And I get it. I spent years feeling the exact same way.

But here is what my research and my experience coaching thousands of women has shown me over and over again. The body is not failing. It is responding, perfectly and predictably, to what it is being given.

The inputs most women are missing

The first one surprises almost everyone. Most of the women who come to me are not eating too much. They are eating too little, specifically too little protein and too few carbohydrates, and their metabolism has quietly slowed mode because of it.

Muscle is metabolically expensive tissue. It burns calories at rest. It supports hormone health. It protects your bones as you age. And when you are chronically under-fueling, your body breaks it down. Not because something is wrong with you. Because your body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do with the resources it has been given.

This is why so many women eating clean are still not seeing the body they want. Clean does not always mean enough. And enough is where everything changes.

Strength training is the lever most women are not pulling

Cardio feels productive. I know. I was a half marathoner. I ran miles and miles and never got the body I wanted because running is aerobic and changing your body composition requires anaerobic work, heavy lifting and sprinting.

Four days a week of progressive strength training, lifting heavier over time, builds the muscle that raises your metabolic floor and keeps your body burning efficiently long after you leave the gym. This is the non-negotiable at the center of everything we do inside Lean and Liberated.

Sleep and stress are not soft variables

Chronic stress keeps cortisol elevated. Elevated cortisol drives fat storage, particularly around the midsection, disrupts hunger hormones, and makes everything harder. The cravings, the energy crashes, the mood, the recovery. And for women navigating demanding careers and full lives, this is not a hypothetical. It is Tuesday.

Poor sleep compounds all of it. One disrupted night measurably impacts how your body processes food the next day. String enough of those together and no amount of clean eating or gym sessions will fully compensate.

Why high performing women need a coach

The C-suite understands this. Top performers hire coaches for everything because they know the value of expert guidance when they are trying to level up. A great attorney has a mentor. A great executive has a business coach. And yet the same women who would never try to navigate a complex legal or financial situation alone are still trying to figure out their health by themselves.

The gap between where you are now and where you want to be is almost never effort. It is strategy. And strategy is extraordinarily difficult to see clearly when you are the one inside it. This is especially true for the women I work with who are already disciplined, already educated, and already doing a lot of the right things. The missing piece is rarely motivation. It is precision, accountability, and someone who can see what you cannot.

What actually changes things

The right inputs, applied consistently, with someone who actually understands your physiology, your hormones, your history, and your life. Not restriction. Not more cardio. Not white knuckling through another challenge.

This is what I am writing my doctoral dissertation on. And it is what I see working every single day with clients inside Lean and Liberated who came in convinced their body was broken and left understanding exactly what it needed all along.

For more information, Watch This First — Strong by Sarah Coaching

If you have been eating less, training hard, and watching the scale refuse to move, you are not doing anything wrong. You are just dealing with the very predictable consequence of chronic dieting.

When women restrict calories for extended periods, the body adapts. Metabolism slows. Hormones shift. The body essentially becomes more efficient at operating on less fuel, which means the deficit that used to produce results no longer does. You are not broken. Your body is just very good at surviving.

The solution is not to eat even less. It is to strategically and gradually eat more, in a way that rebuilds your metabolism without gaining unwanted body fat in the process. This approach is what nutrition scientists call reverse dieting, and it is the focus of my doctoral research.

Here is exactly how to do it in Five Steps.

Step one: understand where you are starting from

Before you change anything, track your food for three to five days. Not to judge what you are eating, but to understand it. You need a clear picture of your current calorie intake and your macro breakdown across protein, carbohydrates, and fat. You also want to look at micronutrients, specifically fiber, sodium, and sugar.

As a general guideline, sugar should stay under seventy grams per day even from whole food sources like fruit. Sodium should stay under twenty-five hundred milligrams per day even for active women who sweat heavily.

Step two: set your macro targets

Once you know where you are starting from, you can establish your targets.

Protein should be set at roughly your body weight in grams. If you are not currently hitting that number, increase by ten to twenty grams each week until you get there. If you are already there, protein stays the same.

Fat targets depend on age and health status. For women under thirty who are generally healthy, fifty to sixty grams per day is a reasonable range. For women who are older or managing a health condition such as a thyroid issue, sixty to seventy grams is more appropriate. From your current fat intake, adjust by two and a half to five grams per week (up or down) until you reach your target range. Fat is calorie dense, so small adjustments matter more than they sound.

Carbohydrates are where the real change happens. Regardless of where you are starting, increase your carbohydrate intake by twenty grams every one to two weeks. You continue this process until you reach a reasonable calorie maintenance level for your age, height, weight, and activity level. A free online TDEE calculator can help you estimate that target number. Your job is simply to work your way there systematically.

This gradual increase is what separates reverse dieting from simply eating more. Your body has time to adapt, your metabolism has time to respond, and you are never in a true calorie surplus that would cause unwanted fat gain.

Step three: train with intention

Reverse dieting works because of what you are doing in the gym alongside it. The protocol is straightforward: lift four times a week, two upper body sessions and two lower body sessions. Weighted ab work can be incorporated into upper body days.

The key is progressive overload. You do the same workouts every week for eight to twelve weeks, mastering the movements and consistently doing more (more weight, more reps, even just a few extra) every single session. That consistency is what drives muscle growth, and muscle growth is what drives metabolic change.

Step four: sprint once a week

On a dedicated fifth day, sprint. The vehicle does not matter — running, cycling, rowing, battle ropes, swimming, burpees. What matters is effort. You go all out for ten to twenty seconds, rest for sixty to ninety seconds, and repeat anywhere from three to eight rounds depending on your conditioning level. Try to pair upper body sprint variations with upper body training days and lower body sprints with lower body days, or dedicate a single day entirely to sprinting.

Step five: rest and recover

Muscle grows at rest. This is not optional. One to two rest days per week are built into this protocol for a reason. On those days you still hit ten thousand steps, but you are not lifting heavy or stressing your central nervous system. Light yoga, stretching, and mobility work are all appropriate. An intense workout class is not active recovery regardless of what it feels like.

