How to Stay Lean Year-Round Without Always Dieting

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.

You know, when you're looking to lose X amount of weight, or you're looking to reach a type of goal, you go into a deficit, or you're learning all these things that are going to make that weight come off, that fat come off. You're training a certain way, you're working out a certain way, and you're doing that for four, five, six months if you're doing it the right way. This is where your mindset can really play tricks on you and where you have to be in control of your mind rather than your mind being in control of you.

What is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode 145.

First of all, I cannot believe we are that many episodes into this podcast. I want to give a shout out to all you listeners, man. I love you guys. Thank you so, so freaking much for all of the love and, most importantly, the support that you guys give this podcast. I read through the reviews. We've been in the top 10 within the U.S. in the fitness category for, I think, a very, very long time. If it's not top 10, it's top 20. And that's because of you guys. Leaving a review really makes this podcast bump up in the charts. And more importantly, it gets to more viewers and listeners so that they can come into this sphere of learning. So if you can take a second to leave a review, I appreciate it. If you've already done it, I appreciate you. You guys listening, I appreciate you. Thank you so freaking much.

Anyway, on with the episode. The last couple of episodes that I've done have been based off of the questions I got when I dropped the little Q&A box on my Instagram story asking for questions you guys want answered on this podcast. I do that time and time again because it helps me hear how I can help you guys. And it helps me big time, because sometimes I'm doing episode after episode after episode and I'm like, man, I don't know what to talk about today. So when I drop that there, it helps big time.

This one in particular is from one of our star clients. She knows who she is. There are many of them inside of WarriorBabe. But she asked this question, and it may be geared more towards the advanced individual that is year after year inside their fitness routine, working out, tracking macros, maybe leaning into more of the intuitive side of eating. This podcast is really going to be geared for you guys.

But I don't want to single out anybody else that's listening to this. It could really help you understand where you could get to along your journey, which, honestly, not a lot of people talk about in the fitness space. A lot of it is still geared around quick fixes and three months to this result and crash diets. It still amazes me that that's still the narrative that's going on. But if you are listening to this podcast today, and I hope you do, I hope I didn't single you out there, know that once you do get the consistency down, the adherence to building new supporting habits, eating right, working out for a consistent amount of time, you can get here.

This babe that's asking this question has been in the WarriorBabe program for four or five years, maybe. And she's done a lot of it by herself, which is pretty cool. She was in our Blueprint program. She's also one of our ambassadors, by the way. So I can understand where this question is coming from. And I'll get to it, I promise. It's for more seasoned individuals.

More importantly, what I'm trying to say as I get into the question is that this podcast is going to be heavily based on my experience, my story, and where I'm at in my journey right now, like 10 years in. No, like nine years in. I can't believe it's been that long, it's crazy. But it's also geared to what I've seen some of my long-term clients experience as well.

So let's just get to the question. The question that I got from this seasoned babe is how to maintain the look of a cut without being in a cut, and how to make it sustainable.

For those of you that may be starting out your journey right now, the biggest thing that you need to get down is consistency. That is your main priority, your main focus. Learning about food. Learning what food is made up of. Some people don't even know what macros are. And it's like, okay, let's get to the first milestone of learning how much protein I'm eating in a day, and carrying out that type of work and applying it consistently for a couple months, and maybe even a year or a couple years on end, before you can really think about this concept that I'm going to dive into today.

Because in order to really successfully do what she's asking, you have to be at it for a year or two. Not even a year. Like two years, three years, four years, five years, six years. And more so have your general understanding and knowledge rooted in concepts that will serve the success of this question. Because you really have to know what macros are. You have to be tracking for a while. At that time, especially for beginners, you're spending a lot of time looking at food. You're spending a lot of time putting it on a scale and weighing it out. You're spending a lot of time learning these different types of habits and behaviors, because you need to rewrite the narrative and story that you have lived with for so long. And that takes time to do successfully and sustainably. It doesn't happen overnight.

So in the beginning, in order to achieve the answer to this question, in order to unlock maintaining the look of being in a cut without being in a cut and doing it sustainably, you have to do the basic work over and over and over again. That is tracking your macros. It's getting to the gym. And most importantly, it's being consistent.

But the big thing that I want to highlight here, which is a part of the answer, is your mindset. In order to maintain the look of a cut without being in a cut, you have to successfully have gone through a cut, a maintain, maybe even a little bit of a build, coming back into a cut, and then, and this is where the trick is, successfully going from a cut to a maintain without being a fool and eating whatever you want to eat. Ladies, that's what I'm talking about.

