How I Lost Stubborn Weight and Recomped My Body in 4 Months

I remember the moment it clicked.

I was standing in my kitchen making a post-workout shake, the same one I had made a hundred times before, and I thought: I feel terrible. Not tired-from-training terrible. Just terrible. Bloated, foggy, heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the session I had just finished.

I had been doing this for years. Training hard, eating carefully, tracking everything. And my body was not responding the way it should have been. Not even close.

What followed was four months that changed everything. I lost 16 kilos. I built more muscle than I had in years of training. My digestion cleared up. My hormones stabilised. And I finally understood why none of it had worked before.

This is the honest version of that story.

Where I Actually Started

I want to be specific about what was wrong, because I think a lot of women reading this will recognise it.

I was training five days a week. Lifting weights. Going to the gym consistently. I was eating what I genuinely believed was a healthy diet. I was taking protein powder after every session because that is what you are supposed to do.

And I was bloated after almost every single meal. I was exhausted in a way that sleep did not fix. My skin was breaking out. My cycle was irregular. I had been diagnosed with PCOS a couple of years before and had sort of accepted that this was just how my body worked. That the bloating was just me. That losing weight was harder for me than for other people, so I needed to push harder.

That mindset, it turns out, was part of the problem. I was not working smarter. I was adding more stress on top of a body that was already inflamed and overwhelmed.

The Thing Nobody Told Me About Inflammation

The shift came when I started actually researching what chronic low-grade inflammation does to the body.

Inflammation disrupts cortisol regulation. It impairs recovery. It drives fat storage, particularly around the abdomen. It makes insulin resistance worse, which for someone with PCOS is already a significant factor. And when your gut is inflamed, your body cannot absorb nutrients properly, which means all the supplements and carefully tracked food in the world are not doing what you think they are.

I started looking at everything I was eating and asking one question: is this adding to the inflammation or reducing it?

Gluten went first. Not because of a trend, but because every time I ate it I felt it. Within a couple of weeks of removing it, the chronic bloating I had normalised as just being part of my life started to ease.

Then I looked at my protein powder.

Conventional whey protein is derived from cow's milk. And cow's milk contains A1 casein, a protein that a significant number of people struggle to digest, even if they would never describe themselves as lactose intolerant. It triggers an inflammatory response in the gut. I had been drinking it twice a day for years.

Switching to goat whey changed things almost immediately. Goat whey is naturally lower in A1 casein, easier to digest, and genuinely gentler on the gut. The bloating I had blamed on just being me disappeared within weeks. That realisation is what eventually became Kultra.

Building the Protocol That Actually Worked

Once I removed the things that were working against me, I could finally feel what was working for me. Here is what the four months actually looked like.

Nutrition was the foundation. I stopped tracking macros obsessively and started eating by principles instead. Gluten-free. Cow dairy-free. Whole foods as the base of every meal. Each plate built around a quality protein source, fibre-rich carbohydrates, and anti-inflammatory fats.

My protein target was 1.8 to 2g per kilogram of bodyweight per day. Non-negotiable. Protein is the single most important nutritional variable when you are trying to lose fat and build or maintain muscle at the same time. Without enough of it, your body loses muscle tissue during a calorie deficit, which is the opposite of what body recomposition requires.

I hit that target through whole food sources first: chicken, salmon, eggs, legumes, coconut yoghurt. And I used Kultra Vanilla Bean Goat Whey to close the gap. One to two scoops a day, mixed into goat milk, blended into smoothies, stirred into overnight oats.

Fibre became a priority too. Thirty grams a day minimum from vegetables, legumes, seeds, and whole grains. Fibre feeds the gut microbiome, stabilises blood sugar, and keeps you full without spiking cortisol. For someone with PCOS, blood sugar stability is everything.

You can read more about how I structure anti-inflammatory eating day to day on the Kultra journal.

The Training

I had been training without real structure before. Going to the gym and doing a bit of everything, following random workouts I found online, no progressive overload, no clear direction. Just effort without intention.

