HD Fitness

HD Fitness NYC Personal trainer. Vegetarian girl who lifts. Helping you reach your "High Definition" fitness goals. Contact Hannah today for more information!

HD Fitness is a local personal training business operating at multiple locations throughout Manhattan. Owner Hannah Driscoll has been a certified personal trainer for several years working with a variety of clientele. She focuses on a wide variety of goals, including weight loss, muscle gain/fat loss, improved strength & functionality, and preparing for specific events. Regardless of the goal, you will always focus on a well-rounded program consisting of strength training, cardio, flexibility, and nutrition tailored to your needs and goals.

02/20/2026

Protein isn’t magic. But it does something most people don’t realize.

Your body actually burns about 20–30% of the calories in protein just to digest and process it.

That means if you eat 100 calories of protein, you don’t net 100. Your body has to spend energy breaking it down, absorbing it, and using it to repair tissue and maintain muscle.

Compare that to fats and carbs, which cost your body much less energy to digest.

This is called the thermic effect of food, but you don’t need the term — you just need to understand what it means:

Protein makes it easier to stay in a calorie deficit without white-knuckling hunger.

Add to that the fact that protein preserves muscle (which keeps your metabolism higher) and keeps you fuller longer… and now you’ve pulled multiple fat loss levers at once.

This is why I keep coming back to it.

Not because it’s trendy.
Not because it’s flashy.
Because it works.

02/19/2026

A calorie deficit isn’t just “eat less food.”
That’s the part everyone hears — and the part that usually backfires.

A deficit simply means your body is using more energy than it’s taking in. And there are multiple levers that affect that.

Muscle matters. More muscle means your body burns more energy just to exist.
Protein matters. It preserves muscle, costs energy to digest, and keeps hunger in check.
Movement matters. Not just workouts — daily movement adds up more than people realize.

When all you pull is the “eat less” lever, hunger skyrockets, energy drops, and fat loss gets harder to sustain.

This is why fat loss isn’t about punishment or grinding harder. It’s about understanding the system and working with your body instead of against it.

If you’ve been stuck or frustrated, zoom out and ask: which levers am I actually pulling?

02/18/2026

If fat loss feels harder than it should, pause and zoom out for a second.

It’s not just about eating less. It’s about what your meals are built around.

Protein is doing a lot more work behind the scenes than most people realize (it’s not just a “bro thing” or “gym rat right of passage”)
It helps preserve muscle (which keeps your metabolism higher)
It keeps hunger under control
It costs your body more energy to digest

That’s why protein pulls multiple fat loss levers at once.
(So yes….it is for EVERYONE….ESPECIALLY if fat loss is your goal…)

But only if you’re eating enough of it.

A good rule of thumb is 25–40g of protein per meal, or about a palm-sized portion of a complete protein source. That gives your body a real signal to stay full and maintain muscle, instead of constantly chasing hunger.

This is also where people get tripped up—foods that contain protein aren’t the same as foods that are built around protein. You don’t need perfect meals, you just need better anchors.

Start there with protein.

The next time fat loss feels confusing or hunger feels relentless, don’t ask what’s wrong with you. Ask what your meals are actually anchored with—and if you’re not sure how much protein you actually had—track it!

02/17/2026

Peanut butter is not a protein source.

Yes, it has some protein.
That doesn’t make it a protein anchor.

🥜 Two tablespoons of peanut butter have about 8g of protein and nearly 200 calories.
To get a full protein serving from peanut butter, you’d need to eat so much of it that you’d blow through your calories… and still be hungry again soon.

And that’s the part people miss 👇
Foods that are mostly fat digest quickly and don’t shut down hunger the way protein does.

Peanut butter isn’t a bad food.
It’s just not the job you’re asking it to do.

If fat loss feels harder than it should, step back and look at the whole picture 🧠
Are your meals actually anchored with enough protein… or are you relying on foods that just contain protein?

Build meals around real protein first 💪
Then add foods like peanut butter for flavor, enjoyment, and fats — not as your main protein source.

We’re not here to demonize foods.
We’re here to understand how they actually work.

02/16/2026

If fat loss feels harder than it should—especially if you’re hungry all the time—it’s probably not a willpower problem.

It’s a protein problem.

Protein does a few things most people don’t realize 👇
🔥 It costs your body more energy to digest
💪 It preserves muscle (which keeps metabolism higher)
🍽️ It keeps you full longer than carbs or fats

That’s why protein is suddenly in everything—cereal, bars, chips, even soda. Not because it’s a fad, but because most people are under-eating the one macronutrient that actually makes fat loss feel sustainable.

