S13 EP21: Food choice is not about willpower. | Lacey Baier
The Thick Thighs Save Lives Podcast
Constantly Varied Gear
4.9 • 724 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we’re joined by nutrition coach and Cleanish founder Lacey Baier, who shares how losing 80 pounds the “hard way” (think: extreme restriction, constant hunger, and white-knuckling discipline) ultimately led to burnout and why she had to completely rebuild her approach to food from the ground up.
This conversation goes beyond macros and meal plans. It’s about why so many women feel stuck between “all-in” and “off the rails,” how under-eating shows up in sneaky ways (even when you think you’re doing well), and how to create a system that actually works with a busy, real-life schedule.
We also get into:
Why perfection is the fastest way to fail
The mindset shift that makes nutrition sustainable
How to stop starting over every Monday
What “balanced” eating actually looks like day-to-day
Simple ways to prioritize protein without overhauling your life
If you’re tired of knowing what to do but not being able to live it consistently this episode will help.
Lacey’s Links:
Birthday Cake Protein Bites Recipe
To pre-order on Amazon: Cleanish Meal Prep: High-Protein Recipes for Real Life, which releases on May 19:
https://www.amazon.com/Cleanish-Meal-Prep-High-Protein-Recipes/dp/1628606126
(00:01:47) “I Ate As Little As Possible”… Here’s What Happened
(00:03:10) Why We Romanticize Being Miserable to Be Thin
(00:05:46) Calories In vs Calories Out (Still Wrong in 2026)(00:08:35) Why Eating Less Stops Working in Midlife
(00:10:55) The Real Goal: Strength, Energy, and Longevity
(00:14:30) The Protein Problem No One Talks About
(00:18:05) The 80/20 “Clean-ish” Approach That Actually Works
(00:29:40) How Much Protein You Actually Need
(00:37:45) Lacey’s Meal Prep Fail (Don’t Do This)
(00:41:15) The Simple Meal Prep Strategy That Actually Works
(00:48:15) High-Protein Desserts That Actually Taste Good
(00:52:33) Where to find Lacey Baier
Want to leave the TTSL Podcast a voicemail? We love your questions and adore hearing from you. https://www.speakpipe.com/TheThickThighsSaveLivesPodcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's actually not about being 100% anything because that's so unsustainable. |
| 0:04.1 | What I realize is you have to have a little bit of that ish in your life. |
| 0:07.9 | The more you can set yourself up for those opportunities to go imperfectly, I think the better |
| 0:13.4 | you are. |
| 0:14.2 | How many grams of protein per servings should we be aiming for to support our minds and |
| 0:18.6 | bodies throughout the day? |
| 0:19.8 | Typically, if you can kind of try to aim around or meal, it is going to get you there. |
| 0:25.6 | And so many women are having probably like, there's actually a third person that you can |
| 0:30.6 | try to attain to be. |
| 0:31.6 | It doesn't have to be the one who fails or the one who goes back to normal behavior. |
| 0:35.6 | It could be the one who figures it out and gets shit done. |
| 0:43.1 | Hi, guys, and welcome back to the Thick Thigh Save Lives podcast. |
| 0:46.5 | I have a nutrition guest on with me today. |
| 0:49.5 | Lacey Beyer, welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:52.2 | Thank you. |
| 0:53.1 | Happy to be here. |
| 0:57.6 | We have an awesome nutrition-based podcast for you guys today and not like you think, well, if you've been listening to the podcast, |
| 1:02.3 | similar to what you think. It's not going to involve crash dieting. It's not going to involve |
| 1:05.4 | you being hungry, but it is going to involve you having a plan. This is the thing. I feel like we can talk so much about nutrition when it comes to don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. But then it's like, all right, well, now I'm just kind of giving up because they don't have a plan and I've gotten so many don'ts that I'm just going to go eat whatever in the fridge and try my best from there. So Lacey, I'm super excited for you to |
| 1:29.8 | kind of clear this up with my audience. We're going to dive into nutrition and get everyone a plan |
| 1:36.0 | to moving forward into their kind of spring reset. Awesome. Sounds good. Sounds like a good thing. |
| 1:43.9 | Yeah, right. So I want to kind of dive into your background. So you have lost a significant amount of weight. Your health journey has been, you know, one you have learned from. So you once said that you prided yourself in eating as little as possible. What did that actually do to your |
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