Yogatotransform

You close your 20 hour fasting window for the fifth time this week. You've hit the gym. You've eaten less than you have in years. And the scale says the exact same number it said three weeks ago.

That's devastating when you've done everything right and your body still is still the same weight.

You did the fasting.
And the number on the scale hasn't moved once, except maybe in the wrong direction.

What you might not know is why the fasting and the restriction isn't working, or why they might be working against you now.

A body that's underfed doesn't burn fast faster. It slows down and holds onto every calorie it gets, because as far as your metabolism is concerned, food has become scarce and survival mode is the priority. So you eat less, and your body compensates by needing even less to hold its current weight. That's biology protecting you from what it reads as a famine.

And here's the part most women miss. You're not eating as little as it feels like you are. The calories you are having often aren't nutrient dense, and they're landing at the wrong time of day to actually support your metabolism. A skipped breakfast and lunch, a bigger meal eaten late at night, snacks that are more sugar than substance. None of what you're eating adds up to starvation. All of it adds up to a body that's confused about when food is coming and what to do with it when it arrives.

Restricting your eating window is not always the answer, even when the scale isn't moving and it feels like the only lever left to pull. Sometimes the answer is eating more, at the right times, of the right things, so your metabolism trusts you enough to let go of what it's holding onto.

You don't need another fast. You need to know the right tweaks for you. What to eat, when to eat it, and how to rebuild a metabolism that's stopped trusting you so it can finally start working with you instead of against you.

If you're keen to get the number on the scale moving without fasting all day DM me.

I remember when my youngest child graduated high school.

They stood at the front of the hall in their uniform for the last time, and by the end of the day they were already talking about the culinary course they start in a few weeks. One peak moment, done. The next one already calling them forward.

And in between those two points sits a transition. A gap most of us barely notice, let alone honour.

We got thinking about that this week on the mat, because it is exactly what we do in a yoga practice too. We chase the peak pose. We hold our breath until we get there, and the moment we land it, we relax, like the pose was the only part that mattered. But the getting there matters just as much. The stepping back into the lunge. The walking forward out of downward dog.

That pause is so brief you could miss it entirely. Most of us do.

So this week's class stayed with that idea the whole way through. We spent real time on the shoulders, isolating the small actions most people rush past on their way to the pose they actually want. Lifting the shoulders towards the ears. Softening them down the back. Drawing the shoulder blades together, then letting them broaden apart. Small movements, but they are the ones that hold everything together when we move from table into cobra, from plank into a lunge, from one side of triangle back to standing.

You know that feeling when you are moving through a sequence and your body just seems to know where it is going, even mid-transition? That is not an accident. That is awareness built one small, unglamorous action at a time.

We carried the theme all the way to savasana. Even the breath has its own quiet transition, that flicker of a gap between the inhale ending and the exhale beginning. We asked ourselves the same question we ask in every class. Is this an endpoint, or is it a transition? And can we stay present either way?

Off the mat, it looks like this. It is the walk through the supermarket. It is noticing the flowers, the sunshine, the light, instead of scrolling through what happens after you get home. It is watching your own child step from one identity into the next and choosing to be fully in the gap with them, not just at the finish line.

It is also the space between where you are now and the body or the life you are working towards. We spend so much energy on the destination that we forget the getting there is where we actually live.

We have put the full class up on YouTube this week if you want to move through it yourself. It walks through the shoulder work in detail, then builds into low lunges, twists and a gentle cobra sequence, before landing back in child's pose and savasana.

If you are local, we would love to see you on the mat in Christchurch. If you are further afield, the video will take you through the whole thing at home.

Wherever you are moving through this week, we hope you find a moment to notice the gap. Not just the destination.

Stay present. Stay anchored. Stay you.
Link to class here - https://youtu.be/LjgUXfhBCQo

3am. Wide awake. Staring at the ceiling with zero hope of getting back to sleep before the alarm goes off.

That was me a few months ago. Night after night. And if you have ever tried to coach a client, run a business or just be a decent human on four broken hours of sleep, you know exactly what that does to you.

I went to my doctor for sleeping pills and melatonin. Honestly, that's all I wanted. She had me fill out the menopause symptoms sheet first, and by the end of it she said I had more than enough symptoms to go on HRT.

I'm not against HRT. But I have never taken the pill in my life. I don't love the idea of overriding my body's own wisdom if I can work with it instead. So I said yes to that conversation before I said yes to the sleeping pills.

I gave it a proper couple of months. My sleep didn't change. And when I talked to my clients who are on HRT, most of them told me the same thing, it didn't fully fix their symptoms either, so the answer was to increase the dose.

I wasn't going to do that without understanding why it wasn't working first.

So I went back to my doctor, picked up the sleeping pills and melatonin I'd wanted in the first place, and turned my attention to what was actually running underneath the sleeplessness. Stress. My nervous system had been switched on for months and no hormone patch was going to switch it back off on its own.

