How to Raise Your Metabolic Capacity and See Results
Chronic dieting killing your results? Learn how to raise your metabolic capacity and finally get the body composition you're after on this episode of Get Sculpted.
Prefer audio? Listen here!
If you've been grinding in the gym, eating less than you ever thought possible, and still not seeing the shape you're working so hard for, this episode is going to change how you think about your metabolism. Because the problem isn't your effort or your willpower. Nobody told you the real reason your body stopped responding, and what it takes to fix it.
In this episode, Coach Tijana gets honest about her own two-year journey through back-to-back preps, chronic under-eating, and what happened when she finally stopped chasing leanness and started building metabolic capacity instead. She shares what she learned the hard way. and exactly how to apply it to your own training and nutrition so you stop losing and regaining the same 10 pounds and start building a body and metabolism that lasts.
Here's what we cover:
What metabolic capacity is, and why it has nothing to do with having a "fast" or "slow" metabolism
Why years of chronic dieting quietly downregulate your metabolism, and the telltale signs it's already happening to you
How Tijana went from 1,300 calories and two-a-day cardio sessions to eating 2,300 calories and looking and feeling better than ever
Why eating more to lose weight isn't a gimmick, and the physiological reason your body starts responding differently once you build your metabolic capacity up
The dieting trap most women fall into without realizing it, and why going from one lean-out to the next without a true maintenance phase is keeping you stuck
What slow metabolism symptoms look like in real life, including food noise, constant fatigue, stalled progress, and why you can't lift as heavy as you used to
Why building muscle to burn fat is the strategy that changes everything, and why your F45 classes aren't doing what you think they're doing
The reason the scale number you've been afraid of might be the weight at which your body looks and performs its best
How reverse dieting works in practice, what the phases look like, and why you have to earn the right to cut
What body composition for women over 30 really requires, and why the approach that worked in your 20s is actively working against you now
This episode is for the woman who is training hard, eating as clean as she knows how, and still staring at the same body in the mirror, wondering what she's missing. The one who has convinced herself she just needs to go lower, cut more, push harder. Here's what Coach T wants you to know: your metabolism isn't broken, but it's underdeveloped. And there's a way out of this that doesn't involve eating less.
"The toned body you want is on the other side of way more muscle. Toned is built, not bought. It's rented, not owed. And rent is due every day." — Coach Tijana
Ready to stop spinning your wheels and finally understand what your body needs? Coaches Marilynn, Tijana, and Jordanna personally review every application and will meet you exactly where you are. Fill out the form at getsculpted.ca/contact, or DM us on Instagram @getsculpted.ca. And if this one hit home, subscribe because there is a lot more where this came from.
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More about the Get Sculpted Podcast
Welcome to Get Sculpted, the podcast for women who want to gain muscle and lose belly fat, improve their metabolism, and create real results using science-based fat loss strategies and practical coaching.
We go beyond quick fixes and fad diets to give you sustainable fat loss, strength training for weight loss, and fitness tips for women who want results without burning out. You’ll learn how lifting weights supports fat loss, how to train smarter instead of longer, and how to build habits that fit your lifestyle. Think less about guessing, more about clarity, and about progress you can maintain.
Whether you’re getting started or focused on building muscle after 30, this podcast gives women the tools to lose fat, gain muscle, and feel stronger, without relying on endless cardio or restrictive plans. We emphasize fat loss without cardio extremes, so you can train with confidence and consistency.
We’re your hosts, Jordanna, Marilynn, and Tijana, fitness professionals with over 20 years of combined experience and 1,000+ client transformations. With a strong focus on helping women 30 and older, we specialize in strength training, improving metabolism, and weight training for sustainable, realistic weight loss.
We’ll cover questions like:
Can you build muscle and lose belly fat at the same time?
How does strength training support weight loss?
What’s the best way to lose fat without losing muscle?
What’s the best way to lose fat without relying on cardio?
How can lifting weights improve my metabolism?
Why am I not losing weight even though I’m working out and eating healthy?
How can I stop yo-yo dieting for good?
If you’ve been searching for sustainable fat loss, women’s nutrition, and weight training that actually works, you’re in the right place. Join us every week for practical guidance, honest conversations, and tools to sculpt a stronger body and a more confident life.
