the rest of my life, but some tiny piece of it never felt quite right.

When I became a health coach, the scaries vanished completely and they never came back. I'm always excited to talk to my clients, even when they have a bad week. Nothing compares to the high of celebrating a win with them. To me, getting the chance to make a real difference in one person's life is infinitely more rewarding than building software that is used by millions.

Although I really love my job now, I've shifted more of my energy away from it. I prioritize taking care of my mental health and spending quality time with my husband and my dog. Family is more important to me than career and it's about time that my actions show it.

In the past few years, I've made drastic changes to my lifestyle and I finally feel like my whole self. It's a feeling that everything is right in my soul, not just the fleeting dopamine rush I used to get when I got a promotion or a new squat PR.

All it took was listening to myself and trusting my instinct.

Thank you so much for reading. Let me know if you relate!

If you follow me on social media, you may have seen some strange videos of me throwing a loaded barbell overhead. "What are you doing?" you might ask.

"Oh, just weightlifting", I would respond.

"Weightlifting? But it doesn't look anything like the exercises that I see people do at 24 Hour Fitness."

"Oh, well, it's Olympic weightlifting."

"What? You're going to the Olympics?!"

"No no no, the term 'Olympic weightlifting' just describes a specific sport that involves two ways to dynamically lift weight overhead."

"Ok, now you've lost me."

What is Olympic weightlifting?

Olympic weightlifting is a power sport that has been part of the Olympic Games since 1920. It is practiced by athletes throughout the world, but is still relatively obscure in American popular culture.

Olympic weightlifting involves two main lifts: the snatch and the clean and jerk. Unlike more popular gym exercises such as bench presses or bicep curls, these lifts are highly technical and require precise control to perform correctly.

The Snatch: In this lift, the athlete lifts the barbell from the ground to overhead in one continuous motion. It’s a test of explosive power and technique.

The Clean and Jerk: This lift is performed in two stages. First, the barbell is lifted from the ground to the shoulders (the clean), and then from the shoulders to overhead (the jerk). This lift also demands explosive power but adds an element of strength and stability.

In the United States, Olympic weightlifting is often misunderstood and less visible than mainstream fitness activities. Many people associate the term "weightlifting" with the bodybuilding or powerlifting, which are completely different sports with different goals and training methods.

One reason why it might be less popular here is that weightlifting training goes against our cultural bias toward instant gratification and quick hits of dopamine. Unlike other strength sports, weightlifting won't reward you with gains right away. Due to its complexity, it requires more time to learn and master technique.  You won't be able to pull big weight in weeks or even months. But when you do put in the work needed to progress, it is much more gratifying.

Why I love it and think more people should try it

Despite the high barrier to progress, I thoroughly believe that more people would benefit from Olympic weightlifting. In particular, it's a great fit for the ambitious, career-oriented, overachieving type. Let me tell you why.

Efficient Full Body Training

One of the primary reasons I love Olympic weightlifting is that it covers a lot of bases in a short amount of time. The snatch and the clean and jerk engage your entire body and require a unique combination of strength, speed, balance, mobility, and coordination. Each lift takes under a second to complete, but within that second, you get pretty close to fully expressing the power that your body and brain are capable of.

For those of us who aim to be well-rounded and ready for whatever life throws at us, a multi-purpose fitness routine is essential. Olympic weightlifting, combined with cardio, creates a comprehensive workout regimen that touches on many dimensions of fitness.

Surprisingly Low Risk of Injury

Another reason I advocate for Olympic weightlifting is its low risk of injury. On average, there are only 2-3 injuries for every 1,000 hours of training, which is less than half the rate of recreational running and less than one-eighth the rate of basketball. Additionally, over 90% of the injuries incurred in Olympic weightlifting do not require more than a day of rest.

For high-performing professionals, the risk of injury is a significant consideration. When others depend on you at work, you can’t afford to be sidelined by an injury. Olympic weightlifting provides a safe and effective way to stay fit without the high risk of injury associated with many other sports.

Mental Toughness

The mental game in Olympic weightlifting is another aspect that makes it incredibly valuable. This sport requires you to be mentally dialed in. You can’t just show up, tune out, and go through the motions. Tiny mistakes in position or timing can cause you to miss a lift that you would otherwise make. It’s an excellent opportunity to work on your ability to focus in a world full of distractions.

Moreover, weightlifting strengthens your resilience and teaches you to overcome mental obstacles. Just like in life, you can execute your plans perfectly and still fall short of your goals. The unpredictable nature of progress in weightlifting mirrors the unpredictability of life. Sometimes, despite months of preparation, you might fail spectacularly when attempting a personal record.

However, the more you practice picking yourself up and moving forward, the better you get at it. This mental toughness and resilience carry over into all aspects of life, making you stronger and more adaptable.

Practical advice

If you're interested in trying out weightlifting for yourself, I only have one piece of advice: GET A COACH.

Seriously, you won't regret it.

If there isn't a club near you, then there are plenty of options these days for online coaching. You may also be able to find a CrossFit trainer to introduce you to the movements in person.

But by all means, do not try to teach yourself with YouTube tutorials. There's a lot more to these lifts than what you see on the surface and it can take years to correct poor technique that has been ingrained with practice.

Good luck and don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything I can help with!

We all have confidence in some areas of our lives, but lack confidence in others. Since I was a nerd and an outcast during my formative years, confidence in my knowledge and my work ethic came easily. But confidence in my image and my ability to connect with others took a lot of work to develop.

I've probably spent thousands of hours over the years worrying about how other people perceived me and feeling anxious and insecure when I was in public. I wasted my time feeling bad about external factors that were out of my control when what I really needed to focus on was my relationship with myself.

The areas where we lack confidence are the areas where we lack experience. While I used to spend a lot of time and energy on my work output, I spent very little of either on my physical self. So naturally, I was insecure about how I looked, how I moved, and how I spoke.

But how do you even start getting out of your head and getting in touch with your body?

For me, it started with building awareness around the food I put into my body and how it made me feel. And I strongly believe that personal nutrition can be the gateway to confidence and self-empowerment for anybody.