Ten thousand steps daily (on training days and rest days) is non-negotiable throughout the process.

What to expect

Follow this protocol for eight to twelve weeks, prioritizing whole foods, staying hydrated, and hitting your targets consistently. The results are not subtle. Body composition changes. Metabolism improves. Energy increases. The process works because it is built on physiology, not guesswork.

This is the framework at the foundation of what clients inside Lean and Liberated follow, personalized to their specific starting point, monitored weekly, and adjusted based on real data. Because the difference between this working and not working is almost always in the execution, and that is where having the right support changes everything.

If you want help applying this to your specific situation, we would love to talk: Lean For Life | Strong by Sarah

She has been lifting weights since she was seventeen years old. She reads labels. She avoids seed oils. She taught herself to cook when her son started eating solids because she wanted to control what went into his body. She has built businesses, grown teams, and learned to spot exactly when someone is getting in their own way.

And yet, for two years, she had not lifted a single weight. Programming, which she had always loved, had become too much. She was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. Her digestion was so disrupted she was googling gastroenterologists and was prepared to spend thousands on testing. Her cycle was unpredictable. She was waking up drenched in sweat with her hands numb and aching.

She had known what she needed to do for years but she just did not have the capacity to figure it out alone.

“In the back of my head it had been, “You need to count your macros”. But with life going on (the pandemic, a baby, we opened a business, then another business, then another) I just couldn’t. I was so creatively and emotionally drained. I needed someone to tell me what to do.”

The moment everything changed

Katrina saw a transformation in her best friend’s body. Not a subtle one.

Within twenty-four hours of that conversation with her, Katrina had made up her mind. She had a best friend who was already seeing results with Strong By Sarah. She looked at Sarah’s page and listened to how she talked about nutrition and training. She saw a highly educated woman whose body reflected the work and who was speaking about science in a way that went well above the surface.

“I would never pay someone who looks worse than me to train me. That has always been my thing. And then as I started listening to her talk, she was highly educated, talking about things I actually wanted to read and know. And then my girlfriend told me she’s eating all the food brands I’m already eating. That was it. We’re good.”

She was in the program thirty-seven days later...with Emily Boltryk as her coach.

Meet Emily

Emily Boltryk is Head Coach at Strong By Sarah. She spent over a decade on Wall Street and had been Sarah’s client herself, learning how to prioritize her health and fitness while juggling an incredibly stressful career. What happened to her body and her relationship with food changed the trajectory of her career entirely.

She is now a NASM-Certified Personal Trainer and Certified Sports Nutrition Coach with a data-driven mindset and a genuine understanding of what it means to perform at a high level in every area of life because she has lived it.

Katrina knew within the first conversation that she had found her person.

“I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. It’s weird. We just started talking like we had been friends forever.”

What changed in the first three days

The digestion resolved almost immediately.

“Within three days of just eating with this program, I realized I haven’t had a stomachache. And by day four it was obvious. It was the food.”

Before the program, Katrina had been eating on the cleaner side, but as she described it, she had all the ingredients and none of the structure. She was not eating enough. She was not pairing things correctly. She was in a rut, and the rut was feeding itself.

“I had all the stuff here but I wasn’t utilizing it correctly. And since I wasn’t feeling well, I had lost any creative spark to try new things. I was just lost.”

By day seven, her husband, a professional chef and someone who has always been precise about what food does to the body, looked at her and said: if your digestion has regulated, this program is worth it. If you can just go to the bathroom every day and feel normal, that is worth every penny.

Everything else (the hot flashes, the numb hands, the hormonal unpredictability) began to shift over the following weeks.

The big mindset unlock

Katrina came into the program as someone who had always been results-oriented. She knew what she wanted the scale to say. She had a number in her head, but she realized she had pulled it from somewhere she could not even identify.

The unlock came when the scale went slightly up on the same day her body fat percentage dropped significantly from where she had started.

“I was elated. And then I looked at the scale and I was like, yeah, forget that. Who cares? The scale is technically up but the body fat is down.”

It is the kind of shift that sounds simple and is actually everything. Katrina had spent years tethered to a number that had nothing to do with what she actually wanted: to feel good, to feel strong, to feel like herself again. Once that number lost its power, everything opened up.

“I don’t care about the number. I feel better. I’m looking better. I need to increase my bone density. These are active goals that may actually add to that number on the scale. And I’m fine with that.”

Emily had been the one to plant that seed, walking Katrina through the distinction between scale weight and body composition, showing her what was actually possible and what the data was actually telling her.

“My coach is telling me I’m fine. I paid to have someone tell me to simmer down and be patient. And that is exactly what I needed.”

What it taught her about coaching itself

Katrina runs businesses. She hires people, grows teams, and watches careers develop. She has a very clear philosophy about what separates the people who succeed from the people who don’t make it.

“In my professional experience, I have seen so many people get in their own way. They want something so bad, but they want to dictate how they get there. And you can’t do that. There is no linear path to anything. You cannot copy someone else’s path.”

She quickly realized that the same holds true for her now being in the position of being coached.

“If you knew what you were doing, you would not have paid the money for the program. And this is coming from someone who has been lifting weights since they were seventeen and who already has a ton of knowledge. Look at me… I still needed someone to teach me what to do and why! I am not an expert. This is not what I do every day.”

Her advice to anyone hesitating:

“You are always going to be terrible at something the first time. You are going to look goofy. You are going to be uncomfortable. The beginning of everything sucks. You just have to do it. And in about a month it gets less hard. And then you get your two hundred hours in and all of a sudden you are proficient. But you have to start from the worst. You have to start knowing nothing at all. And you have to be willing to let people teach you.”

The ripple effect

Katrina’s son now asks for the same breakfast she has. Her husband notices when the inflammation goes down. She is eating through groceries instead of throwing produce away. She has energy for the first time in a long time; the kind of energy that shows up as patience, presence, and excitement about what the next day holds.

