How my client went from insecure + overweight to losing 30 lbs as a busy mom

If you've ever told yourself you don't have enough time, energy, or "normal circumstances" to lose weight right now, this episode is for you.

I'm sharing the story of a client of mine: a mom of three, working full time, traveling regularly for work, and breastfeeding for most of this year. In that time, she STILL lost 30 pounds while eating over 2,000 calories a day.

In this episode, I break down exactly what we did for this transformation - how we built her nutrition around breastfeeding to make sure she was losing weight without losing her supply, how she stayed consistent through travel without ever feeling like she was starting from scratch, and the mindset shifts that helped her not only lose the weight but keep it off forever.

If you're in the thick of it right now but ready to prioritize your goals, this one's for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magry, and here we talk about becoming Stronger Within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body and life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the podcast. As I am uploading this, it is the last Wednesday of July, which is crazy. I'm actually uploading this or rather recording this a few weeks earlier, but once I have recorded, or why can't I get my words up? My words are gonna be jumbled today. I'm just gonna warn you right here, right now. Um, as I am uploading this episode, we will officially be living in North Carolina. We'll have been there for a week, which feels crazy to say, surreal, uh, but that's not the point of today's episode, and I'm not gonna ramble about that too much because there's a lot I want to talk about today. I want to share with you one of my client stories. So I share all the time on here tips, tricks, advice when it comes to losing the weight, but I find that I haven't really shared very specific examples of clients, and I know for me that is always something really helpful to see a tangible, like this is where this person started, this is what they did along the way to find the success. And so that is exactly what I am going to share with you today. Today we are going to talk about one of my clients who I'm gonna keep her name anonymous, but um, I'm sure her story is going to hit home for you. So let's first of all set the scene of who she is, where she started, etc. So this client in particular of mine is a mom of three. She works full-time, she also travels regularly for work. She luckily doesn't anymore. She actually switched job positions because the traveling was just, it was getting to be too much. So she's not anymore, but for the duration, most of the duration so far of our coaching, she did travel multiple times for work. Um, and for most of this year, she was also breastfeeding. And in that time, she's lost, I'm gonna call it 30 pounds. Last time I checked, it was 29. I'm assuming by the end of this week or next week, she'll be at that 30-pound mark while eating over 2,000 calories a day. And the thing that I've really enjoyed about working with this client in particular is I basically handed her the plan day one, like, hey, here's what we're doing, here's your macros, here's what you're doing, and she ran with it. Like she trusted in the process, she listened to her coach, and that is the reason why she has seen the success that she's seen so far. And you know, it's normal to ask questions and not trust in the process, and that's where a big part of coaching comes in too. Maybe I can make, you know, a separate episode on another client who struggled to trust in the process but did, and how they found success. But for this client in particular, she was someone who she applied for the program, and she was like, I didn't even have to like like I knew she was in. I knew she was someone that was gonna do this for herself. And I knew a week or two into her being in the program, I'm like, I'm like, yeah, she's gonna be successful. I can see that. And so I really also want to paint a scene or a picture of what her life really looks like because she's not someone who has hours and hours to meal prep every Sunday. In fact, a lot of what we've done is figuring out okay, how do we be more strategic and efficient with your time? Because you don't have a lot of it. She has three young kids, one who's not even a year old. Like I said, she works full-time, she has a lot on her plate. Um, and you know, up until now, I mean, even now, she doesn't have the most flexible schedule, right? She's working full-time, she she just has a lot going on. And so if you've been there, you know that that changes everything about the plan and the process that you need to implement versus someone who maybe doesn't have as many kids or they have more help, or you know, someone's a stay-at-home mom, which being a stay-at-home mom is a job, but you know, working out of the house full-time, completely different situation. So I just want to say that because I think so many of you probably hear client success story, and your brain is like, well, she probably has more time or help or energy than me or whatever. I mean, she does have more help because if you know you're not a client of mine, she has more support in that sense. But I want to share with you where she started and I actually pulled up her application for this because I want to share with you her three main goals. So her first goal was to find easy ways to hit her macros. Number two was to have energy to keep up with her kids. She said, I am dead tired by 6 p.m. I don't have the energy for me after the kids go to bed. I want to be able to play and hang out with my kids and be a good example for them on how to take care of your body. I didn't have that growing up, and I think that is part of my struggle. And then the third goal was make sure I am eating enough while I am nursing/slash pumping. And then one of the questions I have in my one-on-one application is, what's the biggest hurdle keeping