Flexible Health

13/10/2026

I don’t want life-long clients. Which is an odd thing for a coach to say.

My wife reckons I have iron-clad willpower. Ice cream in the freezer I don’t touch, the gym after a full-on day, chicken and vegetables most nights.

Willpower might make those calls in the moment, but you’d have to be not from this world for it to carry you this long. What got me here is a process I built for myself, and that’s the part nobody sees from the outside.

It’s also the part most people are really after when they reach out. Not the how. Someone in their corner, noticing progress in the smallest moments.

I have clients who’ve been with me two years. Would I rather they did this without me? Yes. My job is to hand over the tools. Some people are ready sooner, others need longer, and both are fine.

One client spent months rebuilding how they ate. A few RTDs a week stuck around, and I never pushed it. Then they told me they were giving up alcohol altogether. Not habits propping up accountability. Accountability propping up the habits.

Wrote up what that actually looks like:

Most coaching sells you a check-in call. Accountability is different — here's what it actually looks like, and why the goal is you not needing me.

09/10/2026

Pineapple on Pizza?
Yes or No?
🤔🤔

Let me know below!

We have a family tradition here at home - Friday night Pizzas. We make our own and enjoy a movie or 2. Great way to have fun with food and get the kids involved.

29/09/2026

I told someone I'd made potato wedges. They didn't know wedges were made from potato.

They bought the frozen bags. That's what they knew, and they'd never had a reason to question it. Written down that sounds unbelievable, but if nobody has taught you where food comes from or how to cook it, why would you know?

Almost every client I work with says the same thing at some point — they don't know what to eat. I don't blame them. Dinner gets delivered. The biggest section of the supermarket is packaged and prepared food.

So I've written up how to actually read a label, for the aisles where you need it.

The short version: the serving size on the packet is set by the manufacturer, not by you. Your muesli might say 45g. Two brands side by side can use completely different serving sizes, which means none of the numbers underneath are comparable. Go to the per 100g column — it doesn't move, and it's closer to your real portion anyway.

Also worth checking how many serves are in a pack. A bag of microwave rice looks fine until you notice the panel is for two, not one.

Full article covers the kilojoule conversion, what the carbohydrate line is actually made of, and why "high protein" yoghurt usually isn't.

How to read a food label in NZ: why the serving size isn't yours, why per 100g is the column that matters, and why "high protein" yoghurt usually isn't.

25/09/2026

When I talk about protein most of my family just roll their eyes. But the science and results speak for themselves, and its probably the most important macro nutrient your body needs to thrive.

So the biggest question left is, how much protein do you actually need to eat?

The NZ guideline is around 0.75g per kilo. The training research says 1.6. One is a floor, not a target — and 150g of chicken isn't 150g of protein.

22/09/2026

150 grams of chicken isn't 150 grams of protein. It's about 45.

That one catches more people out than anything else I talk about. Weigh out a chicken breast, see 150 grams on the scale, and it's easy to assume the job's done. It's a good serving — plenty for one meal — but if your target is 160 grams a day, you need to do that three or four times over. Every day.

Which is usually the moment the number stops being abstract.

The other thing worth knowing is that the official New Zealand guideline sits at roughly 0.75 grams per kilo of bodyweight. Most articles you'll find online say 1.6. Both are right, they're just answering different questions.

The guideline is a floor. It's set to stop almost everybody getting a deficiency — not to build muscle, hold onto muscle while you're losing weight, or keep you full enough to get through an afternoon.

If you're training or losing weight, you want to be nearer that 1.6. Doing both at once, closer to 2. At 100kg that's the difference between 80 grams a day and 200.

Most people are well under, and it's rarely because they don't care. It's because nobody's ever shown them what a day's worth actually looks like on a plate.

https://www.flexiblehealth.co.nz/journal/how-much-protein-do-you-need-nz?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nutrition-hub

08/09/2026

The fat comes back. The muscle doesn't.

That's the part of coming off a GLP-1 that nobody seems to mention.

You've probably seen the two-thirds figure — that's how much of their weight loss people regained in the year after stopping semaglutide. It's a real number from a real trial.

What's more interesting is what that trial actually involved. The lifestyle support was diet counselling and an activity target. No structured strength training. No protein target. And when the medication stopped, the support stopped with it.

So that number tells you what happens when there's nothing in place. It doesn't tell you nothing helps.

There's a second thing worth knowing. When the weight comes back, it comes back as fat. The muscle you lost on the way down doesn't return on its own. Go through a full cycle without protecting it and you can end up at a similar weight to where you started, carrying a worse body composition than you began with.

I'm not going to tell you coaching prevents that. Nobody has run the trial that would prove it, and the researchers behind the regain study say as much themselves.

What can be said is narrower, and it's still worth acting on: more muscle at the end is a better position than less, and there's a real way to protect it.

Written it up properly here, including where the evidence runs out:

Most regain about two-thirds of the weight after stopping Ozempic or Wegovy. What the research really shows, and what protects the result you paid for.

