Are you ready to transform your body and boost your confidence through clean eating? In this episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I dive deep into essential clean eating tips specifically designed for women who aspire to achieve a ripped physique. It's not just about what you eat; it’s about how you approach your nutrition and fitness. As I always say, “Commitment and consistency are the cornerstones of transformation. ”
Are you ready to transform your body and boost your confidence through clean eating? In this episode of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast, I dive deep into essential clean eating tips specifically designed for women who aspire to achieve a ripped physique. It's not just about what you eat; it’s about how you approach your nutrition and fitness. As I always say, “Commitment and consistency are the cornerstones of transformation. ”
Many women underestimate the importance of a balanced approach to nutrition, often focusing too heavily on protein while neglecting vital carbohydrates and fats. I’ll help you avoid common pitfalls and guide you through five key clean eating tips that have empowered my clients to achieve remarkable results. From pairing protein with carbohydrates to embracing single-ingredient foods, these strategies will not only enhance your weight loss efforts but also support your overall wellness.
Whether you’re navigating the challenges of menopause, striving for lean muscle, or simply looking for effective workout tips, this episode is packed with valuable insights tailored for women over 35. I emphasize that achieving a ripped body is not just about aesthetics; it’s about building the confidence to master your health and well-being. Clean eating tips can be the game-changer you need, and I’m here to show you how.
Throughout our conversation, I encourage you to embrace your potential for transformation, regardless of your age or background. This isn't just a health podcast; it's a journey towards empowerment. Together, we’ll explore how nutrition for women can be optimized, how to eat for muscle, and the role of energy levels in your fitness journey. Join me as we uncover the secrets to effective clean eating and the motivation for women that can lead to lasting change.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to elevate your health and fitness game. Tune in and discover how clean eating tips can redefine your approach to wellness, helping you achieve not just a ripped physique, but a stronger, more confident you.
Get FREE lifetime access to my 4-week Strength Without Stress program today! This unique program helps you build lean muscle and reduce inflammation—without the fatigue from long or intense workouts. All you need to do is post a review of my podcast, grab a screenshot, and upload it at: hollyperkins.com/review
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Women who get ripped have secrets, especially when it comes to their diet. A cheat code, if you will, and I've got all the deets. In many ways, it's not hard to get super lean and fit, but it does take super commitment and determination. And if you can lock into the daily habits, you'll do it too. I've watched it, I've coached it, I've done it. So. If you're wanting the clean eating tips from women who got ripped, keep listening. Hello and thank you for being here. If you are new, welcome. I'm Holly Perkins and I will help you improve your body composition to at least 70% lean mass because that is the threshold that you first have to achieve to move into a category that's truly healthy. Because that is where you reduce your risk of disease, create the body that you need to keep up with the life that you love so that you can stay in the game of life and out of the rocking chair. If you're struggling because you really want to get ripped and you're trying, but you aren't getting there, I promise there's probably a few important tips that you're missing. Because when you get these clean eating tips right, you'll start seeing things shift almost immediately. Like you get it right overnight, you're going to see a change in your body. Now, listen, I do think that you need to be crystal clear if getting ripped is truly your goal, because the truth is it is not for the faint of heart. You have to really want it. And it's not for you if you want to be the type of person who's good all week, you're on it all week, And then on the week... you like to let loose a little, or you like to enjoy some indulgences over the weekend, or if you're not a beast in the gym, really and truly committed to every single workout, it is going to be hard to truly get ripped. Getting ripped takes consistency more than anything else, and commitment leads to the day-to-day actions that you have to to take in order to get ripped. If you're frustrated because you've been trying to do that and you're not getting anywhere, or if you think you're doing everything right, but you aren't seeing the chiseled abs or the ripped arms in the mirror like the way that you want, I promise you there is a reason and there's probably a handful of reasons. And it usually has to do with your strategy. It really doesn't have anything to do with whether you're capable of getting ripped. If your body could do it too, like those other women that you see, it really has nothing to do