Libby Wescombe

Libby Wescombe Instagram: libbywescombe Twitter: libbywescombe

-Women's physique specialist and behaviour change expert.
-I help women lose fat, improve their metabolism, build muscle, get body recomp results & maintain them long-term.

“Just eat more carbs and strength train to support your metabolism.”You’ve probably heard this advice. A FKING LOT as it...
10/05/2026

“Just eat more carbs and strength train to support your metabolism.”

You’ve probably heard this advice. A FKING LOT as it’s trending big time right now.

And it’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete.

Carbs are needed. Strength training matters!! Building muscle is SO important!

But if the only thing you’re building is a bigger glucose sink without developing the ability to burn fat, you’re still metabolically inflexible. And i don’t care how jacked you are! You’ll still wake up in the night every time you feel stressed.

Your body is supposed to switch to fat oxidation at rest and during sleep. That’s when leptin peaks, growth hormone peaks, tissue repair happens & inflammation gets cleared. If your system is stuck on glucose, especially overnight, none of that runs properly. And eating more carbs before bed won’t fix it. It will block it.

The 2am wake-up everyone blames on their liver? It’s not your livers fault. Your liver already did its job. Its not stress either. Your handover to fat burning is what failed. And no amount of “extra carbs” will build the system that makes that handover happen

But the answer isn’t to go low carb either!! Please don’t! That’s the conundrum that started all of this in the first place. Women went too low carb, tanked their leptin, crashed their thyroid & felt terrible. The pro-metabolic movement was then the overcorrection! Now the pendulum has swung the other way & we’ve gone from one extreme to another.

Chronic restriction tanks leptin & impairs thyroid function through a different pathway. Both extremes miss the point.

The real answer is metabolic flexibility & it’s a physical capacity that has to be built!

The answer is the Goldilocks zone! Strength training for the glucose side. Aerobic training for the fat-burning side. Movement throughout the day to keep the system switching & sensitive. And aligning your eating, light & rest with the circadian rhythm your body has been running on for millions of years!

That’s the hack, my friends! It takes work but it WORKS! For good.

Comment ATHLETE if you want to learn how I help you build this inside The Athletic Physique Method.

09/05/2026

The fitness industry has confused you so much about diet, carbs and exercise that it’s made it sound like if you use the wrong machine, do cardio without a six course meal first, or get your heart rate above 130bpm, you’ll spontaneously combust.
That is not true.
All the “be gentle with yourself” content hasn’t gotten women stronger. It’s made the gym scarier, more confusing & more rules to follow before you’re even allowed to go for a run or pick up a barbell.
The women I coach who are actually getting results? They eat enough. They train with a plan. They recover. They don’t need to chatGPT whether running is bad for their adrenals or whether they should squat or leg press. They just go train!
I’ve said this since my earliest days as a CrossFit coach and athlete and I’ll say it until I’m dead: everyone is an athlete.
Athletes train to adapt to the demands of their sport. To perform physical tasks like second nature. To not get injured. And adaptations don’t come from your comfort zone…which is honestly just really good general life advice that everyone has completely forgotten.
You might not be going to the Olympics any time soon. But there’s something in your life, likely some physical activity you love…where being fitter, stronger, better conditioned would make you better at it. And let you do it longer, without pain & without limitation.
That’s what training is for.
I said what I said. You can save this reel too if you want. Or you could commit to finally taking action
Comment ATHLETE if you’re done overthinking and ready to start doing 👇🏻

Your muscles don’t grow from training them daily & then smashing a post-workout shake in the “anabolic window.” They gro...
05/05/2026

Your muscles don’t grow from training them daily & then smashing a post-workout shake in the “anabolic window.”

They grow from training with enough tension, applying the right stimulus to the muscles you’re actually trying to work & then consistently having protein 3–4 times a day

Muscle protein synthesis stays elevated for up to 48 hours post-training in experienced lifters (longer for beginners). Every meal you eat during that window hits MPS which is building muscle.

And no, this isn’t just a men’s thing! Women show the same response.

The takeaway is simple. Train often enough to keep the signal active. Eat enough protein across the day to use it: 3–4 protein feedings at 25–40g (exact amount is dependant on preferences, lean mass & how many meals you eat) is plenty for most people.

And stop thinking you need to annihilate a muscle every day to make it grow.

This is exactly how we structure training and nutrition inside APM: frequency, stimulus & fuelling matched to how your body actually builds.

Spors for APM are open. Comment “ATHLETE” & I’ll send you the link. Or if you want to know exactly how this would work for you…DM me and we’ll jump on a free 30-minute call where I’ll look at your training, your nutrition, and tell you honestly whether this is the right fit for you!

💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽

I’ve been seeing this wave of content that basically says if your friends don’t support your content online they’re unsu...
02/05/2026

I’ve been seeing this wave of content that basically says if your friends don’t support your content online they’re unsupportive, jealous or don’t deserve access to you

And then you read the comments and it gets even worse… And my gosh do you know we’re in weird times when being a “good friend” is measured by how fast you like someone’s post ONLINE

People take social media way too literally… it’s giving high school hallway energy 😂

Obviously I appreciate my friends & family’s support… this isn’t about that. it’s about the meaning people attach to it, & the fact that it’s trendy now to make it be “the metric” of true friendship & support. It’s actually creepy… if you strip it back to what you are actually saying & expecting

PS: if you haven’t seen Black Mirror episode called Nosedive… it’s basically a world where every interaction is rated & your entire life runs on social approval scores. your ranking affects how people treat you, where you can live, and what opportunities you get… all based on how “likeable” you are online

Scary s**t!

What are you thoughts?

29/04/2026

Here’s why you should build your aerobic base before you do a fat loss phase!

