How I Have Maintained My Weight Loss for Three Years
I get asked this more than almost anything else. How do you stay at that weight? What do you actually eat? How do you keep it going?
The honest answer is that it took finding a program built specifically for my metabolism. Not another diet. Not more restriction. A food plan generated from my own blood markers that told me, for the first time, exactly what my body needed. Once I understood that, everything changed.
I am sharing this because I think it matters that you hear it from someone who lives it, not just prescribes it. I am a Clinical Nutritionist. I thought I was doing everything right. And I still had room to feel significantly better.
What I noticed before I started
I had always watched what I ate. Six or seven gym sessions a week. I kept myself trim and was proud of that. But I had a persistent bloating problem I had never fully resolved, and I always felt slightly bigger than I looked in photos, which is a strange thing to sit with when you are a health professional.
The catalyst was a photograph. Seeing yourself in a still image, with fresh eyes, can be confronting in a way that the mirror never quite is. I decided to try Metabolic Balance on myself. I needed to know if it would do for me what I was promising it would do for clients.
Within four months, I had lost four kilograms. My fingernails, which had ridges for years — a sign of nutrient and protein deficiency — became smooth and strong. The white coating on my tongue, which I now recognise as a marker of poor gut health, reduced significantly. My energy shifted in a way I had not expected. And my relationship with food changed in a way I did not see coming.
What the blood test revealed
Before starting the program, I completed the 36-marker pathology test that is the foundation of every Metabolic Balance plan. My results showed I was deficient in magnesium and vitamin D — neither of which I had suspected. That alone was valuable. I began targeted supplementation immediately and the difference in energy and sleep was noticeable within weeks.
This is one of the things I find most compelling about the Metabolic Balance method. It does not assume. It looks at your specific blood markers and builds your plan from what they show. No guesswork, no generic recommendations.
What I learned about my gut
The tongue test is something I now do with every client, half-jokingly, in our first telehealth session. I ask them to hold it up to the camera. A white coating is one of the earliest signs of gut dysbiosis — an imbalance in the gut microbiome that, left unaddressed, shows up in ways most people would never connect to their digestion.
The symptoms are wide-ranging. Persistent bloating and gas. Irregular digestion. Low mood. Brain fog. Poor sleep. Skin conditions. Chronic fatigue. These are not separate problems. They are often the same problem presenting in different ways, and that problem frequently starts in the gut.
Gut dysbiosis develops for a variety of reasons — a diet high in processed foods and sugar, overuse of antibiotics, chronic stress, poor sleep, and low physical activity all contribute. So does a condition called leaky gut, where the intestinal lining becomes more permeable than it should be, allowing substances into the bloodstream that the immune system then reacts to with ongoing inflammation.
I had none of the dramatic symptoms. But I had enough low-level signs that clearing them up made a noticeable difference to how I felt every single day.
The first four weeks
The initial phase required a genuine mindset shift, particularly around exercise. I train hard — strength work, most days — and being told to reduce intensity in the first two weeks was not easy for me. I did it anyway, because I wanted to give the metabolic reset the best possible conditions to work.
By the time I reintroduced my usual training, I had enough of a foundation to manage the adjustment in hunger that came with it. I learned to listen to my hunger signals properly, often for the first time. The five-hour gap between meals, which sounds daunting to people who snack constantly, became comfortable. I realised that a significant amount of my previous eating had been boredom and habit, not actual hunger.
The compliments from colleagues helped. I will not pretend otherwise. But what actually kept me going was the physical evidence: the energy, the nails, the tongue, the taste of food improving in ways I cannot fully explain except to say that an apple started to taste extraordinary.
What I eat now
Three years in, I follow the 80/20 principle. The foundation of the plan holds, and I move around it with flexibility for social situations and the occasional week where life intervenes. My weight has stabilised. My muscle has continued to develop through strength training. Both together produce results that neither does alone.
A typical day looks something like this: plain full-fat Greek yoghurt with homemade granola, flaxmeal and fish oil to start. Lunch is usually chicken and salad with a flaxseed dressing I make myself. Dinner is red meat or fish with sweet potato, broccolini, and whatever vegetables I have on hand. I take a practitioner-grade probiotic that supports iron absorption.
It is not complicated. That is the point. Once you understand what your body actually needs, the decisions become simple.
What I want you to take from this
I spent years eating well by every conventional measure and still carrying more inflammation, more fatigue, and more self-doubt than I needed to. Not because I was doing it wrong by general standards, but because I was eating for a template rather than for my own metabolism.
If you are in that place — doing all the right things and still not getting the results you deserve — the answer is probably not more effort. It is more precision. A plan built from your blood, not borrowed from someone else's body.
That is what Metabolic Balance gave me. And it is what I now offer every client who sits across from me.
If you want to talk about whether this is the right fit for you, a free clarity call is the place to start.
