Expert Q&A: Nutrition for building strength, with Lisa Franz

The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version or watch the video below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.

In this episode of The Heallist Podcast, we dive into muscle — what it actually takes to build it, why food is most of the equation, and what people tend to get wrong when they're focused on losing weight instead. Our guest, Lisa Franz, holds a master's in exercise science, health promotion, and nutrition, and is the owner and head coach at Nutrition, Coaching and Life. She has coached full-time for over seven years, working with more than 350 clients, and hosts the Nutrition and Life podcast. Originally from Germany, she now coaches from the road and is currently based in Bolivia.

In this conversation, Lisa breaks down why resistance training matters for everyone — not just people chasing an aesthetic — how it affects hormones, mood, and confidence, why most people underestimate their protein needs, and how to build sustainable habits around both training and nutrition without powders, extreme diets, or all-or-nothing thinking.

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Lisa: I do want to catch the people who are thinking, I don't want to look specifically muscular, I don't want to look big and bulky. This is still an episode for you, because it should be in literally everybody's interest to at least maintain the muscle mass you currently have. As we're aging, past the ages of 35 or into our 40s, we actually need to work on keeping the muscle we have — even just the postural muscle, the muscles that help you carry the groceries, that let you play with your grandchildren, that keep you alive for longer. Many people don't die directly from disease — they fall, go to the hospital, and either never come out because they've grown too fragile to handle their own lives, or for other muscle-deficit reasons. So literally everybody should care about maintaining muscle, even without aesthetic goals.

The other reason women especially should be listening: most people say they want to lose weight, but what they actually mean is they want to lose body fat. We don't want to become a smaller, less strong version of ourselves — and that's exactly what happens if we only focus on nutrition without resistance training, or if we just do cardio, like I used to believe was enough myself.

Lisa: I also want to catch the person who's thinking, I don't actually want to lose weight. Even if you're happy with your current body weight, most of us would like to improve our body composition — you might stay at the same exact weight, but your body fat percentage goes down and your lean body mass goes up. Even at the same weight, improving your body fat percentage makes you a healthier version of yourself, and usually means looking more toned and defined. When people describe their goals now, they're less focused on a number on the scale, and more likely to say, "I want to look like this" — often a picture of a woman who looks strong in the sense of capable, with defined shoulders and arms, some ab definition, nicely shaped glutes and legs — not that skinny-fat look. That's what I help people achieve: improved body composition, which is associated with so many positive health outcomes, not just having a lot of fat around your organs, which carries health risks.

Resistance Training That Actually Sticks

Lisa: The first thing to build or maintain muscle is resistance training. I'm specifically saying resistance training because I don't mean everybody has to go to the gym and lift a ton of weight. For someone starting out, this could literally be bodyweight training — sometimes as simple as squatting down onto a chair and getting back up. I've worked with senior citizens where that was literally it, and someone who used to need a cane or someone's help to get up from a chair could now do that on their own. If you're traveling a lot, it can be a Pilates session, resistance bands, or a TRX. If you're more advanced, a gym is perfect, or exercise classes that use equipment. I always encourage people to do something sustainable and something they enjoy — though initially, when starting something new, we often don't enjoy it, because we don't enjoy feeling like we're bad at something.

I would never prescribe someone just starting off to work out six times a week for an hour — that's ridiculous, would likely lead to injury, and they'd never stick with it. Think about where you're at — maybe you're already running twice a week and doing yoga once. That's already great for your cardiovascular health, but you could add one pure resistance session, or swap one run for a Pilates class that builds more core strength. Think about where you want to be in five or ten years, because my goal is for you to still be working out and building strength when you're 70, 80, or maybe until your very last day. We need to actually use our muscles to maintain them — there's a lot of truth to "use it or lose it," unfortunately.

Lisa: That's the most important and often overlooked thing, because we often think about what's optimal, or hear about some new training that's even better, and forget about adherence and whether we'd actually be able to stick with it. In my opinion, adherence always comes before what's optimal.

