I’ve been quiet for a few months. Here’s what I was doing, along with a handful of takeaways that might surprise you on your own wellness journey. If you’ve ever lost weight, gained it back and felt like you failed, this one’s for you.
I’m officially a NASM Certified Weight Loss Specialist!
Adding a new certification to personal training for re-certification isn’t the most involved task in the world, but it does take a lot of time and focus once you decide to go for it. This specific course took me a little under twenty hours to complete, including a 90-minute final exam with a very large folder of handouts and takeaways to use down the road.
In case you’re newer around here, I have a long-term love for both NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) and Precision Nutrition for education and certifications in the health and fitness industry. You can read more about my experience with NASM here (along with my study guides!) along with and my PN reviews of the Nutrition Coaching and Sleep, Stress and Recovery Management Coaching courses around the blog. (Phew!)
For those who don’t know, in order to keep your certification in personal training active, you need to re-certify every two years with continued education credits. I knew the challenge going into it, and I actually love having motivation to acquire more knowledge and skillsets and deadlines to do it in.
I’m not going to share a review of the Weight Loss Specialist certification, but instead leave you with a background on why I chose it, what I plan to do with it, and five really great takeaways that you can apply to your own wellness journey!
How we got here:
Before we dive in, let’s back up because you might need some context on what I actually do for work these days. Above all, I am the main caretaker for my son who is now eight years old. I drop him off to school, pick him up, and take him to all of his after-school activities and sports. I am so thankful for our time together every afternoon, and while it’s not a job that actually pays (lolll), I am rich in life for the opportunity and season to do this. That’s not lost on me at all.
My husband runs his own business and constantly travels for work, so I hold the fort down (along with the mental load) here while he juggles *a lot* in and out of New York. Over the past several months, I have also held the Chief Administrative Officer role with his company, and together we are a small business figuring the ins and outs of what that means along the way.
That said, my passion is and will always be connected to the health and fitness industry! And while I’m not working full-time at the moment, I have clients that I train in-home and online. When I have the extra time, I thoroughly enjoy creating content here on the blog as well as on social media, and I’ve been slowly chipping away at a huge project that sadly fell on the back burner for far too long. But we’re back at it, and that just about sums it up for now!
I love the flexibility to be able to do it all, without spreading myself too thin (most of the time).
Studying for this new certification took over my tasks at home during school hours, and I was able to get it done in between cooking dinner, bedtimes, conference calls, and folding laundry. To my advantage, a lot of the content was a refresher on what I’ve already learned through other certifications, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t needed. Any time I add a new specialty or focus, I feel a lot more confident in what I’m coaching. This is especially true after this one when it comes to understanding the statistics, causes and successful strategies in coaching on weight loss specifically.
So if I’m training and have the credentials already, why this specialty and why now?
Well, I needed the continued education credits, but more importantly, if there’s anything I hear from clients or readers about frustrations in health and fitness, it ties back to weight loss more times than not. Now that everyone is an influencer, self-proclaimed expert, or celebrity on social media, there is *a lot* of noise out there when it comes to the science behind it, what works, and what doesn’t.
I get it, and I feel overwhelmed at times, too.
This is my biggest motivator to finish the course I’m developing of my own (!!!), and why I’m here to share tidbits and advice I learn along the way.
Here are a few things from the course I think you should know:
(I won’t go into detailed specifics, as that type of content will be reserved for my own self-paced coaching package I’m building, but hopefully this helps and acts as a peek into what to expect.)
1. Maintenance is a range, not a number. Staying within about 5 pounds of your goal weight absolutely counts as maintaining. True regain is when your weekly average stays more than 3% above that for several weeks in a row. For this reason, I think the scale is an amazing tool, but is *not* the best one when aiming for weight loss.
2. You probably need more protein than you think. Aim for at least 1.7g per kg of your goal or maintenance weight (about 0.77g per lb). It helps you stay full and protect muscle while losing fat. For example, if your goal weight is 150 lb (68 kg), aim for at least 116g of protein/day.
A couple more for reference:
- 130 lb (59kg): about 100g per day
- 140 lb (63.5kg): about 108g per day
- 160 lb (72.6kg): about 123g per day
- 180 lb (81.6kg): about 139g per day
Of course, specific amounts of macros depend on each person, their goals, and their activity levels, but above is a great general guideline to start. My biggest tip to adding more protein to your day is to start with a high-protein breakfast. Add a side of eggs to your toast, a side of Greek yogurt, or even cottage cheese into your scrambled eggs as they cook. (Don’t knock it until you try it!)
3. Fiber is the underrated one. Aim for at least 25g a day for women and 38g for men, and more tends to keep you fuller longer. Think about what you can add versus take away from your meals like chia seeds or raspberries in your morning oats, a pear for a snack and a cup of black beans at dinner, which gets you over 25g without overthinking it. Fruits and vegetables do the heavy lifting here, so aim to fill half your plate with them!
4. Sleep and stress directly affect hunger. Short sleep and high stress make cravings louder and willpower harder to come by, especially for sugar. Poor sleep raises cortisol, which sets you up for the 3pm crash. You grab sugar or caffeine for a quick boost, crash again, crave more sugar, and the cycle keeps looping. A hill I will forever die on is to make quality sleep a priority for more health reasons than you probably realize.
5. Plateaus are normal. Your body adapts as you lose weight, so a plateau is information, not failure. Most people lose the fastest at the start (partly water weight), then things slow down or stall. That’s your cue to reassess and make sure your habits are sustainable for the long haul. If you’ve been in a big calorie deficit for a while, consider a diet break: a week or two at maintenance calories to give your body and mind a chance to recover before you keep going.
If you’re reading these points above and thinking “great, but how do I actually do that in real life?” … that’s exactly the question I want to answer in an online course called Healthy Living, Simplified. It’s been a long road of creation with plenty of stops and starts, and a big one is overthinking everything and feeling overwhelmed with the need for it to be perfect.
(We’re our own hardest critics, am I right?)
Finishing this certification reminded me how much I LOVE this stuff, and how much I want to help you move past short-term extremes and build habits that actually last.
My plan is to get it out to you sooner rather than later, imperfect and all, because done and helpful beats perfect and sitting on my computer.
So! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this today, learned something, and would love to close this post with a question for you to answer in the comments or reply to this email if you’re a subscriber.
What’s the one thing about healthy living you wish someone would just break down and simplify for you?
(I’m building this for you!)
xo, Heather
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