Connect with us on Instagram at @getsculted.ca
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Get Sculpted podcast follows:
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Get Sculpted podcast. [00:00:02] It is Coach T here and I'm here for a solo episode, one that I'm excited about because I will be recapping just my journey with my own body composition and fitness over the past couple years. [00:00:13] Because even though I've been doing this for quite some time, I've been working out since I was like in my teens. [00:00:19] But like training properly, let's say in the last decade or so, I've evolved for sure and continue to evolve, which we all should. [00:00:26] We're going to be talking about how we can apply this for you as well, how you can raise your metabolic capacity and specifically what my post prep journey has taught me about eating more, building more muscle, and actually being able to stay in shape and stay lean all the time. [00:00:40] So let's dive in now.
Reflecting on 2023–2024: Dieting Without Building
[00:00:42] To start, we're going to take it back to 2023. [00:00:47] I was staying quite lean and muscular and I would say my best shape at the time in 2023 and then 2024. [00:00:55] I spent a lot of that year dieting and on low calories because I know that I had at least one or two photo shoots and then I just had back to back lean outs. [00:01:04] Like in hindsight, most of that year was not spent building muscle. [00:01:08] And actually that's kind of when I started looking a little bit softer and the scale crept up a little bit. [00:01:14] Nothing major, but like, let's say in 2023 when I was at like my like lean peak shape. [00:01:19] At the time I was probably in like the mid to low 1-30s where I was in the high 1-30s in 2024 and just kind of looked softer overall. [00:01:29] So I was putting in the same grind, if not more because I was always trying to lean out and I just wasn't seeing my physique look the way that I wanted or to my standard or what I felt like it should be at because I was putting in a lot of grind.
Hiring Coaches and Over-Dieting
[00:01:43] So I was tightening things up even more. [00:01:46] I hired a coach because I'm always a believer that every coach needs a coach and I wanted an extra push to lean out at the time. [00:01:51] And that's kind of when that began of like I started leaning out with that coach and then that plan was just too restrictive. [00:01:55] It wasn't a good fit. [00:01:56] And then sometime in 2024 I got another coach. [00:01:59] Anyway, I spent a lot of that time dieting with kind of two new coaches. [00:02:02] So the thing is, in hindsight now, cause hindsight's 20 20. [00:02:06] Starting with a coach, if you say, hey, I want to lean out, they don't have a background of working with you, of, like, exactly how much you've eaten in for how long.
Lack of Background, Chronic Deficit, and Realization
[00:02:14] So there was no background with either of those coaches about, like, what were your maintenance calories? [00:02:18] It was like, hey, let's put you in a deficit. [00:02:21] So that was kind of what I spent most of 2024 doing. [00:02:24] And then I decided at the end of 2024, I really was thinking about competing again. [00:02:32] And I think that in hindsight, I wanted to take my physique to the next level. [00:02:37] In my mind, I felt like, okay, I got to get back to, like, being really lean. [00:02:41] And that's what I'm missing right now. [00:02:42] Because the truth is, if I'm being totally honest, which I always aim to be, here I felt like, gosh, my whole life, I've never really been as lean as I wanted.
Competing Aspirations and Honest Self-Reflection
[00:02:52] Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about what I've achieved with my physique. [00:02:55] I've certainly been happy with and am proud of my physique, and I'm happy with what I've achieved. [00:03:00] But I felt like I've never really been, like, ripped and shredded, and I want to see what my body can do when I get there. [00:03:07] And I felt like, okay, I'm in a place where, like, the last time I competed was 2014, 2015, and that was before kids. [00:03:15] I was even vegan at the time. [00:03:16] It was like, a totally different approach. [00:03:19] It was just extremely restrictive. [00:03:20] I didn't have a lot of muscle, so I felt like, okay, I could do this right, and I could do it better.
Starting Prep with a New Coach
[00:03:24] So that's what pushed me to get into a prep. [00:03:28] And then I reached out to a coach who — she's my coach at the moment. [00:03:32] We're actually winding down right now because she has taken me through a full reverse diet, and we're going to talk about all that in this episode. [00:03:40] But I was with her for about 14 months. [00:03:41] And then when I came to her, I liked her because she didn't say, let's start with a lean out. [00:03:46] She said, great, you want to prep. [00:03:47] I want to stick with you for bringing you into consistent maintenance before we cut, which in hindsight, like, I never did that before.