I switched to a five-day lifting split: push, pull, quad focus, hamstring focus, and a core and shoulders day. Maximum five to six exercises per session, four sets each. Simple. Repeatable. With a clear intention to add weight, reps, or difficulty every single week.

Progressive overload is not optional. It is the mechanism through which your body builds muscle. Without it you are maintaining at best.

On top of the lifting I committed to 10,000 steps every day and at least 10 minutes of elevated heart rate five days a week. Not punishing cardio. Just movement. A brisk walk, a short row at the end of a session, some jump rope intervals. NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is one of the most underrated fat loss tools available and it costs nothing.

The Supplements

I kept my stack simple and intentional. Creatine monohydrate every morning, 5g. Magnesium citrate in the morning, magnesium glycinate at night for sleep and recovery. Myo-inositol daily for blood sugar and hormonal support. Omega-3 and vitamin D3 with K2 because I live in London and the sun is not reliable.

And Kultra goat whey daily, because getting enough protein from whole foods alone is genuinely hard when you are training hard and need 130 to 140 grams a day.

Every supplement on that list serves a specific function. No proprietary blends. No fillers. Just things that work.

What Four Months Actually Looked Like

Months one and two were about removing and replacing. Removing gluten. Removing cow dairy. Removing the conventional whey. Adding structure to training. Getting consistent with protein and fibre. The scale barely moved in the first few weeks, but the bloating disappeared. My energy started coming back. I felt different before I looked different.

Month three was where the physical changes became visible. Body composition was shifting noticeably. Clothes fitting differently. Strength going up week on week. I had figured out my calorie targets, a modest deficit rather than a crash, my protein was consistently high, and the training was building real momentum.

Month four was the most dramatic. The habits were locked in by this point. I was not thinking about any of it anymore. It was just how I lived. Sixteen kilos across the four months, and what was left was a body with more muscle than I had started with.

But more than the physical change: I was not bloated. My cycle was regular for the first time in years. My skin had cleared. My energy was consistent. My PCOS symptoms were quieter than they had ever been.

That is what an anti-inflammatory approach does when you commit to it. It is not just about aesthetics. It is about giving your body an environment where it can actually function.

The Honest Part

It was not linear.

There were weeks where nothing moved. There were days where I trained hard and ate well and still felt off because my luteal phase was wrecking my energy and my appetite. There were moments where I wondered if I was doing something wrong.

Cycle syncing helped enormously with this. Understanding that my body's capacity to train hard, recover, and process food changes across the four phases of my cycle meant I could stop fighting myself and start working with my biology instead. I trained heavier in my follicular and ovulatory phases. I backed off intensity in the luteal phase and increased my calories slightly. I rested properly during my menstrual phase.

This is something I cover in detail in the free guide below, because it changed everything for me and I think it is one of the most overlooked tools in women's fitness.

And the other honest part: I could not have hit my protein targets consistently without Kultra. Not without the bloating that came from conventional whey. Goat whey was the piece that made the whole thing sustainable.

Where to Start If You Are Reading This

If I could give myself one piece of advice at the beginning, it would be this: start with what you are removing, not what you are adding.

Before you optimise your training split or calculate your macros, look at what in your current diet might be creating inflammation. Gluten. Cow dairy. Ultra-processed foods. Seed oils. Conventional whey protein. Removing these things costs you nothing, and the effect on your energy, digestion, and body composition can be faster and more dramatic than any supplement or training protocol.

Then add the protein. Get consistent with it. Hit your target every single day. Use Kultra Vanilla Bean Goat Whey if you want a clean, gut-friendly way to do it without the bloat.

Then build the training structure. Pick a split, commit to it, and focus on progressive overload above everything else.

Then walk. Ten thousand steps. Every day. It sounds almost too simple. It is not.

The full system is in the guide. Everything I did, laid out step by step. Download it, follow it, and give it four months. Your body will show you what it is capable of when you stop fighting it and start working with it.