Shar Cheung On Leaving Corporate To Coach Full Time

Shar Cheung coaches women on macro nutrition. Before that she was an IT project management consultant for some of the largest utility companies in North America, the person everyone called when a project needed rescuing.

I wanted to know what it took for her to walk away from that, and what she teaches now.

How It Started

Shar's struggle with food started young. She watched her mom choose what to eat and what not to eat. In high school a teacher threw out a number for a healthy weight, and Shar was above it. That number stuck with her for years. She bought fitness magazines, did crunches in her parents' basement, and cut her food.

Every new diet worked for a while and then stopped working. In 2020 she was at her highest weight and working as a project manager, and she found macro nutrition. She hired a macro coach to lose weight, and only then saw how bad her relationship with food had been.

The turning point was her six year old son. The family was doing keto, and at a party he asked why she wasn't eating any fruit. She told him fruit has carbs and carbs are bad.

Well mom, if they're so bad for you, why are they giving them to us?

That's when her goal changed from losing weight to being a good role model for her kids. She used to think she had to eat about 1,200 calories. Now she eats around 2,200 and says she is thriving. She lost 25 pounds and has kept it off.

Food Is Fuel

A few things Shar teaches stood out to me.

No labels on food. She doesn't call food healthy, unhealthy, good, or bad. Once you call it bad, you punish yourself for eating it. Her example is a protein bar and a McDonald's cheeseburger with the same calories. The protein bar will fuel her better, but nobody should feel guilty about the cheeseburger. She eats chocolate almost every day.

You can't put a diet on a diet. Shar calls herself a very data driven coach. New clients track two weeks of their normal eating with no changes and no shame. Most women who come to her to lose weight are actually undereating. So she slowly raises their food and has them spend time at maintenance first.

Plan in phases. She calls it nutritional periodization. A fat loss phase should only last about 12 to 14 weeks, then a recovery phase, and most of your life should be spent at maintenance.

Nail the basics. Someone asked her if drinking ice cold water first thing in the morning would boost her metabolism. That client was undereating. Shar's answer was to eat properly first. Most people try to get too complex too soon.

Burnout And The Leap

At the end of 2021 Shar was at the height of burnout. Her nutrition was on point, but she was losing hair and barely sleeping, and most of her teams were in India. Her family kept asking her to quit. She was the breadwinner, they were in the middle of a big home renovation, and she was afraid.

On December 9, 2021, she heard her company was about to offer her another project manager's portfolio. An hour before the meeting she texted her husband and asked if he was okay with her quitting. He was.

They offered her a multi year, six figure contract. She gave her notice instead, and stayed until February 2022 to finish her project.

I asked what helped her feel ready. Three things. She truly believed in what she could do for women who struggled like her. She had money set aside to keep her going for a few months or longer. And her husband was behind her.

She was honest that it wasn't easy. She grieved leaving corporate for about a year. She kept logging on at 8 like someone expected her to, and had to learn that she could now drive her kids to school and pick them up.

What Keeps Her Going

Shar's definition of high performance is one word, consistency. The more reps you do, the better you get.

She surrounds herself with other entrepreneurs, because some months are hard and it helps to know others go through it too. She uses ideas from James Clear's Atomic Habits with her clients, along with check ins and group calls.

She keeps clear boundaries, something she learned from burnout. Her workouts go on the calendar. So does time for herself. Her office door being closed tells her kids she's working.

Her advice to coaches who aren't sure about going all in is that it is usually limiting beliefs. Her first year, she worked with a business coach and cried at almost every meeting. As an introvert, showing up on social media felt awkward. Two years ago she took 20 to 30 takes of every story. Now she does one.

Those ceilings then become my floor.

You can find Shar on Instagram at Designed by Shar.