Learning to Stabilize with Maintenance Calories
[00:03:53] Definitely not with a coach. [00:03:55] If I came to a coach in the past and was like, I want to go on a deficit, they're like, okay, great, here's your calorie deficit. [00:04:00] And yeah, like, I knew how to grind that way. And I see this in a lot of my clients, too, where it's like, okay, cutting calories, sure, I could do that. [00:04:07] I could do the calorie deficit, but you need to, like, earn that. [00:04:10] And that's really what I learned early on. [00:04:12] So from, like, January of 2025 last year, I worked with my coach through, like, April on just staying in a maintenance intake and just stabilizing my calories and just not cutting yet. [00:04:23] So I was consistently, I think, working up to, like, 2100. [00:04:26] And that was keeping me quite full at the time.
Progression from Maintenance to Cutting
[00:04:29] So we kind of stayed there. [00:04:31] I mean, I was always training hard in the gym. [00:04:32] Don't get it twisted. [00:04:33] I never have a period where I'm not training hard in the gym. [00:04:35] My husband was like, you know, Tijana, even when you're lifting light, you're lifting heavy, so that doesn't change. [00:04:40] But the food worked up my calories. [00:04:43] And then in April of last year, I began my first cut for my first show, and my body was actually responding pretty well. [00:04:49] Like, I was at probably 17 or 1800 calories.
Comparing Current and Previous Cutting Experiences
[00:04:51] And at the time, that was never my cutting calories. [00:04:54] Like, my cutting calories were always, like, 1600. [00:04:56] And I had it in my mind that, like, oh, you just have the calories you cut on. [00:04:59] Like, I just always am going to cut at 1600 and get down to 1400. [00:05:02] It's just what I do. [00:05:03] It's just what I needed to do in the previous year. [00:05:06] And even in 2024, it was always kind of like the whole year was like, 1500, 1600 calories. [00:05:11] Anyway, I digress.
Show Prep: Calories, Cardio, and Judging
[00:05:13] 1700, 1800 — I was cutting last April. [00:05:16] After building up my maintenance with my coach, things were going well. [00:05:20] We upped my cardio near the end of my first prep. [00:05:24] So I did one show, which was in August, and then near the end, in terms of how far prep goes, it didn't get that crazy. [00:05:32] I felt like a million bucks. [00:05:33] But the feedback that they gave me, the judges, was like, you're very far off conditioning. [00:05:38] They were like, you're, like, seven or eight weeks far off.
Transition to Second Prep and Warning Signs
[00:05:41] And look, I couldn't tell you what I was doing at the end, but it wasn't anything crazy for a prep. [00:05:45] The cardio I was doing was, like, brisk walking, and my calories, I think, were at, like, 1500 and no lower. [00:05:50] So it was not that crazy. [00:05:52] It was like an hour of, like, brisk walking a day at the end where I was elevating my heart rate to, like, 115, 120. [00:05:59] So like moderate to low intensity cardio. [00:06:02] Anyway, I decided at that point with my coach, look, I'm already relatively lean. [00:06:07] Let's push things further and aim for another show. [00:06:10] And at the time there was like a buffer of like a month, I think.
Second Show and Spiral Into Low Calories
[00:06:15] Yeah, like it was August — that was my show. [00:06:17] And then I think September I started my lead out for a November show. [00:06:20] So really it was only a month buffer between this very low calorie, high cardio phase where I still hadn't really upped my calories a whole lot. [00:06:27] I think it was at like 1600. [00:06:29] And then I was cutting back down. [00:06:32] And when I went into that second cut, that's really when things went sideways.
Hitting New Lows: Calories, Cardio, and Sustainability
[00:06:38] That's when I started noticing that it was a lot harder. [00:06:42] And near the end, what happened in the gist of it is I cut between September and November and I got to like 1300 calories or so. [00:06:50] And it was the cardio that really did me in. [00:06:52] Oh my God, I was completely starving. [00:06:54] And just to clarify, I do not blame my coach and neither should you. [00:06:57] Because the reality is it was for show, right? [00:06:59] It was not just me cutting for my everyday life. [00:07:01] This is not meant to be sustainable.