Other than eating, there are very few things that you do multiple times a day, every day, without fail. With nutrition, there are so many opportunities to take small, simple, and intentional actions to invest in yourself. It's not only about changing your outer appearance or adding more years to your life. It's also about proving to yourself that you are diligent and consistent, and that you truly value yourself.

Self-care and self-respect, when backed up by daily action, can kickstart anything else you want to accomplish in life. In brief, nutrition can help you feel good, perform well, find connection, and take control.

Feel good

To state the obvious, eating well can give you a hot body and who wouldn't feel great in one of those?

But it goes much deeper as well. A balanced diet supports sustained energy throughout the day, preventing irritability and exhaustion that can drag you down. Nutrients in food are also required for the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine that keep you in a positive mood.

Perform well

In addition to their role in physical performance, whole foods that are rich in vitamins and antioxidants are essential for supporting brain health. The foods you choose have a huge impact on mental focus and clarity. So if you are responsible for making major decisions at work, you need to be properly fueled.

Nutrition is equally important to supporting your recovery after a hard day. A nourishing meal can do wonders to relax your muscles, calm your nervous system, and reduce stress. All of these contribute to your resilience and your growth as a high performer.

Find connection

Improvements in energy, mood, and confidence will positively impact your interactions with others. When you love how you look and feel, you’re more likely to engage in social activities, take on leadership roles, pursue hobbies, and invest time in cultivating meaningful relationships. A thriving social life contributes to a greater sense of belonging and support, further supporting your overall well-being.

Take control

When you take control of your nutrition, you reclaim a sense of agency over your life. You begin to understand the impact of your daily choices and you build trust in yourself. Choosing to eat in a way that supports your goals affirms your commitment to yourself. When you're empowered to improve your own well-being, you also gain more ownership and influence in other areas of your life.

Taking control of your nutrition is an incredible step toward taking control of your life. It's not the only step you can take, but it is a widely accessible and exceptionally effective one.

Food holds the power to nourish so much more than just your body. The ripple effects of better nutrition extend to improved sleep, stress management, productivity, and relationships, creating a positive feedback loop that enhances all areas of life.

First off, you're not alone.

There is constant and immense pressure on women from all directions to conform to beauty standards. The desire to look attractive (which in our culture, also means being small) often dictates the choices that many women make about what they eat and what activities they engage in. Most women put a lot of thought and effort into their appearance, aiming to be thin, soft, and feminine – a body type that is not commonly associated with physical strength.

It may seem shallow at first, but honestly, I don't blame them. Our society has yet to progress past the ideal of thinness in women. The Economist published a video last year that shockingly revealed that, for an obese woman, simply getting down to a medically "normal" weight would earn her a 18% raise, the equivalent of getting a master's degree. It may be unfair, it may be upsetting, but the sad truth of the matter is that fitting the beauty standard affords women significant advantages in life. This doesn't only go for income gains, but also in how she is treated and the relationships she is able to form.

I've been into fitness for a while and have seen my own body at different shapes and sizes. After all that, I've come to the conclusion that my self-worth should come from something way deeper than how I look.

To be completely honest, though, I'm not always in a mental space where I can say that and fully embrace it. I believe that it's actually quite unrealistic to expect women to be "body neutral" and feel high self-worth 24/7/365. We need to acknowledge that no matter how beautiful and confident a woman is, she will still have bad body image days and she will sometimes still let negative feelings about her appearance influence her. And that is perfectly normal.

But what I'm really here to say today is, that no matter how you feel about the way you look or the way you want to look, you should not let it deter you from lifting weights.

Strength training will not make you bulky.

If you don't believe me, here are just a few things to consider:

Women don't produce enough testosterone to build big muscles.

The average man produces over 20 times more testosterone than the average woman, and testosterone is needed to increase muscle mass. Women still have some capacity to grow their muscles, but it is much more limited, and will result in what we commonly call a "lean" or "toned" look, rather than "bulky".

Muscle takes a really long time to build and it is really dense.

Under absolutely optimal conditions with her training and diet on point, a woman could gain up to 10 lbs of muscle in her first year of lifting. However, most women do much less than this, and are still able to make great progress in terms of strength. In subsequent years, the potential for gaining muscle falls off precipitously, so it could only be 5 lbs her second year and 2 lbs her third year.

To give you a sense of what this looks like, 1 lb of muscle is about the size of a tangerine and this is spread out across your whole body.

You will get stronger by training your brain, not only by growing muscle size.

Early on in your strength training journey, most of your gains (amount of weight you're capable of moving) don't actually come from physically growing muscle, but rather from neural adaptations. Basically, your brain is just learning to fire signals to your muscles more effectively. So you can develop the capacity to move more weight without any changes in muscle size.

Training alone won't make muscles bigger. You need to eat more food.

If you're really desperate to not get bigger, there's one easy way to accomplish that: Just don't change your diet.

It comes down to basic thermodynamics. In order for your body to pack on size, you need to eat more calories than you burn. If you don't eat in a surplus, you won't get bigger.

Bodybuilders and fitness models who are jacked likely have elite genetics and help from performance enhancing drugs.

If you've gotten this far and you still don't believe me, you may be thinking, "But wait, Michelle, I have seen literally seen women at my gym/on YouTube/on Instagram who ARE bulky. What gives?"

To that, I say, "It's probably a combination of a decade or more of intentional training, great genetics, and/or drugs."

Professional athletes, fitness models, and bodybuilders follow meticulous routines for years and years to produce their bodies. And it is a lot more common than you might think for them to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to overcome natural limitations on muscle growth. It would be very difficult for the average person to ever look like them with training alone.

To summarize, there are unfortunately many factors that deter women from pursuing strength training. But, concerns about physical appearance should not be one of them. I've met hundreds of women over the years who are seriously strong and feminine at the same time, and I'm grateful to them for modeling this duality for the next generation.

Almost everyone falls into what I call the "volume trap" at some point in their training journey. Initially, they discover that they can do more exercises, more sets, or more sessions per week to accelerate their progress. The logic goes something like this: "If I want get stronger at the back squat, I should practice it more. 5 sets of squats per week is good, but 10 sets of squats per week is better." But then, if 10 is better than 5, why not push for 20? 25? 30?

