[00:00:00] Emily Field: Welcome back to the Macros Made Easy podcast. This is episode 54, and today we're talking about something. I know many of you will relate to the biggest mistakes I made in my first fat loss phase and what I would do differently. Now, this episode is for you, if you're thinking about starting a fat loss phase, if you've already started one but feel like it's not working, or if you've done one before, didn't get the results you hoped for, and you're trying to figure out what went wrong.

[00:00:25] Emily Field: First, I'm gonna walk you through what I did right, because some things actually went really well. I'll share some of the insights from that first focus deficit phase. I did back in the early days of finding macro tracking. We're talking like 20 16, 20 17, but then I'll take you behind the curtain and talk about where it all started to fall apart.

[00:00:44] Emily Field: I'll share what I didn't know at the time, like why setting a finite end date matters. How the scale can mess with your mindset if you don't know how to interpret it and why reverse dieting needs to be part of the plan. From day one. You'll also hear stories from clients who have made similar mistakes, like cutting calories without considering macros, skipping maintenance altogether, or believing that they had to be perfect to make progress.

[00:01:07] Emily Field: And by the end of this episode, I hope you walk away with clarity and confidence, knowing exactly how to approach your next fat loss phase, smarter, stronger, and more sustainably. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I'm your host, Emily Field, a registered dietician that specializes in a macros approach.

[00:01:25] Emily Field: In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We'll cover the basics of macronutrients, how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I've helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition.

[00:01:45] Emily Field: So whether you've tried macros and it just didn't stick, or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can't wait to help you too. Let's start with the things I actually did, right? Because I don't want this episode to sound like a warning against fat loss altogether. A fat loss phase can absolutely work, and it did for me in many ways.

[00:02:03] Emily Field: I lost about eight pounds over the course of 12 weeks, going from about 150 pounds to 142, and I wanna be really clear, that was intentional. I had been eating at maintenance. I felt consistent in my routine, and I was ready to dial in for a cut. It was a decision I made from a grounded place, not a reactive one in a lot of ways.

[00:02:24] Emily Field: I did the foundational things really well. I set my macros, not just my calories. I didn't just slash and burn. I used a. Protein forward approach balanced my carbs and fats around my training, and made sure I was eating enough to fuel my workouts while still creating a modest deficit. That alone puts me ahead of where a lot of people start because I wasn't just trying to eat less, I was trying to eat with purpose.

[00:02:48] Emily Field: I was also very consistent with my intake, and this is a big one. I didn't follow a cleanse or a detox. I wasn't skipping meals Monday through Friday and just losing it on the weekends. I was tracking as diligently as I could for 12 straight weeks, well before I trailed off. At least not perfectly, but consistently.

[00:03:06] Emily Field: And that consistency is what allowed my body to respond. I also tracked my weight and took measurements. I didn't solely rely on the scale, which is something I still recommend to this day. I took body measurements. I looked at progress photos. I checked in on how I felt in my workouts, and that gave me a more complete picture of my progress.

[00:03:27] Emily Field: But, and here comes the setup for part two. I didn't always interpret that data very well. So let's get into what I did wrong. I shared what I did right during my first fat loss phase, and one of those things was tracking progress through multiple metrics. I didn't rely solely on the scale, which is something again, I still recommend to this day.

[00:03:47] Emily Field: I took body measurements, I snapped progress photos, and I checked in on how I was feeling in the gym. That gave me a much fuller picture of what was happening in my body. But here's the problem. I didn't always interpret that data well. So let's talk about the scale because yes, I used it. I weighed myself regularly and I tracked those numbers in a spreadsheet.

[00:04:06] Emily Field: But I made the classic beginner mistake. I didn't take weekly averages of those weights. I looked at the raw daily numbers and expected the scale to trend downward in a straight line. And spoiler, that's not how it works. Weight loss is not linear. There are fluctuations based on water retention, sleep hormones, digestion, sodium, stress, time of day, and a lot more.

[00:04:30] Emily Field: You can be in a perfect deficit and see the scale bounce up and down, or stay the same for several days in a row, and that's. Totally normal, but because I didn't know that I panicked, I assumed it wasn't working, and when the scale didn't move for a few days, I started to adjust my macros too quickly. I would drop calories when I didn't need to, instead of just staying the course.

