Strong Through Change: The Value of Fitness in the Valleys

Motivation isn’t the problem.

If you’ve ever started a “fresh” health kick only to hit a wall, feel guilty over one meal, and wonder why progress never lasts, this episode is for you. Carlin sits down with  fitness and nutrition coach Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz, a homegrown expert with big-stage experience, to talk about what actually works when real life gets in the way. No influencer hype, no extreme rules, just the honest stuff people don’t say out loud: why deprivation backfires, how “cheat days” can help instead of hurt, and the simple shifts that make weight management sustainable.

But this conversation goes deeper than food and workouts. Vanessa opens up about perimenopause, mental health, and the scary, confusing symptoms that can leave women feeling exhausted and alone, sometimes even convinced something is seriously wrong. It’s raw, practical, and surprisingly hopeful, the kind of episode that makes you feel seen and gives you a clearer path forward. If you’re ready for real answers from someone right here in our community, press play.

Listen For:

2:48 What’s the biggest mistake people make when trying to lose weight?

5:38 Should you be having cheat days—or avoiding them?

9:47 How extreme is a bodybuilder’s diet before competition?

15:55 What can women expect during perimenopause—and how should they prepare?

25:41 Is low testosterone sabotaging men’s fitness and energy levels?

Guest Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz

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Transcript

Carlin Lutzer (00:01):
So how are your New Year's resolutions going? I'll be honest, I've started 2026 out a little bit on the slow side, and that's why I thought it would be a perfect time to reach out to Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz. Vanessa. I promise I'm going to get it right by the end of the episode. Vanessa is a fitness and nutrition coach with a serious competitive background. In 2024, she earned multiple pro cards, was named Athlete of the Year by the N P A I A and in 2025 took home a silver medal at the Natural Olympia in Las Vegas. But what drew me to Vanessa isn't just the accolades, it's her approach. No extremes, no quick fixes, just realistic, individualized plans that actually work for real people. In this conversation, we talk about weight management, cheat days, mental health, perimenopause, and why deprivation almost always backfires. If your New Year's motivation is feeling a little delayed, this one's for you as it was for me. Let's get into it.

Big Announcer (01:27):
You found the Okotoks Podcast sponsored by Carlin Lutzer Real Estate, no refunds if you laughed too hard.

Carlin Lutzer (01:39):
Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for joining me.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (01:42):
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Carlin Lutzer (01:44):
Yes, and Vanessa, the way that I found you is through our mutual friend. Now I'm going to have to reach out to Medo and tell her that we're talking about her on a podcast, but she took some photos of herself. She had her head down, and this person, I had no idea who it was, was completely ripped. Her biceps were huge, and I was just like, holy cow. And then I read that it was Medo and it was just like, wow. And then she gave, obviously she did the work, but she gave so much credit to you and the journey that you took her on that I wanted to reach out to you because of the success story of Medo. And no doubt seeing the passion, the successes you've had inside of fitness and then just reading some things about you and just the passion that you have to see other people achieve success in their fitness journey was the reason why that I reached out to you. So again, thank you for joining me today.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (02:48):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Can't wait to chat.

Carlin Lutzer (02:51):
Absolutely. So as we are all on a journey, and as before we hit record, I told you a little bit about my journey and the struggles, the highs and lows of loss and weight gain. I know of ways that I can lose weight, but then I also, the things that I crave, I feel that what happens to me is that I deprive myself of certain foods for X amount of time, and then right now I'm working towards Easter. Easter is kind of my goal place as to okay, once I get to Easter, then I can celebrate Easter. But the problem is then celebrate a little bit too long, too much. So it's a bit of a trap that I'm in. So I just wanted to reach out to you and for some tips, things that you would suggest for men and women to look towards, to finding ways to find their desirable weight now, realistic desirable weight, and maintain it. Because that's my problem is I can't maintain it.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (04:07):
Yes. Well, that's everyone's problem.

Carlin Lutzer (04:11):
Yeah,

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (04:11):
It's really hard. It's really hard, and it is hard when you're working around holidays and temptations and all kinds of things, and if you don't know how much your body can tolerate in terms of food, you'd be surprised how much we actually overeat. Even if we think we're restricting, that one tablespoon of peanut butter that you scoop out with a knife thinking, oh, this looks like about a tablespoon, is usually probably around two tablespoons. Not that peanut butter's bad, but just we're not tracking. And once you start tracking and you understand how much you can eat for your body weight, for your age, for your gender, things like that, then you can factor in a diet plan that actually incorporates treats into it, because deprivation is a big problem. As soon as you start depriving yourself, that's when you're likely to start bingeing. And I think it's the first thing we do, right? When we want to lose weight, we think, okay, I need to cut all this food out and I can't have any treats and I just can't eat anything. And then next thing you know, we're surrounded by 15 bags of potato chips and 15 chocolate bars crying because we just destroyed ourselves.