you from achieving your goals? Why have you not hit them yet? And she said, I get super involved and dedicated for about a month, and then I tend to get stressed and fall off the wagon, and then I get discouraged. I also tend to struggle with hiding, um, with holding myself accountable. And when I um also asked more on her specific goal, like we just went through her three main goals there, but you know, I like to really have you paint a picture in the application of like, okay, let's just imagine it's six months from now. You're well on your way to reaching your goals, you feel, you know, better than you ever have. What does this look like? She said, I am able to play with my kiddos outside without being super tired by the time I am home for work. I can help my husband around the house without needing to take a break. I can crawl around, take care of my flower bed without being sore the next day. So those were some of her goals, and that is where she started. Um, and like she said there, she had had a past history of going all in, doing really great for a month, but then struggling to sustain that pattern, which maybe you can relate to that, right? You start your journey, you're super motivated, you're crushing it, and then after a few weeks or months goes by, you're like, Yeah, I'm not really feeling this anymore. This is not so exciting. I don't really want to do this. And you're constantly swinging between this being all in and then not, you know, not caring at all, right? And so, you know, I want to now turn to the turning point, which is what we actually did to lead her to lose the 30 pounds and break out of the cycle. So we have been together for she started in middle of December. So that would put us at January, February, March, April, May, June, July. Seven months now. So we've painted the picture, right, of where she wanted to be six months from when she filled out her application. So at the end here, we'll talk about where she is now more specifically. But here's where it gets interesting because I think we can look at this success story and be like, how much did she cut calories by? Did she add in all these crazy workouts? Was she doing hours of cardio? Um, no, we did not cut her calories. We really did not have that as an option, even if we wanted to, which we would never want to, but she was nursing her baby, and so she needed to make sure that she was losing weight but not losing her milk supply. We didn't put her on a restrictive diet. We didn't start cutting everything out. What we did was we looked at, okay, where are we starting? Where are our current body stats? Meaning height, height, I guess doesn't change, but uh current weight activity level, factoring in nursing. From there, we built her macro target of how much she needed to be eating to support breastfeeding, training, energy for all of our kids, right? But still creating a slight deficit that allowed her to start losing weight. And then with that, what we did, and she started, we didn't drop her macros for a while. We only dropped recently because she weaned her baby, but she was losing like those initial 21st pounds, she was eating 2,400 calories a day. And I think that can be very difficult for us as females to conceptualize when we have been taught through years and years of diet culture, you have to eat 1200 calories a day or 1400 or 1500 or whatever. And you know, it is so dependent upon you, your specific body, your specific goals. However, one of the biggest mistakes I see moms make is they drop calories way too low. Now they're in this huge calorie deficit, and it's actually working against them more than it's helping them. So we were very strategic about this process that we went through with calculating her macros. With that said, one thing she did on her end was she was consistent. So if a client comes into the program, I say, okay, we need to, these are your macros, this is what you need to be tracking daily, and you're only doing it three or four out of seven days, well, that's not gonna be enough, right? We're gonna stay stuck in a place where we're not giving the input for the output that we want, right? I like to compare it to if you are contracted for a 40-hour work week and you are expected to make a certain amount, you're paid hourly, but you only show up for 20 hours. And you're not gonna get paid that full amount, right? Because you didn't show up for all the hours you were supposed to work. The same thing works with fat loss. So I want to be very clear that we didn't restrict anything, we didn't do anything crazy. However, she was consistent as heck, and that is what allowed her to see progress. And again, it's not that she had perfect control over her environment or her circumstances all the time. Like I said, she traveled for work for many of these months, and so we had to learn how to navigate traveling while still tracking macros efficiently and consistently, making good choices, even when eating out, learning how to bring things, to have things on hand while traveling. Another big thing that we worked through was the nighttime snacking habit slash urges. So this client had built a habit of once the kids are in bed, it is me time, it is time to sit on the couch, watch a TV show, rot, and eat whatever I want. And maybe you can relate to that one. Um, and so she had actually sent me a message one day and she said, Hey Christy, can you help me find snacks that are low calorie that I can mindlessly eat? She said, to an extent, obviously, or a way that I can break this habit. And I'm gonna walk you through exactly how I coached her through this. So, first thing I asked her to do was send me over examples of some snacks that she does enjoy, ones that she enjoys eating at night. That way I could have an idea of what satisfies her so that we could come up with some macro-friendly ideas so that she could still snack at night if she wanted to, but in a way that was not gonna deter her from seeing progress. The next thing I did was kind