Physical and Hormonal Red Flags
[00:07:03] A prep for a competition is anything but sustainable. [00:07:05] So please understand that. [00:07:07] But however, the grind I had to put in to get not even lean enough again was an indicator of some red flags of my body. [00:07:14] Lost my period near the end for like two months. [00:07:18] 1300 calories. [00:07:19] I was up to two times a day cardio, where I was having a hard time elevating my heart rate. [00:07:24] Cause I could not push hard enough.
Total Depletion and Exhaustion
[00:07:26] I was trying to move those sticks on the elliptical and I'm holding on and I'm trying to give all my might, but the might was not there, my man. [00:07:35] I was exhausted. [00:07:36] And just after a while, you don't even get hungry because you're so depleted. [00:07:40] Like anything — like someone suggesting a walk would be absolutely exhausting for me. [00:07:43] So it was a grind, let me tell you. [00:07:46] And I still wasn't lean enough.
Post-Prep Reflections: Understanding Metabolic Capacity
[00:07:47] So what I want to share now, in hindsight, now that I'm back to my healthy state, my periods are regular, my hunger signals are good. [00:07:55] I thought I actually had a good understanding of metabolic capacity and what mine was before this. [00:07:59] But through the process of my prep and my recovery and going through building my maintenance now, which I'm in a healthy place — I understand how intentionally increasing food has changed how I feel and perform and show up and what it really means and feels like to be in a metabolically healthy body. [00:08:24] Because here's the thing — we often think of your metabolism being unhealthy when you're overweight and obese. [00:08:29] And it is unhealthy when you're overweight and obese because you're at risk of metabolic syndrome where you're messing up your hormones in a whole different way. [00:08:37] But that can also happen when you're under fueling and over training. [00:08:41] And that's where I was. [00:08:42] So today I want to talk about what metabolic capacity actually is, why so many women are unintentionally suppressing their metabolic capacity, and why eating less is not the way that you're going to upgrade it and how we want to think about this differently.
Breaking Down Metabolic Capacity
[00:08:55] Okay, so let's talk about it. [00:08:57] Let's break this down really simply. [00:08:58] Metabolic capacity is not just like, okay, I'm going to have a fast metabolism. [00:09:03] It's your actual ability to maintain a lean physique and be able to handle more food while maintaining a certain body fat level, certain shape, performance, how heavy you're lifting, how fast you're running, how well you're able to recover, how good you're feeling, healthy hormone function — this is huge. [00:09:23] And your energy output, like how much oomph do you have to your day, how much are you moving? [00:09:28] And this is gonna have an influence on your muscle mass, your training intensity, how hard you can train, how well you recover, your stress management, your sleep quality, your hormone health, and how much food you eat over time. [00:09:43] So a lot of women think that success means being able to eat as little as possible, always being hungry, always being on that 1500, 1600 calories, and just being in a constant calorie deficit. [00:09:54] And let me just highlight one thing. [00:09:56] Calorie deficit by definition means the number of calories you need to lose weight.
Identifying a Downregulated Metabolism
[00:09:59] And if you're eating 1500, 1600 calories and maintaining — that is a very low maintenance. [00:10:04] It's just an indicator that your metabolism is slowed down and downregulated to the point that you're maintaining on something that used to be your deficit. [00:10:11] And that's not what you want. [00:10:12] You want a healthy, functioning metabolism. [00:10:15] Signs that you have a metabolism that has downregulated beyond a healthy level — and I'm using careful language here. [00:10:22] I don't want to say broken metabolism, I don't want to say anything that kind of indicates that your metabolism is not adaptable. [00:10:28] Because it's very adaptable, it's dynamic.
Symptoms of a Slow or Downregulated Metabolism
[00:10:30] So these are just symptoms that your metabolism is downregulated or slow at the moment. [00:10:35] Low food tolerance — it means you feel like you just can't eat that much without regaining weight. [00:10:40] And not just weight in the short term, not just like you eat more carbs in one day and the scale goes up. [00:10:45] Not talking about that. [00:10:46] I'm talking about your maintenance intake is low. [00:10:48] Like truly low. [00:10:49] Based on what you've been eating and tracking and what it should be, you have low recovery.
[00:10:53] You're always feeling kind of sore and tight. [00:10:55] Like your muscles just feel like they're not ready to go. [00:10:59] Or mentally you don't feel ready to go. [00:11:00] That's also a sign of poor recovery — mentally there's no oomph to train. [00:11:03] You're just dragging your butt. [00:11:05] You have a low output, you just can't lift heavy. [00:11:07] It's really hard for you.