And no—foods with some protein don’t automatically count.
Peanut butter and hummus aren’t bad foods, but they’re not protein anchors. To get enough protein from them, you’d have to eat so many calories that hunger comes back fast and fat loss gets harder.

Here’s the simple takeaway 👇
Anchor each meal with 25–40g of protein (or a palm-sized portion of a complete protein source), then build the rest of the meal around that.

The next time you feel hungry an hour or two after eating, don’t ask what’s wrong with you.
Ask instead 👉 how much protein was actually in that meal?

That question changes everything.

🎥 I just posted a full video breaking all of this down —why protein matters for fat loss, hunger, muscle, and metabolism—plus how to eat so you’re not constantly hungry.
Watch it next if you want clarity instead of guessing.
👉🏻Link in bio

02/13/2026

Most people think deadlift strength comes from pulling harder.
It doesn’t.

It comes from hip control.

Before I deadlift, I always prep two things:
✅can I control the femur in the socket?
✅can I actually extend the hip without my back taking over?

The first drill teaches you how to pull the femur head back into the pelvis, load the glute the way it’s loaded at the bottom of a deadlift, and stabilize the hip as the bar breaks from the floor.

The second trains true hip extension — hamstrings and glutes doing the work, pelvis stacked, no compensation from the low back.

This isn’t mobility for the sake of mobility.
It’s teaching your hips what their job actually is.

Try these before your next deadlift and pay attention to how the bar comes off the floor, how stable you feel, and how your back feels after.

That’s the difference between moving weight and controlling it.

02/12/2026

A pull-up bar is one of the most effective pieces of home equipment you can own… even if you can’t do a single pull-up.

Just hanging from a bar:
✅decompresses the spine
✅improves overhead shoulder mobility
✅strengthens grip
✅wakes up the core and upper back

And from there, you can progress:
✔️active hangs
✔️knee tucks
✔️assisted pull-ups
✔️slow negatives

It’s not about “earning” the exercise.
It’s about giving your body a reason to adapt.

You don’t need a full home gym, sometimes one simple tool does a lot more than you think.

If you train at home, this is one worth considering.

02/11/2026

Your body doesn’t know where you work out.

It only knows what you ask it to adapt to.

Muscle is built through tension and progression.
Fat loss comes from consistency over time.
Neither one depends on a gym.

A good home program still needs:
✔️compound lifts
✔️progressive overload
✔️enough volume to create change
✔️consistency long enough for adaptation to happen

When home workouts don’t work, it’s usually not the location—it’s that the program never progresses.

Training is about adaptation, not a gym membership.

02/10/2026

Home workouts actually work.
The research is pretty clear on that.

Building muscle and losing fat comes down to progressive overload and a solid program — not whether you’re training in a gym or your living room.

Where most people get stuck is here:
They either buy way too much equipment…
or they buy a few things, don’t know how to use them, and eventually give up.

Then home workouts get blamed.

The truth is, home workouts only fail when they turn into random movement sessions instead of training. If nothing is progressing, your body has no reason to change.

Here’s what I cover in this week’s video:
✅what equipment actually matters
✅how progression works at home
✅and how to stop wasting time and money

🎥 Full breakdown in the video — link in bio

02/09/2026

Home workouts get a bad reputation, but honestly… most of the time it’s not the workouts that are the problem.
It’s how we use them.
A lot of people treat training at home like:
“move a little”
“get sweaty”
“check the box”

And that’s fine sometimes. But if the goal is to build muscle or lose fat, your body still needs a reason to adapt.

That reason is progressive overload.
Even at home.
Even with limited equipment.

You don’t need a full gym, you need intention, structure, and progression.

I broke all of this down in today’s video if you want the full context and examples.
🎥 Link in bio

02/06/2026

Stretching and mobility aren’t the same thing — and that’s where a lot of people get stuck.

Stretching is passive. It’s how far your body can be placed into a position when nothing else is demanding control.

Mobility is active. It’s your ability to move into and out of that range on your own, with control.

And stability is what makes that range usable — especially when you’re standing, walking, lifting, or changing direction.

That’s why you can stretch all the time and still feel stiff, unstable, or uncomfortable when you move.
Real life doesn’t happen in stretches — it happens under load.

The goal isn’t to stop stretching.
It’s to pair it with control so the range actually carries over.

02/05/2026

Stretching feels easy… until you actually move.

That’s because stretching is passive.
Real life isn’t.

Standing, walking, lifting, changing direction — all of that happens under load.
If your body doesn’t feel safe controlling a position there, it tightens things up — even if you stretch constantly.

The answer isn’t forcing deeper stretches.
It’s learning to control the range you already have — slowly, with breath, without momentum.

thens

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