Weight loss is often treated as the goal and health as the byproduct. In this episode, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher turn that idea around.
They begin with a simple question: what if addressing your health is actually more important than addressing your weight? James explains why results are the product of a process, not something that suddenly appears. The conversation moves from willpower and scale weight toward body composition, muscle, hormones, metabolism, stress, digestion, and inflammation.
Amy then connects that framework to The Exercise Coach Nutrition Playbook and the Metabolic Comeback. Eating for health is presented around three practical targets discussed in the episode: better hormonal balance, improved digestion, and decreased inflammation. The goal is not an extreme short-term diet, but a way of eating and training that can support health from the inside out.
The final section lets clients tell the story in their own words. Across the testimonial montage, people describe more energy, better sleep, healthier food habits, less inflammation, improved confidence, stronger bodies, changes in body composition, and—for several clients—significant fat or weight loss. The common thread is process: consistent strength training, better food choices, coaching, support, and habits that can continue beyond a 30-day challenge.
One, we achieve better hormonal balance. Two, we improve digestion. And three, we decrease inflammation. People don’t suddenly wake up and have success. They’ve worked to attain that. And in the end, the results do appear around that waistline. Welcome to the Strength Changes everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co hosts are Brian Sagan, co founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence based strength training.
And now for today’s episode. Welcome back to the Strength Changes everything podcast. Have you ever wanted to lose weight and thought of it as a really big undertaking? Something that would be involving a lot of willpower and you have to strategize really carefully on. Today, in this episode, we’re going to make the case to you that addressing health is really the first domino to arriving at a healthy weight. So, what we’re going to break down what we mean by this claim, but the challenge that we want to leave you with today is what if addressing your health was actually more important than addressing your weight to get started? You know, once people try to lose weight, I think those people who have undertaken efforts like this in the past can attest to the fact that losing weight is about more than just willpower. There are so many other factors, including hormones, genetics, medications, underactive thyroids, age, stress, and specific health issues that actually prevent people some people, from losing weight or give them trouble losing it. So, what if instead of formulating a weight loss game plan around losing fat, the process really started with being healthy?
What if the process was based on how the food we eat and the exercise that we perform positively influence our hormones, metabolism, stress levels, and health issues? If so, wouldn’t fat loss be a nice side effect? Of this among other Great health benefits? I love this because the reality is that leaders in sports and personal growth constantly discuss process that leads to results. Results don’t just happen, they’re not magic. People don’t suddenly wake up and have success. They’ve worked to attain that. Sports teams don’t just show up for the Super Bowl and win and so forth. You know, businesses don’t just suddenly start making money. There’s so much back In all of this, and there’s so much process in all of this. And if we think of winning or success as weight loss, then there has to have been work that’s gone into this and work that’s gone into making the team perform better or the organization or the company perform better. And the reality is, successful fat loss is no different. And whether it’s losing five, 10 Whether it’s losing 5, 10, 20 pounds, it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a product of process. And we’ve talked about this before on the podcast numerous times.
And I love that we’re able to reiterate it in this context. But if we focus on improving our health and various problems that might be related to our health, then they might be the problems that are causing weight gain and inflammation. And so we improve our health, it leads us to improving our waistline. You know, there’s an issue right now of talking about weight and body weight. We’ve talked about GLP1s previously. We now know that we shouldn’t talk about body weight. We should talk about body composition and we should talk about muscle mass or not weight loss, but fat loss. And if we talk about weight, it seems almost superficial and almost aesthetic that, okay, you can achieve weight loss or achieve an ideal weight, but that doesn’t make you healthy. Let’s flip that on its head and let’s achieve health and see the weight loss arrive. As a result of that health. Absolutely. And I think that’s a very important thing to keep in mind, especially if you fall victim to hyper focusing on a number on the scale or a certain specific outcome. One thing we do at the Exercise Coach with our clients is we guide them through the Exercise Coach Nutrition Playbook on eating whole foods.
And this creates sort of a habit of eating for health. And when we eat for health what we end up achieving is three big things. One, we achieve better hormonal balance. Two, we improve digestion. And three, we decrease inflammation. How can addressing these three areas by eating for health lead to fat loss in the end? Yeah, I love those simple three things. Let’s just, I’m going to add to that. You know, we want to eat foods that minimize or eliminate spikes in. Fat storage hormones, just insulin, and restore appetite regulated. Storage hormones such as insulin and restore appetite regulating hormones such as leptin.
That’s absolutely going to be a kickstart in transforming our health. We know as part of the metabolic comeback, we’re going to perform exercise centered around total muscle fiber activation and maximum muscle fiber recruitment. We’re not subjecting our body to prolonged exposure to stressor hormones, we’re stimulating an acute spike in the right hormone. That then prompt growth hormone and don’t prompt a stress response to cortisol and other hormones that might make us eat or consume more calories again. We’re eliminating anything that we might have a reaction to or an allergic response to. And many times we don’t know that that even exists. It might exist in the form of bloating or brain fog, mood swings, fatigue, things like that. But if we start to cut out processed or ultra processed foods, we suddenly lose that brain fog or those moments or that bloating sensation at times. And we’ve realized that our body was having a response to that. So we really want to do that. And we want to eat foods that our body can digest properly. That’s absolutely key. And of course, minimally processed foods will do that. And then of course, eating foods that don’t trigger an inflammatory response, you know, high blood pressure and high cholesterol as a product of, you know, systemic inflammation are bad and reducing that will absolutely transform our health from the inside out.
