She Lost 100 Pounds and Reveals the #1 Myth That Kept Her Stuck for Years (It’s About Spot Reducing Fat)

The fitness industry loves complexity.

It thrives on confusion, selling solutions to problems that don’t exist while ignoring the fundamentals that actually work.

But one coach who’s lost over 100 pounds herself is cutting through the noise with a brutally honest breakdown of what really matters when transforming your body.

And her first truth bomb? It’s one most women desperately need to hear.

Spot Reducing Fat Is A Myth—And It’s Costing You Results

Most women design their workouts around the body parts they hate most.

Belly fat? More crunches. Thick thighs? Hello, abduction machine. Arm jiggle? Let’s schedule an arm day.

You cannot spot reduce fat. Picture this. You’ve got a bathtub full of water in front of you here, and you take a cup and you scoop a scoop of water out of the bathtub. What happens to the rest of the water now that you’ve got that cup full in the cup? The water fills back in.

Fat loss doesn’t work like liposuction. It’s systemic.

Your body pulls from stored fat all over based on hormonal signals and genetic predisposition—and no amount of tricep kickbacks overrides that order.

A 2017 study trained one leg exclusively for 12 weeks. Both legs lost the exact same amount of fat.

The work you put into a muscle doesn’t pull the fat sitting directly on top of it. They’re two separate systems entirely.

The only lever that moves fat? Your overall calorie deficit. The only lever that changes your shape? The muscle underneath.

GLP-1 Drugs Cause Muscle Loss—Here’s Why That Matters

GLP-1 drugs are being marketed as miracle solutions to obesity.

Sometimes the before-and-afters look incredible. But often, users lose far more than just fat.

Here’s the cascade: You’re already not eating enough protein. Then you start taking a drug that blunts hunger and slows digestion.

Protein takes the most energy to digest—it’s called the thermic effect of food. Carbs and fats digest faster and easier.

So when you’re nauseous, bloated, and not hungry, what do you crave? Quick-digesting carbs. Crackers. Toast. Cheese Whiz buns.

For dinner, she had perogis and chicken, but she was full and didn’t finish her chicken, but finished her five perogis.

When you’re feeling awful and full, the last thing you want to do is hit the gym and lift heavy.

GLP-1 trials showed users lost an average of 15% of their body weight—but a significant chunk was lean mass, not fat.

Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate. The moment you stop the drug and return to normal eating, you’re in a worse position than before.

You’ve decreased your metabolism by losing muscle. Now you’ve created an even bigger caloric surplus for yourself, which just stores more fat—not rebuild muscle.

Loneliness Has The Same Mortality Risk As Smoking

Think about people who’ve stayed consistently fit for years—not those who did a challenge or lost weight for a wedding.

What do they have in common? Probably not what you think.

A meta-analysis of 148 studies and 308,000 people found that social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 26%—comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes daily.

It exceeds obesity and physical inactivity as a risk factor.

This isn’t soft wellness talk. This is hard epidemiology.

Chronic loneliness elevates cortisol, suppresses immune function, disrupts sleep, and drives systemic inflammation. Every single one of those things directly tanks fat loss and muscle preservation.

There’s been times for me when the community aspect of it was so important that it got me going to do CrossFit at 6:00 a.m. 5 days a week just because the people and the community and the atmosphere.

People who stay fit long-term always have some social component—a training partner, a class, a coach, community.

It’s not just accountability. It’s biology. We’re wired to move with other people. When you don’t, your body registers that as a threat.

Scheduled Treat Meals Actually Help Fat Loss

What if the thing you’ve been feeling guilty about is actually one of the most effective tools in fat loss?

And what if the way most people do it makes it work against them instead of for them?

The key word here is planned.

If I know I have some sort of event coming up, you know, summer’s around the corner, there’s Billy Joe’s barbecue is coming up and I want to be able to go and eat a burger without beating myself up about it and trying to cardio off the cake the next morning, that’s all the more reason for me to stick to the plan.

Research comparing flexible versus rigid dietary restraints shows that people who allow planned treats are:

• Less likely to binge
• Less likely to develop disordered eating patterns
• Significantly more likely to maintain fat loss long-term

The restriction mindset creates the binge cycle—not the food itself.

A treat meal you schedule in advance lets you adjust your intake around it so your weekly calorie average stays on track. You are not falling off track. The treat meal is part of the plan.

Telling yourself you’ll never eat pizza again is a promise you’re going to break 100% of the time.