Hormones Mood And Confidence Benefits

Lisa: I can tell you about a client — a man with really low testosterone who was on the verge of jumping to TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, which is absolutely fine and often required. In his case, we focused on lifestyle factors first — we improved his sleep, he cut out more alcohol, and started strength training three times a week. His testosterone came back to really good levels — he was in his late 40s, and it ended up better than it had been in his late 20s, without any testosterone replacement. The same applies to women — a woman's hormone profile can really improve with resistance training.

Another client was on antidepressants. We worked on lifestyle — sleep, cutting alcohol, nutrition — and she started resistance training. Under supervision from her therapist, she eventually came off the medication, and she gained so much confidence and self-belief from proving to herself week in, week out that she could stick with a routine and lift certain weights. There are so many beautiful benefits to resistance training beyond the aesthetic aspect.

Protein Basics And Food Tracking Clarity

Lisa: We need both the resistance training and the nutritional side. The training sets the stimulus for muscles to grow or at least stay — then afterward, we need to give the body the building blocks to repair that tissue. The literal building blocks of our body — hair, skin, nails, muscle, everything — is protein. Working with over 350 people, I can confidently say 90% or more of the people who come to me do not consume enough protein on a consistent basis.

When I started recording my own food intake, I was convinced I was eating enough protein — a couple of eggs at breakfast, some chicken at lunch, fish or cottage cheese at dinner — and it turned out to be nowhere near enough. I'm not saying everybody needs to track macros and count calories forever, but I believe in the educational value of recording your food intake for an extended period. First, it creates awareness — clients often say "I hardly ate anything all day, why am I so hungry," then start recording and realize they had creamer in their coffee, half their kid's sandwich, half a muffin, a mocha with whipped cream — and suddenly it's 2,000-plus calories.

Second, it educates you on what's actually in your food. I used to believe things like peanut butter or a couple of beans being a great protein source — and yes, they contribute, but without paying attention to quantity, they're not going to be enough to maintain or build muscle. I'd recommend anyone struggling with weight loss or wanting to retain or build muscle commit to recording their food for about four weeks, using any free tracking app — MyFitnessPal, Macros, Lose It, Cronometer, whatever. It might be eye-opening, as it was for me and most of my clients.

Once you do that, you can set a target for protein. Take your healthy or goal weight in pounds and use that number as your daily protein target — if you're currently 170 pounds and want to be 145, use 145 grams as your target. If you only get to 120, that's great too. Many women I start working with naturally only get to 60 or 80 grams, which is too low. Quality matters too — I believe we should be eating 80-90% whole, minimally processed foods — vegetables, fruits, fish, lean chicken or red meat, or plant-based sources if you choose — with 10-20% flexible room to enjoy date night or a slice of birthday cake. To build or maintain muscle, we need the stimulus of resistance training and the building blocks of protein — meal timing and frequency are secondary to consistently hitting your overall daily protein goal.

Hitting Protein Goals Without Powders

Lisa: There's absolutely a way to reach these numbers without force-feeding yourself. Many women who come to me have a slightly slowed metabolism from years of not eating enough, or from being too stressed to get their body into a rest-and-digest state. Protein happens to be the macronutrient hardest to digest, between protein, carbs, and fats — and that's actually beneficial, because it's also more metabolically active. If you eat 400 calories from protein versus 400 from carbs or fat, it's a lot less likely to be stored as body fat, and your body needs more calories to process it — which helps with weight loss, since who doesn't want to eat more while burning more calories?

When we increase protein slowly and gradually, we can teach the metabolism to rev back up — especially alongside techniques like sitting down to eat, taking a few deep breaths beforehand, to get into rest-and-digest mode rather than staying in fight-or-flight.