Carlin Lutzer (05:16):
Yeah, no, for sure. Well, it's nice that you can have those snacks, but then sometimes you just feel so guilty in the moment like, oh, I shouldn't have done that, or whatever. Do you suggest cheat days or cheat meals or just one cheat snack a week or something? What's your suggestion on those types of things?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (05:38):
So I will tell you, as an average person who was a recreational fitness person before I started competing, and I did this for 20 years, I had a cheat day. So six days a week, Monday through Friday, I would eat really, really healthy. And then Saturday was my cheat day, and then Sunday I started again eating healthy, and on Saturday I ate whatever I wanted and it worked for me for 20 years. I never felt deprived. I always looked forward to Saturday and what I was going to eat, and I actually found that I didn't eat as much as I thought I would because the first couple Saturdays that I did this, I went so hard on the food that I made myself sick, and then I realized I really don't want to eat that much. So Saturday would come along and I would have my pizza or my ice cream or whatever I wanted, and then I felt good again. And then even as an athlete moving into competitions, I still kept that framework. I still had my one cheat meal per week, and it kept me on track. It definitely kept me from bingeing and going through that stuffing myself and then the guilt phase and then having to start over and then just again and again and again in this vicious cycle.

Carlin Lutzer (06:47):
So cheat days, you would recommend them. And do you think that does encourage longevity because you get that cheat day, you have that day short term that you can look forward to that I'm going to have those cheesies and I'm going to have the pizza, the burger, or whatever. Then do you suggest a low carb diet or does that really depend on the types of exercising you're doing?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (07:12):
So that is completely dependent on the individual and their lifestyle and their fitness goals. There's so many things that go into that. I don't subscribe to any fad diets whatsoever. Everything that I would recommend as a fitness and nutrition coach is based on all of the factors I just mentioned. What do you do for a living? Are you sedentary? Are you active? Do you work out? How old are you? Are you male? Are you female? What are your goals? All of that matters. And I think that's part of the problem is that we get so confused with the bombardment of information that we have in the fitness and nutrition industry telling us, you need to eat only meat or you need to eat only vegetables, or you need to cut out all these carbs. And when you're trying to create a healthy body, you need little bits of everything and you need to find that balance. And I just don't recommend cutting anything out unless you have a medical reason why you need to cut certain things out.

Carlin Lutzer (08:12):
Right. Yeah. I mentioned that Julie was on our show a few weeks ago, and I talked about the fad diet. So when you talk about fad diets, so you're talking like keto, carnivore, what other kind of diets are you talking about?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (08:29):
Yes, all of those things. Even the hardcore, all vegetable, no meat, all of that stuff, it's sustainable for a little while, but it can end up causing problems in the long run. As a bodybuilder, I had to have a very high protein diet, very low carbs, but even that's not sustainable after a time. In order to get back to a place of wellness, we have to start slowly incorporating those foods again in balanced amounts. So yeah, leaning into that and really taking those things to extremes.

Carlin Lutzer (09:02):
Yes. Because of your success, the silver medalist in 2024 and 2025, is that correct?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (09:14):
Yes. So won about seven or eight pro cards in 2024 and was named Athlete of the Year at the N F P A A and then November 2025, silver medal at the Natural Olympia in Las Vegas.

Carlin Lutzer (09:29):
That's incredible. Now, thank you. When you are training, is it a full year cycle? Is it a month? Is it four, six months? How long is it from the time that you decide that you're going to compete, that you need to start really getting strict?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (09:47):
About 20 weeks out is when I start really dialling everything in.

Carlin Lutzer (09:51):
And when you say dialling in, what does that look like?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (09:55):
So that means that I have all of my macros laid out, all of my calories laid out, and everything I eat six times a day is measured on a scale and weighed, and that's all I get. So if I'm still hungry, I don't get any more food. Everything is very, very meticulous. And then throughout that 20 week phase, my carbs are slowly dipping down, down, down, down, down until they go very, very low. As soon as I get near show day and my calories, normally when I'm in my off season, when I'm not doing a show, I sit at around 2,800 calories a day, which is very high for a female, but I have a high metabolism, and I'm very small and I train a lot, so I go from 2,800 calories to 1,300 approaching show day. So it's just a constant drive downward.