From an observer's standpoint, you can probably already predict where this "more is better" progression leads: straight to burnout and injury. But it's harder to catch it when you're in the thick of it yourself.

One of my clients is a soccer and volleyball player, who is dedicated to improving his athletic performance. Over time, I've noticed that this client is very hard on himself whenever he gains a few pounds or feels like he's lagging on the field. His natural reaction to this feeling of disappointment is to commit himself to more gym sessions the following week.

"I feel like I just need to get in the gym more to get back on track," he says, or "I just need to do more in order to keep progressing." When he's not getting the results he wants, he automatically assumes that he's not working hard enough.

This strategy may work temporarily, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes a fast track to overtraining. It's natural to want to take action in order to move past a plateau, especially in a culture that rewards work ethic and grit. In a way, the additional effort expended toward pushing ourselves provides a sort of relief from the feeling that we're not meeting our own expectations. At least we're doing something about it and not just sitting around, right?

Sometimes, less is more.

Unfortunately, adding more and more to his training load led my client to fizzle out. He became physically and mentally exhausted and lost his motivation to work out altogether. He was frustrated to find that although he was putting in more effort each day, his performance declined. His numbers decreased in the gym and he couldn't keep up on the field.

In order to understand what is going on here, you'll need to understand one core principle of fitness: the concept of supercompensation. In the simplest terms, supercompensation tells us that fitness gains are not made by exercise, but by the recovery that follows the exercise.

When your training is productive, you are applying stress to your body with exercise and effectively recovering and restoring your body after exercise. If you have enough time and resources to recover completely, you will then get a boost in performance called supercompensation. This is when you'll achieve the fitness gains you are training for, getting stronger, faster, and more powerful.

However, if you're not able to recover effectively before your next training session, you'll be taxing your body with even more stress before giving yourself to realize any gains. In fact, your performance can even decline with time if you get into the habit of overtraining and under-recovering.

Finding your optimal training load

So how do we figure out how to train enough to make improvements but not too much to the point where we are overdoing it?

The answer is simple, and it can be summed up in three words: Trial and error. And four more words: Listen to your body.

It's important to recognize that your body's capacity for recovery and improvement depends on what you're asking of it in any given week. Physical exercise isn't the only source of stress that can impact recovery. Work stressors, personal relationships, and all sorts of lifestyle factors can also play a role.

So if you're feeling guilty for skipping a workout because you were feeling drained, know that it's not only totally normal to do so, but also that it may have been the smartest call to make.

Curious to read more on this topic? A few months ago, I wrote about finding a balance between your resources and demands. You can check out that article here for a more in-depth take on stress and recovery.

Ever since I decided to pursue a career in nutrition, I've been bothered by the disconnect between focus of the health industry and the needs of average people. As I get farther in my formal education, I'm quickly losing faith in the capability of nutrition professionals to reach the people who need them, when they need them, in the way that they need them.

One group of experts help the people who are very ill (e.g. hospital patients). A smaller group of experts help the people who are very fit (e.g. professional athletes). But what about the vast majority of the population who lie somewhere in between? It seems like there are few qualified experts left over to help them.

The travesty of our healthcare system as a whole is that people often don't get access to quality care until they reach the stage where critical intervention is needed. The saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" holds profound truth, yet our medical system is engineered for late-stage treatment over early-stage prevention. This not only comes at a great cost in terms of finances and health, but it comes at the cost of individual autonomy. Lots of capable and intelligent people are developing chronic diseases, and relying on doctors to drag them out of their graves, rather than having the means to steer themselves in the right direction from the start.

Somewhere along the way, we became a society that spends more on developing advanced pharmaceuticals than on empowering individuals to make healthier choices within their daily lives. We all know that the most potent elixir for health is a cocktail comprised of balanced diet, regular physical activity, and strong social relationships. And we all know what's best for ourselves, better than anyone else.

But no matter how knowledgeable and committed you are, you shouldn't have to manage eating right, staying active, and connecting with others all on your own. You have a job, a family, and a life outside of nutrition and fitness that demand your energy and time. You deserve support in keeping your body healthy, so that you are capable of working on everything else that is important to you.

Now let me tell you a little about the field of nutrition, from what I've seen as a nutrition graduate student. In America, the highest qualification for nutrition counseling is the nationally accredited Registered Dietitian (RD) credential. The requirements to become an RD include a graduate degree, a 9 month internship, and a passing score on a rigorous exam.

But if you happen to be a regular middle class adult with no serious health conditions, it's unlikely that you've ever met a Registered Dietitian in the flesh. That's because the majority of them work with sick patients in hospitals and nursing homes, as you can see from the data below. Even among those who work in private practice, the setting that is most likely to reach "average" people, the majority only take on clients with pre-existing health conditions that can be covered by insurance.

Anecdotally, I have noticed that nearly all of my fellow nutrition students fall within one of three categories:

1. Those who want to treat sick people in a clinical setting
2. Those who want to help professional athletes enhance their performance
3. Those who want to stay in academia and do nutrition research

While all of this is important and respectable work, I'm still left wondering where this leaves the rest of the population. I mean, there are just so many levels between being at the pinnacle of health and having to be hospitalized that just aren't covered here.

The problem that many people face is that, without a pre-existing health condition, the cost of professional nutrition advice is prohibitive. You could already be struggling and know that your health is headed downhill, but if you don't already have a diagnosis of diabetes or fatty liver or high triglycerides (etc etc), a single RD consultation would cost you several hundred dollars out of pocket. If you don't have the means to pay up, you're left to grapple with questionable and even harmful advice from internet influencers that largely not backed by science.

You will be able to find the services of "health coaches", "nutrition coaches", and "nutritionists" at a lower price point. But you should know that these titles are all unregulated, and there is wild variation in the quality and types of service out there.