Awesome. Yeah, it’s pretty exciting to think about that and to think about the power of eating whole foods what we can really change on an internal level from the inside out when we focus on eating the foods that will support our health from the inside out. That is what the metabolic comeback is Designed to do. This is a proven fitness and fat loss and health generating program that is available only at the Exercise Coach, and it’s built around these principles. So, if you are intrigued by the concept of sort of addressing your health from the inside out to enjoy all of the other downstream benefits, this is what the Metabolic Comeback is designed to do. It’s designed to improve the way you look, feel, and function. And in the end, the Results do appear around that waistline from following this plan. If you want to learn more about what’s involved in the 30day metabolic comeback challenge which we have coming up, go back and listen to episodes 60, 61 and 62 on this podcast where we interview the exercise coach nutrition playbook and cofounder Jerrianne Sagan all about the nutrition concepts that we implement during this 30day challenge.
30 day challenge. And if you’ve never done so, I encourage you to give this a try to see how this health transformation can help you transform the way you feel. We hope you’ll join us in this next 30 day challenge. And today we’d like to leave you with an audio or visual testimonial sequence of clients who’ve experienced this and have combined these two areas of exercise and whole food eating to achieve amazing results. Take a listen to their stories. It was healthy, it felt good, and I was enjoying myself. I noticed the difference within a few days the second and third week.
I just got into the habit of eating the healthy foods. Definitely, you will see the change in your focus, in your energy, especially after the first several days. It’s been wonderful and highly recommended. It was a definite change in what you eat. I started eating clearly more healthy and cooking at home more than going out. At the end of the 30day challenge, I had decreased my BMI and I had lost around 10 pounds and I’m even more energized to continue the journey. I’ve gone through these metabolic challenges multiple times and I think one of the reasons I really enjoy it is because it gives me a reset and it orients me to to new recipes, things that I haven’t tried. It’s just a really good reminder of how to eat healthy eat well. I’m 70 years old. This has been the one program that I have stuck with consistently.
I’ve gotten very strong and I’m really happy about that. I don’t call it a diet, I actually call it my new lifestyle choice. My blood cholesterol has significantly improved since I started eating according to the Metabolic Comeback Challenge. I found that I had more energy during the day and I slept better at night. What I discovered was it actually is a great lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle. My birthday, which was last month, and I was 68 years old, and I can say with all confidence I’m aging backwards. There are so many things that we eat that we aren’t necessarily aware of how they make us feel. And through the Metabolic Comeback Challenge, you can learn what works for you. Coupled with my strength training, I’ve lost nearly 30 pounds. So it’s a win win, and I encourage everybody to try it. If you’ve already done it once, do it again. It’s worth the refresher. It is very challenging. I’ve given up sugar, carbs and dairy. I’m like, oh, you have to be kidding. What am I going to eat? But the support you get here and information and just like the baby steps. And even if it’s just one thing you can do or just you keep trying and it’s just worth it.
It gave me a new mindset on how to eat. Before it didn’t control me anymore, I controlled my food. That was a real mindchanging thing for me. I would say for both of us. Since October, we’ve lost a combined 40 pounds. I’ve had a great experience with lessening of inflammation in my knees and just overall well being. I highly recommend everyone to go through this process, and really, it changes your biological markers, the shape, and also it gives you immense strength, inner strength, the willpower. And it develops the inner confidence. So that is, you will be a changed person altogether. That is my experience. I lost 12 pounds during the challenge. I felt better. My skin looked better. It was just overall a good experience. I really enjoyed the challenge and looking forward to doing another one. I really didn’t join Exercise Coach to lose weight, but I’d lost 10 pounds. There’s such a wonderful Creative, national Facebook group that shows pictures. You can ask questions. And it’s just really given me the strength, the coaching, the support that I need in order to stay on this path. So when I was doing my workout and I was a couple of months in, I was wondering why my abs weren’t changing.
And Jess said to me, abs are made in the kitchen. She said, you really ought to participate in the metabolic challenge. I said, what’s that? When they came back in and did my test again, I realized everything had changed in my body. My abs were finally forming. I felt significantly improved. So I highly recommend it. It was a phenomenal experience and I can’t wait for the next one. I weighed about 220 pounds and I lost from the beginning of January until the end of the challenge, which is mid March, I lost about 20 pounds. And I won that first challenge.
I got to the lowest weight that I’ve been at since I was probably in fifth grade. I’m not The 170s, which I’ve been able to maintain since the challenge, which was several months ago. So I’ve lost over 40 pounds since I started coming here. I’ve gained almost seven pounds of muscle mass and lost 12 of my body fat. The results have been incredible. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverythingcom Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health. Thank you.
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