[00:04:51] Emily Field: In hindsight, I wasn't hitting a true plateau. I was just being really impatient. So what is a true plateau? A true fat loss plateau means that you've been consistently tracking and hitting your macros, and you've seen no change in scale trends, body measurements, or photos. And that's been happening for at least two to three weeks straight.

[00:05:10] Emily Field: And I would also add that. You wanna make sure that your sleep, your stress, and your recovery are all accounted for. If all of those things are true, then it might be time to make an adjustment, but most people, myself included back then react way too soon. And when you do that, you cut calories before your body's even had time to respond.

[00:05:29] Emily Field: You're working harder eating. And still not seeing better results. It's kind of like digging up a seed before it's had a chance to sprout. Now I coach my clients to zoom out and look at the trend, not the day to day. We take weekly averages. We measure multiple variables. We build a buffer before making changes because fat loss isn't about instant feedback, and that's probably something you really need to hear, especially if your background has been.

[00:05:56] Emily Field: Slash and burn your calories, lose as much weight as possible, getting that really instant feedback that what you're doing is working. I need you to really understand your data and trust the process. And with that, let's get into the rest of the mistakes I made because the scale wasn't the only thing. I misread.

[00:06:13] Emily Field: Number two, I didn't set a finite end date and I just thought I'd know when I was done with my fat loss phase. I figured I'll just know when it feels right to stop. Spoiler, that's not a plan. That's a guess. So I just kept going even after my energy was really dipping, even after my cravings were super, super high, and even when progress had clearly started to slow down, I stayed in a deficit longer than I probably should have.

[00:06:40] Emily Field: Thinking that more time would mean more results. But what I didn't really understand back then is that the fat loss phase was supposed to be temporary. You're intentionally eating less than what your body needs, so less energy, less recovery, less flexibility. You're really pushing your physiology and your mindset in a very specific direction, and you can't, and you shouldn't stay there forever.

[00:07:04] Emily Field: And I see this mistake a lot in my clients, especially women who have spent years dieting. They fall into that mindset that they just need to eat this way forever. Even if the scale moves down, the answer is to just keep going. And that's because the diet culture and the weight loss culture of our time doesn't really give you a plan for what happens after the deficit is over.

[00:07:26] Emily Field: So let me give you an example from a past client. We'll call her Lauren. Lauren came to me after doing a fat loss phase at her gym. She had tracked consistently, lost a few pounds, and felt really proud of her results. But the challenge ended and no one told her what to do next, so she just kept eating that way.

[00:07:42] Emily Field: Those low calories, the very little flexibility, and just not a lot of food. At first, things seemed just fine, but after a few more weeks, her progress definitely stalled. She felt more tired. Her lifts were getting heavier instead of lighter, and her cravings hit a whole new level. She assumed that she just wasn't trying hard enough, but when we looked at her intake and the timeline, she'd been on a deficit, or at least attempting that deficit for more than 16 weeks without a break.

[00:08:07] Emily Field: She didn't even realize it, and without an end date, she just assumed that this was her new normal. We had to reverse her calories back up slowly, reintroduce maintenance, eating, and rebuild her energy and strength before she could even think about returning to another fat loss phase to lose. The weight that she really wanted to.

[00:08:26] Emily Field: She had about 20 more pounds that she felt like she needed to lose. So what I do differently now for both myself and my clients is this, I set a clear start and endpoint for that deficit. I reassess progress every four to six weeks. I build in reverse or maintenance phase even before a cut even begins.

[00:08:47] Emily Field: So why is this so important? It's because fat loss requires both physical and mental energy. When you're in it, you're focused. You're more disciplined. You're navigating hunger planning meals more tightly and being more intentional about the way you train and recover, and that takes bandwidth. Knowing when the phase will end helps you stay consistent.

[00:09:06] Emily Field: It protects your health, and probably most importantly, it sets you up to maintain your results after the deficit ends. The person who falls for this mistake like I did, is just usually lacking context. They've been taught how to restrict, but not how to transition. They don't understand macro phasing.

[00:09:24] Emily Field: They don't know that maintenance is not a pause or a failure. It's a skill and it's actually the goal. The goal is to be eating as much food as possible and maintaining a happy, healthy weight for you. So if you've ever felt like you should just keep eating less, or if you've never got the results you wanted, even though you've stayed on plan forever, ask yourself, did you have an end date?

