Holly T. Baxter

Holly T. Baxter As a Accredited Practing Dietitian, my goal is to provide you with the knowledge & tools to create a healthy lifestyle through science based nutrition. Holly T.

Baxter is an APD Dietitian (Accredited Practicing Dietitian), IFBB Bikini Pro, and fitness and nutrition coach with 13 years of experience in health and fitness. Originally from Australia and now based in Tampa, Florida, she holds a Master’s in Dietetics, authored Muscle Hypertrophy: The Complete Exercise Guide and several macro-friendly cookbooks, and co-founded the Carbon Diet Coach app. Holly is the founder of BiaBody, where she recently launched BiaFit—a comprehensive fitness, recipe, and strength-training app—and co-authors BiaBrain, a monthly research review publication. Specializing in women’s health, she empowers her clients through evidence-based coaching that addresses both physical and emotional well-being, drawing on her personal experience overcoming body dysmorphia. With scientific expertise and firsthand insight, Holly is a dynamic guest for any health, fitness, or entrepreneurship-focused podcast.

03/26/2026

🌅🥗 Should You Skip Breakfast Before Hitting the Gym?
🎥 Dive into the full video on my YT 👉🏼 https://youtu.be/MfoiX3GiEYE?si=kDZI-1hLRKVKmpwQ

Ever wondered if breakfast really affects your morning workout? 🤔 A recent study uncovers the potential impact on lifting performance, especially for those of us who train fasted.

🔬 Study Insights:
While most research emphasizes endurance, weightlifting is heavily dependent on muscle glycogen. Could skipping breakfast mean less fuel for your workout?

🤔 Study Design:
In this experiment, 16 resistance-trained men either consumed a high-carb breakfast or went without it before their lifting session. The breakfast was designed to meet about 20% of their daily energy needs—think classic carbs like cereal, milk, and juice🍊🥛

📊 Findings:
👉🏼 Performance Impact: Not eating breakfast resulted in a 15% drop in squat performance and a 6% decrease in bench press reps, particularly noticeable at the start of the workout.

👉🏼 Hunger Levels: Those who had breakfast felt more satisfied and less distracted, while the fasting group reported increased hunger during their training.

⚠️ Key Things to Remember:
🔹 The performance differences were very modest; and prior studies suggest breakfast might not directly impact muscle growth.
🔹 Individual responses likely vary—those who are used to eating breakfast may experience different performance effects than folks who are habitual fasters.

⭐️This study provides valuable insights, but it’s only 1 piece of the puzzle!🌟

🔹 How might our overall energy balance relate to workout performance? It’s likely significant.
🔹 Consider our body composition—this could also play a crucial role.
🔹 Don’t forget the impact of sleep & lifestyle factors; these elements might influence your performance even more than skipping breakfast!

🔑 Bottom Line:
👉🏼 If you lift in the morning and typically eat breakfast, a carb-rich meal could enhance your performance.

🤔Want a more comprehensive look at this study? Head over to my YouTube video! 🎥💡

03/21/2026

🤯 A 3 lb jump on the scale… yet one of the best training weeks so far🔥.

🙋🏼‍♀️This week I hit my highest energy expenditure so far — 4,800 kcal — and it was a great reminder that scale weight alone doesn’t tell the full story of your progress.

🎥In this update, I share:

👉🏼How one high-calorie day can impact your weekly deficit
👉🏼How I adjust my diet during my cycle
👉🏼What’s makes a “successful” week during prep

💕After an intense 80+ hour week, I also took a short staycation at The Vinoy in St. Pete — a little reset before pushing into the next phase.

⭐️Watch the full Week 5 competition prep update here: https://youtu.be/trHgWotwmOU

Holly ❤️

03/20/2026

Are “responders” and “non-responders” to resistance training actually a real thing? 💭🏋️‍♀️

A newly published study in the European Journal of Sport Science tackled this question using a clever design: train → detrain → retrain with the same program, in the same people, and then compare responses.

Why does this matter?

Most training studies only look at one short training block. That gives us a single snapshot—and makes it hard to tell whether differences between people are real biology or just noise from sleep, stress, testing conditions, or measurement error.