Carlin Lutzer (10:49):
Right. By the time you hit the competition, are you starving? How are you feeling?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (10:54):
Starving. Starving. Really?

Carlin Lutzer (10:57):
Yes. Okay, here's a question. Is that healthy what you're doing?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (11:05):
No, actually no, it isn't. It can be very unhealthy, and that's why it's not sustainable at all. And I think that even looking at my photos online, people might look at that and think, wow, I'd love to look like that, but that's just a short period of time in my life that is not sustainable because of the things we have to do to get to that point. It's really not healthy, that kind of dieting,

Carlin Lutzer (11:28):
Right? For sure. Yeah. No, because the ups and downs, the highs and lows, and even after the carnivore diet, when I stopped doing that, I was not feeling good. My digestive system was not doing well. I was missing the greens, I was missing the fruits I was missing, and I feel like I felt like I was missing some kind of vitamins, minerals, or something was being missed in my body.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (12:02):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think the issue with some of that is that you need all those different foods for your microbiome, for your gut in order for your digestion to function properly. And not only that, but as soon as you decide, if you decide to come off of a very high protein and carnivore diet like that, and you start incorporating carbohydrates again, your body kind of goes into shock and goes, I got to hold onto all of this now. So if you're not careful, you can actually balloon out so quickly with

Carlin Lutzer (12:36):
Weight. Okay. No joke. That's what's happening to me right now.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (12:41):
Yeah, that'll be why, because the reintroduction of carbohydrates has to be very strategic, otherwise you could run into problems.

Carlin Lutzer (12:50):
Yeah, no, that's exactly, but I also, yeah, it feels like now I've been carb loading for three months, and that's probably not good. Yeah,

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (13:05):
It needs to be progressive. Yeah,

Carlin Lutzer (13:07):
No, but I feel like I've kind of turned the corner. I've reintroduced vegetables and meat into my diets, and I feel like I'm in a much better place, even mentally. I feel like I'm in a better place mentally. I feel tired at times, but it's a good tired. So my struggle still to this day, and I've been told time and time again, and even with Julie, when I mentioned with Julie, I struggle with the balance between weightlifting and cardio. What's your thoughts for, I guess, just people in general balancing between cardio and weightlifting?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (13:55):
So I'm always a weights first girl. I'm always going to recommend weights first. Cardio is obviously very, very important for heart health, but I think there was a time when all of us were doing so much cardio when we felt that was all we needed to do, but we've realized now that building muscle mass is so important for sustained health for our metabolism, it speeds up your metabolism. So I definitely recommend a combination of both, but leaning more heavily into the weight training side of things for sure.

Carlin Lutzer (14:27):
And

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (14:28):
If you're doing cardio three times a week, 30 minutes a pop, depending on your needs, right? Everyone's going to be a little different. Absolutely. But for the average person who's healthy and wants to gain some muscle mass and just keep their heart healthy three times a week, 30 minutes a pop and leaning a little heavier into the weight training for sure. Right?

Carlin Lutzer (14:48):
For sure. Sorry, you said three times a week for

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (14:51):
Yeah, like 30 minutes. 30 minutes a pop. And like I said, that's for the average person who's healthy and just wants to put on some muscle mass. And depending on what your goals are there too, sometimes you may want to, if you're looking at really building muscle mass, you may want to eliminate your cardio altogether because it just uses up too much energy. It's so dependent on the individual. But yeah, I definitely lean heavier into the weight training and a little less on the cardio.

Carlin Lutzer (15:19):
Now, your passion is to help women and to be helping women through, it's crazy when you think of everything that a woman has to go through in life, right? It's almost not fair, right? Childbirth. And then in midlife, they hit menopause. And I know that that's a huge struggle, a huge thing for women. But what are some things, advice that you give to women that are entering that stage of life?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (15:55):
So I'm going to speak from my own lived experience as a 51-year-old female who began really noticing the symptoms of perimenopause over the last four or five years. It can be a really scary time because there are symptoms that can mimic heart attacks. There are symptoms that can mimic multiple sclerosis. There are so many scary symptoms, and if you don't understand that you may be at the stage of life where you're entering perimenopause, you might end up in the emergency room thinking you're dying, which actually happened to me multiple times. There's this fear that goes along with this stage of life, and nobody has talked about it until recently. We all just felt like nobody, our grandparents were talking about, our grandmothers were talking about our moms never talked about it. No one told us what this was going to be like, and just trying to get yourself fit and healthy in our society right now with the pace of life is hard enough.

