Gaining Weight After Extreme Dieting? How to Find Balance

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

Lindsey: Tracking macros is simply measuring the amounts of your carbs, fats, and protein that go into your body. You can do that eating keto, eating high-protein, low-carb, eating whatever you want to eat, eating junk food. You can track your macros eating ice cream and Snickers bars all day long.

Nikkiey: Yeah, McDonald's.

Lindsey: Exactly. And so it's just optimizing those and having that balanced approach that's going to be the key to making it work for you.

Nikkiey: What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the show. Today we're thrilled to have Lindsey Matthews, also known as Trainer Lindsey on social media. Lindsey is not just a fitness coach. She is a storyteller of personal transformation, and I'm super excited to have her on the show today. I can't wait to hear about the competitive fitness that you did, overcoming your own health challenges, your journey into understanding hormones and gut health. It's inspiring, transformative and informative. So today she's going to share her highlights with us and her balanced approach to health and wellness. Lindsey, welcome to the show.

Lindsey: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, Nikkiey.

Nikkiey: Yes, cool. So let's dive right into it. Recently I just found out you and I have very similar stories when it comes to competition days.

Lindsey: I know. It's so crazy, right?

Nikkiey: Yeah, wild. So go ahead, share with us. I want to know selfishly, too, a little bit more about what your journey looked like, but the audience wants to hear more about you as well. So open up, share your story, why you started competing, and what you experienced.

Lindsey: Yeah, perfect. So let me back up just a little bit. When I started in fitness, so to speak, I put that in quotes, in the fitness industry, I was really just looking for a job that I could do from home to make some extra money for my family. We had a very young family at the time. I started coaching in 2004, actually, before online training was even a thing. I wanted to be a trainer, but I did not want to be a trainer in the gym. I wanted to do something from home.

A lot of my story was built on insecurity and being afraid to take the next step. I really wanted to get certified as a coach or a trainer, but I was really insecure with how I looked. I felt like I did not look the part of what a trainer is, quote, supposed to look like. Nowadays I feel like people go more for the healthy approach, but I'm talking 2004 or 2005, when I thought you needed to be lean and ripped all the time in order to call yourself a fitness trainer.

So I decided to go for it. I did end up getting a job at a gym for a little bit just to get more in-person experience connecting with people, knowing how to motivate them, knowing how to push them. I feel like a lot of that experience really comes from being with people in person. Then you can translate that to online, but oftentimes you can't just start online. Do you know what I mean?

Nikkiey: Totally, a hundred percent. I agree. In my personal opinion, you need to have the personal experience so that you know how to work with those clients in a totally different arena when it comes to the online space.

Lindsey: Yeah. And once you know how to do it, it's super easy to adapt to online. But it's hard, or at least harder, not saying you can't do it, to just jump in online if you've never done that in person. And I remember a couple of little stories. I was working at this tiny little gym. It was an Anytime Fitness. Do you have those where you are? Is that nationwide? Okay. I specifically got a job there because I thought it wouldn't be very crowded. I didn't want people to see me. I was super embarrassed still.

Anyway, I was working there and a friend told me I should start bootcamps. This was in 2007. She said this is where fitness is going: small group training or even large group training, not just teaching fitness classes, but my own business, bootcamps. And I was like, there is absolutely no way you would ever find me working out in front of people with a microphone up on a stage or a landing, just being in front of people. There is absolutely no way. But that seed was planted.

I went home and I was like, well, what could it look like? I'm a big visionary. I get the ideas and I like to brainstorm and come up with fun things and gamify everything. That's how my brain works. And I said, okay, if I can get eight people to sign up, I'm going to do this. So I put it out there, and keep in mind, there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram. It meant I flyered my neighborhood on the doors, and I hired teenagers to help me put out flyers at the library and the carwash and all that kind of stuff.

I remember the day the eighth person signed up, I had a panic attack. I was like, oh my gosh, I really have to do this now, because I told myself if I had eight people, I would do it. This was back in 2007, and I did this for eight years, until 2015. It grew from those eight people in our neighborhood clubhouse area to, at the last session I did, 150 people in a big gymnastics facility. It was so much fun, such a good part of my life that really pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped build my confidence. It was amazing.

It was during those years, I think it was 2009. This is embarrassing. This is the story of my first competition and it's awful. So I remember I felt like I looked so good, right? Everybody does before they go to a competition, and then they realize, oh gosh, that's a whole other level. This was 2009, and I went to our local university here and they had a Bod Pod. Do they do those anymore? It's body fat testing by air displacement. I got that test and it told me I was 18% body fat. And I thought I was the queen of being lean. I was like, oh my gosh, I've never been so lean in my entire life. I am good.