“I’m just excited every day. What do I get to eat today? What do I get to do today? Is today a rest day? I’m excited to rest. Is tomorrow a lift? I’m excited to lift. My energy for life is back.”

She started the program thinking about aesthetics. She stayed for everything else.

“I started from a vanity perspective. But it has now really turned into a physical health and mental health situation. This is something I need to maintain, like going to the doctor or getting a mammogram. It is in that category now for me.”

This is the work Emily and our entire team does with every client inside Lean and Liberated. A full team behind you. A plan built around the life you are actually living. Results that go well beyond the mirror.

If any part of Katrina’s story sounds familiar, we would love to talk. For more information on Strong by Sarah’s Lean and Liberated program: https://coaching.strong-by-sarah.com/lp/lean-for-life

If you have been eating clean, prioritizing whole foods, and still not seeing the body composition changes you are working toward, this might explain why.

Eating healthy is a great foundation. But if you are trying to make specific aesthetic changes (building lean muscle, reducing body fat, getting that defined look) healthy eating alone is not enough. The breakdown of what you are eating matters just as much as the quality. And if you are only paying attention to protein while ignoring carbohydrates and fats, you are missing two of the most important levers for body composition change.

Eating healthy is not the same as eating strategically. If you want specific changes in your body, this is what the science actually says about carbs, fat, and how your body stores energy.

What the research actually shows

A landmark 1995 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Horton, Drougas, Brachey, Reed, Peters, and Hill examined exactly what happens when humans are overfed, specifically, whether the source of those extra calories makes a difference in how the body stores them.

The study overfed participants by 50% above their energy requirements, alternating between excess fat and excess carbohydrates across a 14-day period each. Researchers used a whole-room calorimeter to precisely measure energy expenditure and nutrient oxidation throughout.

The findings were striking.

When participants were overfed carbohydrates, the excess produced progressive increases in carbohydrate oxidation and total energy expenditure, with 75 to 85% of that excess energy being stored. Fat overfeeding, by contrast, had minimal effects on fat oxidation and total energy expenditure, leading to 90 to 95% of excess energy being stored as fat.

In plain terms: excess dietary fat was stored at a significantly higher rate than excess carbohydrates — and the difference was most pronounced in the early stages of overfeeding.

Why this matters for your body

The reason carbohydrates behave differently comes down to how your body processes glucose and glycogen, which are the forms carbohydrates take once digested.

Glucose is your body’s preferred fuel source. The more carbohydrates you eat, the more your body ramps up its ability to oxidize them — essentially burning through them more efficiently rather than storing them. This metabolic adaptation is a real, measurable physiological response. Your body gets better at using carbohydrate energy the more consistently it has access to it.

This does not happen with dietary fat in the same way. Excess fat intake does not trigger the same upregulation in fat oxidation, which is why the storage rate stays so much higher.

The carb fear problem

Despite what the research shows, fear of carbohydrates is one of the most common patterns among the women our team at Strong by Sarah works with. The belief that carbs cause fat gain is deeply embedded in diet culture, and it is keeping a lot of women from the very macronutrient their bodies need to change.

The practical consequence of carb avoidance is often a diet that is disproportionately high in fat, where the body is operating in a metabolic environment that is far less forgiving of excess calories. Women who cut carbs and increase fat sources thinking they are eating healthier may actually be creating conditions where their bodies store a higher percentage of what they eat.

How this connects to reverse dieting

This is one of the core principles behind reverse dieting done correctly, the approach I’m currently researching for my doctoral dissertation in sports nutrition and exercise science.

Inside Lean and Liberated, clients systematically increase their calorie intake over time, with carbohydrates playing a central role. What happens consistently is that clients eat progressively more food and get progressively leaner. Their bodies become more metabolically efficient. They build muscle. And because a properly executed reverse diet never creates a true calorie surplus, the fat storage that most women fear simply does not happen at the rate they expect.

The research supports exactly what is observed in practice, and understanding the science behind it changes how you think about food entirely.

What this means for your approach

If you are only tracking protein and eating otherwise healthy, you are likely leaving a significant amount of precision on the table. Understanding your carbohydrate and fat intake, and adjusting those ratios based on your goals and how your body responds, is where body composition work gets specific.

This is not about eating perfectly. It is about eating intentionally, with an understanding of what your macros are actually doing inside your body.

That understanding is exactly what we build with every client inside Lean and Liberated — personalized nutrition backed by science, adjusted over time as your body responds, and built around the life you are actually living. For more information: Lean For Life | Strong by Sarah

Source: Horton TJ, Drougas H, Brachey A, Reed GW, Peters JC, Hill JO. Fat and carbohydrate overfeeding in humans: different effects on energy storage. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995 Jul;62(1):19-29.

If you have been going to Orange Theory, bootcamp classes, or high intensity group fitness consistently and wondering why your body is not changing the way you expected, this is not a motivation problem. It is a physiology problem.

Here is what is actually happening.

The Gray Zone Problem

High intensity interval style classes keep your body working in what exercise scientists sometimes call the moderate intensity gray zone — hard enough to feel like a lot, but not structured in a way that produces the specific adaptations you are after.

The issue is not that these classes are not difficult. It is that difficulty and effectiveness are not the same thing. Your body adapts to whatever stress you give it consistently. When the stimulus is the same every session (varied enough to feel different but not progressively structured) adaptation stalls.

What Happens to Your Cortisol

Cortisol is your primary stress hormone. It is supposed to rise in the morning and fall throughout the day. That natural rhythm is essential for metabolism, sleep, mood, and hormone regulation.

Repeated high intensity exercise, especially multiple times per week without adequate recovery, keeps cortisol chronically elevated. This is where things start to unravel.

When cortisol stays high, your hunger hormones (specifically ghrelin and leptin, which regulate hunger and satiety) become dysregulated. Cravings intensify. Appetite increases. And your body becomes more predisposed to storing fat, particularly around the midsection (a process called increased visceral adiposity).

This is why so many women doing multiple bootcamp classes per week report feeling exhausted, constantly hungry, and frustrated that the scale is not moving. Their body is responding exactly as physiology would predict.