I worked with adaptogens and feminine support herbs from an Ayurvedic lens, alongside the sleep support, and treated the root cause instead of just the symptom sitting on top of it.

Now I sleep deep through the night. When I wake, I fall back asleep instead of lying there until the alarm. I'm close to feeling like myself again.

Here's what I see constantly with my clients. Women reach for HRT and skip the lifestyle, food and stress work that's actually driving the symptoms. HRT has its place. But the results get so much better when you look at what's actually causing the problem, not just what's covering it up.

If your sleep, energy, weight or mood have been off and you want to look at the root cause with me, reach out.

You walk out of your first weights session already checking the mirror.

I see it happen almost every time. A new client picks up the heavy weights for the first session, feels her legs shake on the last set, and part of her is quietly waiting for a different body to show up by the following week. Maybe the month after that.

You expect to feel it by the next session.
You expect the mirror to say something new within a month.
And when it doesn't, some women quietly stop showing up.

Unfortunately, if weight training is the main thing we're doing, the body does not shift on that timeline. It shifts on consistency.

Two to three sessions a week. Heavy weights. Month after month. That's the actual formula, and it's slower than what most women expect walking in the door.

I've had a some clients now who stayed on that formula for close to nine months before we noticed the change. Powerhouse women. In the gym two to three times a week with me, moving real weight, showing up on the weeks they didn't feel like it too.

Then one session, it's just there. A little more definition through the legs. The waist sits differently. The arms have shape they didn't have in January.

Why? Because muscle is built in layers you can't see for a long time, and then one day the layers are enough to show through.

Once that first shift shows up, the next ones come faster. Then it feels like every time I see these women there body has changed. A little more definition. A little more shrink. It compounds once it starts.

Transforming your body through weight training alone is completely achievable. I watch women do it. But the ones who get there aren't the ones looking for a different body in week one. They're the ones who decide heavy lifting is just something they do now, part of who they are, and who stay steady through nine slow months while other women would have quit at month two.

Then the results don't stop coming.

If you're ready to build that kind of consistency. identity and body change, let's talk.

Five months ago my client left me for a GLP-1 drug.

She'd tried everything with me first, the strength training, the food work, the mindset shifts. But it wasn't happening fast enough and she was struggling with the parts of her body that needed rehab. So when a friend got results on the injection and she wanted to try it too. Her hunger slowed down and the weight starting dropping - slowly.

But it wasn't easy or enjoyable.

The nausea came first.
Then a headache that never fully left.
Then her sugar cravings, the ones we'd worked so hard to settle, spiked harder than they ever had on her own.
She was tired, foggy and reaching for sugar just to get through the afternoon.

She lost 5kg in those five months. Last week she sat across from me and said she was done. Not done losing weight. Done borrowing it from something that made her sick to get there.

Why? Because a GLP-1 drug can turn down hunger, but it comes with those known side effects and it can't teach a woman how to eat, move and live in a body that's actually hers again. It can't rebuild her metabolism, her digestive fire, or the muscle and strength she needs to hold steady and stay well for the next twenty years, not just the next prescription refill.

You know that a drug can quiet appetite and the food noise. It can't rebuild identity. That part is still yours to do.

She's back with me now on a combined coaching and PT package. We're not chasing a number on the scale. We're rebuilding her relationship to food, her metabolism, her muscle mass, and her belief that she can live well in her body even with it's aches and pains.

Now she's a woman who tried the shortcut, felt exactly what it cost her body, and chose the harder, truer path back to herself.

I am so proud of her.

If you're standing where she was five months ago, wondering whether the drug is the answer or the side door out of your own strength, reach out and we can talk about how we can support you to lose weight and change your identity.

Same time. Same treadmill. Same woman, every single week.

I watch her run and it is clearly not easy for her. The pace is slow, her face tells the whole story, and she is not having a good time out there. But I have so much respect for her, because week after week, she shows up anyway. That kind of consistency is rare and it matters.

I don't know her story. My guess is she wants to lose weight, and somewhere along the way she was told that pushing through a hard run is the price you pay for that.

I'm always with a client when she finishes, so I've never gotten the chance to go over and say what I actually think when I see her walk past afterward, looking defeated. So I'll say it here instead, and it's not a judgment. It's an insight I wish she had.

You don't have to do the hard slog to lose weight anymore.

Here's what women need to know. Steady state cardio at a pace you're gritting your teeth through is one of the least efficient ways to change your body composition, especially over 40. It burns some calories while you're doing it and then your body moves on with its day like nothing happened.

Why? Because fat loss and body composition change come from building and keeping muscle, not from grinding through cardio you don't enjoy. Muscle is what changes your shape, lifts your metabolism, and keeps working for you long after you've left the gym. Slow steady-state cardio alone that feels like punishment, doesn't deliver the change a woman is hoping to see. Women over 40 need a different kind of cardio than the long run on the treadmill.

That's why week after week, her fitness doesn't look like it's shifting. It should be. Every week of consistent training should show up somewhere, in how a movement feels, in training getting easier, in what she can lift, in how her body looks. If it isn't, the effort isn't the problem. The approach is.