So I did that, and then I went to the gym right after and I was in the bathroom and there was a flyer for a bodybuilding competition. I was like, sweet, I should do that. When is it? Oh, it's Saturday. Awesome. I'm 18% body fat. I can do a competition on Saturday.

Nikkiey: Oh, this is hilarious.

Lindsey: Yeah. So this is how little I knew about the whole world of competing. Granted, it was 2009. The bikini division had just come out that same year, so it was a much softer look, but still, that doesn't justify what I did.

Nikkiey: Five days, four days?

Lindsey: I didn't even know what a prep was. I got some clear heels at probably a stripper store, I don't even remember. I bought my spray tan on Amazon and applied it myself. I knew enough to go to one posing class with a local coach here, and I was like, wait, posing? What is this? Okay, you put your toe out. Got it. And everybody was wearing suits off the rack at the time. I did have a little scrunch bum, this was way, way back, but my suit was not good at all.

I showed up to the show that Saturday. I think I had eight days or whatever; it was the Friday the weekend before. And I was like, oh, what have I done? Do I turn around and go home? My tan that looked so dark in my bathroom was obviously nothing close to what I needed. And I was like, no, I'm going to see this out. I went up on stage and I got last place. To be a little bit fair to me, the others weren't super lean. I was definitely last place, but it wasn't like nowadays. It was very much the early days. Still, I went through with it, and it was mortifying, probably one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.

But I left there thinking, this is actually kind of cool. What could I do if I really tried? Let me learn more about this and see what I could do if I actually applied myself and did a prep, because by then I knew what the word prep actually meant, not just walking on stage. This was in November, and I knew nothing about an off season and on season. So I was like, the next show here in Salt Lake City is in March, I'm going to do that one.

So I hired a coach. He was pretty well known, or at least he was at the time, back in 2010, 2011. But he was $30 a month.

Nikkiey: Oh my God.

Lindsey: And you get what you pay for. He was hardly a coach. I just had no idea what I was even looking for. He gave me a meal plan and did a check-in every three weeks, and the check-in was basically, how are you feeling? Okay, cool, here's your new meal plan, which I guarantee all his clients got the same meal plan. For 30 bucks a month, that's all you can expect. And it was awful. I joke sometimes that there was tuna for breakfast. No mayo, no bread, just a can of tuna. And I was like, am I just supposed to open this and eat it with a fork? What do I do with this? That was a horrible experience, but I did come in a little bit better. I think I placed top three or something.

Then I tried prepping myself for a few shows and placed top three. Granted, these are small local shows, so that doesn't really mean anything. To cut to the bulk of the story, this was 2010, 2011. I competed in bikini until 2012 and then took a couple of years off. In 2014 I was like, I want to do this again, but I want to try the figure division. Granted, at that time figure looked how bikini does now. It was not as big and muscular as it is now.

So I hired another coach. My calories stayed high. I did it really healthy. I didn't really have a lot of negative hormonal implications at that time, in 2014, 2015. I went to nationals. I didn't place at nationals, but it was a fun experience. And then I was like, okay, I'm done. So 2016, 2017 pass, and 2018 rolls around.

Nikkiey: Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply. All right, let's get back to the show.

Lindsey: And I was like, I'm just kind of bored. Maybe I'll try it again, but go back to the bikini division, kind of the same look I was going for before, but the divisions had changed. And this was when it all went down. Which is the same year as you, right? 2018.

Nikkiey: Yeah. That's so funny.

Lindsey: So I told myself I was going to do one show. We started prep in January. Interesting thing, I still haven't quite figured this out, but my calories started high, and I lost my period in January, about two weeks into prep. I still don't really know why. Maybe it was the stress, like my body knew what was coming. I don't really understand why I lost it so early, before I got super lean or my calories dropped super low, but that did happen. I did not have my period that entire year. I remember it came back on Christmas Day and I was like, this is the greatest Christmas present I could ever have, to get my period back. But that's jumping ahead.

Nikkiey: I didn't share that on your podcast, but that's the same thing that happened to me, and around the same time my period came back as well.

Lindsey: No way.

Nikkiey: Yeah, wild. That's crazy, but go ahead, keep going.

Lindsey: That is so crazy. So I was going to do one show. It was going to be in June. But of course, as time goes on, you're like, well, why just do one show? I'm doing all this prep. Might as well do one more right around the same time. So I decided to do one in Idaho the week before. I won that one. And of course you get all in your head, and the judges are like, you should go to nationals. And you're like, oh really? Do you think I should? Oh yes, you should. It's a whole story in your head. Then I went into the next one and I won that one as well. So I was like, okay, let's just do it. I'm already here. I've already done all this work. Might as well see what happens.

Nikkiey: And what was the time difference between those two shows?