Your body burns fat as its fuel primarily during rest & sleep. It’s a parasympathetic process, meaning it happens when your nervous system is in recovery mode. During deep sleep specifically, your body is supposed to shift to stored fat. That’s when leptin peaks, growth hormone peaks, tissue repair happens & inflammation gets cleared. Fat is the fuel that powers all of that

But here’s the catch: fat burning is an aerobic process. Your mitochondria, your fatty acid transport systems, the enzymes that pull fat out of storage & oxidise it...all of that is an aerobic process. If your aerobic system is underdeveloped, the machinery to burn fat at rest & during sleep isn’t there. Your body can’t make the switch.

So when you go into a deficit & glucose availability drops, esp overnight, your body needs to be able to bridge the gap with stored fat

Liver glycogen is designed to bridge the FIRST few hours. After that, the body is supposed to transition to fat oxidation as the primary fuel source. Thats the switchover

If someone’s aerobic system is underdeveloped & they can’t make that transition, the liver has to keep providing glucose ALL NIGHT. It was never designed to do that. Of course it runs out. Of course cortisol spikes. The problem isn’t that the liver is broken or nutrient-depleted, it’s that it’s being asked to do a job that fat oxidation should be handling.

When we don’t get enough fuel, cortisol steps in as a rescue hormone. It breaks down amino acids, does whatever it can to get blood sugar up because fat oxidation can’t keep up. That cortisol spike is what wakes you up at 2–3am. It’s a metabolic rescue response because your body doesn’t have the machinery to use the fuel that’s already sitting there

This is why building your aerobic base BEFORE you go into a fat loss phase changes everything. You’re not just “doing cardio.” You’re building the metabolic infrastructure that allows your body to actually access your stored fat when it needs to... during rest, during sleep & during a deficit

Comment ATHLETE if you want help to build t

Something I’ve been sitting with lately: You’re allowed to want things for yourself that happen to overlap with messages...
27/04/2026

Something I’ve been sitting with lately: You’re allowed to want things for yourself that happen to overlap with messages you’ve deconstructed & rejected.
You can reject diet culture AND still want to be lean or lose weight. You can reject hustle culture AND still love waking up early & being productive. You can understand that the wellness industry profits off your insecurity AND still genuinely enjoy the behaviours it co-opted. Two things can be true.
The problem is that a lot of women, especially conscientious, ethically-minded ones… have done so much work deconstructing all these systems that they’ve accidentally built a new cage out of all the new rules. They won’t let themselves want something they genuinely want or like because wanting it feels ideologically suspicious.
And I get it. I had to grapple with this myself. I stopped tracking macros. I started eating intuitively. I started questioning everything I’d been taught about food and bodies. And somewhere in that process I had this moment where I was like … wait. Am I not allowed to say that I prefer not tracking as a fitness coach & I can do it without under-eating & still thriving with a healthy metabolism & s**t ton of muscle? Because those things are genuinely true to ME. They’re my values. My genuine preferences.
There’s a massive difference between choosing something because a system told you to & choosing something because you actually love it, or it aligns with your values and feels true to YOU & who you are at your core?
But do you even know the difference anymore? Or has it all become so muddled? So many voices telling you what’s problematic & what’s empowering & what’s “not allowed” (YES women so often message me saying “oh I didn’t realise that was allowed”…wait what?? Allowed by whom?) So many voices telling you what’s a “trauma response” & what’s healing, so many voices pathologising every normal human response or desire… that you’ve genuinely lost track of what YOU actually like? What you’d choose if nobody was watching & nobody had an opinion?
This is your permission slip to do those things! Life is short! Reject the rulebook, the current narrative, the noise. Keep what’s actually yours

Depending on what side of the internet you’re on, you’re either being told to be a “fat burner” or a “carb burner” …as i...
26/04/2026

Depending on what side of the internet you’re on, you’re either being told to be a “fat burner” or a “carb burner” …as if picking one fuel source & committing to it is healthy & the answer.

NEWS FLASH: It’s not. Your body needs to do both.

The ability to switch between burning glucose and fat based on what’s happening: eating, training, resting, sleeping… is called metabolic flexibility.

Think of it like a well-run intersection inside your cells: nutrients come in & a crossing guard directs traffic: “glucose, you’re up for fuel. Fatty acids, head to storage, we’ll get you later. Insulin, I need you now.”

Everything flows well.

When metabolic flexibility breaks down, that intersection turns into a four-way stop with a busted traffic light. Everything stalls. Fuel pools in the blood instead of being used. Over time, that’s what leads to leptin resistance, insulin resistance, inflammation, & metabolic dysfunction

The thing most people don’t realise is that metabolic flexibility is directly tied to your fitness!! Specifically your aerobic fitness.

Your mitochondria are the engine that runs this whole system, and aerobic training is what builds them. Without a developed aerobic base, your body physically cannot switch to fat as fuel when it needs to. So it stays stuck on glucose…even at rest, even during sleep, & even when fat should be the main fuel source.

Researchers have now shown that this inflexibility shows up FIRST during sleep

The healthy, flexible subjects burned more fat overnight. The inflexible ones stayed stuck on glucose. Sleep is where the dysfunction starts

If your sleep is average, you wake up in the night during the time when you should be in your deepest sleep & burning fat as a fuel (between 12am-3am)your recovery is slow, you feel inflamed/watery for no clear reason, or your body composition won’t budge despite doing the “right” things… this might be why!

Pt 2 drops soon! Where I’ll break down why the most popular “metabolism” advice online is actually making this worse & what to do instead

This is also exactly what I help you build inside The Athletic Physique Method. Comment ATHLETE and I’ll send you the details!!

In my villain era 💀
22/04/2026

In my villain era 💀

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