I have been coaching clients at Gray Matter Health for over 2 years while pursuing the RD path. I recently decided to join a "master health coaching" course to up-level my skills and become a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBHWC). And let me tell you, I have been shocked and dismayed at some of the other coaches I've met in that class. On one hand, there are those who regularly prescribe water fasts and extreme elimination diets to help healthy middle aged women lose weight. And on the other, there are those who are in poor health themselves who have never successfully improved their own lives, much less anyone else's. Just know that they are among the "master/certified health coaches" you will find on the market.

Even extremely intelligent and responsible people can fall for dangerous diet fads that masquerade as medically-informed protocols. One of my clients, a successful lawyer in New York City, was following "The Copenhagen Diet" before she started working with me. This diet, consisting mainly of black coffee, boiled eggs, and lean meat, amounted to a mere 600 calories a day—which was woefully inadequate for any adult, let alone one with her demanding lifestyle. Sadly, it is difficult to discern which sources of information are trustworthy and reliable.

Another part of this problem is the way that health professionals are trained. While nutrition education thoroughly covers the science of health and disease, it completely disregards the value of communication skills and empathy. Therapists are required to complete countless hours of client communication practice and are assessed on their performance in these sessions. But there is no such requirement for dietitians and nutritionists.

Any health practitioner can tell you to eat more vegetables and fit in more daily movement. But that's not at all what helps people adopt healthy behaviors. People don't want to be lectured at. They want to have authentic and meaningful interactions with professionals who show deep care for their wellbeing and respect for their individual preferences. They want someone to work with them to identify realistic action steps that work within the reality of their daily lives.

We need to look beyond traditional models of healthcare. Our healthcare system isn't a solution; it's only a safety net. Instead of relying on the paternalistic medical-industrial complex, we should be empowering individuals and communities to manage their health on their own terms and provide support for one another.

You don't need to be an expert to take action and improve your health today. But if you don't have access to expert guidance, you need to be very honest and discerning when things don't feel right.

If you're currently in good health, you can afford to take some chances and learn from your experiences. Try out a new fitness program, change up your diet, experiment with a different morning routine. If you want a source of guidance and support, hire a health coach. And if you don't hit it off with them, fire them and hire a new one. Read different sources of information and ask different people about their experiences. You may not be able to fully trust the word of other people, but you can always trust your own experience and intuition.

If you keep trying, eventually you will land on what works best for you, and you will play an active role in preventing illness, injury, and disease. Moreover, your dedication to self-improvement will inspire your friends, family, and greater community to take action themselves.

Remember that your health is built up from your daily choices, and that the power to shape your future is already within you.

Many of you will resonate with a day like this. You have fantastic willpower all day long, sticking to a healthy low calorie meal plan. For breakfast, it's a green smoothie and a black coffee. For lunch, a grilled chicken salad with balsamic vinegar, hold the cheese and no side of bread. You're feeling great, you're feeling energetic, you're feeling so accomplished!

But then, you stumble into your kitchen after the day is done, and that's when everything spirals. All of a sudden, you get the irresistible urge to eat everything in sight. And try as you might to reel it in, you just can't stop ravaging your fridge and pantry until you are stuffed.

And after it's all done, you get an overwhelming sense of guilt and disgust. "How did I ruin all the good decisions I made earlier in the day in a matter of minutes at night?" Well, I hate to break it to you, but maybe those decisions earlier in the day weren't so "good" for you after all.

Evening binges are commonly misunderstood as lapses in willpower. But more often than not, they originate from too much restriction. Even someone with high willpower will eventually hit a breaking point at which their survival instinct takes over and they succumb to the pressure to eat.

If you struggle with binge eating, the first thing to understand is that binging is not a failure of willpower. It is simply a sign that something needs to be tweaked with your diet strategy.

Honoring your hunger cues

While they could work for some people, intermittent fasting and 1200 calorie diets are among my least favorite trends in nutrition. When you skip meals or restrict your intake to an extreme degree, you might initially feel fine. Maybe you're not naturally hungry in the morning, or maybe caffeine is helping to suppress your appetite. But hunger indicates a basic human need for sustenance that can't be ignored indefinitely.

Repeat after me: Restriction causes binging.

Ignoring or suppressing hunger cues during the day naturally lead to overeating or binging at night. Our bodies are smart; they know when they're being deprived of the energy they need. And when the deprivation goes too far, you can bet that they will respond however they can to get you to eat, eat, eat.

If you've ever had to care for children, you know that when we are young, we are naturally attuned to our hunger signals. But at some point, we became enmeshed in diet culture, we trained ourselves to ignore our physical signs of hunger, and we lost our way.

If you have a hard time telling hunger apart from cravings or eating at regular intervals throughout the day, you can improve your relationship with food by practicing mindful eating and tuning back into your body's natural cues. Learning to respond to hunger in an appropriate and timely manner will prevent the extreme hunger that causes uncontrolled binging at night.

A healthier and more effective way to diet

Does this mean that you should give up on dieting altogether? Not necessarily! If you're carrying excess body fat, losing weight may very well be the best way for you to live a long, healthy life and avoid chronic disease. Even though the hallmark of weight loss diets is caloric restriction, there are ways to approach it that are more reasonable and more sustainable.

Now you're probably thinking: "Wait, Michelle, didn't you just say that I should avoid hunger in order to stop binging? How am I supposed to be in a caloric deficit and avoid hunger and not binge?"

Well, here's the deal. Hunger will be a part of your life no matter what. You can't avoid it altogether. But you can manage it in accordance with your goals.

If you had to rate your hunger/fullness on a scale of 1 (most hungry) to 10 (least hungry), you'd probably want to stay somewhere between a 4 and 8 most of the time. If you're stuck in a binge-restrict cycle, you're likely overshooting on both ends, allowing yourself to become both extremely hungry (restriction), only to succumb to the reaction of becoming extremely full (binging). And let's be honest, both ends of the spectrum make you feel like crap.

Sustainable weight loss is about getting comfortable being at a 4, instead of pushing yourself to the absolute brink at a 1. It's about recognizing and appropriately responding to hunger, dialing it to a manageable level rather than letting it build to an overwhelming point. It's about fueling at regular intervals with satiating foods that curb the urge to overindulge. By avoiding the extremes, you can not only reach your weight loss goal, but also improve your body awareness, and maintain a healthy relationship with food for life.