Lindsey: Just one week. It was a Saturday and the next Saturday. That was the whole plan, and I truly believe if I had stopped there, I would have been fine, because I was so lean. I'm five-six. I normally hang out around 140 to 145 or so. By this show I was down to 120, 125. That was lean for me. To just get there and touch it probably would have been fine. But to hang out there all summer like I did, I believe that's what did me in.

So we said, okay, let's go to nationals. I did one show as more of a practice and placed 11th. Then I said, okay, that was just the practice. We're going to do a masters one. So I went to Masters Nationals, or the other one, North Americans; I think Masters Nationals was first. I made first callouts. They pulled us out to the front. I was put in the center and never moved. Everybody moved around me. I came off stage and people I knew were like, oh my gosh, you did it, you got first place, you're turning pro, yada yada. The night show comes around and they call me second. And I was like, what? I thought it meant I won if I was in the middle and never moved. And again, that lit a fire in me. I was like, I've got to do one more.

Nikkiey: So you did a show, you did one a week later, and then you went to North Americans?

Lindsey: Yep. I went to Team Universe, or is that what it's called? I am so out of the competition world nowadays I don't even remember the names of the shows. I think it was four to six weeks after Masters Nationals, maybe a month later. My times might be wrong, I can't remember. So from the time I placed second, I had six more weeks, and I was like, should I do it? I decided to do it. By the time that last show came around, I was like 115. I was so small. I don't want to use the word emaciated, but I was just so small. And I did not place well. I placed eighth, which is great, of course, but I didn't win like I was hoping to.

So that whole summer, I like to tell people, for me the stress was being so lean. My calories never went to crazy levels like 700, 800, 900. I did it in as healthy of an approach as you can, but it's never healthy to stay that lean for so long. You can't really do that in a healthy way.

Nikkiey: Where were you at with your food? What were you eating, and how much cardio were you doing?

Lindsey: That's a great question. Let me try to remember. I feel like I put it in the back recesses of my mind, never to relive again.

Nikkiey: I think about how, whenever people compete like that with back-to-back shows, it's like a mirage in the desert. You see what the end point is, but you get closer and it's still far away. That's competing in a nutshell, right? You're like, I thought I was there, and no, it's still a mile away.

Lindsey: Oh my gosh, it's so true. I feel like my calories were 1200 on a low day, 1300 most of the time, maybe with some refeeds at 1500, 1600. So they're low, but not crazy low. But cardio, there was a time when my cardio was 70 minutes, seven days a week.

Nikkiey: Yeah.

Lindsey: Super high. And lifting. We talked about this on my podcast, but you're lifting for at least an hour, and you've got your bodywork, your foam rolling, your glute stuff with your ball. I haven't even touched that stuff in years. You bring your heels to the gym and you're posing, and you can't do anything else. It's so consuming. I remember lying on my couch after dinner at night and the kids were like, let's go outside and go swimming, and I'm like, no. I just wanted to go to bed because I wanted the morning to come so I could have breakfast. I remember thinking those things, so stupid. I was a shell of a mom, a shell of a human. And of course at the time you're like, oh, but I look so good, so it's fun and I love it. At the time you think you love it, but you're dying inside, and you don't realize it until you look back. At least that's how it was for me. Was that how it was for you?

Nikkiey: Yeah, totally, a hundred percent. There are so many things I gained positively from the world of bodybuilding, but there were also a lot of cons, like what we're talking about. Once the end point was done, I was praising God it was over. I was like, why did I put myself through all of that for the last six months? I'm sure you relate.

Lindsey: Yeah, totally. So that last show comes and goes and I was like, okay, that's fine, that's how this sport rolls, no big deal, we'll try again next year. And that next year never came, because afterwards I did a reverse diet. I brought calories back up. That last show was early September, I think Labor Day weekend, and by mid-October my calories were about at my usual maintenance, which is approximately 2000-ish. My weight had come up to really my set point, about 135. So I had gained some weight back, which I wanted to. I never wanted to stay as lean as I was. Even my husband was like, your butt's gone, you're so small.

Nikkiey: How fast was that? You were 115 and you went up to 135. How fast did that happen?

Lindsey: I think the 115 was so depleted. I feel like I gained five to seven pounds in the first week or two, but that was fine with me. It was just water, food. Then it came on pretty fast, a pound or two a week. But again, I wanted it. I was prepared for it and I wanted to get back to that healthy place, so I wasn't sad or discouraged or frustrated. So I got to October and I maintained for probably a month, and I was like, cool, I reversed, I maintained, I'm back to where my body likes to be. Let's move on and do other things for a while.