[00:09:49] Emily Field: Did you have a plan for after the plan? Because fat loss best works when you and your body know that it's just a temporary phase. Okay, let's talk about the next big mistake I made during my first fat loss phase. I really underestimated how hard it would feel, especially while trying to train hard. I was super into CrossFit at this time.

[00:10:10] Emily Field: I was really loving the new friends I was getting from being at that gym and just really loved pushing myself. I really thought, well, I have weight to lose, so my body will just release it. No problem. That was naive. What I didn't understand back then, and what I know deeply now is that your body just doesn't give up fat because you want it to.

[00:10:30] Emily Field: It definitely adapts. It fights back, it gets hungry, it gets tired. It sends you signals to eat more and move less because biologically it thinks you're in danger. So, yes, I lost weight, but I was pretty tired. I was dragging through my workouts. I was thinking about food all the time, and I was leaning hard on what I would now call fake foods, like protein bars, sugar-free gum, diet, soda, cauliflower, everything.

[00:10:56] Emily Field: If it was the low calorie version or the artificially sweetened version to save on carbs, I was all over it. I convinced myself that this was smart. I'm saving calories, I'm being efficient, but I really wasn't satisfied. I was full technically, but kind of craving something more all the time, something real, and again, I see this with my clients a lot.

[00:11:18] Emily Field: Take Michelle for example. She was a high achiever, a CrossFitter. She had tracked macros before, so she thought a fat loss phase would be no big deal. She came in super disciplined, but within the first few weeks, her energy really dipped hard. She started reaching for diet sodas, low calorie puddings, rice cakes with spray butter, whatever would stretch her macros without quote, blowing it at first, it helped her stick to the plan, but soon she was overeating on the weekends, ravenous in the evenings, and constantly thinking about food.

[00:11:49] Emily Field: When we looked at her meals, they were mostly snacks. No real satiety, no fiber, no grounded balanced plates. Once we shifted to real food, protein rich meals, slow digesting carbs and healthy fats, that volume from non-starchy vegetables, everything changed and she still had to navigate some hunger, but it was manageable, predictable, and she felt very much in control again.

[00:12:13] Emily Field: And that's what I do differently now with my clients and myself. When you enter into a fat loss phase, you have to anticipate the consequences. You will feel more hungry. You might feel a little lower energy. That doesn't mean that something's gone completely wrong. It means it's working. You are eating less.

[00:12:30] Emily Field: Than what your body needs after all, but you need to plan to manage it or you won't stick with it long enough to see results. Because let's be honest, the number one reason fat loss faces fail isn't because someone has set the wrong macros. It's because they couldn't stick with it. And the number one reason people can't stick with it is hunger.

[00:12:49] Emily Field: Here's what I teach. I want you to build macro balanced meals, not just snacks. You're thinking 30 grams of protein or more. Some fat, some fiber, rich carbs, color use volume foods strategically. Lots of non-starchy vegetables, lots of whole fruits. Thinking. Less liquid calories, less soups, less smoothies, more chewing.

[00:13:12] Emily Field: This will help you stay fuller on fewer calories. I want you to include real food, not just bars and powders or sugar-free everything. And most importantly, remember that it won't always feel this way. Fat loss phases are temporary, and you're not meant to live here. So if you're in a fat loss phase and feeling like your body is rebelling, ask yourself, are you making satisfying meals?

[00:13:35] Emily Field: Are you making room for real food? Are you honoring the fact that this phase isn't supposed to feel easy, but it is supposed to feel doable? That right there is the shift. Let me tell you, when I started my first fat loss phase, I thought the hard part was going to be the actual deficit, the tracking, the hunger, the discipline it would take to hit my numbers while still training hard.

[00:13:58] Emily Field: That's what I braced for. And to be fair, that was hard. But what caught me completely off guard was the reverse. I had no idea how much intention and discipline it would take to reverse out of the deficit. Well, because by the time you get to the reverse, you're already tired mentally, physically, emotionally, you're ready to be done.