[00:11:08] It feels like a struggle bus. [00:11:09] Every time you're training, you have low muscle, you're not putting on that lean muscle and you're trying to grind for it, but it's not happening and you have constant fatigue. [00:11:18] Like my example with the walks — someone says, hey, wanna go for like an hour walk? [00:11:26] If they said that to you right now, what would be your first thought? [00:11:27] Would it be like, oh, an hour walk, my God — or if you had the time, would you think, gosh, I would love to. [00:11:34] That seems awesome. [00:11:35] Just walking and talking.
Food Noise and Obsession
[00:11:38] Food noise. [00:11:39] How much is food noise showing up for you? [00:11:41] I know when I was surviving off the 1500, 1600 calories, I was thinking about food all the time. [00:11:47] All the time. [00:11:47] I went to bed thinking about food. [00:11:49] I saw a bus with a picture of food on it and I was like, oh my God. [00:11:52] I saw a name of a street that related to food. [00:11:55] I saw like a Persimmon Street. [00:11:56] And I was like, oh my God, persimmons. [00:11:58] I couldn't stop thinking about them. [00:11:59] I would be finished one meal and I was hungry again for the next one. [00:12:02] These are signs. [00:12:03] You need to eat more, girl. [00:12:05] Food should not rule your life. [00:12:06] You should eat and get on with your day. [00:12:07] And of course, stalled progress.
Stalled Progress and the Chronic Dieting Trap
[00:12:09] You're just not leaning out and you're feeling soft. [00:12:11] Despite all that effort you're putting in, your metabolism is not broken, it's underdeveloped. [00:12:15] And the solution to this is not eating less and moving more. [00:12:19] That's dumb advice. [00:12:20] Let's talk about what you need to do. [00:12:22] This is the dieting trap women fall into — and that I've fallen into and that my clients have fallen into before coming to us. [00:12:29] So years of chronic dieting, you go from challenge to challenge to lean out to lean out. [00:12:33] And you're working with one coach on fat loss.
[00:12:34] And then you take a break and never go into a true maintenance. [00:12:36] And you're not actually increasing your calories. [00:12:38] You're either in fat loss or not in fat loss. [00:12:40] You're always trying to lose that same 10 to 15 pounds. [00:12:42] You've grinded and grinded and lost it and every grind feels harder. [00:12:46] You're always on track Monday to Thursday and then Friday — oop, the wine comes in, the meals get loose and then you're starting over again.
Training Myths, Clean Eating, and Carb Avoidance
[00:12:55] So you're doing things disguised as strength training, maybe like high reps or like a fitness app with five, ten pound dumbbells. [00:13:01] And you're doing them for a burn. [00:13:03] You're eating clean, but you're under fueling. [00:13:05] So you're eating the right foods, but you're cutting carbs. [00:13:07] You're always avoiding rice and only having cauliflower rice — which I like cauliflower rice. [00:13:11] But it can't be your only carb source. [00:13:13] It's not a carb source. [00:13:14] It's just a fricking vegetable.
[00:13:16] You're cutting carbs and cutting foods. [00:13:18] You're trying to stay small year round. [00:13:19] You're trying to chase a number on the scale. [00:13:21] And I'm guilty. [00:13:22] Guilty. [00:13:22] My coach had me stop weighing myself for a while because I even was like, oh my God, the scale is at 142. [00:13:29] I weighed myself the other day and funny, I looked up BMI for giggles, and it said that I was 2 pounds away from being overweight and I had to just — I'm in a healthy relationship with my body and the scale — I just chuckled and thought, huh, that's funny.
Scale Weight, Muscle, and Progress Markers
[00:13:42] Like, I'm obviously not overweight because if I maybe didn't have any muscle, this weight would look very different. [00:13:47] This is where I was. [00:13:49] And I just want you to know that if you're in this place, the scale does not rule who you are and what your progress is. [00:13:57] If you're trying to keep a magic number on the scale — that's not a good idea because when you're building lean muscle, the scale might increase. [00:14:08] And a number you were once so afraid of could very well be the weight that your body feels and performs your best at and looks the best at, for that matter. [00:14:17] So with my coach, when I was checking in with her, the reason she had me step away from the scale wasn't because we don't care about how I look — girl, I do. [00:14:27] It was because my photos told the whole story. [00:14:33] I was at high 140s starting my prep, which was my big weight quote unquote. That was my getting a little chunky kind of weight last year at the beginning of the year.