Here's a common scenario that you may be able to relate to. You've been diligently pursuing your fitness goals for weeks, keeping a close eye on both your nutrition and your exercise routine. Then one morning, you step on the scale and—bam!—the number has jumped up over a pound since yesterday. You've been doing everything by the book, so what went wrong? Why does the universe hate you?

At this point, you are disheartened and frustrated. You may be tempted to give up on your goals altogether, seeing how impossible it now seems to reach them. But, hang in there! Let me explain why it's not yet time to quit.

You probably didn't gain a pound of fat.

The first thing to understand is that gaining a pound of more of body fat overnight is highly unlikely. By that, I mean that you would have to make a real effort to eat enough in one day to achieve a full pound of weight gain.

Let me put it this way: 1 lb of body fat requires you to consume 3,500 calories in addition to what you normally eat. To put that in context, here are some foods that pack on the equivalent of 3,500 calories:

• 1.5 large pepperoni pizzas (12 slices) from Domino's
• 4 pints of Haagan Dazs chocolate ice cream
• 7 large servings of McDonald's fries
• 18 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed donuts
• 24 bottles of Budweiser beer

Get the idea? Even if you enjoyed a fun night out on the town with friends, it wouldn't be enough to derail your fitness goals, unless all of you were deliberately binge eating to the point of pain.

So what is really going on here?

It's mostly water weight.

The short of it is that you gained mostly water, not fat. It is actually very normal for your body weight to fluctuate day to day, by several pounds or more. And most of this fluctuation is due to temporary changes in the amount of water that your body holds onto. One day, you could be holding onto a lot of water (and thus be a few lbs heavier on the scale), only to have it all flush out of you when you go to the bathroom the next day. Our bodies are just fickle like that.

There are many reasons your body may be holding onto more water than it normally does, but here are a few of the common culprits:

1. Salt intake: Eating more salty foods than usual can lead your body to retain more water, to ensure that your blood doesn't get too salty. You can get rid of the excess salt and water by drinking more water the next day.
2. Carbohydrate intake: Not many people realize this, but the key is in the name: carbohydrate. Basically, every molecule of carb that is stored in your body attaches itself to 4 molecules of water. So after you eat a particularly carb-rich meal, your body weight can temporarily increase due to water weight.
3. Exercise intensity: Pushing yourself harder in the gym? Your body naturally responds to intense exercise with by becoming inflamed. This inflammation can cause a temporary increase in water retention, and a higher number on the scale. Not to fear, this is a normal response to exercise as your body works on repairing and strengthening itself.
4. Stress level: Elevated stress can cause your body to overproduce a hormone called cortisol, which in turn can cause your body to hold onto water. Even if you're sticking to your diet to a T, a stressful week can reflect as a sudden spike in weight.
5. Menstrual cycle: If you're a woman, you probably already know that it's normal to see your scale weight bump up anywhere between 1-5 lbs in the days before your period. This is due to changes in the female hormones, progesterone and estrogen, during this time of the month. Don't fret, your weight will naturally drop back down a few days into your period.

A better way to track progress

Daily weight fluctuations are normal and are often indicative of body water, not body fat (which is what we're usually interested in changing). So focusing too much on day-to-day changes on the scale can be misleading and discouraging. But, you still might want a measurement of progress to tell you if what you're doing is getting you closer to your goal.

A good alternative to get a more accurate picture of your progress, is considering averages instead of individual data points. Averaging your weight across at least three measurements per week and comparing these weekly averages over time can help to smooth out the fluctuations and give you a better sense of how you are trending over time.

Your fitness journey will have lots of ups and downs, so remember to be gentle with yourself along the way. If you put in a consistent effort, a few off days aren't going to break you. As long as you stay focused and patient, and trust the process, you will move toward your goals in the long term!

One of the most frequent questions I receive is, "How many calories should I be eating?" Naturally, it's one of the first questions that comes up when someone starts thinking about how to eat healthier.

If you search for the same question on Google, you'll find a plethora of online calculators that all try to convince you that the number of calories you burn in a day, and thus the number that you should eat, can be determined by filling out a simple form. They take in your weight, height, gender, age, and a primitive estimation of how active you are, and then spit out a number instantaneously: "Jenny, you should eat exactly 1,692 calories per day to reach your goal."

But then if Jenny decides to visit a different calorie calculator, and enter the exact same information, she might get a dramatically different result: "Jenny, you should eat exactly 2,347 calories per day to reach your goal." What gives?

The bottom line is:

An online tool cannot calculate your caloric needs accurately.

For that matter, neither can any "coach" who doesn't have prior experience working with you. So, you might want to think twice before purchasing a generic meal plan from a fitness personality online.

Why not? It's because the calories we burn daily are determined by many obscure factors, including genetics, body composition, diet history, stress level, and the type of activities we do, just to name a few. These elements are complicated and hard, if not impossible, to measure directly.

Luckily, though, we don't actually have to measure them to get you the information you want. There's an accurate, cost-free, and foolproof way to determine your caloric needs. It works whether your goal is weight loss, weight gain, or weight maintenance. It does take about a month of commitment and dedication to following a plan, but in exchange, you won't have to question how much you should eat for a long time to come.

Your step-by-step calorie guide

You will need:

• A food tracking app (I recommend Cronometer)
• A body weight scale

Week 1: Track your current diet, without judgment

• Start logging everything you consume in a food tracking app. Even though its tempting to change your eating habits to make your log look "better", try your best to resist those urges and maintain your usual eating habits.
• Measure your body weight daily, first thing in the morning. Aim for at least 5 days of measurements, though all 7 days is ideal.