of just validating where she was at instead of just jumping straight into solutions. It's like, hey, let's work through how to mindlessly do something else that doesn't involve food. Right now we are still very much at what I like to call the baby stage where we are still learning skill sets, and one skill set that you need to continue working through is not leaning on food out of comfort, mindlessness, relaxing, etc. And I said, you've been used to doing that for a while. How well really how long has it been, right? So it's going to take time to rewire your brain not to do that. And the first step is self-awareness. So in my Forever Fit Mama method, which is my three-step framework that I bring clients through when they come into my one-on-one coaching program, phase one is the metabolism audit. So this is where we are assessing, hey, what patterns do we have? What habits do we have, good or bad? Usually we're focusing on the bad, and just noticing. So what I see a lot of moms do is they jump straight into strategy. It's like, tell me my macros, tell me how much to eat, what number do I need to be at for my deficit? What do I need to do for workouts? And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's pump the brakes. Let's first of all start with just where you are now. Let's not jump straight into the strategy. That's gonna, it's gonna take us a second to figure that out, right? That is where we look at past dieting history, your relationship with food, your ability to stay on track. And so the way that I coach even today is so different than the way I used to coach even a year ago. I swear my coaching has evolved so much over the last year. And one of the big things is when a client comes into my program, I'm not even gonna give you your macros for the first week. You're gonna get your macros at your first weekly check-in, but you're just gonna start tracking your food and seeing like, how much am I even eating in a day right now? How much protein do I get? And where are my cravings happening? Why are they happening? What am I feeling here? Like, is it linked to emotion? Is it hunger? Most of the time we're not even slowing down enough to notice that. And so whenever a client comes into my program, I say, hey, first 30 days are just about awareness with noticing what patterns you have. There is no stress or pressure to change everything overnight, overnight, to break all the bad habits, because that kind of pressure that's what leads to burnout and struggling to stick with it. We just tried to bypass overcoming what the issue even is. And that's why you're struggling to implement consistent change right now because you're just skipping over that step when it really is the most important step. And so I said to her, the first step is self-awareness, second step is communication. Us working through that is exactly what you're doing right now. Now that we've covered the mindset piece of it, I haven't even gotten into the strategy of telling her what to do yet. The mindset piece of it is half the battle, and most coaching programs are so hyper focused on what to eat, the workouts. Yes, those things matter, but the mindset is such a huge piece of it as well. And so that is something that is heavily incorporated throughout my coaching, whether it's one-on-one coaching group. If you've worked with me, you know that I'm big, big, big, big on mindset. So now that we're going in with the right mindset, right now we can implement strategies. So here's what I told her. I said, here's what I do. First of all, give yourself an eating window, aka the time you start eating to the time you're done. Give yourself a cutoff. I typically suggest two hours before bedtime and make this a hard boundary with yourself. So I'm not somebody who's like, you have to stop eating at 8 p.m. exactly, but really, not even just for weight loss purposes, but for digestion and your body being able to function optimally, you should stop eating at least two to three hours before bedtime to give your body time to digest food so it's not doing that while you're actively trying to sleep. Next, I said brush your teeth at the end of that eating window so that you've signaled to your brain it's time to be done with eating. Eating window is closed, the kitchen is closed, we're moving on. Now I said if you do want a snack and it's within that eating window, this is where we find healthy options, which then I ended up sending her over a list of some macro-friendly options based on the list of foods that she enjoys and had given to me. Um, and then I created a dock with those snack ideas so that she had them all in one place and she's not having to like always scroll up in our conversation to find it. And so she said back to me, that all sounds great to me. I think part of my problem is that I want something to do with my hands, so maybe like a fidget toy or something. And I said, That's a great idea. I said, Are you actually hungry at all at night when you're getting this urge? Do you take the time to notice that? She said, Possibly, question mark. I'm not 100% sure, to be honest. I said, That means we're not taking the time to notice. Okay, so your job is to figure that out. Pay attention the next three days and let's see what's happening. So the point of this here is that once we worked our way through this conversation, we realized she didn't even know if she was actually hungry or not in those moments. She wasn't even slowing down enough to have that self-awareness to see, am I snacking out of boredom habit of needing to like relax or decompress at the end of the day? It was just such a mindless habit that she kind of just went through the motions. I always like to compare it. The best habit, daily habit to compare it to is brushing teeth. Like it's not something you think about, you just do it. And that is where she was at with that. And so we had to slow down enough to recognize what was happening there. And so this is just one example of how it goes so far