[00:14:18] Emily Field: You've seen some progress, and now the scale is slowing down a little bit. You're motivation is dipping and the structure that kept you dialed in suddenly feels a little wobbly. There's this time and a deficit where. You ask yourself, do I just need to eke out a few more weeks or should I just be done?

[00:14:35] Emily Field: That's a really tough spot to be in when you're going completely at it alone, especially without a coach. Let's take Kelsey for example. She did great during her cut. She tracked consistently, hit her protein, trained with intention, lost a solid amount of fat, and honestly crushed it for 10 or 12 weeks.

[00:14:52] Emily Field: But as soon as it was time to reverse. A reverse being the bridge between your deficit and your maintenance calories, slowly increasing your calories over time to return to maintenance. She panicked. During this time, she equated eating more with gaining it all back, even though she trusted the process.

[00:15:11] Emily Field: The mental load of tracking more food after tracking less for so often felt really heavy. She was fatigued, her discipline was low, and she just wanted to be totally done. So what happened? She stopped tracking, stopped planning ate based on what sounded good instead of what her body needed, and overshot maintenance within a few weeks.

[00:15:30] Emily Field: This happens all the time. People just think that they need to add a few carbs back and see how it goes, but there's no structure, no plan, no bandwidth left to execute well because the reverse still requires effort. Now, in my own experience, I didn't totally fall off the rails, but I did notice something around 10 to 12 weeks.

[00:15:48] Emily Field: Things were just getting dicey. I was still hitting my numbers, still showing up, but I was super antsy. I was tapped. I was craving more food, more flexibility, more room. And because I hadn't prepped for the reverse, I didn't pivot quickly enough. That could have easily turned into, screw it, I'm done if I didn't catch it early.

[00:16:06] Emily Field: So what I would do differently now, and what I teach my clients is this. The reverse diet isn't separate from the deficit. It's part of the plan. The reverse is your landing your runway, and if you don't plan for it, you're gonna crash the plane. Here's what I map out now before the fat loss phase even starts.

[00:16:24] Emily Field: How long will we stay in a deficit? Realistically, when will we pause and decide if we should go further or if we should end? Usually that's around eight, 10, maybe 12 weeks. When will we reassess and look for signs of fatigue or slowing progress? What does the reverse phase look like week by week? What metrics, physical and emotional will we track to make sure we're not just rebounding?

[00:16:48] Emily Field: Because here's the truth, the reverse diet still means you're undereating your full needs. You still need to be consistent here, and you still need some structure and intentionality. And yes, you'll feel better with more carbs and more calories, but you'll also be tempted to throw caution to the wind and eat things that you've been white knuckling away from in the past two to three months.

[00:17:09] Emily Field: That's how people rebound. That's how progress gets undone. Not because the deficit didn't work, but because they didn't land it. So now if I'm getting squirrely around week eight to 10, I'm checking in with myself. If I haven't already mapped out the reverse, I do it, then I know I'm not gonna feel motivated later.

[00:17:27] Emily Field: So I set myself up. Now because motivation is a finite resource, and discipline is a muscle that gets really tired, and if you wait until you're already depleted to make these important decisions, they usually don't go well. So if you're planning a fat loss phase, I want you to ask yourself, do I have a plan for what happens after the deficit ends?

[00:17:47] Emily Field: Because that's the part that determines whether your results will last. Even when you go into a fat loss phase with the best of intentions, tracking macros being consistent, it's still easy to fall into some sneaky patterns that stall or slow progress. These are the mistakes I see over and over again in clients that come to me before they start eat to lean in our conversations when we do a discovery call or maybe when I'm running a free training and they're worth naming.

[00:18:14] Emily Field: Not to shame anyone, but to help you course correct early and stay the course when things get tough. The first is cutting calories without balancing macros. This can lead to muscle loss, poor recovery, and often a flat quote, skinny fat. Look. It's kind of like the attitude of just, I'll drop my calories and just eat less, you know?

[00:18:34] Emily Field: And that's what Emily thought too. Emily came to me eating 1200 calories a day, surviving on egg whites. Rice cakes and the occasional protein bar. She worked out hard bootcamps around five to six days a week and was wondering why her body wasn't changing. She was frustrated, exhausted, and constantly craving sweets.