with that. Oh, by the way, it's got nothing to do with your age. There's so many women proving that's not true. Now, getting ripped goes far beyond these clean eating tips, but I will say that nutrition is a huge part. of the equation. I don't want you to think that what you'll learn today is enough, but if your training programming is right for the goal, these tips really will move you from meh to meow. So in this episode, you'll learn the most common clean eating mistakes that women make, five clean eating tips that my most ripped clients live by, day in and day out, how protein isn't the most important consideration, and what you need to do around your workouts in order to get the best from your body. So I've been ripped before. There were a lot of years I was rightfully ripped, and I will tell you it is a lot of fun. I would encourage every woman to go for it at least once in her lifetime. To me, it really represents you mastery of your body, your choices, your discipline, your ability to follow through on your plan. And as they often say, the journey is not about the destination. It really is who you become throughout that journey to get there. And I know for me and my most successful clients, it really marks a turning point in many women's attitudes about their body and about what they want as well as... what they're capable of. And it really can be a turning point in terms of being forever changed so that your health is a whole lot easier down the line. And it's almost healing to see that you too are capable of getting there if you want. And just having that knowledge and that power to manipulate your body is so confidence building. And I really do believe that any woman anywhere of any age has the ability to get ripped if you want. Yes, even you. But you really do have to make a commitment. At least that is what I've gleaned from my clients who successfully got ripped. And when you do commit, these five eating tips will help make the process both easier and faster for you, just like it did for my most successful clients. So let's cut to the chase and jump into the five clean eating tips. The biggest mistake my clients were making. before they got ripped was cutting carbs and fat in the name of clean eating. And this often led to an overemphasis on lean proteins, protein, protein, protein. And this is largely because we're in what I call a protein preoccupation, as I often say. The women who got ripped thought that protein led to more lean muscle and you On some level, that's true. It's really only part of the story. Sure, if your protein intake was low and then you increased it, you will most likely see some improvements without a doubt. And I think that's why this commentary is so prevalent because up until about three, four years ago, a lot of women were not getting enough protein. And so if you just were getting too little and And then you increase your protein. absolutely you're going to see some benefits. But in my experience, which I'll be honest, surprised even me, when I watched my clients go from confused to ripped and tracked their photos and their body composition reports, nearly every single one of them got leaner when they reduced their protein to the right amount each day and therefore allowed you more space for carbohydrates. This isn't a binary conversation. It's not high protein, low protein. And so if you reduce your protein, that doesn't mean you're getting too little. You really do have to target the right amount. And there is a window, there is wiggle room. But if you are too high, that means you're not going to be getting the carbohydrates that you need and almost every single one of my clients saw. way better fat loss when they increased their carbohydrates because they had space by reducing their protein. And this is where clean eating can start to work against you because clean in quotation often turns into low carb or low fat. It might even turn into just low sugar, or sometimes it's all of the above. And it feels like you're doing the right thing, Right? I did this all throughout my 20s. I ate clean. I ate vegetables and lean protein and no sauces and no packaged foods and clean, clean, clean. That was the focus. And in some ways, I felt like I was doing the right thing, but my body was telling me something very different. Because carbs and fat are not the problem and protein is not the savior. All of them are required for optimal metabolism, especially carbs and fat. Where all of your organs are getting the resources that they need, there's a reason there are three macronutrients and that we need all three of them. That's because they are all important for different purposes. Carbs give you energy for your workouts and for your brain. And so if you are in a stage of life where you really have to use your brain a lot, if you're low carb, good luck to you. You wonder why you have brain fog. why you can't find the right words in a sentence, or just struggle to think clearly, that's because your brain runs on carbohydrates, and more specifically, the glucose that's created from the carbohydrates that you eat. And if you often feel like just off or uncomfortable in your own skin, carbs are for actually feeling like yourself again, because your body will finally work the way that it's designed. And fats are essential for hormone health, which becomes