beyond just eat less and move more. Like it goes so much deeper than that. Another big thing we did was shifting the focus from I'm gonna cut out X and X for the sake of results, and instead stopping seeing food as something she had to earn or restrict, and instead seeing it as fuel to keep up with her daily life as a mom of three young kids. And I truly believe that that shift is what made this this time, this round of being in her fitness journey, which I always say I will be the last fitness coach you will ever need, because I'm not gonna teach you just how to lose the weight, I'm gonna teach you how to keep it off too. But I truly believe that's what made it sustainable instead of just another temporary fix because she was stuck in this cycle of I do good for a month and then I fall off and then I do good and then I fall off. That is, if you are stuck in that cycle, that is a red flag that there is something off about your current approach. So are you restricting things? Are you going into too big of a deficit? Are you, you know, are you not doing things in a sustainable way? That is the question, or those are the questions you need to start asking yourself. So the other things that we focused on, of course, movement. So we only actually do two strength training workouts a week right now. And I remember in the beginning of the program, she had filled out, or maybe she commented on one of the workouts. I can't remember, but she had basically said she was like in pain from walking on the treadmill, and now she is running on the treadmill regularly without being in pain, without being out of breath. She is continuing to get better and better. In fact, she is training for a 5K she's gonna be running later this year. And then the other two habit goals that we focused on were total steps and total water. We've also talked about stress management, time management. Again, she has a very busy full life, and so those are things that we have also um worked on together. But I truly love to see how far she's come. You know, she's 30 pounds down, but when I talk to her about her wins and her progress, the number is literally never what she brings up. It's always about having the energy to keep up with her kids, um, not feeling like food is this big battle, feeling like herself again and a body that has been through so much breastfeeding, sleep, sleepless nights, all of it. And so, and lastly, when I think about the other really big factor that has helped her see the success that she's seen this year, it is having the support, the strategy, and the accountability from a coach in her corner. It is having somebody to not only give her the step-by-step plan, but also help her through the hard weeks or the hard moments where things feel out of control, she's struggling, she's feeling discouraged because I know I'm sharing this like it's all rainbows and butterflies and sunshine, but she has hard days and hard weeks too. I always say to my clients, we are humans, not robots. We cannot expect that things are always gonna be perfectly fine and dandy all the time and we're never gonna struggle and it's this la la land. Like, I'm sorry to break it to you, but no, it's not that. And that is where you need the support from a coach in your corner. I think about my own coach, different example because I currently work with a business coach, but I know if I have a question I don't have the answer to, she has the answer. I know if I'm feeling discouraged, she's gonna give me a pep talk and she's gonna tell me what I need to hear. It is having that person to hold you. And I say this all the time, but especially as moms, we take care of everybody all day around us. We hold everybody all day around us. So who is there to hold you through the things that you are struggling with? And that is where investing in yourself is quite frankly one of the most important things that you can do in this journey if you are struggling with your weight, living in a body you're not happy, comfortable, confident in. At this point, hiring a coach, in my opinion, is a non-negotiable. That is like your preventative health care, right? So if you pay for health insurance every single month, kind of just look at it as an extension of that. We are preventing you from, you know, all the things that you might have to pay for in the future as the result of you not being the healthiest version of yourself. But all of that to say, next week, my one-on-one coaching is officially opening back up. It has been on wait list with the big move happening. Um, and if you're unfamiliar, this is my private one-on-one coaching program, which where we combine a personalized nutrition and fitness program, weekly direct coaching from me, and real-time adjustments as you progress using my Forever Fit Mama method, where we are going to help you collapse the timeline and build a body you love without sacrificing your life as a mom. So if you would like to head over to the show notes and fill out the application, get on the wait list. It's gonna be first come, first serve. So if coaching applications open back up and I have a few people on the wait list who might have to wait a little bit longer. Um, but I would love to see your name on there. I would love to hear about your goals and you know, figuring out what is keeping you stuck and how are you gonna overcome it so that you can truly build a body in life you love and there's no pressure here. We can just go through a conversation, see if it's a good fit for you. But thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope this episode really helped you see a real life example of what this client did to see success and how you can do something similar. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love if you shared it with a friend who might need to hear it, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me, leave a review that helps this message reach even more moms who need it. And until next week's episode, keep becoming stronger within.