If this is you, here's the redirect. Find cardio you actually enjoy, walking, dancing, swimming, anything that gets your heart rate up without dread attached.

Consistency like hers deserves to be matched with a plan that works as hard as she does.

You packed your gym bag and took it to work, planning to go on the way home. You didn't go. Now there's a voice in your head telling you the whole week is wrecked, so you might as well order takeout and start again Monday. That voice is the one I actually care about.

Because it is never really about the missed session or the takeout order. Those are just symptoms. It's about who you decided you were the moment you skipped that workout.

The woman who just wants to lose weight treats one missed session like proof she's failing. She's all in or all out. One skipped gym class becomes a skipped week becomes starting the whole thing over in January.

The woman who looks after her body for the long term misses the same session and picks the next one back up without the story attached. She's not more disciplined. She just isn't fighting an identity that says it's too hard to lose weight.

That's the difference identity work actually makes, and here's what you need to know before you start it. It brings the old stuff up. The belief that you have to earn rest. The habit of punishing yourself with food after a hard workout, or punishing yourself with restriction after a big eating day. The pattern of measuring your whole week by your worst moment in it.

Why? Because a missed workout doesn't move the scale. The three weeks of all or nothing thinking that follow it does. It's never the food or the workout that tanks a woman's results. It's the belief underneath it that decides what happens next.

Most programmes hand you a schedule and a meal plan and hope discipline carries you the rest of the way. It never does, not for long. Discipline runs out. Identity doesn't, because it isn't something you have to talk yourself into every morning. It's just who you are now.

This is slower work than a new workout plan. It's also the only version I've seen actually hold, past the eight week programme, past the goal weight, into the years after.

So the gym bag by the door. The version of you who picks tomorrow's session back up without making it mean anything about who you are, that's who we're building.

DM to get started.

That daily quiet judgement of yourself, your body, your aging, how far along you are, is a form of violence.

In this week's podcast we explore ahimsa, the yoga teaching on compassion and kindness. Ahimsa is usually translated as non-violence, but it goes far beyond not causing physical harm. It's compassion and kindness, in thought, in word, and in deed.

Ahimsa starts with intention rather than action or impact alone. It's not just about what you do. It's about the place you're coming from when you do it.

That shows up in your training and eating as not pushing past your own limits and not criticising where you are today. It shows up in daily life too, in what we take in. The foods we eat that we know will leave us feeling worse. The scary movie that keeps us up for weeks. The people and the media we surround ourselves with without noticing the effect they're having.

And it shows up in our thinking. Harmful thoughts about ourselves or others activate the same fight or flight response as a real threat, flooding the body with cortisol and adrenaline. Loving and harmonious thoughts do the opposite, supporting the immune system and genuine wellbeing.

There's research showing happiness is contagious. If a close friend is happy, you're around 25 percent more likely to be happy yourself. Even an acquaintance's happiness lifts yours by around 6 percent. Kindness moves through a room the same way, whether we're conscious of it or not.

So this week, notice where you're being hardest on yourself. In your training, in your thoughts, in what you're consuming. And see if you can meet that place with a little more loving kindness instead.

Watch this week's podcast on the link below and reach out if you would like to learn to transform your body with some more love and kindness:

Ahimsa: the yoga practice of non-violence towards yourself You judge your body every time you step onto the mat. The wobble in...

A client of mine told me about two friends, both 60, who fell within months of each other. Both broke bones. One broke so many that she can no longer look after herself. She's in a care facility until she heals.

My client didn't come to that session wanting to talk about workouts. She came thinking about the difference between her at 60 and her friends.

If you're a woman who knows the diets that used to work for you don't work anymore, and you're not willing to settle for slowly declining instead of losing weight and staying strong, this is the story I want you to sit with.

Here's what you need to know. A fall at 60 that ends in a care facility isn't just bad luck. Bone density and muscle mass don't disappear overnight. They erode slowly, over years, usually while a woman is doing everything she thinks is right. Eating less. Sitting more.

Why? Because when you manage your weight through restriction instead of strength, you're not just losing fat. You're losing the muscle and bone density that keep you upright, steady, and able to catch yourself when life throws you off balance. That erosion is silent until the day it isn't.

That's not aging. That's the compound result of small daily choices. Fasting until lunchtime instead of nourishing. Staying seated instead of moving. Nobody decides at 60 to fall. Women decide, one day at a time from their 40s onward, whether their body is being built up or slowly worn down.

The women I coach are done trading their independence for a smaller dress size. They want to lose the weight and manage it long term while their strength, their balance and their bone density go up, not down.

That's what we actually train for. Strength work that builds bone density and muscle, nutrition that fuels a body doing real work, and a whole system approach, body, mind and constitution together, so weight loss and long term strength happen at the same time, not at each other's expense.

If you're ready to build real strength while you lose the weight, DM me to learn how we can work together.