And this does apply to everybody. When you're looking to lose X amount of weight or you're looking to reach a type of goal, you go into a deficit, or you're learning all these things that are going to make that weight come off, that fat come off. You're training a certain way, you're working out a certain way, and you're doing that for four, five, six months if you're doing it the right way, maybe even seven, eight. And then you break that routine and you're in an area where you sometimes have to reduce the type of training that you're doing and you're specifically adding in more food. I talked about this two or three podcasts ago, where I talked about moving from a build to a cut or a cut to a build, one of those.

You're increasing your food at this point, and this is where your mindset can really play tricks on you and where you have to be in control of your mind rather than your mind being in control of you. This is a part of the answer. This is how you successfully maintain the look of being in a cut without being in a cut: if you can successfully move from a cut into a maintain and not spend three out of seven days of the week paying attention to the increase in macros that you're doing, and then the other four it's like, oh, whatever, I just spent the last six, seven months really focusing on losing body fat and being in a deficit, so I'm going to go enjoy a dinner out. And then that turns into four dinners in a row without you paying attention to what you're eating on a daily basis.

You could do that, right? But then that turns into a week, to two weeks, to three weeks, and that's where a little bit of control gets lost. And I talked about this in the most recent podcast, but that's where unwanted body fat can come on very, very quickly. And right there, you're not able to maintain the look of being in a cut without being in a cut.

I share that because of one of my clients who I still work with to this day, for about four years. We've gone from cut to maintain to build, or a little bit of a build, not much, but being in a little bit of a surplus, back down, working our way through maintain, going back into a cut, and then from a cut back up into maintain. And my girl, she knows who she is. When we first started going from cut to maintain each time, the, God, what's an analogy I can use for that? The reins got lost.

This is a mindset thing that I had to work on with her, because she felt like what I just shared with you guys. She felt like she spent so much time in a cut, paying attention so closely. I have to say the hardest work is when you move from reaching and attaining your goal to being able to sustainably hold on to it. And not even just sustainably, but being able to still control yourself in the manner in which you controlled yourself in a cut.

So going back to that story, she struggled with it every time, and a lot of people struggle with this. It's not just her. I know it's a bunch of other WarriorBabes, and maybe some of you listening to this, or maybe it's my girl that asked the question listening. As spot on as you can be when you are in a cut, you have to maintain some of that level of adherence as you're moving into maintain, until you successfully move into it without adding on unwanted body fat too quickly.

I'm trying to pinpoint this a little bit more here. Usually what I see when people move from a cut to maintaining is that they've scheduled it around vacations, or travel, or some type of event, or a certain time of year. And while that is admirable, because it's a goal that you're working towards, it's almost like added pressure on you to move into a maintaining phase more strictly, in a sense. Because the way I look at it, those travels are how you get lost in, oh, I'm done with the cut, and now I'm maintaining, but I have dinner with friends tonight, and over the weekend, and then I travel next week, and then you're not paying so much attention to what you're eating and kind of just letting it go.

I've been there too. I want to highlight that. I have been there a few times, where I have totally lost the reins for a couple weeks on end. And then you get to week four or five of trying to transition into a maintenance phase, and you're like, dude, why do I feel like I'm so far back from where I was when I just finished my cut five weeks ago? And then you've got to take a deep, honest look at yourself, and you've got to be like, damn, it's because I timed this transition wrong. I didn't get to purely focus on increasing my calories at an appropriate rate and paying attention to it over a two to three week period. That time period, I just want to highlight here, is so important.

But once you get into maintaining and you've leveled out, your body is recognizing that you're increasing the food. Then you can go on vacations, and this is where it becomes a balance. You have a couple dinners scheduled with friends, or events, or whatever. And mind you, you can work those things into your macros. I don't want people to be like, oh my god, this is so strict. If you want to do it the right way, you have to go through these periods where you are mentally aware of why things may have spiraled off track, and that's when you're moving from a cut to a maintenance phase.

But once you're in the maintenance phase, dude, I love the maintenance phase. I spend the majority of my time there. You can intuitively track, you can intuitively eat, you're training, and most importantly, this is the plug: when you get to the level where your body is maintaining with food, and your body is eating that level of food consistently over time, you can play around with going out to eat, going on vacation, X, Y and Z, and doing whatever you want, and still be able to achieve that look of being in a cut. And I'm saying that because it's exactly where I am right now.

But this has taken years, you guys. This has taken so much time and understanding and learning my body, and being real and honest with myself in times and periods when I haven't been insanely consistent. Or if I'm changing from a cut to a maintain phase and I fall short in the first two weeks, I've got to stay at the same macros to try and get my body and metabolism to adapt to this caloric intake before I increase the caloric intake, and X, Y and Z. So it's taken so many years.