[00:18:52] Emily Field: When we dug into her intake, it was clear not enough protein. Barely any carbs and lots of snacky convenience foods. She simply wasn't eating enough to recover, build muscle, or keep her metabolism firing. Her body wasn't burning fat. It was clinging to it. Once we boosted her protein, brought back real meals and structured carbs around her workouts, she saw some real change.

[00:19:14] Emily Field: She got more that definition, better recovery, improved strength, and a lot fewer cravings. Fat loss isn't just about eating less. It's about eating strategically. Another mistake I see is skipping the maintenance phase altogether and going straight into a cut. This leads to burnout, stalled progress, and metabolic resistance.

[00:19:34] Emily Field: It kind of sounds like, you know, I've been eating like garbage, so I'm just gonna clean it up and jump into a fat loss phase. And that was Jessie's plan before she came to me. Jessie was an endurance athlete, always training for something. She lived in the cycle of over-training and undereating and then rebounding with intense hunger and guilt.

[00:19:52] Emily Field: She wanted to drop 10 pounds and assume that the solution was just to cut again, but she hadn't tracked in months. She didn't really know what her maintenance intake was, and her body was already showing signs of fatigue. She was already feeling sluggish in her recovery. She was already struggling with her sleep.

[00:20:08] Emily Field: She was seeing some mood swings and. Definitely low energy. Instead of jumping straight into a deficit, we hit pause. We spent six, probably more, six, eight, maybe even 10 weeks at maintenance. I can't really remember eating real whole food meals actually fueling for her training and stabilizing her energy.

[00:20:28] Emily Field: Then and only then do we layer in a small, modest calorie deficit. And her body responded almost immediately, body fat started to drop, performance started to improve, and she finally broke out of that cycle of binge and restrict. The lesson here is that a fat loss phase built on chaos will not work. Your body knows when it's under supported and it will fight back.

[00:20:51] Emily Field: I highly recommend that you start at maintenance, really get used to what maintenance feels like before you start a modest deficit. The next common mistake I see is thinking that tracking needs to be absolutely perfect. This is gonna trigger your all or nothing thinking, and it will stop progress cold.

[00:21:10] Emily Field: It kind of sounds like if I can't hit my macros perfectly, why even bother? I'll start over on Monday, I'll start over next month. I'll start over after my next vacation, something like that. And that was Rachel's mindset. Rachel had been tracking on and off for years. She knew macros inside and out, but if her dinner plans changed or she couldn't find the exact item in her food logging app, or if she went out to eat, she'd write the whole day off as a failure.

[00:21:34] Emily Field: She needed everything to be precise or it wasn't worth it. We worked on flexibility, how to estimate, how to use ranges instead of hard target numbers. How to trust herself with food choices, even when tracking wasn't perfect. Once she stopped treating, tracking like a test and started treating it like a tool, everything changed.

[00:21:53] Emily Field: She started enjoying her meals again. Her stress around food dropped, and funny enough, she actually got more consistent Progress doesn't require perfection. It requires patterns. The last common mistake that I'll review here is that you're only tracking scale weight, and you've heard this one from me before.

[00:22:10] Emily Field: This is gonna lead to confusion, frustration, and missing real progress. Tracking only the number on the scale does not tell you anything about fat loss. And fat loss is what you are interested in. Fat loss doesn't always look like weight loss, especially if you're new to strength training, increasing your protein or coming off a long period of undereating.

[00:22:31] Emily Field: Your body can be losing fat and building lean muscle mass at the same time, and the scale might barely move. That doesn't mean it's not working. If you're only watching the scale, you're missing the full picture. You might feel leaner, your clothes might fail differently, your workouts might be improving, but the scale does not reflect that, and suddenly you're just discouraged.

[00:22:50] Emily Field: I had a client named Elise who was exactly there. She tracked her weight obsessively every morning and panicked when it went up half a pound, even though her progress photos showed visible fat loss, even though her deadlift had increased by 40 pounds, even though her jeans fit way better than they had in two years.

[00:23:08] Emily Field: When we started tracking measurements, biofeedback, and progress photos, instead of just the number on the scale, she finally saw how much progress she was actually making, and she stopped tying her worth to a daily fluctuation. So what do you track instead? Well, we've already reviewed this. I want you to be tracking weekly skill averages.