Then come mid-November, my weight started ticking up again. And it went up probably a pound or two a week, Nikkiey, until July. I am not kidding. I think my highest was 165, and I have never been more than about 145 when not pregnant or having just had a baby. After I had my babies I was higher, of course; with my first baby I was mid-160s. Anyway, numbers are nothing. I'm just trying to paint a picture: up 25 to 30 pounds above where I normally like to be. And so over that year...

Nikkiey: What happened? You said you were reversing out and getting your calories up to 2000, then you maintained come that October. From there to July, what happened?

Nikkiey: Hey, hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you're enjoying it, and there's so much more to come. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons, and it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too.

Lindsey: So many things. My body started gaining and I started freaking out. This had never happened to me post-show. I'd gained back the weight I lost for a show, but I'd never gained higher than that. And I don't know if you remember, but there were a lot of people on social media talking about this at the time. I feel like a lot of us had competed in those few years, and a lot of people were saying, I gained weight for a year no matter what I did. I talked to so many people who said that. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's going on?

So I tried everything over the course of that year. I did labs first, of course. My cortisol was super high. My thyroid was really low. I was estrogen dominant. My progesterone was tanked. Those were my main issues: cortisol and sex hormones. My testosterone has always been fine, but my progesterone was really low, thyroid was really low, cortisol was super high.

Nikkiey: How were you sleeping during that time?

Lindsey: I struggle with sleep in general, my whole life, but I was sleeping horribly. During that time I worked with holistic coaches. I tried keto because my gut health was a disaster as well. It's interesting: I did strict keto for six months and didn't lose a single pound. Actually, I kept gaining. I truly believe I would have gained no matter what I did, and I did lots of things. I did keto to try to help my gut, and it did help my gut a ton. When your gut is healthy, your hormones work better; our endocrine system and our gut are so intertwined. And it made it so I was taking way too much thyroid medication. I don't know if your listeners know much about lab numbers, but free T3 is supposed to be around three to four for a healthy place. My free T3 got up to 8.2 or something, so my heart was racing all the time. I was super anxious, which again is in line with estrogen dominance and low progesterone as well. I was just a disaster.

During that time I was also getting rashes. My mom was like, oh, I have the best autoimmune doctor, you should go to him. And I'm like, I am not going to an autoimmune doctor who is just going to tell me I have an autoimmune disease and have to take medication for the rest of my life. I'm going to do everything I can with nutrition and lifestyle to try to fix it before I go see your autoimmune doctor.

So there was a time after keto when I did carnivore. Oh, that was awful, awful. But my rashes went away. I had a sore on my lip that I thought was cancerous and it wouldn't go away, and when I did this little bout of carnivore, which I didn't even do fully because it was so hard for me, all that stuff went away. So I don't know everything I did, or what worked and what ended up helping. I had times where I did not track my macros because I thought maybe the stress of tracking was making things worse, and I just ate more intuitively. I had times where I tried a deficit and that didn't work. My weight just kept ticking up. Literally nothing I was doing was working.

Honestly, I truly believe it was just lifestyle stress, all of that stress. I don't know the science behind why it took my body so long. You hear people talk about how your body needs to trust that you're taking care of it and feel loved and appreciated. All the woo-woo stuff, I truly believe it's real. It's like a pendulum. You swing so far to one side, the extremes, that my body seriously swung to the other side for just as long before I found that middle.

Nikkiey: And not to mention, you did all of the dieting world with bodybuilding, then you did the reverse, but because you saw your weight incrementally increasing, it freaked you out. So you tried other things to turn the weight gain around. How many things do you think you tried in that span from October, November to July of the next year?

Lindsey: Oh my gosh. I didn't do anything like Optavia or any of the shots; the shots weren't even out at the time. But nutritionally, I don't know, five, six, seven. So, so many things over the course of...

Nikkiey: Your body was like, what the fuck is going on?

Lindsey: Yes.

Nikkiey: You went from keto to carnivore to...

Lindsey: Back to balanced eating. Yes. And it was going from a deficit to, no, this isn't working, let's go back up to maintenance, to, what am I going to do? Am I just going to keep gaining? That was my thought. I remember crying on my bed, numerous times, but this specific time, really feeling like, is this weight gain ever going to stop? Am I going to be over 200 pounds? I'm just using numbers, no shade on anyone who is over 200 pounds, of course. But I was like, is my weight just going to keep going up and up and never stop?

Nikkiey: You were coming from a space of, how do I stop this, how do I figure it out, and you were trying to figure it out along the way. So you got up to about 50 pounds over, right?

