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.

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 💀

Here’s the thing most people can’t figure out on their own: is your “low energy” actually from not eating enough/not hit...
12/04/2026

Here’s the thing most people can’t figure out on their own: is your “low energy” actually from not eating enough/not hitting your micrnonutrients/not eating enough carbs?

Or is it from a leptin signalling problem driven by circadian disruption, leptin resistance & a nervous system that’s been stuck in overdrive for years?

Actually not eating enough/ genuine low energy availability vs if your body not being able to use the energy properly requires a completely different fix.

Many people’s logic is: suppressed metabolism = energy deficiency = eat more to signal safety. And for someone who is genuinely undereating, that works. But leptin resistance specifically breaks that equation because:

The brain already thinks there’s a famine even when there isn’t one. It can’t read the leptin signal telling it energy stores are adequate. So the person eats more, stores more, leptin goes even higher, resistance deepens, and the brain still doesn’t get the message.

You’re not feeding a deficit, instead you’re pouring more into a system that can’t read its own fuel gauge.

You might go follow the advice but you gain weight, feel worse, go back & continually get told you’re not eating enough or you’re still too stressed.

The “you can be overweight & still have low energy availability/LEA” framework can’t see its own blind spot!!

The poor metabolism symptoms are the same. The cause is completely different & so is the solution!

If this is you, something cool is coming to help you figure out exactly which TYPE of energy/metabolism issue you’re dealing with. Stay tuned.

Share this with someone who needs it! 💕

You can understand exactly what a calorie deficit is and still not be able to stay in one. You can know your training se...
11/04/2026

You can understand exactly what a calorie deficit is and still not be able to stay in one. You can know your training session will feel good once you start and still not get yourself there. You can fuel perfectly all day and completely unravel every single night.

That’s not a knowledge gap. That’s not a discipline gap. That’s not a consistency gap. That’s a specific behaviour skill gap. And behaviour has layers.

And here’s the part that really matters: Two people can have the exact same problem on the surface and have completely different skill gaps underneath.

Two women both struggling to stick with tracking their macros. For one, it’s a values conflict issue: tracking was never the right tool for her and she’s fighting against something that fundamentally doesn’t fit.

For the other, it’s a realistic planning issue. She built a system that only works when life is perfect, so the second things get busy or messy, the whole thing collapses. Same behaviour. Different gap. Which is exactly why “just be more consistent” is useless advice.

Consistent at what, and what’s actually in the way?

These aren’t character flaws. They’re skills. Specific, trainable, identifiable skills that no one has bothered to teach you because it’s easier to sell you another meal plan and tell you to try harder.

The work I do with clients lives at the exact intersection of what they deem bad, what they keep doing anyway, and what they actually want to change. Not what I think they should change. Not what the internet thinks they should change. What makes sense to them, when the trade-offs finally stop adding up.

There is no right or wrong. I firmly believe that. There is only what works for you and what doesn’t, & whether you have the skills to close that gap.

Swipe to see which ones might be running the show for you 🤷🏼‍♀️

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