Pia Davis, Great Missenden (2026)

10/06/2026

I was talking about protein last March when I drew a barrel on the whiteboard.

(Not my best artwork! One of my students told me it looked like a badly squished coffee cup.)

But the barrel metaphor is one I come back to because it explains something most women have never been told about how protein actually works in the body.

Think of an oak barrel built from 9 individual wooden staves (planks) - each one representing one of the nine essential amino acids. When all the staves are the same height, the barrel holds water to the top. Every amino acid is available and used. Nothing is wasted.

But if one stave is shorter than the rest - even by a small amount - the barrel can only fill to the height of that shorter stave. The amino acids above the waterline? Your body can't use them.

They're simply excreted.

This is why variety matters more than volume.

You can eat a lot of protein and still be short on the specific amino acids your body needs - if you're eating from too narrow a range. A diet built almost entirely on one source, however good that source is, will always have a short stave somewhere.

Animal proteins - eggs, meat, fish, dairy - tend to contain all nine essential amino acids in good proportions. That's why they score so highly on protein quality measures. Plant proteins can be lower in one or more, which is why variety and combination matter more if you rely more on them.

The goal isn't just more protein. It's the right protein, from a wide enough range of sources, consistently throughout the day.

Fill the barrel.

03/06/2026

I was doing a talk on carbohydrates last March. Half the women in that room had spent years cutting carbs. Most of them felt guilty when they ate fruit. Then I saw it click for someone in the front row.

I’d just said: “Plants are tiny solar panels. They absorb photons - actual packets of light energy that travel ninety-three million miles from the sun - and convert them into glucose. That glucose becomes the food on your plate. And when your body digests it, those photons become the energy powering your brain, your muscles, your heartbeat.”

The woman in the front row said: “So when I eat fruit, I’m eating the sun.”

Yes! Exactly that.

There is nothing passive or indulgent about eating carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are how the sun’s energy travels from ninety-three million miles away into your body. That’s beautiful biochemistry.

Photosynthesis captures light. Digestion unlocks it. And your cells - specifically, the ATP molecule - use that energy to run every single biological process keeping you alive.
So when someone tells you carbs are bad, what they’re actually telling you is that solar energy is bad.

How can that be?

What matters is the quality and the quantity. Complex carbohydrates from whole grains, vegetables, and fruit give you slow, steady energy. Refined, simple carbs spike and crash your blood sugar. The sun is not the problem. The carb processing industry is.

If you've been avoiding fruit for five years, this one's for you.

Carbs are cool 😎

29/05/2026

One question I get asked in my cardio workouts is some version of: “can't I just do something gentler?”

And I always explain the same thing, because I think it's genuinely important.

We do low 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 work - not low 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 work.

What I teach is hard work. Your heart rate goes up. You feel it. That's the point. The difference is we do it in a way that doesn't hammer your joints - no jumping on hard floors, no pounding on already-stressed knees. Walking, knee raises, skating steps, short sprint bursts. High effort, hard work, but easier on our older joints.

And the reason it matters so much for women at this stage of life - cardiovascular training is one of the most effective tools we have for midlife metabolic health. It strengthens your heart, improves your lung capacity, gives your metabolism a real boost.

There's also something about bone density that I don't think gets talked about enough. Low-impact loading also stimulates bone growth. Which matters enormously for women going through or past menopause, when bone density is something we genuinely have to protect.

A fall can change your life. I don't say that to alarm anyone. I say it because building strength, balance, and bone density now is one of the most important things you can do - and you absolutely can do it without destroying your knees in the process.

Take your HIIT session easier if you are injured or working through a tweak or a twinge.

But if you can, get that intensity. Get your heart rate up - even for just 15-20 seconds. It’s that intensity that makes the difference you need.

That's what this is for.

27/05/2026

I want to share something with you that I think about whenever one of my women is getting frustrated with the scales.

There was a study - a real, proper study - that tracked a woman who had spent six months doing everything correctly. The workouts. The nutrition. The tracking. All of it, consistently, for six months.

At the end, the scales showed she had lost ten pounds. In six months.

Not very much, for six months of real effort. I can understand why she might have felt disappointed.

But then her body composition was measured again properly (via professionally calibrated DEXA scan).

She had lost twenty pounds of fat. And she had built ten pounds of muscle. In her late 50s. The scales had hidden the whole story.

Muscle is denser tissue than fat - so the same volume of muscle weighs more. Which means when you're building it - which is exactly what we should be doing at this stage of life - the number on the scales can stay almost completely still while your body is changing underneath it.

The scales tell you one thing. Your body is doing another.

This is why I keep saying the number one the scale is only one data point, not the whole picture. Not even close.

I know this one very well, by the way. That woman in the study? She was me 😊

25/05/2026

When someone tells me they're doing everything right and nothing is shifting - one of the questions I ask them is how much water they're drinking.

And more often than not, the answer is not much. Coffee in the morning. Tea in the afternoon. Maybe a glass with dinner. But water is key to gaining health and strength.

Your body actually needs water to burn fat. Fat oxidation - the chemical process of it - has to have water to run properly.

Without enough of it, the whole system slows down. You're doing everything else right, but this one thing is working against you.
Two litres a day is the minimum. A practical way to do it is to fill a two-litre bottle first thing in the morning and make sure it's empty by the end of the day. You don't need apps or trackers - just one clear visual cue.