Lindsey: Yeah, 50 pounds over my stage weight. I gained 50 pounds in that year. I stepped on the scale every week and measured myself. I never really put it in the back of my mind; I was always aware of it, which I think was a good thing because it probably kept it from being more. But it was something I was always stressed about, so that was probably the downside. I remember getting on the scale in early September and I was down a pound, and I was like, whoa, that's never happened before. Instead of getting my hopes up, I thought, it's probably a fluke, it'll probably be up two pounds next week. And it wasn't. It was down another pound the next week. And I was like, what? Maybe this is finally the time, because I haven't been in an extreme deficit and I haven't been super lean for a year. Maybe this is finally starting to work.

I really attribute it to such high stress. There was gut stuff, there were autoimmune things going on, so much going on that my body just needed to chill and calm down. The first 10 pounds came off fairly easily without really trying. I don't even know if I was tracking my macros. I was loosely eyeballing things: okay, that's approximately 400 calories. I lost about 10 pounds in a couple of months, and then it stayed there. And I didn't want to stay there. I was still 15 to 20 pounds above where I wanted to be.

At this point my body was responding, but my hormones were still kind of a mess. I was trying to do this more holistically. I do take progesterone, but I was trying to do the rest with thyroid supplements, like selenium and magnesium, that kind of thing. So I hired another coach who really specializes in optimizing hormones naturally, really focusing on nutrition, lifestyle, exercise and supplementation. And that really started to work for me. It was taking the stress down, cutting out all the cardio, focusing more on mindfulness techniques, spending some time at maintenance, and taking supplements based on my lab work. My thyroid was low, so I took specific vitamins and minerals to help thyroid production. Nothing gimmicky, nothing magical, just the basics.

And I approached it in 10-pound chunks. We reversed again, because my calories had gotten a little lower, stayed at maintenance for a while, did a 12- to 15-week diet, lost 10 pounds, then spent another six months at maintenance. This is the part nobody wants to do: take a bigger weight loss goal, break it into chunks and spend time at maintenance in between. That last 20 to 25 pounds took me probably a year and a half. Could I have done it faster? Maybe, but I wanted to do it slower: diet, maintenance period, diet, maintenance period. And I truly believe that's why I've been able to maintain it for about two and a half years pretty easily. Because I did it slower, it's almost like your body creates that new set point in the maintenance time. You're like, okay, I'm here. Then you try to lose a little bit more, create that new set point by spending some time at maintenance, and go again. So that's the whole story.

Nikkiey: There's a lot to unpack there. I have tons of questions. First, I'll highlight the fact that you've been in the game for a long time. You started before social media was even cool, just to go all the way back to the beginning.

Lindsey: Yes.

Nikkiey: So I want to unpack a little more. We unpacked the competition and the lead-up, the training, diet and cardio, as we were going. Now the months where you gained all this weight and were trying different things. You mentioned that once you started to turn it around, you worked with another coach, which I freaking love. Coaches work.

Lindsey: I'm a big believer in coaching for sure.

Nikkiey: So once you were working with that coach, you mentioned you pulled back on cardio. Besides the things you were trying nutritionally to get the weight to come down, what did your training look like during that time? What did your cardio look like? Can you elaborate on that?

Lindsey: Yeah, for sure. I started with him and he cut out all cardio. Only walking. And I don't mean walking at an incline at the gym. I mean walking my dog around my neighborhood, heart rate around 90, 95, not even exercise, just moving.

Nikkiey: Really?

Lindsey: That was my, quote unquote, cardio. When I competed I was lifting usually six days a week. He took it down to three and specifically told me no failure. He said, do not go to failure, we're focusing on recovery and rest. You can lift, but you need to have at least two to three reps in reserve, like a seven out of 10. And he had me do restorative yoga once a week. That was the training aspect. I did that for probably six months, and he was looking at labs. My second set of labs showed improvement. My third set of labs was pretty darn awesome. Actually, after my second set of labs he let me go up to four days a week of training and push a little closer to failure, but I could not add cardio in. I still don't lift five days a week. I'm at three or four, four most of the time, sometimes three. He let me push harder in my lifting and moved me into a calorie deficit after that third set of labs, when they looked pretty awesome. And then the weight just came off.

Nikkiey: Okay, can we put a pin right here? Lindsey, I need you to elaborate on what you just shared, what you personally changed, because I think a lot of women need to understand that you were doing extremes. You were training six days a week, doing cardio. Were you still doing a ton of cardio post-show, in those months you were gaining the weight?

Lindsey: I was still doing some, but nothing like what I was doing during competing. I was probably doing three or four days a week for about 30 minutes. Something our listeners are probably doing: 30 to 45 minutes a few times a week. And he cut it all out completely.

Nikkiey: Oh, that's incredible. Women think they have to be inside the gym for two to three hours. I think it's starting to shift in the online space...

Lindsey: I agree.

Nikkiey: ...but women look at a body and think, that person probably spent a ton of time inside the gym. You just shared that your hormones, everything, your gut was off, you were gaining weight, you were overtraining, and you were on this extreme side of the scale.