What they did:

• Untrained men & women
• 10 weeks of supervised resistance training
• 10 weeks of detraining
• Then the exact same 10-week program again

• Muscle size measured via ultrasound
• Strength measured via 1RM testing
• A non-training control group to estimate normal biological “noise”

They also used minimal detectable change thresholds—meaning improvements had to exceed normal variability to count as a true response.

What happened:

• Training increased muscle size and strength (as expected)
• After detraining, some gains were lost—but not all
• When the program was repeated, gains returned to a similar degree

The big question:
Were individual responses reproducible?

👉 Yes—to an extent.

People who gained more muscle or strength in the first block tended to gain more again in the second. Correlations were moderate to strong for most outcomes. Not perfect—but not random either.

About “non-responders”:

• Some people didn’t exceed the threshold for specific outcomes
• BUT no one failed to respond across all measures
• Many “non-responders” for strength still gained muscle (or vice versa)

👉 This matters because labeling someone a “non-responder” based on one metric is misleading.

Another interesting finding:

Those who gained the most also tended to lose the most during detraining. Adaptation *and* de-adaptation may both be individual traits.

03/17/2026

TIP 🙋🏼‍♀️ Exercise order matters… but probably not in the way you think 👇

If your goal is hypertrophy, the body doesn’t “know” whether an exercise came first or last in your workout.

💪🏽What it does respond to is:
Sufficient weekly volume, training close to (or at) failure and progressive overload over time

👉 So if a muscle is taken close to failure, and you’re accumulating enough quality volume across the week… it has the stimulus it needs to grow — regardless of where that exercise sits in your session.

🤔So why do programs even prescribe an order?
Because order helps with fatigue management and performance, not because it’s a requirement for growth.

☀️ Early in a session: You’re fresher, can lift more weight, and can perform with greater stability and control

🌖 Later in a session: Fatigue is higher, loads may drop, and ex*****on can become more challenging.

But from a hypertrophy standpoint, if you’re still reaching high effort (near failure), the muscle is still receiving a meaningful stimulus. So where order does matter more 👇

👉 Strength & performance-focused training

If your goal is to maximize load, improve skill on compound lifts, express force output, then yes—exercise order becomes much more important, because fatigue directly interferes with neural output and coordination.

One practical (and often overlooked) consideration is injury risk. While you can place compounds later in a session and still grow…

👉 heavily fatiguing yourself before big compound lifts (like squats, deadlifts, presses) can increase:
• Breakdown in technique
• Reduced stability
• Higher injury risk

So it’s not that compounds must go first for growth—it’s that placing them earlier is often a safer and more sustainable choice, especially when loads are high.

🔑Takeaway:
Exercise order is a tool for optimization, not a prerequisite for progress.
Don’t let perfection in programming prevent consistent progress.
Because in the long run, ex*****on > exact order.

03/14/2026

🎈To celebrate my 37th birthday, I’m excited to share a limited-time birthday special with you all to celebrate my new app, BiaFit! 🎉 We’re offering a **FREE 1-Month Trial** to 37 lucky individuals! 🤯

👉🏼Be among the first 37 people to comment “FREE TRIAL” and unlock a complimentary subscription that grants you one month of **unlimited access**—absolutely no strings attached!💕

🔥This trial gives you full access to the app📱where you can explore hundreds of training programs tailored for all goals and experience levels. Plus, you’ll have access to all my easy macro-friendly recipes, advanced training data and analytics 📊 , and a vibrant in-app community to support you every step of the way!

To join in, make sure you’re following my page and watch for a direct message from me, as I’ll be reaching out to all the winners over the weekend to get you set up! 🥰

Send this post to a friend 🙃

👉🏼 While you’re here, check out our “Build Your Own Workout” tool! It’s designed for advanced lifters who are looking for flexibility in their training. With a library of *1000+ exercises*, you can easily customize your workout frequency, duration, and selections to meet your specific needs.