[00:23:26] Emily Field: Take the full week of your daily weigh-ins and average it. Find some circumference measurements that you can be consistent with. So waist, hips, chest, maybe your thighs, something like that. I want you to take progress photos, same lighting, same time of day, same clothing, front side, and back, and compare those every other week or once a month.

[00:23:47] Emily Field: I'd also like to see you track performance in the gym, your energy, mood, your cravings. Sleep. And lastly, maybe even just how your clothing is fitting. Maybe you have one pair of jeans that you try on every other week or once a month, and you use that as a gauge to know if your fat loss phase is working.

[00:24:04] Emily Field: The scale is just one metric, and it's not the only metric. It's never gonna be, it should never be the one and only thing you use to assess your progress in a fat loss phase. So after learning the hard way and after coaching hundreds of women through fat loss phases the right way. My approach is completely different now.

[00:24:23] Emily Field: So if you're wondering what it looks like to do a fat loss phase well, and what I now build into every client strategy, this section is for you. These are the five pillars I use to set clients up for success. First, I set macros and boundaries. It's not just choosing the right macros or the right split, it's about giving some structure to the fat loss phase.

[00:24:45] Emily Field: So when I coach a fat loss phase, now we set a finite timeframe, usually a minimum of eight weeks, typically around 12 to 15 weeks, and usually never longer than 20. We set some clear metrics to track, including things that are important to the client and important to the overall results. You know, scale trends, your averages, not your daily numbers.

[00:25:07] Emily Field: Body measurements, progress photos, workout, performance, hunger cues, mood and energy. And we set regular checkpoints. Every few weeks we stop and ask, is this still working? Do we need to adjust? Are we still in alignment with the goal? Is this still important to me? This kind of structure keeps clients out of the, I guess I'll just keep going until I'm thin enough, spiral.

[00:25:30] Emily Field: It puts them in control, and that's where we see real progress. I help them prioritize real whole food and high protein meals that actually satisfy. One of the biggest shifts I made for myself and now I teach to all my clients, is moving away from those low calorie, artificially sweetened diet foods and focusing on real whole meals.

[00:25:50] Emily Field: Because here's the thing, if you're within an hour of eating and you're already starving, that's not a badge, and that's not success. That's survival. Now I teach clients how to build meals around 30 to 40 grams of protein, including some satisfying fats. And trying to help them normalize fats, not avoid them out of fear.

[00:26:10] Emily Field: I also help them choose fiber rich, slow digesting carbs like oats or potatoes, whole fruit beans, rice foods that actually fuel your body and keep you really full. This isn't just about macros, it's about meal quality, and these meals support muscle energy, hormone health, and most importantly, they make the deficit feel much more doable.

[00:26:32] Emily Field: I also teach clients to expect hunger and low energy and teach them how to manage it. One of the most powerful mindset shifts I had to make was that hunger doesn't mean that the plan is broken or that you're doing something wrong. It just means that your body is adapting to the stimulus that you're putting on it.

[00:26:49] Emily Field: So now I talk openly with clients before we even start a fat loss phase. Yes, you might feel hungry. Yes, your energy may dip, especially after two to three weeks. Yes, you may need to adjust your training or take more rest days. But we don't just accept it, we plan for it. I teach my clients how to manage hunger and energy with better meal spacing throughout the day.

[00:27:10] Emily Field: Front loading protein earlier to manage your appetite, swapping snacky meals with more complete whole food options, and really dialing in sleep, hydration, and stress. These are all critical for staying adherent. Fat loss isn't just a numbers game, it's a whole body experience, and your physiology will talk to you the whole way through, so you definitely need to be listening.

[00:27:33] Emily Field: Next, I build the reverse diet and maintenance phase into the plan from day one. This is probably one of the most overlooked but most important parts of the entire fat loss journey. When I did my first cut, I didn't really plan for the reverse. I just assumed I'd figure it out when I got there, and that was a really big mistake.

[00:27:51] Emily Field: Now, I always plan the reverse before the cut even begins, or within those first few weeks. And this matters because your motivation is going to drop, especially as you see the scale progress slow down, or you see your body progress, your body composition progress. Slow down a little bit. Hunger and cravings will often intensify.