Lindsey: Right.

Nikkiey: And then you cut basically everything in half. You didn't do any cardio and you were training three to four times a week.

Lindsey: Yes.

Nikkiey: What message can you share with women who need to take that piece of advice and try it in their world? Maybe they're struggling, they don't understand how that works and how they can still get the same results. What would you share with a listener right now who's like, I'm training seven days a week, I'm doing cardio every single day, I want to train abs seven days a week? What could you share to help them see they only have to train less, not more?

Lindsey: Right. I think so often people think, like you just said, that more is better. I think a lot of that comes down, maybe not for everybody, to a calorie-burn perspective. Oh, I need to do more cardio so I can burn more calories. I need to lift so I can burn more calories, even if you don't burn those calories in the lifting session, it's those metabolic boosts, seven days a week. I need all of that to either lose the weight or stay lean or whatever.

But I like to look at it not necessarily as, what's the minimum you can do, but, what's the minimum you can do to see the result you want to see? Because if you need to increase cardio, you always can. Once I was back to that healthy baseline, we did add some cardio. It's not like you can't or shouldn't ever do anything, but it's baseline.

Nikkiey: Love. Yes. A healthy baseline. Until you reached a healthy baseline with your blood work, your hormones, everything internally. Then that's where you were like, okay, I can add a little bit more of the things I enjoy doing.

Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. More is sometimes better, but oftentimes getting to those extremes makes it worse, because there are so many hormonal effects from too much that will prevent you from seeing weight loss. It can slow down your metabolism in so many different ways, with high cortisol, which can then lead to so many different hormonal issues that make it really hard to see results. Cutting back and doing less is almost like, as opposed to thinking about what you need for fat loss or body composition goals, you think, what do I need for my mindset, for my hormones, for my stress levels?

And here's a little tangent: so many people say, well, I run to help my stress, that's my stress relief. And it might be a mental stress relief, but on your body, it's not a stress relief. It is a stress on your body, and you have to manage that and find a moderate place. That's when you're going to see the best results.

Nikkiey: Love that. That's definitely a key differentiator to understand when it comes to cardio. A lot of people say, I just love to do it because it relieves stress from my day. You've got to think: if you're already stressed and you're adding more stress on top of it, you're just sinking yourself deeper into a hole.

Lindsey: Yeah. And you can find other ways to relieve that mental stress. They might feel harder to you, like meditation and breathwork. All of these are a healthier way to reduce that stress.

Nikkiey: Yoga.

Lindsey: But they're hard at first. Yes, yoga. At least that way you're moving. Walking outside, walking around your neighborhood out in the sun. All these things are really good. That's something we do with our clients who really struggle mentally with bringing exercise down: we let them fill that time with walking and restorative yoga, so they still feel like they're moving, but it's a lot more moderate.

Nikkiey: I love that. So for listeners who may be experiencing weight fluctuations or hormonal issues, what advice would you give them based on your journey? How do you help clients who experience the same thing?

Lindsey: It's really keeping that long-term perspective. I feel like we all know why we have weight fluctuations, that's not really the topic here, and it could be due to so many different things. I feel like there's magic in the one-year mindset. When clients come on and give us a year, that's incredible, because it releases the pressure of what your weigh-in or check-in is going to be this week and next week. You have that longer mindset and that longer journey to have phases and change your focus: okay, we're going to take a break from fat loss, we're going to do a two-week diet break. If you're thinking week by week, month by month, that will make you freak out. But if you have this long-term perspective, it's so much easier to shift focuses and directions here and there, all with the end goal in mind of reaching your goal and maintaining it.

Nikkiey: Amen. I love that. That's what we call the long-term game. If you can accept that your journey is going to take six, 12, 18 months, two years, just accept it, because that's realistic. Nobody talks about that because it ain't sexy.

Lindsey: No. And you're going to enjoy it so much more.

Nikkiey: You're going to enjoy it so much. You're going to be happy. People say, oh, when I get X result, I can be happy then. It's like, yo, just learn to be happy right now. Embrace your journey for what it is, what you're experiencing and learning and all the new things you're creating for yourself, and then you can experience happiness along the whole journey.

Lindsey: Exactly. When you have that long-game mindset, like you said, it forces you to find the joy in now. It's easy when you're thinking short-term: oh, I'm doing a six-week program, I'll be happy at the end of six weeks when I can have pizza again and stop eating so much protein. But if you realize these are lifestyle changes you're making and it's the long game, it forces you to find the joy in the journey.

Nikkiey: Yes, I love that. Okay, so you went from the extremes of things, as did I from the bodybuilding world, and we definitely have a lot of similarities there. Now you're living a more moderate, balanced approach to your results and your journey. What does that look like for you? What does living a balanced approach with the fitness lifestyle mean to you?