To answer this question, the reason I said at the beginning I was going to share stories is because it really takes due diligence and understanding yourself and your body. Maintaining the look of a cut without being in a cut comes from years of really programming your body in a certain way. I have to say that too.

Hey, hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to this show. It means a lot. I hope you guys are 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 also help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too. Thanks so much, guys. Let's get back to the show.

I get this a lot from people that I work with too: how do I still have my abs showing through when I'm taking pictures on Instagram? And I'm like, guys, this is nine years, almost 10 years, of doing it the right way. I was in the industry years before that, but I was flip-flopping around, trying a bunch of different programs, trying so many different things that never got me to sustainably follow through on anything, until I found the world of macronutrients and tracking macronutrients. I gained that knowledge and understanding of putting food on a plate, and did that so many times that I can tell you what a portion size of protein, like chicken, looks like without actually weighing it.

There are so many things I had to do. The work that a lot of people don't see through social media is the work that I do behind the scenes, and that's just consistently, on end. I walk the talk. I preach what I do day in and day out to our community, to women, to our coaches.

And having done that for that long a period of time, I know that when I'm away, like I just got back from Switzerland last week, and before that I was away in Miami, I pay attention to protein, but I don't really pay attention to eating my macros one way. I heavily intuitively eat nowadays, and I am so proud of where my body is at and how it can still look like those things that I share with you. But that is literally just from the years.

Kind of like what I talked about earlier, and I know I'm getting a little sidetracked here, it's seeing what the clients I've worked with inside of WarriorBabe go through when they can't transition the mindset smoothly from a cut to maintaining appropriately, without going off the rails or increasing your food too fast, which I talked about a couple of podcasts ago.

But at the same time, you guys, in the process of doing all of this with my physique and my body, I have built so much more muscle mass in those nine years. And when you have more muscle mass, that naturally increases your basal metabolic rate, the calories you burn just sitting, resting, talking. Me sitting here, I'm burning calories, because muscle is an active tissue. It's always constantly alive and working and doing all the things. So I've naturally increased that, so no matter if I eat less on days when I'm traveling and then eat more when I come back home, or I eat more when I'm traveling, or X, Y and Z, there's still somewhat of a balance. Which I freaking love about this lifestyle, by the way.

Because when you do all the things I talked about at the beginning of the podcast, you really focus on the basics, you really hone in on rewriting the narrative for yourself, you really hone in on the work, you do it consistently, and you track your macros for a period of time, you can totally come off the macro train and exist in a space where you're really proud of your body and not have to track macronutrients.

I always hear it all the time: ah, I don't want to have to track macros for the rest of my life. Well, you don't have to track macros for the rest of your life, but you surely do have to do some of the work in the first couple years of your journey to be able to get to that kind of stage. You have to go through experiencing coming out of a cut and, you know, nicely fucking it up. You have to experience that, and you probably have to experience it a couple of times.

Just like with my client. Right before she got pregnant, it finally actually clicked: oh shit, I'm actually doing it the right way. She maintained her weight and gained gradually at a good rate coming from a cut to maintain. To be honest, it took three or four times with her. And that's whatever you guys need to change on your own accord. Even though each time I still coached her and still brought this awareness, sometimes it doesn't resonate until it resonates, and that's okay.

From a coaching perspective, you just have to allow the client to go through the grooves of learning, and be there to be direct as a coach, and tell her point blank, hey, I see this may be happening, so we need to pull it back in.

But anyway, you've got to go through multiple times of fucking up. You've got to go through a cut to maintain. You've got to go through experiencing something that maybe makes you not want to do it again, essentially. That's how a lot of change happens. Some people that are overweight know they need to change, so they get into a fitness program. Those of you that want to maintain the look of a cut without being in a cut have to go through recognizing the periods when you transition from a cut to a maintenance, and you may have messed up.

So that's pretty much the answer to that question. On top of all the other things, like consistency, making sure you're getting good sleep, you're training, da, da, da, all the normal basic stuff that people know to do, the biggest thing is mindset. The biggest thing is being able to control yourself as you transition from a cut to a maintenance. But how to make it sustainable, you guys, really is...

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...allowing your body to be in the maintenance phase for the majority of the time. At the beginning, you do go from cut to maintain because you're trying to get your body adapted to those specific things, and you're trying to build muscle, so you have to go up into a little bit of maintenance. Then you obviously come back down to see the work you put in, and then you can bump back up into maintenance when you're really happy with the body that you've built. But along the way, you have to go through those phases, because in order to change your body composition, you have to eat more food, and you're not going to be able to do that and build more muscle when you're in a deficit.