Here's an example day: for breakfast, an omelet or scramble with a couple of whole eggs plus half a cup of egg whites, vegetables, maybe a slice of sourdough or sweet potato, berries — that alone gets you to around 25-30 grams of protein. For lunch, most restaurant meals have a big carb or fat portion and a small protein portion — so it helps to reduce the carbs and fat slightly and increase the protein: six to eight ounces of chicken breast, some beans, a starchy carb like quinoa, and vegetables gets you to around 40 grams. The afternoon snack is often where people fall short — grabbing just a coffee, or a coffee and a muffin, with no protein, which makes cravings even higher later in the evening. A snack like Greek yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese with berries or nut butter, or a couple of boiled eggs can add another 20-25 grams and help prevent evening cravings. Dinner similar to lunch, maybe fish or salmon with some carbs to help you relax, adds another 30 grams. Altogether that's around 120 grams a day, even without powder. Research points to roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram, or 0.8 grams per pound, as a good target — though we often aim for one gram per pound of goal weight so people have something to reach toward. Personally, when traveling, a protein powder comes in handy since protein is harder to find at airports than carbs and fats — but it's certainly not required.

Body Recomposition Calories And Consistency

Lisa: I want to add one thing about body recomposition: it's not just add more protein and train. In order to reduce body fat, we also shouldn't be in a calorie surplus. Sometimes recomposition is possible at calorie maintenance, especially if you're completely new to training or to a higher-protein diet — but the more experienced you are, the more you likely need a slight calorie deficit to drop body fat and increase muscle. Recording your food helps you understand how much you eat on average and how much your body needs to maintain weight, so you can adjust from there.

One client, I'll call her Rebecca, had already been fairly active but was never really consistent — she'd say she went to the gym three times a week, but once you looked closer, it was really more like one or two times, accounting for travel, school holidays, getting sick. I want people to think about consistency and be honest with themselves rather than setting goals too high. We started by getting ridiculously consistent with her training — she'd send me a gym photo every time, just for accountability, because accountability is huge for sticking with something. The people who are most consistent are actually the least rigid — not someone who goes to the same gym at 6 a.m. every single day, but someone who's adaptable and flexible with what they're doing, shifting their routine around travel or doing the workout later in the day.

The same applies to nutrition. Rebecca was a master at planning ahead — not a two-hour Sunday meal prep eating the same thing all week, but a few simple staple meals, like overnight oats with Greek yogurt that you can mix up with different flavors, or prepped chicken and roasted vegetables you can turn into a wrap one day, a bowl another day, a taco another day. She also thought about how to incorporate social things without derailing her progress — moving away from "it's the weekend, I'll start over Monday," and instead asking what the her from tomorrow would be happier with. If she really wanted a burger, she'd share it with her husband and get a salad too, or order a steak and potato instead. That mindset shift, proving to yourself you can be consistent, brings me just as much joy as the aesthetic results — hearing someone say, "I didn't think I could stick with this," or that the confidence gave them the power to quit a job or get a promotion.

Coaching Value Food Mindset Final Push

Lisa: It's funny — when it comes to finances, we have no problem hiring an accountant; with an injury, we go to a physiotherapist. But somehow with losing weight or training, we think we should be able to do it ourselves. You can, especially now with AI you can find a great training program and meal plan — but there's so much more to it. Food isn't just energy in, energy out. It's cultural, it's nurturing — how did you grow up around food, what thoughts do you have about it, are you someone who emotionally eats, stress eats, rewards yourself with food? We often aren't even aware of these patterns — what food beliefs did you pick up, often from your mom, since nearly every mom dieted at some point in our childhood, or made a comment about hating her body.

As a coach, I bring an outside perspective — not that I see everything, but a good coach asks the right questions to help someone notice things they already have within them: "Oh, I never realized that every Thursday when my husband travels, all I want to do is binge," or "when I have a big deadline, all I want is—." We all have eating habits that need addressing, just like other psychological wounds. The exact numbers of calories and protein are one aspect, but it goes much deeper. I see my job as being part of the journey, not just handing someone a starting plan.

I always want to encourage people — if you currently don't feel like you're living your best life in your best body, do something about it. I would actively discourage people from accepting mediocrity or thinking that because something is "normal," you have to follow along too. Unfortunately, it's become normal to eat junk food, drink a lot of alcohol, be overweight, have diabetes. But if you feel like you can do better, you deserve better — and I truly believe everybody listening deserves the very best.

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