Lindsey: That's a great question. The biggest thing I have in my mind all the time is rest and recovery. For example, last week I had a killer leg day. I was going to hit hamstrings and glutes again three or four days later, but I was still super sore. So guess what? I didn't do it. The old me would have been like, no, I've got to power through it, maybe I'll lower my weights. But I was able to step back and ask, is it better for my legs to do another leg day? No, of course not. I'm not recovered yet. So I'm not going to do another leg day.

Same thing if I didn't get a lot of sleep and I'm super tired. Maybe I got four and a half, five hours of sleep and I have a super crazy day. I'm not going to work out, because is it better for me, when I'm low on sleep and having a high-stress day, to go to the gym and add more stress on top of it? No, that's not better for me. I'll work out three times that week and just skip today. I'm not saying go to the extreme where you never go to the gym and never do these things, but it's being able to step back and ask what's better for me, as opposed to checking off all the boxes of getting in all my workouts and tracking every macro. It's finding that balance.

If I'm extra hungry one day, if it's around my period and I'm hungrier than normal, I'm going to eat some more food. Am I going to make sure it's healthy food? Yeah, of course. I'm not going to eat a Snickers. I'll have an apple and a protein shake or whatever it is if I'm in a hurry. I'm able to step back and ask what's better for me when it comes to recovery, balance, moderation.

I have ice cream almost every night. Do I have a lot of ice cream? No, I have like three bites, because I know I have it every single night, so it's fine. The old me would have eaten a whole pint to get it out of the house so I wouldn't be tempted and thinking about it tomorrow. But when you take away that restriction and know you can have the foods you want whenever you want them, you just don't have that urge to overeat them most of the time. Of course sometimes people do, but ice cream is a good example. I have a little pint of ice cream in my freezer, and after dinner, after dessert, I have dessert...

Nikkiey: You have dessert, then dessert?

Lindsey: After dinner, or before bed or whatever, I have literally three or four bites. And I'm like, mm, that was so good. There's no feeling of needing to overeat it because I don't tell myself I can't have it.

Nikkiey: I love that. I'm the same way. I have Dove chocolate almost every single night. I ran out of it, so I need to go get some more.

Lindsey: Oh no, that's the worst.

Nikkiey: I know, right? I really want my Dove chocolate tonight. I have two to four pieces, whatever I feel like I need that day. And it literally opens up the world of, I'm not restricting any type of food. I think that's really important for people to understand. You can have what you want; you just can't eat the pint in one sitting, because that's what, like a thousand calories? So it's being consciously aware: is this choice I'm making serving my future self, or am I still leaning into the old habits I've been doing?

Lindsey: Yes, for sure. I totally agree.

Nikkiey: Because it's so important. You can have the foods you want. You can enjoy the foods. Even a little bit is enough to curb the craving. You don't need to down an entire bag of Dove chocolate. And then you find that you don't even have those cravings.

Lindsey: Exactly.

Nikkiey: With my journey, I was a sugar queen. Before my journey, I had Smarties in my bedside table.

Lindsey: Oh my gosh. Oh, I hate Smarties.

Nikkiey: Oh my God, they're so good. There's a hilarious picture of me at my old work at the computer with a bag of Smarties right next to me. I was a sugar queen.

Lindsey: That's so funny.

Nikkiey: But thinking about it now, and maybe you can relate, I look at that stuff and I know how I feel after I eat it.

Lindsey: Yes.

Nikkiey: I feel like shit balls.

Lindsey: Yeah, totally.

Nikkiey: There's an immediate shift in my brain and in my overall energy. I feel weighed down by that food. So once you go a while without consuming it and then only allow it in moderation, you gain almost a new respect for it, and you also recognize you don't need it.

Lindsey: Yes, I 100% agree. And when you tell yourself you can have it, that releases a lot of that need for it as well. Human nature: if you say you can't have something, that's all you're going to think about. That's totally normal. It's like me telling you not to think about a pink elephant right now. Are you thinking about a pink elephant? It's exactly the same.

Nikkiey: Right. That's a great point of view. Okay, I want to dive in really quick. You talked about macros before. Can you elaborate on your perspective on tracking macronutrients?

Lindsey: Yeah. I think tracking macros is almost like built-in moderation. You truly can have whatever you want as long as it fits into your targets. A lot of times with our clients, we do what I call a modified macro approach, where we just have them track calories and protein. That's even better for fitting in the foods you're craving and the foods you have on hand. I have times where I want more fats and don't really care about carbs, and times where it's vice versa. For probably 90% of our people, that is enough tracking to help them reach their goals. Some people are going to need to dial it in a bit more, but I think it's a great starting point, especially if you're just starting, because you don't have that macro Tetris at the end of the day, like, oh crap, I'm 20 grams of fat short but 10 grams of carbs high. That can be tricky sometimes. So I think tracking calories and protein is a great start.