more and more important as you move through your 40s and 50s and beyond, because fats are what your body makes hormones from, and fat is needed for up optimal cognition and brain function. And certain vitamins are fat soluble, which means that they require fat to be absorbed. And ultimately, fat does not make you fat. If for some reason you still have some of that lingering messaging from the 90s, it's really not true. And when you include both fat and carbs into your day appropriately, you'll support something really powerful. Metabolic flexibility, which simply means that your body can use fuel efficiently and it can adapt to days when your nutrition is off. Now listen, the idea of metabolic flexibility, I think, is really just a bit of marketing gimmick because it simply represents what a good, healthy, well-functioning metabolism is supposed to do. You're already designed for it. And When this idea of metabolic flexibility really came in after the low-carb era, interesting, And so if you are going through a low-carb phase and then you have a wedding or a celebration or a vacation where you eat way more carbs than your body is used to, that does throw your body into a bit of a tailspin and you are going to feel the ramifications of that. And so there became this idea of metabolic flexibility that you eat a certain way so that when those days happen, there's not much of an impact or a result. But my argument is, but that's what a healthy body does. We don't need to achieve metabolic flexibility. You need to achieve balance in terms of the foods that you're eating so that your body is getting what it needs all the time. so your metabolism is optimal, so that if you have a day or an evening, or a weekend where you're off track, it's not a big deal because there's this foundation of homeostasis. But here's the truth. If your version of clean eating removes or reduces carbs or fat, you're not actually eating clean. You're eating incompletely. Women who get ripped know this. And beyond that, the women who got the leanest started following not. one of my golden rules, always, always, always, always, always pair your protein with carbohydrates at a minimum. And even better is to pair protein, carbohydrates, and fat at every meal and snack, but in a pinch at the bare minimum. You've got to put your protein and your carbs together at the same eating, at the same meal or snack, okay? within 10 or 15 minutes of each other. And this means that you eat, let's say, fruit with your Greek yogurt, or whole grains with your turkey breast, or berries with your protein powder. And it does not mean that you eat a handful of almonds before a workout, or a pure protein drink afterwards. There's a very famous Beverly Hills nutritionist who Thank you. teaches really putting your body into a fat burning state. And this person teaches it by a largely predominantly fat diet. He works with a lot of very famous celebrities and we shared a client and we were in conflict in terms of our philosophies around how to fuel the person before our workout. His advice was eat a bunch of almonds, which is pure fat with a little bit of fiber, A little bit of carbohydrates, but it's negligible. And so... this nutritionist called me out and we had a conversation. I explained my perspective. And by the end of the call, he was like, you're a smart cookie, Holly. And he's older. And he really gave me this kind of pat on the back, even though we had a difference of opinion. And so it is important to listen to who you're listening to. But I will always argue fat alone is not the ideal fuel before a workout. Unless you truly are in a ketogenic state 24-7, which I am just personally not a fan of. And the women who cross over into impressively lean territory very rarely are reducing carbohydrates and fat. And they live by this rule, pairing your protein with carbohydrates. This is probably the most powerful cheat code that exists. and I'm surprised more women haven't gotten this memo yet. So my friend, let this be your memo. Get in the habit of pairing protein with carbohydrates every time you eat. The second clean eating tip from women who got ripped is choosing their foods very specifically to achieve a macronutrient distribution each day. What they don't do is prioritize clean ingredients while ignoring protein and fats and carbs. Because if you're just focused on clean, you're not looking at protein or fats or carbs, right? You're looking at the sourcing of the food or the category of the food. And before they made this change, they were just focused on clean eating, which is great because they were choosing whole foods and reading labels and eating healthy items. There's a big difference between eating healthy items and actually eating for a strategy of getting ripped. Very different. And they were trying to make the best choices at any given moment. But what often gets overlooked is protein. Because protein could very easily come in a not-so-clean package, right? Especially if you're away from home and it's not convenient. Deli meats, maybe, would be considered not-so-clean, right? And I'm going to call out a very specific protein product in a moment to talk about another great example of that. And here's the thing. If your goal is to support your muscle, your metabolism, and your long-term health, Protein is not optional. It's