"I'm going to trust you with the process because it feels backwards, but I'm committed... I'm going to do it." -Chelsea
Chelsea joined me as a one-on-one client in March of 2025 after her best friend Bethany had referred her.
She'd already done a group coaching program built around single-ingredient eating: cook the chicken alone, no soups, no mixed meals, with generic calorie and protein reccommendations that left her feeling like she was failing no matter how hard she tried.
"Who has time to do this? I can't physically live my life that way."
-Chelsea, On being told that she could only eat single-ingredient foods and never eat out.
Fed up, she chose to listen to Bethany’s advice, and here's how we did.
The Periodization Plan:
March - May 2025: 12-Weeks at Maintenance
We spent the first 12 weeks recalibrating how Chelsea navigated meal planning and managing her social life, teaching her the tips and tricks for how to make it work when you're gone and eating out most weekends
We went from starving between meals to nearly feeling like she had to force feed to eat maintenance calories.
June - Sept 2025: 16-Week Fat loss phase
After nailing the foundation and increasing her calorie intake, we started a 16-week fat loss phase. Losing 14.2 pounds
October - Early January 2026: 12-Week Build
We targeted a conservative build, but Chelsea has a highly adaptive metabolism, and struggled to push calories higher than top end of maintenance and only gained 0.8 pounds.
January - March 2026: 10-Week Fat Loss Phase
Given Chelsea had a bucket list international trip in April, we chose to break up her 2026 fat loss phase into two chunks. The first phase she lost 8.7 pounds.
March - May 2026: 12-Weeks at Maintenance+
Knowing we had another fat loss phase planned, we took the opportunity around travel to push calories up when she was lifting and gained 1.6 pounds.
June - August 2026: 13-Week Fat Loss Phase
For the second fat loss phase of the year, we had to dig a little deeper as Chelsea was already down 23 pounds at this point and dropped calories targets ~100 from the prior two deficits, this time landing 10.7 pounds down.
We extended this after two accidental non-progress weeks due to a Dr Pepper mix-up (two casepacks of full sugar instead of zero can do that 😅).
The Periodization plan visualized:
The Measurements
Chelsea came in to work with me thinking that her goal weight was close to 155 pounds and she would never ever do a muscle building phase, and now she's a believer.
A Mental Glow Up
More than any of the numbers, the thing that I am most proud of Chelsea for is how much she committed to the process.
Her motivation shifted from aesthetics to feeling better, having more energy, and being able to do the things that she loves: baseball games travel and family meals, without her health goals running the show.
"I have built the skills to be in a deficit and still travel, still go to all the baseball games, still go out to eat with my family; because I know what to look for and how to order."
-Chelsea
Her relationship with food has changed dramatically as well:
"My relationship with food has changed by understanding the quality of food matters more than the calorie count. Now I look at how much fiber it has, how much protein it has, not just the calories those are things I never looked at before."
Chelsea’s takeaways from the Process
"I had the most success when I realized I need to eat more food, consistently.
[Before working with Laura] I was eating in a deficit pretty much Monday through Friday, not eating enough. And then on the weekend, of course you're in a surplus. I [was] eating healthy foods, but I wasn’t fueling my body.
If you would have told me that then, I would not have believed you.”
-Chelsea
The payoff from her first muscle build didn't show up during the build. It showed up in the deficit after it:
“When I went through the next deficit, I'm like oh my gosh, I have muscle definition. I actually have calf muscles. I don't just go from a knee to an ankle."
Two full periodization cycles later, Chelsea isn't just hitting numbers anymore. She's transitioning into running her periodization on her own, planning to graduate after this next build:
We have two 10-week fat loss phases for 2027.
After which point we're going to transition to a more building heavy periodization plan to continue to chasing body recomposition while balancing her social life.