The mTOR Problem

Here is the piece that most group fitness programs never address.

Building lean muscle (the kind that changes your body composition, raises your resting metabolism, and gives you that lean, defined look) requires activating a specific cellular pathway called mTOR, or mechanistic target of rapamycin.

mTOR is the master regulator of muscle protein synthesis. Without it, there is no muscle growth. And the primary driver of mTOR activation is progressive mechanical tension, meaning heavy, challenging resistance training that progressively overloads the muscle over time.

Bootcamp style classes do not reliably activate mTOR. They are designed to keep heart rate elevated and maximize calorie burn in the session, not to create the mechanical stimulus your muscles need to grow. The result is a lot of effort with very little structural change to body composition over time.

What Central Nervous System Fatigue Actually Feels Like

Another consequence of frequent high intensity training without adequate structure is central nervous system fatigue. The CNS controls muscular output (your ability to generate power, strength, and speed). When it is consistently overtaxed without recovery, performance plateaus, soreness becomes chronic, and that feeling of being perpetually tired but wired becomes the norm.

This is not a sign that you need to push harder. It is a sign that your training stimulus needs to change.

What Actually Works

The research is consistent on this. For women looking to change their body composition, the most effective combination is:

Progressive strength training, lifting heavy relative to your current ability, with enough volume and frequency to create genuine mechanical tension and activate muscle protein synthesis. Most women benefit from four sessions per week with a properly periodized program.

Sprint based anaerobic work, two to three times per week, which supports cardiovascular health and metabolic function without the chronic cortisol elevation that comes from repeated moderate intensity cardio sessions.

Consistent daily movement (steps, walking, and non-exercise activity) that keeps your overall energy expenditure high without adding additional stress to your nervous system.

Adequate protein, which supports muscle repair and growth, and has the highest thermic effect of any macronutrient, meaning your body burns more calories just digesting it.

A Note on Group Fitness

None of this means you can never go to a bootcamp class or Orange Theory again. These classes serve a real purpose. They are social, motivating, and genuinely enjoyable for many women. The problem is not the class itself. It is making it the cornerstone of your training when your goals require something different.

Reducing classes to once or twice a week as a complement to a structured strength and sprint program (rather than the primary driver of your fitness) tends to produce dramatically different results. Less chronic fatigue, better body composition, and often significant improvements in performance metrics like speed and power output.

The goal is not to suffer more. It is to train smarter in a way that is actually aligned with the results you are after. For more information on Strong by Sarah’s Lean & Liberated program: LEAN & LIBERATED — 1:1 Coaching | Strong by Sarah

It is not.

The missing piece for most women is not knowledge. It is identity.

The version of you that already has what you want

Here is the concept that changed everything for me and that I come back to with clients constantly. If you want to become a different version of yourself, you have to start by convincing your brain that you are already her. Not eventually. Not when you lose fat or break the habit or finally get consistent. Right now.

This is not just positive thinking. It is actually how the brain works. Every belief you hold about yourself right now is shaping every decision you make: what you reach for when you are stressed, how you talk to yourself when you fall short, whether you genuinely believe that change is possible for someone like you. Until those beliefs shift, the habits will keep snapping back.

So if you want to stop bingeing, you have to embody the mindset of the woman who no longer binges. That means understanding why you were reaching for food in the first place, building new responses to those same triggers, and practicing slowing down the moment until those new responses become automatic. That is how the brain rewires itself. Not through force or restriction or white knuckling it through another diet. Through intention and repetition and actually addressing the root.

The same is true for alcohol, for over exercising, for restriction, for any behavior that has become a way of managing something you have not fully looked at yet.

My own experience

I do not talk about this lightly. I received professional treatment for an eating disorder, and I share this not for sympathy, but because I think it is important for women to hear that the person on the other side of a very dark chapter can be unrecognizable from who you are right now.

When I was in treatment, something shifted in me. Not immediately, not without a lot of support, but I reached a point where I simply decided I was not going to be defined by this anymore. I did not snap out of it. Recovery was real work with real help. But the moment I committed (the moment my identity started to shift) everything else began to follow.

That pattern has shown up in every major chapter of my life since. When I decided to get my MBA while working full time, I became the kind of person who could do that and then I did it. When my husband and I decided to go all in on this business, we adopted the identity of people who were fully committed and the results came. When I decided to pursue my doctorate, I stopped waiting until it felt possible and started acting like it already was.

My business has tripled in the last few months not because I found a better strategy but because I finally adopted the mindset of the business owner I wanted to be. And once I was her in my mind, the habits fell into place on their own.

Fat loss is not just exercise and eating right

This is something the fitness industry rarely talks about honestly. You can have the most dialed in nutrition protocol in the world. You can have a perfectly periodized training program. And if your mindset has not shifted — if you still fundamentally believe that you are the person who always falls off, who cannot have certain foods in the house, who does well for a while and then self-sabotages — that belief will win every time.

Real sustainable change requires all three things working together. The physical, the nutritional, and the psychological. The habits you build on the outside have to match the identity you are building on the inside. That is not a soft concept. It is the actual mechanism of change.

Why the right support changes everything

Here is what I know from years of coaching and from my own recovery. You do not do this alone and you do not do it with someone who only looks at one piece of the puzzle.

Inside Lean and Liberated, mindset support is not an add-on. It sits alongside nutrition coaching from our registered dietitians, strength programming from our certified personal trainers, hormone and medical support from our functional medicine doctor and nurse and midwife, and the kind of day-to-day accountability that keeps the identity shift actually happening in real life and not just in your head.

Because the woman who finally feels strong and confident and at peace with food did not get there by following a meal plan. She got there because something shifted in how she saw herself. And she had the right people around her to support that shift every step of the way.

That is the work we do. And if you are ready, we are here. LEAN & LIBERATED — 1:1 Coaching | Strong by Sarah

Let’s talk about the calorie range that is keeping so many women stuck.

