Episode 61Apr 22, 2026· 12:41

Drop It, Keep It, Add It: A Trainer's No-Guilt Approach to Eating Better

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About this episode

Episode covers Virginia Kinkel's Drop Keep Add nutrition framework for women over 40, including the 80-20 approach to eating, compound strength training for sarcopenia prevention, and how to build sustainable habits without cutting out cultural foods, family meals, or restaurant outings. Ashley Grant responds on day 277 of her movement streak, sharing personal experience with food guilt after a high-sugar week,…

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Who this episode is for

This episode may resonate with you if:

You've been eating 'badly' this week and the guilt is louder than the actual food — you're spiraling into 'what's the point' thinking and it's threatening to undo everything you've built.

You've tried the extreme versions — the 500-calorie days, the pills, the patches — lost the weight and gained it all back, and you're exhausted by approaches that don't stick.

People in your life are commenting on what you eat — asking if your trainer will be mad, warning you about gaining the weight back — and the outside shame is starting to get inside your head.

You're a woman over 40 who's been doing cardio and light weights for years and not seeing the body composition changes you want — you're wondering if you're doing the wrong kind of exercise.

You're trying to eat healthier but you can't imagine giving up family dinners, cultural foods, or going out to restaurants — every diet you've seen asks you to choose between your goals and your actual life.

What you’ll learn

Why women over 40 should prioritize compound lifting over light-weight cardio add-ons

How to use the 80-20 rule to stop treating imperfect eating as failure

How to keep social and cultural eating habits without blowing up your nutrition goals

How to make dietary progress by adding rather than cutting

Questions this episode wrestles with

Is feeling guilty about food actually helping me or just making things worse?

answered

Ashley's experience is that guilt makes things worse — she describes how beating yourself up leads to binging more and eventually giving up entirely, telling herself mid-episode: 'don't feel so damn guilty, girl.'

"when we start beating ourselves up for it is that's when we start binging even more. That's when we start beating ourselves up to the point that we are like, well, I'm just a lost cause. I'm just not going to go to the gym anymore."

Can I want to lose weight and still not shame myself for eating the cookie?

answered

Virginia's Drop Keep Add approach is built around exactly this — the 80-20 framing means the cookie is in the 20%, it's 'the exception,' and 'it is not going to be detrimental. It doesn't mean that we have to have these feelings of guilt surrounding it.'

"life comes in. Maybe you're on the road and you don't have food prepared with you and you have to hit a drive -thru. That's okay. Maybe you're taking a couple bites off of your kid's plate. That's okay. It is not going to be detrimental. It doesn't mean that we have to have these feelings of guilt surrounding it. It's just understanding"

Why do I always gain the weight back after a strict diet?

answered

Ashley shares from her own experience that extreme restriction — like eating only 500 calories a day — led to losing weight and then gaining it all back as soon as she stopped, because it wasn't sustainable.

"I did the whole let's be in a calorie deficit where I'm only eating 500 calories a day. And yeah, I lost a lot of weight. But you know what, y 'all? I gained it right back as soon as I stopped."

Is there a way to make healthy eating feel less like deprivation?

answered

Virginia's 'add' component flips the deprivation framing — instead of cutting things out, you add more vegetables, more lean protein, more water, so 'by default, you're starting to make progress and you're not living in the sense of failure or deprivation.'

"nutrition and diets are viewed as a sense of deprivation, of things that we can't have, that we're not allowed to do, that we need to cut out. Rather than dropping that, cutting it out, how do we keep what we're doing and add more vegetables? add more lean protein, add more water throughout the day. So by default, you're starting to make progress and you're not living in the"

What do you do when people in your life keep commenting on what you eat?

open question

Ashley names the sting of it — people asking if her trainer will get mad, warning her she'll gain the weight back — and the episode sits with how much that shame lands without offering a clean way to handle it.

"know, don't you need to be more careful about what you're eating? Won't your trainer get mad at you? Won't your instructor get mad at you? Don't you need to, you know, watch what you're eating because you're going to gain all that weight back? And the shame that has been around."

Setting expectations: This episode is not a structured nutrition guide, a diet plan breakdown, or an expert interview with clinical advice. It's a short voice note from a trainer named Virginia Kinkel explaining her three-part eating framework, followed by Ashley reacting to it in real time while admitting she's been eating a lot of sweets this week and feeling guilty about it.

Tone & style

Ashley has been feeling guilty all week about eating sweets, with people around her reinforcing that shame. Hearing Virginia's voice note — specifically the idea that imperfect eating belongs in an acceptable 20%, not in the failure column — reframes the week as an exception rather than a collapse. The episode ends only partially resolved: Ashley acknowledges she might crave sweets next week too, and lands on ongoing flexibility as the point.