(16:58):
But when you're a woman dealing with this change and you're scared and you don't know what's happening to you and you're confused and you have no one to talk to, it can make it even harder to get into the gym, try to better yourself, try to get to a place of wellness when you don't even know if you're dying. So I found I really struggled, even as a competitive athlete through that phase of prep going through perimenopause. It was so, so hard. And if I can help women to take this phase of life and instead of seeing it as this is the end for me, I am old. I'm done. My body's shutting down. I want them to feel empowered, and this isn't the end. We just are recalibrating and we're creating something new. We're not trying to go back to being 20 years old. We're going to take what we're working with right now and we're going to move into that because weightbearing exercise especially is so important for women going through perimenopause to protect our bone density, lean muscle mass helps to keep us healthy, like eating a nutritious diet. There's so many things you can do right now to set you on the path to wellness while you're going through this that can help just take the symptoms down a notch.

Carlin Lutzer (18:14):
Absolutely. And the things going on in women's minds, no doubt contributes to depression, and we all know how that is such a slippery slope. You start believing a lie. You believe something and something's going on, or Yeah, I am getting old and my body's starting to shut down, can be devastating for some people.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (18:43):
And this is the result of massive fluctuations in estrogen, and the dropping off of your progesterone, your sensitivity to cortisol increases. You start to feel like you're going crazy. It affects everything. It affects your brain function, it affects your ability to sleep at night, causes joint pain, burning, mouth syndrome, weird sensations ringing in the ears, all kinds of really crazy symptoms. So you definitely feel like your body is under attack, and it's really hard to want to improve upon that when you feel like you just can't even get out of bed some mornings.

Carlin Lutzer (19:21):
And you felt like it was just a psychological feeling that you thought you were dying?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (19:30):
I did. I thought I was going crazy some days I couldn't understand the thoughts I was having in my head. I ended up in the emergency room because I had such horrible heart palpitations that they actually thought they were going to have to put the paddles on me, and nobody could tell me what was wrong. Your heart's fine. We've sent you to a cardiologist, everything's good. You're having no problems. Bye. And then later to find out that perimenopause causes really bad heart palpitations, but nobody could tell me that. So it's been all these mysterious ailments that I've had that I'm now learning are the result of perimenopause.

Carlin Lutzer (20:07):
Right. So when you go to the doctor and you get checked out, do they just put you on a medication as well

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (20:16):
Usually? So it was like, yeah, you're having some anxiety and some depression. Let's put you on an antidepressant or start meditating. It's funny for me because I always get, are you active? You need to get fit. I'm like, I'm doing all the things. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I am an athlete. Nothing's working. So eventually I was led to a therapist that was able to talk to me and say, this is what this looks like, but took going through so many doctors and so many appointments for someone to actually get me pointed in the right direction and say, oh, do you know, this is kind of synonymous with perimenopause instead of just throwing band-aids on it constantly with medication, like you say.

Carlin Lutzer (21:01):
Right. So once you found out what the issue was and how it was basically diagnosed, what was the solution?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (21:11):
So the solution for me was to drive even harder into my fitness lifestyle. So knowing that weightbearing exercise was going to be really good for me, knowing that having a meal plan that I could follow, that really focused on my fitness goals, but also helped me through what I needed with my hormones and my sleep and incorporating rest, I just leaned really heavily into that. There are options for hormone replacement therapy for women who are candidates for that and want to do that. And for me, that wasn't my choice. But most importantly, and I think what I want women to know is that there are things that you can do right now that will set you on the path to getting through this stronger and healthier.

Carlin Lutzer (21:57):
Absolutely. Well, we certainly do appreciate your transparency and knowing that this is a dark journey for probably a very high percentage of women. Vanessa, how can people get in touch with you and what kind of path would you set them on if they do reach out to you, what are some things that you would encourage them to do?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (22:23):
Okay, so my passion coming out of the Olympia as a silver medalist is to now work with people who are on a journey of wellness who want to get to a better place, be it whatever stage of life you're in. The menopause and the perimenopause is huge in my heart right now because I'm going through it as well. So you can find me online at vanessa jeans fit lab.weebly.com, or you can find me at Fitness Jean on Instagram. And what I do is I put together completely customised fitness and nutrition plans just for you. These are not cookie cutter plans. This is a completely individualised plan. I take into account everything about you. I want to work with the whole person. I don't want to just throw a plan at you and be like riding your butt 24 hours a day. You need to do this.