the anchor. But like I said, it's also not the savior. You might find that when protein is low, okay, if you haven't made that crossover yet, if you will, if your protein is low, you're probably going to notice that your energy feels inconsistent. Your appetite is probably going to feel inconsistent. So today is Monday. Yesterday was Sunday and I just felt like I just didn't want to put thought or energy into my food. I just wanted to kind of like eat what I wanted for the day. And so about four o'clock came around and I actually had a very active and busy Sunday and I've noticed a symptom that I hadn't noticed in a really long time. And it was this weird, like uneasy, I need to eat. I feel hungry, but I don't know what I want. I feel endlessly snacky and I just felt off. I paused for a moment and I reflected. I hadn't had hardly any protein all day long. I had skipped my protein coffee, which I have most days, and I just kind of was grabbing like a this or a that all day long, which were all clean, which were all healthy. But when I added it up, my protein was way too low. So if you feel inconsistent or you're hungry more frequently than you expect, Even if you were eating super, let's say, clean or organic, you're going to notice some symptoms and your body won't just feel as strong or as responsive as it does at other times. But when you start prioritizing protein and carbs and fat intentionally, everything starts to shift. Your meals feel more satisfying. You don't feel like you need to have something sweet. after dinner or two hours later, you're not snacky. Your energy becomes more stable. It's like you eat a meal and it gives you energy for three to four or five hours. And your body finally has what it needs to build and maintain muscle and burn fat. And so of course, you're going to see results faster. So you literally become a fat burning machine, which really is a thing. But you won't get there naturally. You've got to choose the right practices to get into that state. And here's the truth. Clean eating without enough protein is really just pretty under eating. The women who got ripped know that you need protein for repair, carbs for energy, and fats for health. And one is not more important than the other. If you get nothing else from this episode, walk away with that. Healthy fats do not mean you should eat more. Carbs are not bad, so therefore you should eat less. Protein, fat, and carbohydrates are equally important, even though we need them in differing amounts. So ripped women, when they figured this out, they set a macronutrient target for the day, and they choose their foods to achieve that target rather than the standard being you is this clean? Let me look at the label. The standard is how will this food impact my overall macronutrient distribution for the meal or the day as a whole? Very big difference, right? So Track your macros by using a food tracking app like MyFitnessPal, that's the one I prefer, and start adjusting the foods that you eat each day to achieve a specific amount of protein, fat, and carbs each day. And sure, they can still be clean food items, but pair them differently. You want to know the most surprising clean eating tips that helped my women go from soft struggling and sore to strong, energized for workouts and ripped, the women who got ripped learned to fuel up before their workouts. You cannot get a great workout if you don't put fuel into your system. And I wish I had a nickel for every woman who came to me doing fasted workouts or just not really paying attention to what they eat in the hours before a workout, right? You might be eating clean all day long, but not really thinking about how you're fueling your body before a workout. And then they implemented this strategy and saw immediate results. The biggest mistake they learned to avoid in order to get ripped was shifting their mindset from calorie burning, and weight loss to performance fueling. They started being mindful and intentional about how their body was prepared for each and every workout. And this is a big shift for many women, especially if you're not often hungry. It stands to reason that one, if you're not very hungry or don't have a big appetite. And number two, You're going into a workout to, quote unquote, lose weight, then why on earth would you eat before a workout? That makes perfect sense, right? I actually did this in my 20s. I thought, well, if the point of my five mile run is to burn off fat and lose weight, why on earth would I put more calories in? I remember crystal clear having this conversation with myself. in my 20s. And oh, by the way, I was soft and higher in body fat and exhausted all the time. And despite the fact that I was pushing myself through my workouts, I was miserable and I did not look fit. I certainly was not ripped. It's important to understand that your body really is like a high performance vehicle. It must have specialty fuel in order to run optimally. Now, The note here is that I'm not saying, listen closely, I'm not saying eat a high fiber, balanced, slow digesting meal before your workouts. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying fuel up. And that means that you prepare your body with easy to digest carbs and protein with very little fat around your workouts. And this is because you You want the carbs and the protein to digest quickly, to get to your muscles and your blood without spending any time in your digestive system. A lot of people don't know this, but fiber and fat slow down digestion. And you want that for most of your meals during the day, right? Outside of your workouts, that's exactly what you want. Slow digestion. But pre-workout fuel is very different. The whole point is to... number one, prepare your machinery so that your blood sugar is stable and the pairing of carbs and protein do that. But then also number two, ensure that your body has a full supply of circulating blood glucose in general. You want stable and balanced blood sugar because the first half of your workout is going to require glucose. And so if your blood sugar is getting low when you go into your workout because you had lunch three hours ago, a half an hour into your workout, you're not going to have any blood sugar. And so your body has to go into this alternate metabolism in order to fuel the workout. That's why you'll never get a great workout on empty. So stop showing up for your workouts without first having put some thought into preparing your engine with fuel. And on that note, beyond protein and carbs, I don't think I know a single truly ripped woman who doesn't use creatine. Creatine for women is a powerful way to improve strength and energy during your workouts and the lean muscle that is the result of the high quality workout. One of my brand partners is Creatone by Brickhouse Nutrition. Creatone is a special creatine formula designed just for women. Doctors designed creatone to reshape and tone your body without added diet and exercise. Two women can be the same height and weight, but the woman taking creatone will look more fit, in shape, and more toned. Her jeans will be loose. You'll look leaner and toned and more in shape. Stop getting stuck in the same exhausting cycle where you lose 5 pounds, gain 6, lose 10, gain 12. Stop weighing yourself and change your body shape with creatine. Its foundation is the purest form of creatine in the world, sourced from Germany, designed to help reshape and tone your body even before you start losing weight. Creatine targets your body's muscle-to-fat ratio, also known as your body composition. It targets overall fitness and firmness so that your tummy and your thighs and your glutes and your arms look tighter, firmer, smoother, and more defined. Creatone also supports weight loss by helping convert excess body fat into usable energy so that you burn calories more efficiently. Let me help you get started with 20% off your first order. Visit tonetoday.com. And use the promo code HOLLYP. That's promo code HOLLYP at tonetoday.com. I've got two more clean eating tips from women who got ripped. And the fourth one is assembling your meals with single ingredient food items. This is the one that few people talk about when you see one of those what I eat in a day stories from Fit Women. If you look closely, you'll see that they aren't relying on packaged foods with numerous ingredients. You got to pay attention to it because they're not overtly calling out this tip, but it's what's happening. And wow, this practice works like magic. And it's really easy to just simply call it clean eating, right? Single ingredient foods put together. That's true. But of course, all five of the tips. today have to come together. There really is power in simplicity and eating pure basic foods, and it's so good for getting lean. The more you can assemble your meals and your snacks with single ingredient items, the better you'll feel, and therefore the faster you're going to get ripped because you're going to perform better. The mistake is grabbing foods with slick marketing that are really for convenience or flavor. And I'm going to go there. A really great example of this is protein bars. They are highly concentrated bricks of calories with a million ingredients to make them taste good or to give them a certain mouth feel or to just keep them together in a form that looks like a candy bar. Now, I'm not saying they're unhealthy. I'm not overtly saying that because some of them are fine. In fact, if you're on the go and you don't have any other options, if you're stranded on a desert island, I would say that eating a protein bar instead of going on empty is always the better option because just skipping food altogether is the worst mistake of all by far. But imagine this. You eat a 200-calorie protein bar with 25 ingredients. Okay, I'm actually going to call out one brand in particular, and if you know me, you know I don't normally do it, but this headline really bothered me, and that's David Protein Bars. Now listen.I stopped eating protein bars in 2014, and I have never personally had a David protein bar. But if you know what I'm talking about, they've been in the news in the past couple of months because there was a reveal about their ingredients. Let me leave it at that. But I'll tell you this, my friend, I have certainly been intrigued by their advertising. It's one of those things where if you hear about a product enough from enough different people, you're kind of like FOMO. What am I missing out on? Everyone is talking about this product. It must be magical or so special. And I admit, I got sucked into that vibe around David protein bars. I was like, hmm, I might have to try these. These sound like they're so incredible. Somehow they have been able to swindle you into thinking that there is something special about this bar. So I took a good look at the ingredients, and guess what? Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. They are just as garbage as most other protein bars that hit the markets in the 90s. The protein is whey protein isolate, which personally I will not touch and I personally just think is junk. If you love it, that's fine. You've got your opinion. This is just my personal opinion. The main protein is whey protein isolate, milk protein concentrate, and egg whites. Egg whites are fine, right? Their quote unquote fat system, as they call it, is palm kernel oil, which no one has ever said is good for you. And the flavor and color system, as they call it, includes acylfame potassium. And I don't care what anyone says, artificial sweeteners are not good for you. They are not proactively good for you. You will hear some other experts say, They're not bad for you. You'll hear them say you have to get a lot of artificial sweeteners for it to impact your health. But let's reverse engineer that. No one is saying they're healthy. And if in moderation they're okay, but in high quantities they're not, I'd take a look at that, right? The devil is in the details. So in this situation, you could eat this brick of dense calories. in a very small container with 25 ingredients. Or you could eat lean chicken or turkey or halibut alongside of brown rice and quinoa with some nice broccoli rabe and some berries for dessert. For the same exact calories, you're eating four single ingredient foods that you know where they came from. They did not have to be manufactured or chemically altered. And this actually provides nutrition for your body. I literally cannot remember the last time I ate a protein bar. And when I gather data on seriously ripped women, none of them are eating protein bars. Instead, they rely on single ingredient foods all the time. This means oats, eggs, berries for breakfast. I ate this for years when I was ripped. Three ingredients. This also means grilled chicken, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar for lunch. Seven ingredients, same calories. Or ground beef, sweet potato, avocado, and cottage cheese for dinner. This loaded sweet potato has four ingredients. This is how women go from being 70% lean mass to 80% lean mass very quickly. So tip number four is assemble meals and snacks with single ingredient foods. You will go so much farther. Tip number five is quite possibly the one ring to rule them all because you will never get ripped without releasing body fat. And in order to do that, it's really helpful to be in a calorie deficit. Now, you can... release and burn off body fat without being in a calorie deficit, right? You can because your body can, if you condition it correctly, it can tap into fat as its energy fuel. So you can reduce visceral adipose tissue without being in a calorie deficit. You can. But if you really want to get ripped, I do not know a single ripped woman who did it without being in a calorie deficit. Alongside of getting smart about their macronutrient balance each day, the women who got ripped absolutely ensured a calorie deficit every day, seven days per week, until they reached their goal leanness. Now. Here is the nuance. It needs to be a small enough deficit that you're not hangry. Because hunger is the fastest path to caving to a craving, or overindulging in a delicious food, or even your healthy, well-constructed meal. You can't eat so little that you're starving, but you do have to eat less than you burn each day. This is physics. It's the first law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. You must transform the energy from your existing body fat into another form of energy that is then used as fuel by your body. So if you hear some social media voice out there say, calories in and calories out is outdated. or a lie, I so encourage you to check their education and listen more closely. Because didn't you learn in high school, the energy cannot be created nor destroyed? That sounds familiar, right? So unless someone has changed the law of physics in the past 10 or 20 years, it still stands since the last time I checked. Now, I will say it may not be as simple as that. There is a much larger conversation here, but you must be in a calorie deficit if you want to get ripped. Ask any bikini competitor or bodybuilder. Now, nobody got ripped eating fast food in a calorie deficit. So there is something to be said for food quality. It's not only about a calorie deficit, and that's why there's five tips today that all work together, but you're going to feel so much better and be healthier if you're Ka- calories each day come from single ingredient foods. Like I said, you must eat less energy, i.e. calories, than you expend during a 10 to 14 day period. It is not in a 24 hour cycle. It's over a larger cycle. And in my experience with my clients, it's around a 10 to 14 day period. This is why you might you drop off some body fat, and then kind of hit a plateau for a couple of weeks and then drop it off again because it goes in cycles. Your calorie deficit must be small enough that you're mostly satisfied each day, but you're still slightly hungry, but never hangry or