Virginia speaks from practitioner experience working with clients; Ashley speaks entirely from her own lived experience, including a history of restrictive dieting. Neither constitutes medical or nutritional advice.

tonePractical & self-forgiving

focusVirginia's three-part Drop Keep Add nutrition framework lands as personal validation for Ashley, who's been feeling guilty about eating a lot of sweets this week.

stylepersonal_confession

energymedium_low

complexitybeginner

pressure Levellow

emotional Textureself-forgiving, candid, validating, lightly guilty

Notable quotes

"It's dropping the shame around imperfection. I think it's a time of life where we try so hard to hone in and be perfect on everything that we're doing that if we're not, we instantly feel"

— Virginia Kinkel

"life comes in. Maybe you're on the road and you don't have food prepared with you and you have to hit a drive -thru. That's okay. Maybe you're taking a couple bites off of your kid's plate. That's okay. It is not going to be detrimental."

— Virginia Kinkel

"I did the whole let's be in a calorie deficit where I'm only eating 500 calories a day. And yeah, I lost a lot of weight. But you know what, y 'all? I gained it right back as soon as I stopped."

— Famous Ashley Grant

"don't feel so damn guilty, girl, for the fact that you had cravings for sweets. This week is an exception. It doesn't mean I've failed. It doesn't mean I'm a lost cause. It doesn't mean"

— Famous Ashley Grant

Episode transcript

Organized into 5 chapters — open any part to read the full text.

0:001. Virginia's Background and Fitness Focus for Women Over 40Virginia Kinkle introduces herself as a personal trainer, bodybuilder, and gym founder, then explains why true compound strength training — not light weights — is her top fitness tip for women over 40 dealing with muscle loss.1:452. The Drop: Letting Go of Shame Around ImperfectionVirginia introduces the first part of her Drop Keep Add approach — dropping the shame around imperfect eating — and explains the 80-20 rule where drive-thrus and bites off a kid's plate fall into an acceptable 20%.3:183. The Keep: Holding On to Habits That Already WorkVirginia describes the second component — keeping existing habits like family meals, cultural foods, and restaurant outings — and fitting them into the 80-20 framework rather than eliminating them.4:234. The Add: Building Progress Without DeprivationVirginia explains the third component — adding vegetables, lean protein, and water around existing eating patterns — so progress happens without feelings of failure or deprivation, then connects the approach to Ashley's 100 Days of Movement.6:365. Ashley Reacts: Sweets, Guilt, and Why She's Still GoingAshley responds to Virginia's message on day 277 of her movement streak, shares that she's been eating a lot of sweets this week and feeling guilty about it, and pushes back on people in her life who've been shaming her eating choices.

Open full transcript

Mentioned in this episode

personVirginia Kinkle

Personal trainer, lifelong bodybuilder, gym founder, and creator of the Drop Keep Add nutrition approach — the guest whose voice note forms the core of the episode.

organizationBody Mass Composition Testing

A venture Virginia describes herself as co-founder of, mentioned alongside her gym as context for her work with women over 40.

websitefamousashleygrant.com/fitness

Ashley's website where listeners can submit voice notes to potentially be featured on the podcast.

placeBucky's

A store Ashley mentions stopping at to get an oatmeal raisin cookie — used as a real example of her own imperfect eating week.

Key themes

Dropping shame around imperfect eating

Both Virginia and Ashley frame guilt over eating sweets or hitting a drive-thru as the main obstacle to sustainable nutrition, not the food itself.

The 80-20 nutrition rule

Virginia proposes that 80% quality eating leaves room for a 20% where drive-thrus, kids' plates, and restaurant meals are acceptable exceptions rather than failures.

Adding instead of cutting

Virginia's 'Add' component reframes nutrition away from deprivation by suggesting people pile on more vegetables, lean protein, and water around what they already eat.

Keeping existing social and cultural eating habits

Virginia argues that family meals, cultural foods, and going out to restaurants shouldn't be eliminated but fitted into the 80-20 framework.

Strength training for women over 40

Virginia singles out compound lifting close to failure — not light dumbbell work — as the specific type of training women over 40 need to fight sarcopenia and build muscle.

Sustainability over perfection

Both Virginia and Ashley repeatedly return to the idea that an approach only works if it doesn't burn you out — Virginia through the Drop Keep Add framework, Ashley through 277 days of movement without rigid dieting.

Ashley's personal guilt about sweets this week

Ashley discloses she's been eating far more sweets than usual this week due to hormonal fluctuations and has been feeling 'hella guilty' about it, using Virginia's message to talk herself out of that shame in real time.

External shaming from people around Ashley

Ashley describes people in her life warning her that her trainer will get mad, that she'll gain the weight back, and that she needs to watch what she eats — pressure she pushes back on directly.

Lifestyle change vs. short-term dieting

Ashley contrasts her current approach with past cycles of 500-calorie deficits and diet pills that caused weight loss she immediately regained, framing what she's doing now as something she can actually sustain.

Connected episodes

Shared experience

Guilt around eating off-plan

#69Why I Feel Guilty About Food (Even Though I Don't Believe in Diets)

Contrast

Dieting vs. movement as weight loss path

#62A Letter to the Version of Me Who Was Afraid to Start

Shared experience

Movement as permanent lifestyle change

#73365 Days of Movement: My Plan to Celebrate One Full Year

Contrast

Lifestyle change vs. reducing gym visits