Meet Andrea. Shes lost and gained weight in the past, but once she hit peri-menopause, things got more difficult. Having heard me speak at a personal training conference, she liked our approach around hormones, so she decided to start our online coaching program called Drop a Dress Size.

                In the 3 months since she started working with us, shes lost 1 dress size, dropped 10 lbs., 8 cm off her waist, got clearer skin, improved her strength and energy levels, and more. Shes not quite where she wants to be yet, but shes definitely well along the way. So this isnt really a transformation story just yet, but more of a progress report. The transformation story is on the way

                In this article, well cover:

  • Her life before the weight gain, and the factors that made her gain weight (stress, kids extracurriculars, and change in job)
  • The exercise and nutrition programs that her trainer, Shaneh, put her on, along with the rationales behind them.
  • The changes in her measurements body fat, circumferences, and strength
  • The challenges experienced along the way
  • What her life is like now, outside the gym.

If youd like to hear Andrea explain things in her own words, check out the video below (for privacy reasons, she preferred not to be on camera, but she verbally explains everything).

And here are her progress pictures (again, not exactly a before and after just yet, but more like the 3-month progress mark):

And hey, if youre in a situation similar to Andrea, where you either prefer, or have to exercise at home, with limited equipment, and have had some changes to your body after having kids (whether its 2 years ago, or 30 years ago), we have a special online coaching program, called Drop a Dress Size If youd like to see whether its for you, just email me with the words Drop a Dress Size in the subject line.

Andreas Life Before the Weight Gain

                Most of her life, Andrea was pretty fit. Before she had kids, she was super active. She taught primary school kids, which had her moving a lot throughout the day. She played recreational sports, went hiking, biking, golfing, downhill skiing, snowshoeing, and ran here and there. Excess weight was not an issue.

                Then she had kids. Her second child had health issues, which meant frequent trips to the hospital for about 10 years since her birth.

Her house burned down, and they needed to rebuild, and she lost some friends and family members to cancer. So finding time for her was very challenging.

                As her activity went down and her stress went up, she started experiencing back pain (and she felt that her C-section probably had something to do with that as well)

                Despite how busy she was, she still managed to find the time to attend bootcamps and running groups. Once her kids got older, they started to participate in extracurriculars, and Andrea became their chauffeur. Now, the time that she was using for her fitness activities got replaced with driving her kids around.

Around that time, she also changed her job, and now, instead of moving around all day, she was seated.

The combination of all these factors made her start putting on weight, which was never an issue in the past.

Throw in changing hormones as well, as she approached that age, and we had a recipe for weight gain.

At that point, she attended the Can-Fit-Pro conference, where I was speaking, and she liked what I had to say about hormones, and signed up for my newsletter. A few years later, when we had some spots open up for our online coaching program, she approached me, and explained her situation. She had very limited time, she lived north of Ottawa (so not anywhere close to any of our GTA locations), she was peri-menopausal, and she didnt know it at the time but COVID-19 would shut everything down within about a month of when she started working with us.

So we paired her up with her coach, Shaneh, and he got to work, designing her exercise, nutrition and supplementation program. And heres what he came up with:

Andreas Exercise Program

                Andrea is a busy lady between 2 kids and a husband, she doesnt have the luxury of one-hour workouts. So Shaneh built her program to be 20-40 minutes at a time. So she does 20-40 minutes, 4 times per week.

                She does different workouts on different days, to prevent her joints from wearing out (if you do the same exercises daily, with substantial enough resistance, that can happen over time), as well as to stimulate both different muscles, and different energy systems.

                One of the biggest risks for injury is imbalanced development of different muscles around the joint. The idea behind doing different exercises 4 days per week, instead of the same thing each time is to balance the development of different muscles. This has 3 benefits:

  • Injury prevention
  • Breaking up the monotony of a single program
  • Faster progress. The more you repeat the same exercises, the faster the body adapts to it, slowing down the progress. Varying up the exercises keeps the progress going for longer

Shaneh also had Andrea doing different rep ranges. From as low as 5 reps, to as high as 20 reps. The reason for that is that different rep ranges have different benefits. Sets of 5 reps build strength a lot and endurance a little. Twenty-rep sets do the opposite they build endurance a lot and strength a little.

Also, keep in mind the overall goal of strength training during a fat loss phase to maintain muscle. Not to build muscle (thats nearly impossible on a caloric deficit) or burn fat (thats mainly a function of nutrition).

Andreas Nutrition Program

                To tell you simply heres what Andrea ate would miss the picture. The what part is very easy most people know what to eat to lose weight and be healthy. The real problem is in the how. How do we get a person eating in a certain way that is sustainable, so that they wont regain the weight after they lose it? Thats where the real magic lies.