pulling your hair out. The big mistake is eating too big of a calorie deficit and that will derail you Thank you. so fast, like within five to seven days, and it also destroys muscle. So think of it like this. If I took you into a gas analysis lab and we determined for fact that your RMR, your resting metabolic rate, is 1,400 calories, this means that you would need and you would burn 1,400 calories of energy laying in bed all day long. That's what an RMR is, resting metabolic rate. Now, let's say you don't lay in bed all day and you're going about your life and your workouts and whatever you do over a 10 to 14 day cycle. This activity, when you're using your body, requires, let's say, another 800 calories of energy per day. Okay? This means that what's called your TDEE, Total Daily Energy Expenditure, is... 2,200 calories, right? RMR is 1,400. And then if we could mathematically ascertain that you need another 800 calories to get through the day to maintain your current body weight, your current body status, that would be 2,200 calories in order to maintain where you are. The mistake is slashing 1,000 calories so that you eat you 1200 calories, listen closely, that's why I'm slowing down, in order to lose weight. I can't tell you how many women are doing this before they see the light and work with me and they change things. Most people, when they try to go on a diet and lose weight, it's below 1400 calories, right? If you think back to your history, if this resonates for you. So in this situation, that would be a thousand calorie deficit. 1,000 calories, that is way too big to be successful. And none of my most successful clients do that. This is why I believe if someone is 100 pounds overweight and they start eating 1,400 calories, they're looking at like a 2,000 calorie deficit. No wonder they struggle to be successful. It's bad advice because your deficit has to be relative. to where you are currently and your current T-D-E-E. If you weigh 300 pounds, you need more calories to maintain that 300 pounds than someone who's 120 pounds, right? That makes sense. You want a smaller calorie deficit. I don't care if you weigh 500 pounds. You still have to have a smaller calorie deficit so that, yes, you're hungry. A little, because you're eating less than your body needs each day. But you're not distracted by that hunger. And cravings are not derailing you. And you're not struggling with energy fallout. Because if your energy deficit is too big, you are going to be on the struggle bus. And it makes it really hard to win. And you will never get ripped that way. And before you ask, the actual calorie deficit it. depends on a number of factors. And so I'm not going to give you a target calorie deficit, but a thousand calorie deficit's too big. And that's one of the things that we do inside of my coaching programs, because it's unique to your TDEE. It's unique to your strength training program, your cardio programming, et cetera, et cetera. Your fat loss, your current body size, your current body composition. There's so many factors that dictate this, but I will tell you this. The women who got ripped were not in a thousand calorie deficit. So as you're assembling meals with single ingredients, pairing protein with carbs, and targeting a specific macronutrient strategy each day, you also must ensure that you're eating a little less than your body actually needs every single day, seven days a week, until you reach your ripped goal. And that, my friend, is the cheat code of clean eating. from the very women who got ripped. And if you are ready to get ripped and really go for it, your next step is to listen to my podcast episode, The Six Secrets of Seriously Ripped Women. It's episode 74, and you can find it wherever you listen to my podcast or on my website blog. Just search Ripped Women and you'll see it. If this episode inspires you and you think, I want to achieve that at least once in my life and you want to go for it, But then there's a part of you that's like, I don't even know if I could, and that's for other people or other women, or I don't think my body can do that. Hear me loud and clear. Your body can do it too if you want. Now, I'm not suggesting you should do it. That's up to you because it isn't for the faint of heart, and it really does require months of dedication. You got to be obsessed. You got to be a dog with a bone. You got to be determined to do this. My message to you is If you want that, I will tell you it's worth it. It's a lot of fun. And I will always encourage you to go for it. And I will also say, I don't care where you come from. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're missing a thyroid. You too can do it. I've seen every woman of every age, of every walk of life, of every history do it. And so you can if you want it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If so, I hope that you will rate and review it for me wherever you're listening. Your rating and your reviews are really good because it helps boost my rating of my podcast so that more women can hear these messages. I'm on a mission to create strong women around the world, and I need your help in order to do that. So please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening. And... Stay tuned for another brand new episode on Tuesday of next week. Stay strong, my friend.