When I began my career as a coach, I did not think one of the skills I would have to learn would be getting people to pull back. Clearly the large part of the epidemic is getting people to do more, and that’s where a lot of my education was invested in learning how to set that up.

But then I started working with high performing people who literally have zero concept of down time or how to turn it off. It is just as harmful as eating processed foods and skipping the gym.

I have a client whose baseline for output was so high, she had no idea that what she was doing was not normal.

She was operating off of 4–5 hour nights, working out without deload or breaks for years, averaging 20–30 THOUSAND steps per day, dieting extremely restrictively with zero freedom, and committed to over 10 years of vegan lifestyle for health belief alone.

And on top of that, she was a partner, mom to 3 kids, handled all family obligations, AND worked a full-time 9–5.

On paper, dream client right? Work horse, never missed a meal, and on point.

Until you dive into the world of cortisol and hormonal balance.

These two things are essentially in control of the whole operation one way or the other. Humans are made to achieve homeostatic balance at ALL cost. The main metric used to signal this homeostatic balance is amount of stress.

Not just work stress, but emotional, psychological, perceived, financial, family, and yes, training stress.

Ever heard the phrase “too much of any good thing is a bad thing,” or maybe the law of diminishing returns?

Acute stress, correctly applied, is good for a lot of things. Too much, not as good.

And what does every single client say they want when hiring a coach or trainer?
Lose fat and put on muscle.

Both only happen when a series of mechanisms are aligned with the correct stimulus and environment. You do not put on muscle or lose fat at the gym. You do these things after you leave the gym, when the stimulus kicks off the process.

But when the stimulus is met with an environment so filled with stress that all it can focus on is survival, the stimulus just adds to the stress cup overflow.

Your body will eventually make the decision for you.

Symptoms like digestion issues, bloating, indigestibility of food, no nutrient uptake, poor training, poor recovery, irritability, slow muscle gain if any at all, and a whole lot of high effort with frustrating lack of results.

The first step was looking at her program and life context through unfiltered lenses. One of the first things I did was explain in full honesty where she was at, and that the solution ahead was not something she was familiar with.

To restore her body and give it the calories needed to repair and synthesize hormones. This was uncomfortable after years of hard dieting, because growth seasons come with a tradeoff of a little more body fat than she was used to.

We added fats back in for hormone creation, and more carbs around training to fuel properly before and after.

Anything outside of light walking was pulled.
Training was shifted to 2–3 RIR instead of failure.

Telling someone “sleep more” is not realistic.
So I focused on raising the quality of the hours she did get.

A couple pre-sleep habits paired with supplementation to ensure that if she only gets 5 hours, she spends as much time as possible in the restorative part of the sleep cycle.

We began implementing free meals. At first, completely novel and uncomfortable, but she quickly fell in love with it.

Eating foods with her family, not prepped or weighed, and focusing on connection instead of measurement — this was a key part of emptying the stress cup. It was not about gluttony or “earning a cheat meal.” It was about balance and flexibility.

She is taking greater and greater strides toward her own version of balance.

PRs in the gym.
Lost weight.
Less midsection bloating.
More family time.
Still putting in effort without the self-destruction.

If this sounds like you and you have no idea where to start for restoration, I want to hear your story to the last detail.

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