[00:28:10] Emily Field: After the deficit ends, you're suddenly allowed a lot more food. Allowed is a word I don't really like to use, but suddenly your thresholds or your targets are a little bit higher and that can trigger some hunger and cravings. You feel like you have much more leeway and that can feel like you know you have endless possibilities, and that can mean that you overshoot your maintenance and regain weight.

[00:28:32] Emily Field: So now we set clear expectations. You'll be increasing your calories over four to six weeks. Once the cut ends, the scale may bounce around, and that's totally normal. And to be expected, reverse dieting is part of your transformation, not the end of it. This helps clients land the plane, not crash it. And lastly, I teach clients that fat loss is just one of several phases.

[00:28:58] Emily Field: And again, this is a really big shift. Fat loss is a phase. It's not a lifestyle. You're not meant to live in a deficit, and if you've been there for years, you're not thriving. You're just simply surviving. I teach my clients to move through distinct phases usually. Maintenance where you build habits, you stabilize your body, you get really strong a deficit where you apply some structure with intention and boundaries, and the focus is fat loss and a reverse where you rebuild and boost those calories back up to maintenance.

[00:29:31] Emily Field: You are improving your metabolism and you're really solidifying your fat loss results. Most women come to me thinking they need to lose weight, when really they just need consistency at maintenance. They need structured strength training, and they need to eat enough food to feel human again. The real magic isn't in a cut.

[00:29:49] Emily Field: I always tell clients this, so many people. Underestimate what they can achieve in maintenance phases and overestimate what they can do in a deficit phase. The real magic really isn't in the cut. It's probably in maintenance, and it's also knowing which phase you're in and why, and strategically moving through these, especially if you want to dramatically change your body composition.

[00:30:12] Emily Field: So my final thought in this section is that when you treat fat loss like a strategic tool, not a long-term solution, you take that pressure off, you stop guessing, and you stop chasing, and you start owning your nutrition choices with much more clarity and confidence than ever before. Alright, so let's bring this full circle.

[00:30:33] Emily Field: Fat loss can absolutely be a powerful tool, but only when it's used intentionally. And if there's one big takeaway from this episode, it's that doing fat loss well requires more than just a calorie deficit. It requires some structure. It requires self-awareness and it requires a plan. You've heard me talk about what I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently, and while I hope that's been helpful, I also wanna leave you with this final note.

[00:30:57] Emily Field: There is no perfect time to start a fat loss phase, but there is definitely better and worse times if you're training for a marathon or a CrossFit competition, traveling a lot, or moving through a busy season of life. Maybe you're just struggling to eat consistently or you haven't spent much time at maintenance in a while or at all, then now is probably not the right time to cut, and that's okay.

[00:31:19] Emily Field: Fat loss phases are most successful when you plan them into the big picture of your year, not just the next three to four weeks. Think in terms of where will you have the structure, stability, and energy to actually commit. Instead of asking, can I do a fat loss phase right now, ask, is it a good time to do it well?

[00:31:39] Emily Field: If you're not sure how to answer that, here are some signs that you are ready for a fat loss phase. The first is that you've been consistently tracking at maintenance and nailing those maintenance macros for at least six to eight weeks. You're eating enough protein and feeling well fueled throughout the day.

[00:31:54] Emily Field: You're training is consistent, but you're open to adjusting intensity if you have to. Your sleep, your stress, your energy, they're all in a pretty solid place, and you have the bandwidth, mental and logistical to commit to a structured phase. These are the types of things I teach inside my programs, because fat loss doesn't start when you lower your calories.

[00:32:13] Emily Field: It starts much before that with education, preparation, and intention. And if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, I do wanna do a fat loss phase at some point, but I want to do it right, I'd love to support you through that. So I want you to start with my blog post, how to Know You're Ready for a Fat Loss Phase.

[00:32:30] Emily Field: I'll link it in the show notes. It's a super helpful checklist and reflection guide to figure out where you are now and where you need to go next. Because remember, fat loss is just a phase. It's not a lifestyle. It's not a starting point, and definitely not a forever thing. I want you to do it with a plan and to do it with support and to do it in a way that feels really aligned with your goals and your life.

[00:32:52] Emily Field: Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you're listening to right now to share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at Emily Field Rd so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress-free way.

[00:33:08] Emily Field: If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at emilyfieldrd.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you on the next episode.