31/08/2026

If you ask most people how often they need to train to see results, they'll usually guess higher than the actual answer. And no, that's not me being lazy with the truth — training to genuine muscle failure just 1-3 times per body part each week is enough to build real strength, provided you're actually consistent about it.

Here's the thing though — there are three factors that actually drive results in the gym, and none of them are about finding some perfect exercise or program:

Progressive overload. Consistent growth over time — more weight, more reps, or both. Without it, you can train hard forever and still plateau.

A plan. Know exactly what you're training before you walk in. No wandering from machine to machine hoping something works.

Intensity. Training close to mechanical failure — the point you genuinely can't do another rep with safe form. This is where most people leave results on the table, because it's uncomfortable, and most of us are conditioned to stop before we actually need to.

If you're new to the gym, don't stress about chasing numbers in your first few weeks. Focus on learning your body, your limits, and what real effort actually feels like. That foundation matters more than any spreadsheet.

I write full training plans around exactly this — structured, sustainable, and built for your actual life rather than a generic template. Full breakdown of everything above (plus what a session actually looks like, and how this shifts as you get older) is on the blog: https://www.flexiblehealth.co.nz/journal/how-often-should-you-train?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=glp1-launch

Think you need to train every day to see results? You don't. Here's the three things that actually drive progress — and why most people overcomplicate it.

18/08/2026

It isn't the drug that costs you muscle and bone. It's the speed.

If you're on Ozempic, Wegovy or Mounjaro — or thinking about it — this one's for you, and there's no lecture in it.

I'm not anti-medication. These things quiet the food noise, and if you've spent twenty years being told your appetite was a character flaw, that's a relief, not a shortcut.

But there's a number worth knowing. Lose 14% of your bodyweight or more in three to four months and bone loss stops being minor. Take the same weight off slower and you keep considerably more of it. That isn't the drug doing damage — it's what happens to any skeleton when the load comes off faster than the bone can adjust.

Muscle's the same story. Without strength training, muscle accounts for 10–15% of what women lose and 20–25% for men. Guys lose more, not less.

The bit that surprised me most: protein and lifting aren't interchangeable. Protein protects muscle. Load protects bone. You can't out-protein your skeleton.

And one honest thing before you read it. Up to two thirds of the weight comes back within a year of stopping — and that happened to people who had counselling alongside them. Nobody has proven anything prevents that, and I'm not going to pretend I can. What you can protect is the muscle and bone underneath it, and that's yours either way.

Full write-up with the research linked below.

Wegovy and other GLP-1s can cause muscle and bone loss alongside fat loss. Learn what causes it, and how to protect your results long-term.

16/08/2026

I paid for every six-week challenge going. None of them worked.

Not because I didn't try hard enough — I tried plenty hard. They failed because that's what fixed-term plans are built to do. Your body doesn't get long enough to actually adjust before the countdown runs out, and the second it's over you go straight back to your normal life. The same life that put you there in the first place. Nothing about those six weeks touched that.

Here's what nobody selling you the next challenge says out loud: your body doesn't want to be in a diet. But it doesn't want to be overweight either. Finding the bit in between takes longer than six weeks — it takes habits that hold up on an ordinary Tuesday, not just during a countdown you happen to be motivated for.

That's why I don't run countdowns. No end date, no lock-in, book when you need to.

None of us are perfect at anything else in life. Expecting perfection out of a diet was always the wrong ask.

Nutritionist based in Hamilton, coaching online across NZ. If you want a hand building something that actually lasts, there's a link in the comments.

04/08/2026

The mistake was never cardio. It was thinking cardio was the plan.

I get it — the second you decide to lose weight, cardio's the obvious move. It burns calories in the moment, it feels productive, and it's what we've all been told fat loss looks like. I'm a natural runner; even at my heaviest I could knock out a 5km. But it was always when I was trying to lose weight — and if you've read my story, you know how that went.

Here's what nobody mentions: your body is annoyingly efficient. The more you repeat the same cardio, the better it gets at it, and the fewer calories it costs you to do the same work. Stack that on top of an aggressive calorie cut and you start burning through muscle, not just fat. Less muscle means a lower resting burn — so the very thing you're doing to lose weight quietly makes it harder. That's the trap.

Muscle is the part everyone skips. It's active tissue — it costs energy to maintain all day, whether you're training or flat out on the couch. More muscle, higher resting burn. It's also where your food goes to work instead of into storage: better insulin sensitivity, steadier energy, and more room to actually enjoy your food without it working against you.

Build it consistently and something quietly brilliant happens — the scales barely move, but you've dropped a dress size or two. That's body recomposition, and it's the whole point.

Cardio isn't pointless. A brisk walk or easy jog is great for recovery and heart health — it just belongs in a supporting role, not the lead. Cardio supports. Muscle carries you.

Full article — including where progressive overload and protein come in.

Cardio alone rarely delivers lasting fat loss. Here's why resistance training — not more running — is the real key to sustainable, long-term results.