So how to make it sustainable is honestly, like I shared with you guys, the majority of the time I live in a maintenance phase. I'm eating anywhere upwards of 2,500 to 2,700 calories. And if I fall short on a couple of days, or maybe go a little over on a couple days, there's somewhat of a balance to the way that I go, and I train, and I work out, and I keep that all consistent.

Now, something I actually want to add in here, almost like bringing your awareness to it: keep in mind that people don't share this on social media, and maybe it's something I could get better at. I am bloated some days, and I still have my period, so I experience that uncomfortableness within my body on a monthly basis. There are tons of days where I don't feel as confident in my physique, but that doesn't get shown. So maybe I should share that a little bit more. But know that even though you want to maintain the look of a cut without being in a cut, you're not going to look like you're in a cut every single day. Keep that in the back of your mind too.

But overarching, it is totally possible to look, what do I say, shredded year-round for the majority of the time. You can totally do that, but you have to really go through everything that I shared in this podcast first. If you're a beginner, you have to go through the basics, consistently follow through, and really work on changing your body composition. That doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't usually happen in one year. It happens in a couple of years.

Then as you get more tenured in your journey, it's like, okay, am I successfully, and be honest with yourself, am I successfully moving in and out of a cut to maintenance at a good rate? Am I being honest with myself? Maybe I'm intuitively eating, but am I actually doing that right? That's actually a really good point. A lot of people say they intuitively eat or they know how to eat well, even after years of tracking macros, but are you actually doing that aspect right? Because if you're not doing it right, and you're not eating enough, or the weekends are falling off, you're not going to look like you're in a cut. You're not going to be able to maintain the look of being in a cut if you're intuitively eating the wrong way.

So that's actually a whole other bucket that I didn't touch on, but as I'm talking and kind of rambling here with you guys, it just popped into my head. After years of doing this, people say they intuitively eat, but if you want to maintain the look of being in a cut without being in a cut, you have to intuitively eat the right way.

What comes to my mind for that, because this is what I do, is that no matter what, I make sure that I am getting in enough protein on a daily basis. That is a macronutrient that I will not sacrifice. Seriously. So if you're intuitively eating and you're under-eating on your protein, you're over-eating on your carbs, you're over-eating on your fats, you will not achieve maintaining the look of a cut without being in a cut. That's a whole other can of worms to open up. Fitness people share on Instagram that they're intuitively eating, and you can totally intuitively eat, but if you want this goal of maintaining the look of being in a cut without being in a cut, you have to intuitively be eating the right way. You've got to prioritize your protein.

I kind of touched on this a little bit. I'm rambling all over the place, you guys, but I feel like it's good. That's what the podcast is for sometimes. I'm bumping around in my stories and experiences, along with tagging in the clients that I've worked with where I've seen this happen. You can also have the days going out, like I shared, but even on the days you go out and you're planning a night out with friends... another thing that just popped into my brain. See, I just need to talk sometimes to you guys.

Alcohol. If you guys are trying to maintain the look of being in a cut without being in a cut, but you're drinking alcohol, that's something I don't do very often at all. I know alcohol is a big thing, like having a glass of wine, going out with friends, having a couple drinks here and there. I know that's a lifestyle, and it's something that I don't do very often, and I think that does help play a role in me being as lean and as defined as I am on a yearly basis.

But even if you are going out with friends, or you're going on a vacation, or you're going to an event, on those days you still have to intuitively eat enough protein. It has to be top, top of your awareness.

So all in all, guys, thanks for being here for the ramble. I hope that it answered the question. I hope it served a purpose, even if you're a beginner. These are things that you can look forward to, but you can't intuitively eat six months into your journey. You just can't. You don't know enough, to be honest. You're still a little bit ignorant when it comes to the nutrition side of things. You need to really develop your skills in order to get to the concepts that I'm talking about here, when you want to maintain the look of a cut without being in a cut, and also how to make it sustainable.

To close it out, I think the most important thing is moving from a cut to maintenance and being honest with yourself in that process, and not eating too much or scheduling too many things around that transition. When you get there, you can totally do those things. You have to allow your body to adapt to it. And the second thing is making sure that you're intuitively eating the right way.

All right, guys. Cool. Hope you enjoyed that podcast. I enjoy speaking out loud. Sometimes I just have no list of things I want to talk about with you guys and I'm just spitballing it. But hope that made sense, and hope you gained some things. I will see you in the next podcast. Peace out.

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