If you are an active adult woman (walking at least 7,000 steps a day and working out three to four times a week) your calorie needs are almost certainly higher than you think. And if you have been eating somewhere between 1,600 and 1,800 calories, there is a good chance you are in a gray zone where you are not losing fat and not gaining muscle. Just spinning your wheels.

Here is why.

Your body burns calories in more ways than you realize

Most women think about calorie burn in terms of their workouts. But your total daily energy expenditure is made up of several components working together:

Your BMR is the number of calories your body needs just to keep you alive at complete rest. Breathing, circulation, organ function. All of it costs energy before you take a single step.

Your NEAT is the energy burned through all the movement that is not a formal workout. Walking to your car, fidgeting, doing dishes. It adds up more than most people realize.

Your EAT is your actual exercise activity. Yes, this matters, but it is just one piece of a much larger picture.

Your TEF is the thermic effect of food: the calories your body burns simply digesting what you eat. And here is the part most people miss: the more protein you eat, the more expensive digestion becomes. Protein has the highest thermic effect of any macronutrient.

Add all of these together and you start to understand why an Apple Watch telling you that your lifting session only burned 200 calories is not the whole story. Not even close.

The carbohydrate piece nobody is talking about

Most women who come into my program need to be eating at least 250 grams of carbohydrates to see the muscle growth they are looking for. Some need closer to 300. And there are women in my program consistently eating over 300 grams of carbs, losing body fat, and building muscle at the same time.

No, they are not bulking. Bulking is unnecessary. What they are doing is fueling correctly.

The goal is not just eating enough calories. It is eating the right proportion of carbohydrates to protein to fat for your body and your goals. When that ratio is dialed in, everything changes. You train hard without overtraining. You stop stressing every time you eat something extra. You finally have peace with food because you are actually feeding yourself.

The bottom line

If you have been struggling to change your body composition, I can almost guarantee that you are eating too little. Not too much. And it is not just about adding calories randomly - it is about understanding exactly what your body needs and in what proportions.

That is the work we do inside Lean & Liberated. Not guessing. Not generic macros. A fully personalized nutrition plan built around your physiology, your activity, and your goals.

If you are ready to stop holding yourself back, we should talk.

Apply here for Lean & Liberated coaching: Apply — LEAN & LIBERATED | Strong by Sarah

Starting with the full picture

When we review a client’s food diary, we look at three things side by side: her goal macros, what she actually ate, and the difference between the two. But we do not stop there. We also look at sodium, sugar, fiber, potassium, and saturated fat, because these numbers tell us things that protein and carb targets simply cannot.

For this particular client, here is what we found:

Sodium was a little high. Unless a client is sweating heavily every single day through intense training, elevated sodium can affect water retention, how the body manages hydration, and how she feels and looks day to day.

Sugar was slightly elevated. Even natural sugar from fruit counts, and some women are more sensitive to fructose than others. Keeping fruit to around one serving a day and pairing it with protein and fat helps slow absorption and prevents energy crashes.

Fiber was on the lower end, which connected directly to something this client mentioned: her digestion was not quite where she wanted it to be. This is not a coincidence. Fiber plays a critical role in keeping digestion regular, and when it is consistently low, especially alongside imperfect hydration, the body feels it. Supporting fiber intake through whole food sources is often one of the first things that makes a noticeable difference in how a client feels day to day.

Potassium was much too low. Most women are not even close to the recommended four thousand milligrams per day, and potassium plays a critical role in muscle function, heart health, and fluid balance.

Saturated fat was under ten percent of daily calories, which is exactly where we want it. This is one area where this client was doing really well, but as we look at the detail in her meals, this may not be the full picture.

Breaking down her actual meals

Her pre-workout was a banana. A great start, but ideally it’s paired with a small amount of protein and fat to slow fructose absorption and avoid a glucose spike that leads to an energy crash mid-workout.

Lunch was built around mostly whole foods, which we love. She included cottage cheese as a protein source, which works well for women who tolerate dairy. It is versatile, high in protein, and easy to incorporate into a balanced meal.

The one thing missing from lunch was cooking oil. This is one of the most commonly overlooked items in any food diary. Unless every single item is being steamed, cooking oil needs to be tracked as even a spray adds up over the course of a day and contributes to the overall fat and calorie picture in ways that matter when we are trying to be precise.

Her snacks — where things got more interesting

She included bone broth as one of her snacks. Bone broth is genuinely beneficial, particularly for gut healing, which was relevant for this specific client. But it is important to understand that bone broth does not count toward a daily protein goal. The protein in bone broth is collagen protein, which does not contribute to muscle protein synthesis the way complete proteins like chicken, eggs, or Greek yogurt do. It serves a purpose, just not that one.

Her other snack included a beef stick, peanut butter, and a ginger chew. The beef stick provides around twelve grams of protein which is a reasonable choice. Peanut butter adds fat, which is fine in the right amounts. But the ginger chew is almost entirely sugar, and combined with the fat from the peanut butter, this snack ended up being heavier on carbohydrates and sugar with not enough protein to balance it out. A small swap (adding something with more protein) would have made this snack significantly more effective.

What this tells us

This client is making genuinely good choices. Whole foods, real effort, solid awareness. But without understanding the details (the micronutrients, the food combinations, the difference between protein sources) there are gaps that quietly work against her results.

Saturated fat being in the right place tells us her fat sources are mostly healthy. But cooking oil going untracked, potassium sitting too low, and snacks that are missing protein balance are exactly the kinds of things that do not show up when you are only looking at macros.

This is what a real nutrition review looks like. Not just the totals, but the context, the combinations, and the small adjustments that add up to real change.

Lean & Liberated

If you have ever wondered why your body is not responding the way you want it to despite doing all the right things, this is exactly the kind of work we do inside Lean and Liberated.

Our team includes registered dietitians, certified personal trainers, a mindset coach, a nurse and midwife, a pain free specialist, and a functional medicine doctor, all working together around one client, one goal, one plan.