Weeks 2 and 3: Eat according to your baseline from Week 1

• Take the average of your total calories over all 7 days from week 1. This should give you a baseline for the number of calories you typically eat in a day.
• For the next two weeks, plan, measure, and track the foods you eat to keep your daily calorie consumption as close to this average as possible. Every day, you should aim to deviate no more than 100 calories in either direction.
• It takes a lot of patience to be consistent for 2 whole weeks. But this step is essential for an accurate measurement, because it allows enough time for your metabolism to adjust to a consistent level of food intake.
• Continue tracking your body weight daily, or as many days as possible.

Take your average body weight from the last 7 days (of Week 3) and compare this average from the initial average you took from Week 1.

• If the averages are roughly the same (less than 1% different), then you are within your maintenance caloric range.
• If there was a decrease of more than 1%, then you are in a caloric deficit, and will lose weight on this amount of calories.
• If there was an increase of more than 1%, then you are in a caloric surplus, and will gain weight on this amount of calories.

Weeks 4 and Beyond: Fine-tune your intake

If you're happy with where you are and maintaining, then you can stop here. Since maintenance occurs within a range of calories, you can get away with eating more or less on any given day and continue to maintain, as long as your average calories are roughly in the ballpark of what you calculated.

If you're not where you want to be, or you want to gain/lose weight, then you can adjust your calories by about 100-200 calories on a weekly or biweekly basis until you achieve your desired result. For instance:

• If you're at maintenance but want to lose weight, reduce your intake by 100-200 calories per week until you see a drop in your weekly average weight.
• If you're losing weight but aim to maintain, increase your intake incrementally each week until your weight stabilizes.

Transitioning to intuitive eating

Once you reach a caloric range where you're happy, you can start easing off precise tracking. Rather than quite cold turkey, gradually ease off by actively observing your portion sizes and practicing the art of estimating them. By building confidence while easing off tracking, you can foster a more sustainable and less rigid relationship with food.

This whole process is a slow, but enlightening journey of discovery. Along the way, you will learn a lot about how your body responds to different amounts of calories and what it feels like to eat more consistently day by day. This way, you can train yourself to make informed decisions about your diet, based on your personal experience and observation, rather than relying generic online calculators and the advice of others.

Looking for more help or support? My door is always open! Sign up for a free coaching call or shoot me a message at michelle@graymatter.health.

Over the last 3 years, I've coached dozens of clients to achieve and maintain weight loss of 20+ pounds naturally. Today, I want to share the most important factors for weight loss that the science backs, and that I've seen play out again and again in my firsthand and secondhand experience.

When people first commit to losing weight, they're often willing to jump right onto the latest trend. They may start fasting for 16 hours a day, buy the latest superfood shake, or sign up for an extreme fitness regime.

In a landscape dominated by aggressive marketing that promises health, beauty, and happiness, it's hard to ignore the allure of quick fixes. The fitness industry is greedy, and it is designed to capitalize on your insecurities by presenting you with flashy, new solutions each and every year. But while these product offerings allow you to feel good about yourself momentarily, they skirt around the ingredients needed for real, lasting change.

One of the most common mistakes I see is people putting the cart before the horse when it comes to weight loss. Many people direct their time and attention toward things that have little to no payoff, while putting off the big things that will really move the needle for them. People are often willing to spend hundreds of dollars a month on pills and powders and pricy gym memberships, all while continuing to make poor food choices, binge drink on weekends, and get by on a measly 5 hours of sleep. I'm sorry, but this just isn't going to work.

The pyramid of weight loss priorities

I like to visualize weight loss priorities as a pyramid. You need to start with building a strong foundation, as the effectiveness of each level depends on having first established all the levels beneath it.

It's easy to be drawn to the upper levels: supplements, meal timing (e.g. fasting protocols), and physical activity. These are the quick punches that feel effortful enough to be life-changing. But if you want to be successful long-term, you'll want to focus on the base levels first. First, the closely connected trio of sleep, stress, and recovery lay the necessary groundwork for your body to respond to any other lifestyle changes. Then, nutrition (which includes the quantity and quality of food you consume) acts as the main mover for body weight and body composition changes.

Sleep, stress, recovery, and nutrition are the foundational elements of weight loss.

When they are well-managed, you can lose weight effortlessly without changing anything else. When you neglect them, however, your efforts in other areas may be wasted. A lack of quality sleep disrupts your energy, hormones, and appetite. High stress with insufficient recovery hinders your body's ability to respond to exercise. Poor nutrition undermines pretty much everything else.

You can have the ultimate, hardcore fitness routine and the most expensive supplements that money can buy. But if you don't eat right and sleep well, you will still struggle to lose weight, or at the very least, struggle to keep it off.

So before you commit to a new gym or a new superfood powder, make sure you have the basics down and are ready to benefit from those changes.

Curious to read more? Check out my previous writing for simple and practical tips on improving your sleep and nutrition.

At this point, if you haven't heard of the weight loss drugs, Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and the latest – Zepbound, you must be living under a rock. Semaglutides or GLP-1 agonists (as they are classified as technically) aren't just another generation of fat burning snake oil. They are the real deal: scientifically sound and revolutionizing millions of weight loss journeys.

These drugs have been so effective and so widespread that I now have concerned friends and family members asking me, "Will there even be a need for nutritionists when pharma companies solve the problem of obesity?" Well... there wouldn't be if nutrition coaching was purely about facilitating weight loss. But in my opinion, nutrition coaching is about so much more.

As a nutrition coach, I take the number on the scale into account, but it's not my top priority. My priority is understanding the complex needs of every individual client, taking their biology, their lifestyle, their history, and their personal idea of health into account. I guide clients to understand how various foods impact them individually, and how their eating habits tie back to their mood, energy, and quality of life. I also talk them through how to balance nutrition, activity, social engagement, sleep, and stress management to not only be healthy physically, but mentally as well.

In this context, I say bring on the cutting edge injections and pills that will cut me out of the weight loss part of the equation. Let me focus instead on the individualized health part of the equation.

Semaglutides have faced harsh criticism and stigma from professionals in the fitness community, where the ethos of hard work and sweat equity reign supreme. Your fitness trainer may believe that there is only one "correct" way to achieve weight loss, and it is through the traditional methods of diet and exercise. Well, they are kind of right and kind of wrong.