And with the heatwave we're having at the moment, all of this matters even more. You're losing water faster than usual just going about your day. Two litres is the baseline in normal temperatures - right now you need to be thinking beyond that.

I know it sounds too simple to make a difference.
But it isn't!

22/05/2026

A few years ago, before my programme existed in the way it does now, I ran a step challenge with a group of women.

One of them - I'll call her M - was doing really well. She had told us what her targets were. She was logging how she did every day and I could see the kind of consistency that I know is what it takes.

But then she had a rough few days. With the kind of things that can happen to all of us. Family stuff to deal with, then not enough sleep - just one of those weeks that takes so much more to get through.

Her step numbers dropped a little. She got a bit behind on her targets. Then she sent me a message to say she was stopping.

Not just taking a pause - but stopping. Because she felt like she'd already failed.

Actually, she was describing that moment where the gap to get back suddenly feels enormous, where you feel you can’t cross it and get to where you feel you once were. It feels like you’re a bit lost. So it's easier to stop than to adjust. This can be where so many genuinely good intentions end. Not in a dramatic giving-up moment. Just a quiet trail-off.

What I told her, and what I believe more and more the longer I do this work, is that the direction matters far more than ‘being perfect’.

If she managed 1,000 steps a day for three days because that was genuinely all she had - that was great. And that her response could be to not try and make up the difference - but to take a breath, recalibrate and then keep going.

She finished the challenge by the way. Not perfectly. But she finished it. She was pleased - but I was very, very proud of her. It is so much easier to give up than to keep going.

19/05/2026

I want to say something about walking, because I think it gets a bit of a raw deal.

There's an idea out there that walking only counts if you can't do anything more serious. That it's the option you take when you're recovering, or getting started, or not quite ready for the ‘real thing’ yet.

When I tell women to walk more – they think I am giving them an easy solution.

But when I look back to the women I've worked with over the years - especially to the ones who made the most lasting changes to their health - I see something.

It isn’t the ones who train hardest three times a week and then did nothing for four days. It was the ones who moved every single day, consistently, without making a big deal of it.

10,000 steps a day supports blood sugar, cardiovascular health, bone density, mood and sleep. Not because any one walk is spectacular - it isn't - but because the accumulation of small things done reliably is genuinely powerful in a way that occasional big efforts are not.

Walking isn't where you start while you work up to something better.

It's a solid part of your programme.

16/05/2026

You don't have to lift heavy to get stronger.

You have to lift honestly.

What I mean by that is - your last set needs to genuinely challenge you. If you sail through it, the weight is too light. If you can't get past set three (out of five), you started too heavy. Either way, your body isn't getting the signal it needs to adapt.

The principle is the same whether you're lifting 3 kg or 10 kg. I have women in my group who started with the lightest dumbbells they could find - and that was exactly right for them at the time. What matters is that at some point during the session, you need to reach your maximum. That's the moment your body registers: I need to get stronger for next time.

And your maximum won't be the same every session. Some days you'll lift more than last week. Some days less. That's normal biology. It doesn't mean you're going backwards. It means your body is responding to everything else that's going on - sleep, stress, hormones, recovery.

Strength doesn't build in a straight line. It builds through consistency.

Keep showing up. Keep pushing honestly. The progress is happening even when you can't see it yet.

14/05/2026

Something I say a lot in my workouts - start the session lighter than you think you should.

I get some funny looks when I tell women to put the heavy weights down at the beginning of a workout. But there's a reason I structure every workout this way.

When you first pick up a weight, your nervous system hasn't fully switched on yet. Your brain is still working out how many motor units - the connections between your nerves and your muscles - it needs to recruit to do the job.

By the third or fourth set, that process has caught up. That's why the heavier weights at the end of a session often feel more manageable than the lighter ones did at the start. It's not magic. It's your body warming up neurologically, not just physically.

This is exactly why loading up too heavy from the first set is counterproductive. You create fatigue before you've properly activated your strength. And then you wonder why you can't push through at the end.

Start light. Build through. Save your best effort for the last set.

That's where the real progress happens.

12/05/2026

One of my students said to me recently - 'I've been doing this for six weeks and I can't really see a difference.'

So I asked her a few questions.

Could she carry her shopping in from the car more easily? Yes. Had she noticed her shoulders and arms felt less stiff in the mornings? Actually, yes. Was she sleeping better? Much better.

She just hadn't connected the dots - because she was looking at the scale for her answer.

One of the first things that happens when you start strength training is that your nervous system is learning to recruit more of the muscle strength you already have. Also, your joints become more supple from using a full range of movement in your exercises. (So you need to increase your protein intake to give your body the raw materials it needs to repair and rebuild.)

New muscle takes longer to show than any of that. Especially in midlife, when the process naturally slows. But it absolutely still happens - provided you're consistent and eating enough to support the work.

This is what I try to help women understand when they train with me. The changes you can't see are often the most important ones.

And one morning you'll pick up a weight that used to feel heavy - and it won't!

Pia Davis

10/06/2026

03/06/2026

29/05/2026

27/05/2026

25/05/2026

22/05/2026

19/05/2026

16/05/2026

14/05/2026

12/05/2026

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