Because tracking is just the starting point. Understanding what you are tracking is everything. For more information: LEAN & LIBERATED — 1:1 Coaching | Strong by Sarah

Perimenopause and menopause are two of the most significant transitions a woman’s body will ever go through. And yet most women are left to figure it out on their own, often with advice that was never designed for this stage of life.

This is what I wish more women knew.

Muscle is your most important asset right now

At this stage, building and maintaining lean muscle is non-negotiable. Muscle keeps your metabolism working efficiently, protects your bones, supports healthy aging, and gives you that strong, toned look that so many women feel they have lost. It is not a vanity goal. It is a health goal.

To build muscle, you need to fuel it. That means prioritizing protein — aiming for roughly your body weight in grams per day is a solid starting point. Protein also has the highest thermic effect of any macronutrient, meaning your body actually burns more calories digesting it. More protein is rarely a bad idea at this stage.

Carbohydrates are still your friend, but the type matters more now

As estrogen declines, your body’s ability to process certain types of carbohydrates changes. This does not mean cutting carbs. It means choosing wisely. Reach for fiber-rich sources like potatoes, beans, lentils, oats, chickpeas, and rice. Fiber is especially important during perimenopause because it supports healthy digestion, helps regulate hormones, and prevents estrogen from accumulating in the body.

Healthy fats deserve more attention

Even if you have avoided fat your whole life, now is the time to bring it back. Specifically, polyunsaturated fats high in omega-3s support hormone health, reduce inflammation, and protect your cardiovascular system. Think fatty fish, pumpkin seeds, and cooking with olive oil or avocado oil.

Fruits, vegetables, calcium, and vitamin D

Eating a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables provides the vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols your body needs to function at its best. Calcium is especially critical during this transition for bone health — and you do not need dairy to get it. Tofu, almonds, figs, leafy greens, and soy are all excellent sources.

One important note on vitamin D: please do not start a supplement until you have had blood work done. As a fat-soluble vitamin, it can accumulate in your organs if you take too much. Test first, then supplement if needed.

What to minimize

Excessive sodium and added sugar can worsen bloating, affect blood pressure, and disrupt hormone balance. Alcohol is worth reconsidering seriously at this stage — it disrupts sleep, increases body fat, raises cortisol, and adds metabolic stress at a time when your body is already managing significant change.

Movement — what actually works

The most effective approach for women in perimenopause combines strength training with intentional cardio. Lifting four times a week, with a mix of upper and lower body sessions, gives your body the stimulus it needs to maintain and build muscle. Adding sprints one to three times a week, whether running, cycling, rowing, or swimming, supports cardiovascular health and metabolic function. And consistent daily steps, whatever your normal is plus a little more, make a meaningful difference over time.

The bottom line

This stage of life does not have to feel like a loss. With the right nutrition, the right training, and ideally the right support system, women in perimenopause can feel stronger, leaner, and more confident than they have in years.

If you are looking for a fully personalized approach that includes lab work, a functional medicine doctor, and a team that actually understands what you are going through, that is exactly what Lean & Liberated was built for. Apply — LEAN & LIBERATED | Strong by Sarah

Most women leave their annual physical with one of two responses.

“Everything looks normal.” Or a list of numbers that mean nothing without context.

Neither one actually helps you feel better.

Here’s the thing about standard blood work. It is designed to catch disease. It is not designed to optimize how you feel, how you perform, or why your body stopped responding the way it used to. And for high achieving women who are doing everything right but still feel off, that gap is everything.

I reviewed a client’s blood work recently before her appointment with her functional medicine doctor. She told me I said things she had never heard before. Not because her results were alarming. They weren’t. But because no one had ever taken the time to connect the dots for her.

So let me do that for you today.

The thyroid connection nobody talks about

Most standard thyroid panels check TSH. Some check T3 and T4. Very few check free T3 and free T4, and even fewer explain what they mean.

Here is what they mean.

Free T3 is essentially your body’s brake pedal. When it is low, meaning below about 3.2 out of a possible 4.4, fat loss becomes slower and harder. Not because you lack discipline. Because your thyroid is sluggish and your metabolism is responding accordingly.

Free T4 tells us about stress. Internal stress, external stress, all of it. Women who travel frequently, cold plunge obsessively, under eat, or push through demanding schedules without recovery often see low free T4. Your body is not broken. It is protecting itself.

These two numbers tend to move together. Low T3 and low T4 are often mirrors of one another, and together they paint a picture of a body that is working too hard to keep up.

What does that mean practically? It means that for many women, the answer is not more. More workouts, more restriction, more discipline. It is less. Less stress, more recovery, more support for the systems that are quietly running the show.

The cholesterol and hormone connection

Here is something that rarely gets explained in a standard appointment.

If your cholesterol is slightly elevated and your hormones are on the lower end, those two things are not a coincidence. Cholesterol is your body’s raw material for making hormones. When estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are low, your body produces more cholesterol in an attempt to compensate. It is not a failure. It is your body doing exactly what it is supposed to do with the resources it has.

This matters because so many women are told their cholesterol is high and immediately put on a path toward medication, without anyone asking why it is high in the first place. The why changes everything about how you address it.

The bigger picture

Blood work is not just a report card. It is a conversation your body is trying to have with you.

The numbers that are not flagging as emergencies are often the most important ones, because they are the early signals. They’re whispers before the body starts to shout.

For the women I work with inside Lean & Liberated, this is why we include access to a functional medicine doctor and comprehensive lab work as part of the program. Not because something is catastrophically wrong. But because feeling off, tired, stuck, or like your body has stopped responding is data. And data deserves a real answer.

The most common thing I hear from women after their first round of labs is some version of: I wish I had done this years ago.

Because once you understand what is actually happening underneath the surface, everything else starts to make sense. The fatigue. The stubborn body composition. The mood shifts. The recovery that takes longer than it used to.

You are not imagining it. And you are not the exception.

You just haven’t had the full picture yet.

If you are ready to get it, that is exactly what we are here for.