🔥 Ready to get started? Download the app at **getbiafit.com**. Subscriptions are just **$15.99 per month**—no need to invest hundreds in custom workouts or personal trainers to achieve amazing results! Link in my bio 🔗

Happy lifting! 💪🏼

03/13/2026

🥰Week 4 of my diet phase is officially in the books! You can listen to the full update, including details about my diet, training and strategy, by heading over to my YT Channel 🎥

👉🏼As always, balancing coaching, multiple businesses, new app developments, and dieting is quite the challenge—but this week came with a few extra twists thanks to some birthday celebrations.

🎂Sam and I share the exact same birthday, so while we were out to dinner Friday night, we made a very spontaneous decision: why not celebrate somewhere new?

So… on a whim, I booked a hotel, and the next morning we hopped in the car and drove three hours to St. Augustine, Florida.

💪🏽Because I’m still in prep, the morning kicked off with cardio—a quick 20-minute run followed by a 40-minute walk home. After that, I treated myself to a birthday nail appointment, packed my bags, and just after 1 PM we were on the road.

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel and headed straight to St. Augustine Distillery for a bourbon tour and tasting.

It was excellent—and yes, a couple of bottles definitely came home with us. 😁

To watch the full video 🎥 click the link 🔗 in my bio!

03/10/2026

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road for shows and work related events over the years ✈️
☝🏼 And if there’s one thing travel has taught me, it’s how to train anywhere — even small hotel gyms with very limited equipment.

🎥In this video (full-length workout is live on my YouTube channel), I walk you through one of my recent hotel workouts and show you how I use the BiaFit app to make it actually effective.

More importantly, I break down how to create a meaningful hypertrophy stimulus by manipulating a few key training variables — even when load and equipment are limited.

PS: You can get a FREE 1-month trial of the BiaFit app when you download any of my workouts from the BiaBody website.

👉 Visit www.bia-body.com and check out the shop for all my workout plans — programs start at just $9.99 💪

03/10/2026

💕As a professional bikini athlete and Dietitian, I’ve spent a lot of time on the road for shows and work related events ✈️
☝🏼 And if there’s one thing travel has taught me, it’s how to train anywhere — even small hotel gyms with very limited equipment.

🎥In this video (full-length workout is live on my YouTube channel), I walk you through one of my recent hotel workouts and show you how I use the BiaFit app to make it actually effective.

More importantly, I break down how to create a meaningful hypertrophy stimulus by manipulating a few key training variables — even when load and equipment are limited.

PS: You can get a FREE 1-month trial of the BiaFit app when you download any of my workouts from the BiaBody website.

👉 Visit www.bia-body.com and check out the shop for all my workout plans — programs start at just $9.99 💪

03/07/2026

💪✨ One of my all-time favorite glute max exercises has to be the cable kickback!

Not only does it target those glutes perfectly, but using the ankle foot attachment with the strap below your foot makes all the difference. No more sliding up the shin—just pure focus on that muscle engagement!

⚠️A key tip:
👉🏼keep your body close to the cable tower. This helps minimize any loading on your lower back, ensuring you’re getting the most out of every rep. Remember, the further away you are from the tower, the more strain you might put on your back.

If you’re looking to level up your workouts, grab some new ankle cable attachments from the shop page on my website! 🌐www.bia-body.com

🍑💥

03/06/2026

🔥YEOW!!! We finally got some movement!!

Well guys…this week marks Week 3 of my prep for the IFBB GRL PWR Show in Orlando, and probably many more after this one too, and the routine is slowly locking back in — meal prep, macro tracking, daily weigh-ins, and all the small habits that drive progress when calories drop.

But prep is rarely perfect.

At the end of last week, I had a 4-day trip to the Southeast ACSM Conference, the largest sport science conference in the country. Several days out of routine can derail almost anyone during prep… even after competing professionally for over a decade.

⚠️In this week’s update, I walk through exactly how I handled it:

• Eating out for nearly every meal
• Adjusting training using the BiaFit app
• Managing macros without my normal routine
• Reviewing my full nutrition and training data

☝🏼If you’ve ever wondered how professionals actually handle fat loss when life gets busy, this weekly series is for you.

Address

Tampa, FL

Website

https://biafit.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Holly T. Baxter posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Holly T. Baxter:

Shortcuts

Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn
Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share via Email
Share on WhatsApp Share on Instagram Share on Telegram

Category