It's hard to deny that there are real and significant benefits to losing weight the natural, drug-free way. Other than the perception that gritting your way through tough workouts and committing yourself to healthy choices develop discipline and self-efficacy, there are clear physical advantages to taking the old-fashioned path. Physical activity boosts heart health, strengthens muscles and bones, improves flexibility and balance, and enhances lung function. Eating a diet rich in nutrients supports every organ in your body, and reduces stress, anxiety, and depression.

However, saying that every individual who wants to lose weight has to toughen up and do it through diet and exercise alone neglects the realities of many of their lives. The experience of weight loss varies drastically from person to person. For someone who has grappled with obesity for years, the journey towards a significant, sustainable weight change is fraught with challenges that a trainer who has been fit their whole lives will never completely grasp. They may carry legacies of trauma and immense metabolic damage that a healthy person simply cannot empathize with.

For these individuals, why make the journey towards a healthy weight more arduous than it needs to be? And let's acknowledge that Ozempic et al. are not silver bullets; they are but one additional weapon in our arsenal in a long and hard battle against obesity and all its' dire health implications.

Using medication to lose weight doesn't detract from the importance of developing healthy lifestyle habits. On the contrary, it underscores it. For individuals on weight loss meds, mindful eating and regular physical activity are indispensable. They must navigate their reduced appetite to ensure they meet their body’s nutritional needs while avoiding potential negative outcomes, such as the loss of lean muscle mass.

The introduction of weight loss drugs has prompted a critical debate on the relationship between body weight and health. On one hand, body positivity activists assert that body weight alone does not determine one's health or self-worth. On the other, medical professionals attest that there are strong links between excessive weight and risk of chronic diseases. They can both be right. While body weight and health are interconnected, they are not one and the same.

And perhaps what is most important here is not what the experts are saying, but how you choose to navigate your relationship with your own body.

As we grapple with new advances in weight management, with the drastic cultural shifts they are bringing about, we must make an effort to be understanding and accepting of one another above all else. The era of Ozempic and similar medications invites us to broaden our perspectives. It challenges us to embrace loved ones who make choices for their bodies that may contradict the ones we make for our own.

At the end of the day, your body weight is just one part of your overall health. The way you handle the rest – your diet, exercise, mental health, and more – is all in your hands as well.

So another year is over, vacations are coming to an end, and the holiday festivities are winding down. Some of us are feeling invigorated for the new year, but others are starting to get the post-holiday blues. After a season of indulgence and being removed from your normal routine, you might be feeling a little... off.

This time of year, you may wake up one morning, wrapped up in your cozy blanket, and think to yourself, do I really have to get out of bed? You may drift back to sleep, or grab your phone to scroll through social media. Before you know it, hours pass, and you end up feeling guilty for not being "productive". If this sounds like you, then you're definitely not alone! It's perfectly normal to feel a bit lost or uninspired while transitioning out of the holiday haze.

Let's talk about how we can ease out of this funk and revive our sense of motivation and purpose again. And no, the answer is not setting overambitious New Year resolutions that fizzle out by February. Instead of impulsively jumping to the next big, shiny goal that attracts your attention, let's take a step back and do some intentional planning.

Planning is what makes everything else possible

Now I am not an event coordinator, a project manager, or a CEO. I'm just a health coach. But I can tell you one thing: Planning is the first skill I work on with all my clients. It's not food tracking, it's not learning proper squat form, it's not cooking, it's not choosing the right workout gear. If someone cannot consistently make good plans and follow through with them, they will not be able to make any lasting changes - full stop.

The art of planning is not as simple as you might think. Many people fail to reach their fitness, career, and relationship goals right out of the gate, because they don't give the planning process the time and attention that it requires.

On the other hand, the art of planning is also not as scary and unapproachable as you might fear. There are many ways to break it down into manageable chunks. Here's just one suggestion of a 3 step process to get things rolling.

Step 1: Health Check-In

The first step is recognizing that planning is not just about jumping right in and making a to-do list. It's about taking a step back to look at the big picture and re-evaluating what is most important to us and why.

That's why I like starting with a blank sheet of paper and doing a comprehensive health check-in. It’s time to be brutally honest. Rate the following aspects of your life on a scale of 1 to 10:

1. Physical Health
2. Mental Health
3. Finance
4. Career
5. Social and Relationships
6. Home and Family

Feel free to add or remove categories to make it your own. And remember: this isn’t about criticism or judgment; it’s simply about getting an honest assessment of where you are right now.

Step 2: Prioritize and brainstorm

Once you're done, challenge yourself to choose 1-2 areas that either scored the lowest or that you feel most passionate about improving. This is where the momentum starts building.

Begin to brainstorm – and I mean really let your imagination run wild – on concrete things you can do to improve these areas of your life. Perhaps you want to boost your physical and social health by joining a recreational sports league. Perhaps you want to improve your financial health by setting budgets for areas that you tend to overspend in.

After you've gotten all your ideas out of your head and on paper, comes the hardest part. Challenge yourself to choose one, just ONE goal to focus on. It's hard, but explicitly choosing the single most important goal to prioritize above all else will make you that much more likely to achieve it. It doesn't mean you have to throw everything else out the window, but changing one thing at a time is generally a smart decision.

Step 3: Plan and commit

Next, it's time to get tactical. We need to break up that big 3 month goal into a sequence of tiny, bite-sized steps. Each step should be something that you can easily fit into a day, or a week at the absolute most. Even 5 minute actions, such as a brief meditation session or reviewing your weekly spending, can go a long way when done consistently.

A lot of us stumble when we set our sights too high and get overwhelmed. So keep it as small and simple as possible. These actions should feel almost too easy when you write them down.

The last part is the the most important part: Grab your planner, phone, or whatever you use to keep track of your life. Actually pencil in the baby steps you decided on. Tie them to specific dates and deadlines to keep yourself accountable for taking action on them. Treat your actions the same way you would a work meeting or doctors appointment, because you have decided that they are your top priority. The act of scheduling is what makes your goals real.

90% of New Years resolutions fail, because they lack intention and because they lack practicality. It's the small, consistent changes with clear thought behind them that add up to big results. So keep it steady, take it one day at a time, and start your year off right.

