Why am I so sore after workouts when I'm eating very little?

On The WarriorBabe Show, Nikkiey asks you to think back to a time you didn't eat enough and then pushed yourself to the max in a workout. How sore were you afterward? Her point is that the soreness is a signal. When you restrict food, you aren't getting the vitamins and nutrients your body and muscles need to recover, so you can't heal properly from the work you just did. You aren't weak, and you aren't doing it wrong in the gym. The plan is underfeeding you.

Nikkiey goes further. She says your body needs at least around 1,200 calories just to function, because that's what you burn breathing, sleeping and talking. When you dive lower than that, she describes your body going into starvation mode and starting to break down muscle to keep you alive. The muscle you're training to build, the muscle that makes you look toned, gets eaten away. In her words, it's counterproductive to everything you're trying to do.

Carbs matter here too. Nikkiey calls carbohydrates a key macronutrient for building and recovering muscle, and says you need them for the kind of intense workouts you're doing. Low-carb approaches like keto may work short term, she says, but they aren't sustainable and they take away fuel your muscles rely on. She asks you to see carbs as the thing fueling your body composition change, not as the enemy.

She shares the example of Cheryl, a 57-year-old client who came in eating 270 grams of carbs and lost weight. Nikkiey then raised her to 300 and later 330 grams, and Cheryl maintained well. Nikkiey's takeaway is that your body needs food, especially if your goal is to build muscle and change your shape. Her advice is to trust the process and eat more, even if it shatters what you believed about dieting.