How Muscle Gains Really Work
[00:14:39] And now I don't even think of it that way. [00:14:41] I just think, whoa, I look completely different. [00:14:42] My midsection looks lean. [00:14:44] My bottom half — I've built muscle in my legs. [00:14:47] And by the way, I want you to know, muscle's not something where, whoa, you look like a bodybuilder within a few months. [00:14:52] I wish. [00:14:52] I saw someone make a post the other day that said, according to my DEXA, I built four pounds of muscle in 12 weeks. [00:14:59] I'm like, well, you didn't, because that's impossible. [00:15:02] The average woman who's training naturally, who's an intermediate to advanced lifter, is building four to six pounds of muscle a year.
[00:15:08] A year. [00:15:10] Think of a pound of beef in a pack that you see at the store. [00:15:13] Okay, it sounds weird, but that's one pound, right? [00:15:15] Think about four pounds of that on your body. [00:15:17] Pretty significant, especially if you're 5'3" or below. [00:15:23] So I put on some muscle, the body composition changed, and my body looks different. [00:15:27] What was interesting too is I actually said to my coach, my hip circumference is the same as last year, but my glutes look more perky — I have more shapely glutes. [00:15:37] And she's like, yeah, that's why we go by the photos. [00:15:40] We don't even just go by the measurements because last year your hips had more fat around them.
Fat Distribution, Muscle, and Metabolic Activity
[00:15:44] They had fat and muscle — it's not pure muscle. [00:15:46] And I tend to store more body fat around my lower half, but it's actually shifted a little bit. [00:15:51] With more muscle that you build, you build more of that metabolic activity in that area. [00:15:55] So that's something I learned from my coach as well — you can't spot reduce fat, but if you have more muscle in your legs, you're going to be burning more body fat. [00:16:03] You're going to have more metabolically active tissue in the area, you're going to store less fat there, which I thought was pretty cool. [00:16:07] So it goes to show — same circumference booty, same weight, different shaped booty and different looking waist, different looking body. [00:16:15] So that's why we track everything.
[00:16:16] And by the way, if you're listening to this and thinking, oh my God, I've just been tracking the scale, no wonder I've been stuck. [00:16:23] I've been married to a number on the scale. [00:16:25] I'm trying to do my best. [00:16:26] I'm not seeing changes. [00:16:28] I don't know how to unpack this. [00:16:29] This is what we do with our clients. [00:16:31] We do the thinking and the planning and the strategy. [00:16:35] So you just have to execute and you learn how to maintain that.
Invitation to Reach Out and Application Call to Action
[00:16:38] So if you're spinning your wheels, you don't know why you're not getting results, stop spinning them. [00:16:43] We can help you. [00:16:43] Go to getsculpted.ca/contact and click on the link in our show notes. [00:16:48] We'll leave it there too. [00:16:49] Fill out an application, tell us where you're at, what you're struggling with, what your challenges are, what you want to achieve, and we'll help craft a custom plan for you.
Consequences of Chronic Dieting
[00:17:00] All right, so I want to talk about the consequence of actually not changing what you're doing. [00:17:01] You're putting in too much grind, the wrong kind of grind. [00:17:04] What chronic dieting and living in this low calorie like 1500, 1600 calories does — it keeps you stuck in mediocre, quite frankly. [00:17:12] You're not gonna get your magic weight but not your magic body. [00:17:15] Like you're not looking like your hottest, best self, quite frankly. [00:17:18] You're never building enough muscle. [00:17:20] You are never gonna actually be able to train enough or train hard enough and recover from it to get the amount of muscle that you want. [00:17:27] And your metabolism's gonna downregulate. [00:17:29] Now it's getting used to maintaining at 1500, 1600 calories and you don't want to be there.
Personal Maintenance Increases and How to Earn It
[00:17:35] By the way, now I'm eating 2300 calories and maintaining there and I want to be here. [00:17:40] Guess why? [00:17:41] Because I am now learning to better utilize this fuel and the lean out that I did served for that. [00:17:48] So I want to talk about that as well. [00:17:49] Actually, I want to backtrack — because when you get lean first, which is important, okay, you can't have too much fat and eat too much because you're going to gain too much more fat. [00:17:57] I got lean, and then my body became more insulin sensitive. [00:18:01] So the nutrients I was consuming, the food I was eating was more readily able to be partitioned toward building muscle. [00:18:07] So now going from being lean and eating 1300, 1400 calories, I gradually upped that while increasing my training intensity.