(23:20):
You need to do that because it makes me look good as a coach. I have a good resume. I don't need that. I'm here to help you. So if you're looking for a plan that is built just for you, whether you're going through perimenopause, menopause, we factor all of those things into bring you to a place of wellness. Whether you are a man who's trying to build yourself up, you're having testosterone issues, whatever is going on, young, young, old, whoever it is, I want to build plans that are completely personalised to you and you matter to me. You are not a number. That's what I'm passionate about.

Carlin Lutzer (23:57):
That's awesome. You are so genuine, and it exudes because I have the advantage of being able to see you. There's a lot of people just listening to this and they can't see you. So I suggest maybe you jump on my YouTube page just so you can see the passion and how genuine Vanessa is. Right on screen. It comes right across the computer monitor, but just when we were talking before, because you're involved in cosmetics, you're also involved in real estate photography and various types of photography, and then you're also involved in fitness. So I read your bio before this. I'm like, okay, what is she wanting to do? But the thing is, I was like, I thought maybe you were wanting to pursue fitness as being your top thing, but it's not because you're passionate about all the things that you're doing and involved in, and it's just amazing to see that, and just your confidence that comes across and your desire and passion to help out. It's probably going to be more women than men, but obviously men and women is amazing. So I certainly do have some more questions for you after we stop recording, but before we do hit stop on the record, when you talk about testosterone for men, what does that look like? I know that I talked to another friend that we were chatting at the hockey rink, and he had mentioned that he had gone to the doctor and he was low on testosterone. That's a pretty common problem for men, isn't it?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (25:41):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. As you age, for sure.

Carlin Lutzer (25:45):
Yeah. And what would you recommend for men to do? Go to the doctor, get checked out for that? Yes.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (25:52):
Yep, a hundred percent. And that dip in testosterone can affect a man's moods too. It's very similar to what we go through as women. It saps your energy. You're not maintaining muscle mass. You're not building muscle mass the way you want to. You're exhausted. You're moody and snappy. So the first thing I suggest is if you feel like you're going, and I'm not a doctor, this is just coming from a fitness and nutrition coaching standpoint. If you're feeling those things and you're struggling with your motivation and you're just, something's not right, right? It's the same thing I tell women. It's that feeling of I don't feel like myself, something's not right. Go to the doctor, get that tested out, and then if you need it, they'll be able to give it to you.

Carlin Lutzer (26:35):
Right on. That's awesome. And again, what's your Instagram page?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (26:40):
So it's at

Carlin Lutzer (26:43):
Ne jean,

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (26:44):
N E N E S S A jean.

Carlin Lutzer (26:47):
Okay. Okay, perfect. That's awesome. Well, I certainly do appreciate you, Vanessa. I appreciate your time today and your expertise and your transparency, and I think it is something that is very crucial. And yeah, I guess we even look at marriages, and you just wonder the divorce rate once a woman goes through menopause, just because nobody really knows what's going on, and no doubt, your expertise, you pointing people in the right direction could even save some marriages, right?

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (27:26):
The divorce rate is very, very high, and it affects your sex hormones in a female. It affects your sex drive. There's a reason why women all of a sudden are not feeling it anymore, and men typically aren't experiencing that, so they don't understand why all of a sudden, my wife doesn't want to have a relationship with me that way or whatever's going on. But a lot of the time it's not because we don't want to, it's because we just physically can't, because there's all kinds of changes that are going on. So yeah, it's very, very impactful on a marriage.

Carlin Lutzer (27:59):
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, Vanessa, I do appreciate you. I appreciate your time today, and I know that you will have some people reaching out to you, and like I said, I certainly want to discuss further. I know that there's even a form that people can go online on your website and fill it out, and then you can reach out to them and you can get the process started of getting them on the proper diet and then the workout routine as well.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (28:30):
Absolutely. Yep. You bet.

Carlin Lutzer (28:32):
Awesome, Vanessa, thank you so much.

Vanessa Hernandez-Munoz (28:35):
Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Carlin Lutzer (28:46):
My thanks again to Vanessa for an honest and thoughtful discussion around fitness, nutrition, mental health, and the realities many women face during perimenopause, and how important it is that we talk about these things openly, both at home and as a community. One of the things I continue to notice through this podcast is how connected everything really is. Whether it's service organisations like the Rotary Club of Oke Supporting Flat, whether it's service organisations like the Rotary Club of Okotoks, supporting Families in Need, or conversations like today's that support personal health and wellbeing, it all comes back to community understanding and showing up for one another. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it, leaving a review, or passing it along to someone who might find it helpful. Thanks for listening. I'm Carlin Lutzer, and this is the Okotoks Podcast.

Big Announcer (29:45):
You've been listening to the Okotoks Podcast, brought to you by Carlin Lutzer Real Estate. Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time.