To my beloved readers: I'm sorry that you haven't heard from me in a while. The truth is, I've been going through something in my personal life and I wasn't in the right mental space to write. And that kind of leads to what I want to tell you about today. Usually I'm more structured with these posts, but I can already tell that this is one is going to be a stream of consciousness directly from my heart.

Part 1: Demands vs Resources

Stress is not always bad. On the contrary, we need some stress to fuel our growth. But, bad things happen when stressors in our lives exceed our capacity to cope with them. You can think of this as a scale, with the demands on us on one end and the resources we have to tackle them on the other:

Demands can be external things, like getting tasks completed for your boss, cooking dinner for your family, or pushing through a tough workout. But they can also be internal things, like the expectations we set for ourselves and bad feelings like guilt and disappointment that can threaten our self-image. Likewise, resources can be external, such as the support of friends and family, physical safety, and financial security. They can also be internal characteristics, including your experience, your resilience, and your readiness to face challenges.

We spend our whole damn lives trying to balance this scale, and it's never really in perfect balance. When there are too many demands and too few resources, we're overwhelmed. When there are too few demands and too many resources, we're bored. And the thing is, we don't have control over many of the things that get added or taken away from either side of the equation.

So, to get to the point here, my life the last few months involved more demands than I expected and less resources than I expected.

The resources: I sacrificed quite a lot when I decided to leave my job in tech (though I still believe this was a good decision for me). Financially, I went from being a salaried employee to having to scrape by and live off my ever-declining savings account. My husband was then laid off, which added another layer of financial stress to the both of us.

More importantly, though, I lost a huge chunk of my social and emotional support system when I had to move away from New York City to a lower cost of living area. I've tried my best to make new friends, but it takes time to find people who you can build a sense of trust and understanding with.

The demands: Maybe it wasn't the best idea to train for my first marathon during my first semester of graduate school. But that didn't even turn out to be the main issue for me.

The main issue was that while I was training for a marathon, I found out that the graduate program for which I'd turned my life upside down to attend, was a sham. It literally failed to deliver on every requirement. The professional practice hours we needed to graduate were not arranged, even though it was the program's responsibility to do so. All the instructors were under-qualified to teach. The administration was disorganized and reckless.

Before this, I had spent 2 years of my life working part time, taking pre-requisite classes, and losing a lot of sleep, just for the privilege of applying to graduate school. In the end, it had cost my time and effort, a cross-country move, an additional $10,000 of my very limited savings, and all the hope I had built up for years only to twiddle my thumbs for a semester.

To make things worse, I felt very alone. When I spoke up about the issues we were experiencing, only one of my classmates backed me up. The lack of peer support made me question whether I was overreacting and wonder why I was the only one who was struggling. For the first time, I started having doubts about whether this career change was really worth it for me.

Part 2: The Iceberg

After I ran my marathon in November, I felt like I didn't have anything else to look forward to. The whole school situation and the loneliness started to get to me and I ended up putting on 6 lbs in a month. Despite my love for fitness, I got depressed and I couldn't motivate myself to do any type of exercise for a few weeks. Despite all my experience in the nutrition field, I snacked excessively to take my mind off things. As a health coach, I felt ashamed that I was slipping into what I knew were unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is how harshly we judge ourselves and others based on physical traits.

If you've ever gained or lost a significant amount of weight, you're probably familiar with the halo effect. In our society, thinness is often attributed with success, wealth, beauty, kindness, and other positive traits. In contrast, larger bodies are associated with laziness, meanness, and other undesirable traits.

None of those associations really hold water in reality. In my experience, when someone gains a lot of weight, it's usually a sign that they've encountered major stress or trauma. Clearly, there's a physical reason for weight gain (everything you've heard about eating too much and moving too little), but when we dig deeper, we find that the root cause is rarely physical.

People do not become overweight just because they are lazy. People may become overweight because they were bullied as teens or because they suffered abuse as adults. People may become overweight because of how the demands of them at work and home pile up, and because of how the pressure to care for others diminishes the time and energy they have to care for themselves. People may become overweight because of any of the myriad of ways that life can beat them down.

People do not need their healthcare providers to remind them every year to eat more vegetables. They need their healthcare providers to respect them, listen to them, and care about them as unique individuals. Physicians and dietitians and trainers alike are trained to treat the symptoms, but they're not trained to treat the person.

This may be a hard pill to swallow, but real transformation doesn't happen when you find the perfect macros or the perfect training plan for your body. Transformation happens when you take a deeper look, do some truly difficult internal work, and heal yourself from within.

Part 3: Healing your mind is healing your body

I always encourage people to show themselves grace in hard times, but I'm never going to recommend wallowing in self-pity and resentment. So now my own pity party must come to an end.

In this case, I have the privilege of removing myself from an environment that wasn't healthy for me (by transferring to a different school). I fully recognize that not everyone has that privilege. Sometimes you have to come up with creative ways to advocate for your needs within a toxic environment. Sometimes you have to distance yourself from it by setting boundaries. It's not easy.

When it comes to health, getting out of a negative cycle will look different for every person and for every situation. Even though I'm itching to lose the extra weight, because I am feeling uncomfortable, I know that jumping headfirst into a strict fat loss diet wouldn't be the best option for me personally at this time.

This time around, I'm starting by prioritizing the emotional and social aspects of my health, because I know that the physical aspect will fall into place afterward. My process involves meeting up with friends for drinks, going to holiday parties, and spending quality time with family. It involves preparing meals from scratch in my kitchen and sitting down at the table with my husband to enjoy them together. It involves easing myself back into the gym with lower intensity sessions that end with stretching and relaxation.

While this isn't necessarily the best or fastest way to snap back into shape, it's the best way for me to get my mind right, which is the best way to get and keep my body healthy longer term.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading this Sunday update, although it was a lot more personal than normal. To everyone who reads my content, it really means a lot to me. I fully intend to get back onto my regular Tuesday posting schedule in the new year, so please let me know which topics you'd like to hear about. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!