Nikkiey: Great start, I totally agree. What would you say to somebody who says tracking macros is hard to do?

Lindsey: I would say give it two weeks. Honestly, it can be hard at first. It's like anything worth it; it's hard at first. But give it two weeks. I don't know why two weeks, I've just heard it from a lot of our clients: after a couple of weeks it felt so much easier. It becomes second nature. You might feel like pre-tracking your food the night before takes 30 minutes in the beginning, it's tricky and you don't know how to do it, but with practice it gets easy, and it can literally be life-changing.

Nikkiey: Amen. How about when people say, I'm too busy, I can't track my food?

Lindsey: Then I'd say pre-planning is huge. If you're tracking and you pre-plan for 10 minutes, do it while you're pooping the day before, I don't care. You have time.

Nikkiey: Amen. You're on the toilet scrolling social media anyway.

Lindsey: Just open the app.

Nikkiey: I love that, that's hilarious. It's priority. You're not too busy to sit down and watch Netflix at the end of the night. You choose that over prioritizing.

Lindsey: Pre-track your food while you're watching Netflix if you want to.

Nikkiey: Yeah, turn the volume up, go into the kitchen, barcode-scan your food. I needed more votes for why macros are so good, for what happens when people say they're too busy. You got my vote. That's why it's The WarriorBabe Show. We need to help people understand why macros are such a great tool. Not a diet.

Lindsey: We agree, it's not a diet. It's a tool.

Nikkiey: No, not at all.

Lindsey: And a pet peeve of mine is when people say, well, I've done macros and that wasn't enough carbs for me, or I've done macros and it didn't work for me. And I'm like, wait, what do you mean?

Nikkiey: Yeah, what do you even say? Work it the right way.

Lindsey: Yes, exactly. Or they say, I've done macros, I've done keto, I've done Whole30, and none of them worked. And I'm like, no, you don't understand macros if that's what you're saying.

Nikkiey: Yeah, because we need to go a little deeper into what's going on at the human level. Are you actually trying to do the thing? Are you set up in a way that you can successfully do it? Have you been guided? And do you understand what it even means?

Lindsey: Because tracking macros is simply measuring the amounts of your carbs, fats, and protein that go into your body. You can do that eating keto, eating high protein, low carb, eating whatever you want to eat, eating junk food. You can track your macros eating ice cream and Snickers bars all day long.

Nikkiey: Yeah, McDonald's.

Lindsey: Exactly. So it's just optimizing those and having that balanced approach. That's going to be the key to making it work for you.

Nikkiey: Love it, Lindsey. A couple of last questions. Reflecting on your journey, what advice would you give your younger self, especially when you started your whole fitness career?

Lindsey: Don't compete. No, I'm just kidding.

Nikkiey: There are some pros to it.

Lindsey: There are. That's where I was going to go. I actually don't like hating on competing, because there are a lot of pros to it. I think it taught me discipline that has actually helped me with moderation, because I know what the one side looks like. So advice to my younger self would be not to be so black-or-white in my thinking, and not to have that all-or-nothing mindset where if you miss one workout, your whole week is ruined. I'm a very checkbox kind of person. I like to finish a list and check things off. And I felt like if I missed a workout, it meant I didn't have a perfect week, I wasn't completely on track all week. It's that black-or-white thinking that leads people to the pantry, to the fridge, to overeat, because they think, I didn't do it perfectly, so I'll just start over on Monday. So I would tell myself to look at the whole picture and not be so black-or-white, all in, all out. Because when you have those extremes, it's really difficult to find the middle. But the middle is what you can be consistent with long-term, and that's where you'll have long-term success.

Nikkiey: Yes. And be happy now.

Lindsey: Be happy now, and enjoy your whole journey.

Nikkiey: Yeah, for sure. Amazing. I'm going to put all your links below this. You're awesome. And you're the new host of your own podcast as well, so I'll definitely give that a listen.

Lindsey: Thank you.

Nikkiey: I'm going to put all your socials below, but where can people find you most?

Lindsey: Instagram and Facebook. I have a Facebook group called Fat Loss Secrets for Busy Gals. Everyone can join that one. Instagram and Facebook is where I hang out.

Nikkiey: Amazing. Lindsey, thank you so much for being here with us today. I appreciate your info...

Lindsey: Thank you for having me.

Nikkiey: ...your insight, your story, the transformation you've made and the women you're helping along the way. Women and men, right? You coach both?

Lindsey: Yes. Thank you.

Nikkiey: Cool. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. Talk to you soon.

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.