Apply for Lean & Liberated at LEAN & LIBERATED — 1:1 Coaching | Strong by Sarah

because they’re just a trainer. You don’t need just a trainer; you need a

registered dietitian, you need a trainer, and you need a mindset coach. A

trainer is only qualified, if they are a certified personal trainer, to give you

workout advice. They are not inherently knowledgeable about nutrition; you do

not need to take nutrition classes to become a CPT.

So, if you’re actually looking for a holistic, full-body change, you need to

address nutrition from a qualified, educated expert. Additionally, on this

journey, you will also want help with your mindset. That is why, in my program,

we have someone to actually help you work through any frustrations you might

have, narratives you’re constantly telling yourself, an all-or-nothing mindset,

or whatever it might be that’s holding you back.

So, you haven’t failed; you haven’t experienced all coaches. You’ve only had a

trainer, so you’ve only limited yourself essentially to one area of expertise.

What you actually need is a group of qualified, educated professionals to tie

together all these different pieces of your journey. I’m getting my doctorate in

sports nutrition and exercise science, and I work with these women to coordinate

the plan that you need to actually reach your goals and see substantial change

week after week.

Head over to our Lean & Liberated site to learn more: LEAN & LIBERATED — 1:1 Coaching | Strong by Sarah

Here’s the truth nobody in the wellness industry wants to say out loud: a personal trainer is only qualified to give you workout advice. That’s it.

They are not required to study nutrition. They are not equipped to address your mindset. And yet for years, women have handed over their trust — and their money — to trainers alone, and then blamed themselves when the results never came.

You don’t have a discipline problem. You have an incomplete support system.

Real, lasting transformation requires three things working together:

A qualified nutrition expert — not a trainer who dabbles in macros, but a registered dietician who understands your physiology and builds a plan around how your body actually works.

A certified trainer — someone who designs progressive strength programming specifically for your body, your schedule, and your goals.

A mindset coach — because the all-or-nothing thinking, the narratives you keep telling yourself, and the emotional relationship with food will quietly undo everything else if left unaddressed.

This is exactly why I built Lean & Liberated the way I did. As a team.

I am currently completing my doctorate in sports nutrition and exercise science. I work alongside a registered dietician, certified personal trainer, mindset coach, nurse and midwife, and functional medicine doctor, all coordinating around one woman, one goal, one plan.

Because you deserve more than one opinion.

If you have tried coaching before and it didn’t work — you haven’t failed. You simply haven’t had the full picture yet

.

That changes here. Subscribe for more or visit Strong By Sarah | Coaching, Fitness & Nutrition.

You go shopping in Westport with your sister on Saturday.

You have date night with your husband in Greenwich on Friday.

Your husband works full time in the city.

You do everything right.

You eat well.

You prioritize protein.

You run and you lift weights, but you don’t look lean. You don’t look toned, and you are not comfortable taking rest days.

You want to be a good role model for your children when it comes to food, but your relationship with food and the scale sucks.

You don’t know where you’re going wrong, and you feel like you’re stuck in this endless loop.

But luckily, I’m here to help you.

I’ve helped thousands of women get the bodies that they’ve always wanted.

I’m getting my doctorate in sports nutrition and exercise.

I have an MBA.

I’m extremely qualified to guide you on this journey.

That’s how we’re able to get insane results like this in only three months.

Results like this in 13 weeks and results like this in a year.

It’s not rocket science.

It’s nutrition science.

And with the right inputs, you can still enjoy a weekly run.

You can still go out to eat with your family, but you can also have the structure and inputs in place to get the output that you’ve always wanted.

Click here if you want to see if you qualify for my Lean & Liberated coaching program.

Going to workout classes six times a week because it’s social for you because your friends are there is why you don’t have the body you want.

I don’t like being the bearer of bad news but the reality is workout classes are not a replacement for a customized periodized training program.

They are just that.

Workout classes and working out does not translate to specific aesthetic results.

If you want specific aesthetic results, you need to train in a specific way.

There is a reason why bodybuilders, powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, CrossFitters all train differently because they’re all working towards different outcomes.

So even if you don’t want to look like any of those people, you cannot take a random hodgepodge mishmash full of crap curated by someone who knows nothing about you and assume that it’s going to transform your body.

I hear this all the time from prospective clients. They don’t want to stop going to the classes because their friends are at their classes, but the friends don’t like their bodies either. The friends don’t like their own bodies.

The prospective client doesn’t feel comfortable in their body and they’re not actually willing to do something different. They just want to keep doing what isn’t working and the reality is that that’s not how it goes.

Just like if you were trying to learn French, you wouldn’t take Italian because they’re similar. Your input has to match the output that you’re looking for and if the output that you’re looking for is specific aesthetic changes in your body, you need to be training in a way to get those specific aesthetic changes and make them possible.

Medium intensity gray zone huffing and puffing no rest cardio weight babies is not proper training.

If you want to change your body you need the correct stimulus and some hybrid of cardio and weights is not the right stimulus.

And I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you this because unfortunately at a certain point you recognize that the thing you want to do is not always the thing that you need to do to get you to where you want to be.

I used to be a runner. I never understood why it didn’t leave me being the tone strong lean woman that I wanted and it wasn’t until I started lifting weights and sprinting primarily that my body changed the most and of course in addition to eating enough.

I’m not saying that you can’t run. I’m not saying that you can’t go to a class with your friends, but if you want to go to one or two classes a week then you need to be doing the majority of your other training three to four times a week. It needs to be training. It needs to be targeted and you need to be eating enough for your body to actually change and not waste your own time in the gym.

You don’t eat enough to be toned.

You don’t just grow muscle out of nowhere.

I don’t care how many times you’re going to the gym a week.

If you’re not eating enough, your body isn’t going to change.

It has taken me years to build this amount of muscle density.

It has taken me countless calorie surpluses, intentional,

Changing my activity, changing my training, devoting hours almost every single

day for almost seven or eight years to get anywhere close to debatably bulky in the

gym. Frankly, because if you saw me in real life, I’m like five feet tall.