                So Shaneh identified the greatest opportunities for Andrea. What are the smallest things she could change that would lead to the biggest results? And this will be different for different people, based on what theyre currently eating already, their preferences, and more. Why do we look for the smallest change someone can make and not the biggest? Because big changes in nutrition are very hard to make, and even harder to keep long term. Whereas if you just change one tiny little thing, youre much more likely to stick to it long-term.

                So what opportunities did Shaneh identify?

  • Fiber Andrea wasnt eating enough, so at first, Shaneh wanted to get her up to at least 20 grams per day (the long term goal is higher, but this is a starting point).
  • Protein like a lot of women, Andrea wasnt eating enough. Shaneh recommended getting her up to 0.6 grams per pound in the short term, and 1 gram per pound in the long term.
  • Multivitamin to plug any nutritional deficiencies.

Of course, as I outline in my article on how to build healthy habits, these 3 habits were not implemented simultaneously. Only after one habit was mastered, did we add another one. Try to implement one change at a time, and its challenging, but doable. Try to implement 2 or more, and its almost a guarantee of failure. Is it any wonder that most diets fail? Too many changes at the same time.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that putting together a nutrition program is a collaboration between the coach and the client. The coach proposes a habit, and the client gives feedback on his/her likelihood of implementing that habit. If the likelihood is low, we pick a different habit, and come back to the original habit at a later time.

This is in great contrast to the common approach of a nutrition program being a commandment from a higher power. No negotiation. No collaboration. No input from the client. Just follow this program, or you wont succeed. Thats not the way we do things. We want our clients to have the best possible chance of success, and for that, we need their input into what they think theyre likely to stick with long-term. After all, our coaches may be experts on nutrition, but our clients are experts on their life, so their input is greatly valued.

The Changes in Andreas Measurements

                Now you know the theoretical basis behind Andreas exercise and nutrition program. But what came out the other end, 3 months later? Lets talk results.

                In the 3 months that Andrea has been working with us so far, she:

  • Lost 10 pounds
  • Lost 8 cm from her waist
  • Lost 9 cm from her hips
  • Lost 5 cm from her thighs

Not only that, her symptom picture changed. With most clients, we have them fill out a questionnaire that contains 321 symptoms, so we can understand how different systems of their body are functioning.

  • Andreas symptoms in the adrenal/cortisol (stress) section dropped by 11% (she had fewer stress-related symptoms)
  • Her digestive symptoms also decreased by about 7.5%

Not to mention her improvements in strength and endurance are quite significant:

  • She went from doing 13 incline pushups, to 20
  • She started off doing wall sits for 40 seconds, now she can do over 2 minutes
  • She went from doing regular leg curls on a stability ball, to doing single-leg leg curls on a stability ball

Challenges

                Now before you think that it was all roses and rainbows, and there werent any hitches along the way, think again. True body transformation usually doesnt happen without a few bumps in the road.

                And here are the bumps that Andrea experienced along the way, along with Shanehs solutions for those bumps:

  • Protein. As I mentioned, women especially have a hard time getting the right amount of protein (we wanted to get her up to 1 gram per pound). That was certainly the case for Andrea. So Shaneh started her off at a level lower than he wanted, but higher than she had been eating previously. Baby steps.
  • About 2.5 months in, she had hit a plateau in her weight loss. Shaneh assessed her symptom profile again, and saw that she was showing symptoms of high estrogen (compared to progresterone). With the addition of a pair of supplements (DIM and CDG), they were able to break through that plateau, and lost more weight. Damn hormones
  • During COVID-19, Andrea started working from home, which messed with her exercise schedule. So she actually found it easier to break up her workout into 2, and do half the workout before work, and the other half after work, on some days.
  • Keeping her workouts was tough at first. When Andrea was first starting out, Shaneh had her doing 2 workouts per week, for 1 hour. When they saw that it wasnt working, the decreased the duration, and increased the frequency. Again, collaboration.

Life Nowadays

                Although were not yet in the after part of her transformation (were only 3 months in), shes already begun to experience some nice changes in her life. So far, shes:

  • Dropped 1 dress size (from size 12 to size 10)
  • Has clearer skin
  • Her kids respect her workout time, and realize that those 40 minutes she has are me-time
  • In her own words, this self-imposed structure is good for me physically and also helps provide a predictable routine in these crazy COVID days
  • Instead of grudgingly getting her workout done, she actually looks forward to it!
  • She has more energy to get things done in her day

This is the real reason why we, trainers do what we do we take great pride in guiding our clients through improvements in their fitness and health, and helping them get through limitations. If youd like to do what Andrea did, and see if our online body transformation program is for you, just email me with the words Drop a Dress Size in the subject line.