Required Balance: Getting Lean, Eating More, and Training Hard
[00:18:16] I can better handle these 2300 calories. [00:18:18] My body knows what to do with it. [00:18:20] Simply put — so it's not just like, eat more and keep going to F45. [00:18:24] It's not gonna work. [00:18:25] You need to actually get lean, eat more, and train hard. [00:18:28] That's the recipe. [00:18:30] So your consequence of not doing that is you're gonna just stay stuck, always losing and gaining the same ten pounds and never seeing a change to your shape, always having that slow metabolism that just keeps getting slower.
Rebuilding Metabolism and the Long-Term Grind
[00:18:40] By the way, the more times that you diet, you don't want to be in that place. [00:18:43] You want to have a strong, healthy metabolism that tolerates more food. [00:18:46] Your body knows what to do with the food. [00:18:48] You're able to then cut and lean out and do like a mini cut again. [00:18:51] You're not gonna have to upswing much. [00:18:53] But for me, if I want to get lean for the summer or look good for a photo shoot, four to six weeks of a little bit of tightening up the calories, my body's gonna respond so much better. [00:19:04] If I even wanted to do another prep, I would be back to responding well at 1800, 1900, or maybe 2000 calories — rather than 1600, 1700, or like 1300, 1400. [00:19:16] This is why you're not seeing that shape.
The Muscle-Building Truth and Common Mistakes
[00:19:18] You don't have enough muscle, and you've been undereating for years. [00:19:22] You haven't been eating for the result of building muscle. [00:19:24] You've been eating for the result of just cutting body fat, and you think that's the only thing that's gonna get you toned. [00:19:29] And if you've been doing random workouts on top of that, or you've been inconsistently training with the right intensity, or you've never trained with the right intensity, you're focusing on the wrong thing. [00:19:37] You're focused on the number on the scale, or even just the body fat thing, and you're not focused on building muscle. [00:19:42] Muscle's gonna help you be able to eat more because your body's gonna know what to do with those nutrients. [00:19:47] It's gonna help you look better, it's gonna help you not fear the scale.
In Praise of Muscle
[00:19:49] Because the scale's going in the right direction for a reason. [00:19:52] And it's gonna help you get that look that you want. [00:19:55] I don't know any other way to say it. [00:19:56] The toned body you want is on the other side of way more muscle. [00:19:59] And by now you're listening to this, you're still here. [00:20:02] You know, I give you the tough love — when I hear I have enough muscle, I don't know who you are. [00:20:05] I don't care who you are.
Myth-Busting: "Enough Muscle" and The Daily Grind
[00:20:06] No, you don't. [00:20:07] You don't have enough muscle if you have only been ever grinding for natural muscle. [00:20:11] Look, first of all, I've never met someone who has too much muscle ever. [00:20:15] I wouldn't even say that. [00:20:17] I'm the most consistent person I know. [00:20:19] If you're naturally trying to build muscle, you will never in your lifetime build too much muscle to look jacked. [00:20:24] You gotta earn that every day. [00:20:26] Toned body is built, not bought. It's rented, not owed. And rent is due every day.
Training Hard and the Teeter-Totter of Phases
[00:20:33] So you gotta keep training hard. [00:20:36] My point is you don't have too much muscle and you need to build more of it. [00:20:40] You need to keep grinding to keep it, by the way. [00:20:41] And you're probably grinding in the wrong way — which is high reps and random workouts. [00:20:44] And no, your F45 and Orangetheory classes don't count as muscle building. [00:20:49] Okay, so what you're gonna need to do — I'm not poo-pooing on you here and saying what you're doing is wrong, but you're really underestimating what it really takes. [00:20:57] You wanna think of your lean out phase and your muscle building phase — or at least maintenance phase — as a teeter totter.
