Years ago I stood backstage at one of the most-watched daytime shows in the country, about to go live in front of millions.
The honor was real, and so was the pressure.
I did not crash diet. I did not punish myself at the gym.
About a month before taping I did one thing, I doubled my dose of CLA.
CLA had been part of my protocol for years, so the results were not a shock. But the morning of the show still makes me smile when I think about it.
The tailored pants I had chosen weeks earlier were falling off my hips. A producer had to scramble for a replacement pair minutes before we went live.
Delighted is an understatement because I knew exactly why it had happened.
Conjugated linoleic acid, CLA, is a fatty acid your body once received naturally from grass-fed beef and full-fat dairy.
It works at the cellular level, signaling your body to preferentially burn stored fat rather than hold onto it, while simultaneously protecting the lean muscle that keeps your metabolism strong and your body looking toned rather than just thin.
For decades, women eating well and exercising consistently were getting steady amounts of CLA through food without even thinking about it.
Then the food changed.
Today's grain-fed livestock delivers a fraction of the CLA that pasture-raised animals once provided, and some estimates put the loss at over 80%.
That deficiency accumulates quietly in the background, and it shows up as stubborn fat that does not respond the way it used to, a metabolism that feels slower than your effort deserves, and a body that seems to resist rather than reward what you are doing.
Restoring that one fatty acid changes the conversation.
If you have an event coming up, a vacation, a reunion, a wedding, a summer that you want to feel good in, thirty days of consistent CLA is exactly where I would start. The women who commit to it tend to feel it first in how their clothes fit, long before the scale catches up.