But scheduling Saturday pizza means you have something to look forward to Monday through Friday—and a built-in reason not to spiral Thursday night.

Fiber Changes Your Body Composition

Everyone’s obsessing over protein and sugar. Almost nobody’s talking about fiber.

Most women track calories, protein, steps, and weight. Almost none track the micronutrient that determines how your body actually looks.

We’ve normalized feeling bloated. We’ve normalized eating whenever hunger or cravings strike, often reaching for fake sweeteners or processed foods.

But we won’t eat a vegetable because “broccoli makes me bloated.”

Our bodies aren’t used to the fiber and they’re used to the junk that we’ve been putting in that the food industry has led us to believe is food.

Fiber feeds beneficial gut bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids. Those acids reduce inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, and directly influence how much fat your body stores versus burns.

The average woman gets 15 grams of fiber daily. The goal is 25 to 35 grams.

A 2019 study found that increasing fiber by just 4 grams per day led to significantly greater fat loss over six months—even when no other dietary changes were made.

High-fiber diets are consistently associated with lower body fat percentages, independent of total calorie intake.

Chronic Stress Blocks Fat Loss

You’re eating well. Training hard. Doing everything right.

And the scale isn’t moving.

Your first thought? I need to eat less.

But you might not need to eat less at all.

Chronic stress shows up everywhere—skin breakouts, bags under eyes, facial inflammation, random rashes.

It creates a vicious cycle: skip the gym, eat more, stress more, sleep less, stay up late, crave quick carbs for energy, drink to disassociate, sleep even worse.

Less sleep elevates ghrelin—the hormone that makes you hungry.

The moment I started prioritizing managing my stress, things like journaling, going for a walk, touching grass, taking a breath instead of an Oreo, that was when the things actually started to change for me.

Cortisol is a catabolic hormone. When chronically elevated, it breaks down muscle for fuel, signals fat storage around the abdomen and organs, and actively blocks fat mobilization from existing stores.

A study found that women with higher cortisol reactivity accumulated significantly more abdominal fat—independent of total body weight.

Stress specifically targets visceral fat, the most dangerous kind.

Breath work, walks, adequate sleep, and nervous system regulation aren’t self-care extras. They’re body composition interventions.

Training Volume Has A Ceiling

There’s a point where you’re stepping over hundreds to pick up pennies.

More of a good thing is good—until it isn’t.

Research shows a clear dose-response relationship between weekly training volume and muscle growth, but only up to a ceiling.

For most people, that’s 10 to 20 working sets per muscle group per week.

Beyond that, returns diminish while recovery costs skyrocket.

You’re no longer stimulating growth. You’re accumulating damage.

We had a client, for example, came into our elite coaching program and she was currently doing her own workouts, which were CrossFit style workouts, and then she was incorporating the training plan that we made for her, too.

She was experiencing symptoms of overtraining because she wasn’t honest about everything she was doing.

Or women will come wanting to lose fat while simultaneously training for a marathon—trying to fuel endurance training with goo packs while creating a calorie deficit.

The math doesn’t math.

Identity Over Outcome Goals

Why do some people transform their bodies and keep it off for life, while others lose and regain the same weight repeatedly?

They’re not more motivated. They’re not more disciplined.

The difference happens before the first workout.

Where focus goes, energy flows. What we resist persists. What you don’t believe in, you will resist.

This is why building an identity that serves you is critical.

One day she referred to herself as fatty arbuckle. And I was like, Hold up. You have a daughter, right? Do you love your daughter? Would you ever refer to your daughter as fatty arbuckle?

Outcome-based goals are terminal. “I want to lose 30 pounds.” You lose it—then what?

Research in behavior change shows that identity-based approaches produce more durable results because they shift the underlying self-concept rather than chasing a finish line.

Identity-based goals like “I’m someone who lifts” or “I’m someone who eats with intention” are self-reinforcing.

Every decision you make either confirms that identity or contradicts it. It’s like casting votes in a ballot box.

You’ll put votes in all boxes—past self, current self, future self. But as long as you’re putting more into the future self box, you make progress.

Eventually that behavior becomes your identity. You no longer need motivation. It’s just who you are.

The question was never “What do you want?” The question is “Who do you want to become?”

Every meal, training session, and night of sleep is a vote for or against that person.

Cast enough votes in one direction and you stop feeling like someone trying to lose weight. You become someone who lives a life of health in a body that actually serves them.