I’m like 5’2 on a good day.

I’m not a bulky person, I just get a nice pump.

Stop blaming your genetics when it is a nutrition problem.

You will see the results that you’ve always been waiting for if you eat appropriately.

It’s really that simple.

we did this by reverse dieting slowly and strategically eating more with the proper periodized program and a nutrition plan to match

this client is an incredible athlete she was already fit she was already lean but her relationship with food her relationship with herself and her relationship with alcohol was not where she wanted it to be

by reverse dieting we were able to get her leaner tighter and smaller in the areas you cared about and more defined in the others

it’s not rocket science it’s nutrition science

and if you’re currently stuck and you don’t understand what you’re doing wrong and you’re binging every weekend or always trying to eat less and less

we need to talk because the women in my lean and liberated coaching program understand that eating more is always the way.

I easily maintain 15–16% body fat year round.
And no, I’m not constantly in a calorie deficit.

I eat more than 2,000 calories.
I rarely do cardio.
I sprint twice a week and lift four times a week.

If you want sustainable change…
If you truly want a body that looks lean, toned, and strong…

You need someone who gets it.
Someone who has been in your shoes and understands that slow, strategic changes are how you get the results you deserve.

I’m currently getting my doctorate in sports nutrition and exercise science, and I use science-backed protocols with my clients every day.

And they get results like this all the time.

I was running seven miles every other day.

I was barely eating carbohydrate.

I had no idea why I was just skinny fat.

I thought I just had to get smaller and smaller and then eventually my muscles would be visible.

As most of you probably know, hopefully, that is not how it works.

You can’t just lose endless amounts of body fat and hope to uncover muscle.

If you actually want to be toned,

if you actually want to look lean and strong,

you need enough muscle to be visible through a healthy layer of body fat.

You need a healthy layer of body fat to have proper hormone function, as well as a lot of other functionality in your body that’s mandatory to be alive.

So the game isn’t to get as thin as possible.

The game is to reduce your body fat to a reasonable, healthy level.

And while doing that,

grow the muscle on your body so that it can then be visible once you get to that body fat percentage.

This is what leaning out means.

This is what toning means.

Both of those terms are nonsense.

What we’re actually talking about is growing muscle and losing fat,

which is also sometimes referred to as a body recomp.

The only way to do this is to keep cardio at bay,

to eat enough to grow new muscle tissue,

and to stay active enough outside of the gym to allow us to maintain a lower body fat percentage naturally.

You don’t need to cut out carbohydrates.

You don’t need to go keto.

You don’t need to eat only 30 grams of fat a day.

You need a customized program that’s periodized properly so you’re actually recovering in between your workouts, because if you’re not recovering, you’re not growing muscle.

You need a customized macro formula based on where you’re currently starting from to prevent excessive or any fat gain for that matter.

And you need a coach who knows her fucking shit.

So when you start seeing results or if things plateau, she knows where to go next.

That’s what I can give you.

I literally have a team of experts, educated female experts and myself waiting to help you on this journey.

All you have to do is start.

We’ll take the rest from there.

but you talk a really big freaking game because when push comes to shove,

you think deep down you’ll figure it out.

You think you don’t need to invest in a coach because you know what you should do,

you’re just not doing it.

But the reality is,

if it was really that simple,

you would already have the relationship with food that you want.

You would already have the relationship with your body that you want.

Outsourcing to an expert is not weakness.

Outsourcing to an expert is showing strength.

It’s showing that you value your time.

It’s showing that you value education.

It’s showing that you actually give a shit about whatever it is that you’re asking for help with.

I have a lot of experience in this arena and quite frankly,

having a better relationship with food and a better relationship with your body

will change your freaking life.

And if you are price shopping for that experience,

I have bad news for you.

It’s not going to work out in the way that you want.

I see this as someone who has had professional treatment for an eating disorder,

someone who has coached thousands of women.

I know how much time, effort, and money are required to get you to where you want to be.

I know how many experts you need in your corner.

I know exactly how much support you require.

And if you say you want a better relationship with food,

you say you want a better relationship with your body,

but when push comes to shove deep down you think it’s too expensive,

what you’re really saying is you’re not worth it

and you’re not worth the investment.

She said in the past week,

I’ve eaten meals that I haven’t allowed myself to have in the past 10 years.

Let that sink in.

It has been 10 years since she has allowed herself to eat certain meals with certain foods.

And after one week in my program, she is eating them again.

She’s already quite fit.

She wants to be fitter.

She wants to have more muscle.

She wants to reduce her body fat.

But her biggest challenge...

is her mindset and relationship with food.

And that relationship affects every other relationship because as a human, you have to eat.

We don’t do this fasting shit on my team.

We eat every few hours.

And if you have stress and anxiety around food, you know what that means?

Every few hours, you have stress and anxiety around food.

And that does not lead to a high quality of life.

That leads to a lot of stress and anxiety every few hours.

And I say this lovingly as someone who has had professional treatment for an eating disorder. Your life will change so intensely when you start to do the work to make this better.

And with the right support system, literally things will change within a week.

I’m not saying you will get multiple years worth of progress in a week, but this is why I do what I do.

This is why I answer client messages at like 6 a.m.

and 10 o’clock at night.

This is why I’m working every day.

This is why I want to help you.

This is why I am so passionate.

You have literally been preventing yourself from eating certain foods for maybe upwards of a decade for nothing.

Let me help you stop that.

I get messages like this all the time from my clients and this is why I adore them so much.

And this is why we vet people really hard and why you have to apply to my program.

Because you have to be the right fit.

My team has to be able to help you and that means you have to be in a certain place mentally and physically.

If you are struggling with this, your quality of life can change so much.

If you say, I want to do the work.

My team, we have a certified counselor to help you break through any mental unlocks you have.

We have a CPT to help you with your form or any questions you have about your programming.

We have a midwife if you’re pregnant or postpartum and you need that extra support.

But we are also all nutritionists because nutrition comes first.

On this journey, if your nutrition is wrong, nothing else will be right.