Lean Outs, Maintenance, and Metabolic Health
[00:21:07] You have a scale like a seesaw. [00:21:09] And on one side is you leaning out and on the other side is you spending time in intentional maintenance or a slight surplus. [00:21:17] If you've spent most of your year or years leaning out, you're teetering the scale in the wrong direction. [00:21:22] Now your metabolism has downregulated and you haven't earned the right to lose more body fat. [00:21:26] You have to earn that. [00:21:27] You have to spend most of your time in maintenance, in that slight surplus at times — not all the time — to bring back the scale in the right direction, where you're tipping it to neutral. [00:21:42] Because you don't want to be in a place where you need to diet on such low calories. [00:21:46] You're going to be eating away muscle also. [00:21:47] That's what you don't want to do.
Building Muscle Takes Time and Calories
[00:21:49] So I really want to hammer this home. [00:21:51] You're trying to build muscle or maintain it and it's going to take a lot of grind. [00:21:54] You need enough calories for that — like more than you think. [00:21:56] How much of your year have you actually spent eating more than 2000 calories a day if you really have to reflect on it? [00:22:02] And I'm not telling you to go do that tomorrow because I don't know you, I don't know how hard you're training. [00:22:07] And most of the women who come to us are working out hard, but it's a different kind of hard. [00:22:12] They're sweating a lot. [00:22:13] They're doing many days and hours of training a week — like six days a week, seven days of Orangetheory and Peloton. [00:22:19] It's not the same.
Why Class-Based Cardio Isn't Enough
[00:22:21] You're fatiguing your body without the reward I'm talking about. [00:22:25] You're in the gym, lifting a heavy weight. [00:22:26] You know how much to lift — that's well beyond your body weight. [00:22:28] In some lifts you're lifting with intention and intensity. [00:22:30] That's when you earn those 200, 250, 300 grams of carbs a day. [00:22:35] Your body better know how to use that. [00:22:36] Because if it doesn't, that's how you store it as body fat.
Understanding the Real Approach: Eat, Train, Recover
[00:22:39] So if you want to build your metabolic capacity, you really need to understand how to eat and train for that result. [00:22:45] And again, this is exactly what we do with our clients. [00:22:47] So just to give you an idea of our process — we get you lean first. [00:22:50] We don't know how much weight you need to lose, right? [00:22:52] We need to do a full intake assessment of your maintenance. [00:22:54] We do a diet recall. [00:22:56] So we see like how much have you been eating — not just how much you say you're eating or what you're eating, how much. [00:23:01] Log it. Let's see seven days of that.
Phased Process: Getting Lean, Rebuilding Capacity, and Next Steps
[00:23:02] All right, we have an idea. [00:23:04] Let's say you think you have 20 pounds to lose — you might have 30 or 40. [00:23:07] That's the reality. [00:23:07] To get as lean as you want or need to, and then you become more responsive. [00:23:11] Then we up your calories, then we work on your metabolic capacity. [00:23:14] Then we work on increasing you to the point that your new maintenance is much higher and you look leaner because you built the muscle and metabolism to maintain it. [00:23:22] That's what metabolic resiliency is about. [00:23:24] That's what building that metabolic capacity means.
What Increased Metabolic Capacity Looks Like in Your Life
[00:23:26] And by the way, you might think, I don't really want to eat more. [00:23:29] Well, you know what that means in real practicality? [00:23:31] It means you go out with your girlfriends and you're not afraid that dinner at The Keg is going to blow up your diet and your physique. [00:23:37] You can have that extra dessert. [00:23:38] You have that leeway because you've earned it. [00:23:40] You've earned that goodwill with your metabolism by not undereating, not living in a deficit. [00:23:45] Who would have thought that the body you wanted and the metabolism that you've been after is actually on the other side of eating more? [00:23:50] So this is your take home message. [00:23:51] You need the real plan.
Final Thoughts and Getting Support
[00:23:52] And again, if you want help with this, if you want to explore even what that looks like, open the door to the conversation. [00:23:58] Getsculpted.ca/contact — we're gonna ask you a few questions about what you're doing, what you wanna achieve, and we'll guide you on what that would look like to actually work through these phases together. [00:24:10] I hope you got some value from this. [00:24:12] If you did, please give it a share. [00:24:13] Give us a tag — @getsculpted.ca. [00:24:15] Give me a tag — @coachtijanadaily. [00:24:18] And let us know if you want to talk more about this. [00:24:21] Cause I could talk about this till the cows come home.
Closing Message
[00:24:23] This is a really good topic. [00:24:25] So eat more, train hard, and we'll see you in the next one.