Next week, local health and fitness coach Katia Engle Hatter will celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary with her husband, John. Looking at the vibrant, energetic mid-50s metabolic health coach today, it is hard to imagine her life any other way. But as I sat down to interview Katia about her journey, her philosophy, and her tips for aging well, I quickly learned that her path here was anything but a straight line.
Katia and John both grew up right here in Columbus. She attended Columbus North and Hanover College, while he went to UofL. After a five-year stint in Washington, D.C., they returned to Columbus in 1999 to start their family. Today, they are proud parents of three children: Will (24, a college grad), Paige (20, a current college student), and Sam (14, in middle school). For decades, Katia has been deeply embedded in our community—even moving her mother back here from South Carolina when she faced health challenges.
From Running Marathons to Overcoming Injury
A high school swimmer, Katia has always been an athlete. Her passion for fitness really ignited alongside John, who was in the Army Reserves. For about 15 years, Katia stayed in shape by running 5Ks, half marathons, and eventually full marathons while the kids were small. Back then, Katia used running primarily for weight management, admitting she didn’t pay much attention to the nutrition side of things.
Then, in mid-2010, a severe hip injury completely sidelined her running career.
Instead of giving up, Katia adapted. She picked up indoor cycling at her gym, became a certified instructor a few years later, and today still subs around town and teaches Silver Sneakers classes at the Mill Race Center.
As an early morning exerciser in her mid-50s, Katia realized that aging requires a major shift in mindset. As a data-driven science major in college, she dived into the research. The data on aging well is clear: a shocking number of people end up in nursing homes simply due to a lack of mobility and accidental falls.
Because of this, Katia completely evolved her routine. Today, she limits the spin bike, focuses heavily on walking (which research shows is one of the absolute best exercises you can do), and strength trains two days a week. And no, she isn’t lifting those baby weights—she lifts the big weights to protect her bones and muscles.
An Accidental Career Sparked by COVID-19
Katia never actually set out to be a metabolic health coach. However, her personal relationship with food started early; she remembers being put on her very first restrictive diet at just six years old. She knows firsthand that the habits and triggers we carry around food are formed when we are incredibly young.
Her professional pivot happened entirely by accident in August 2020. Katia reconnected with Elizabeth, an old gym buddy who had moved away. While many people were gaining weight during the pandemic lockdowns, Elizabeth was practically melting away. Katia, naturally skeptical, reached out to ask how she was doing it without a gym.
Elizabeth introduced her to a scientifically backed metabolic health program. Katia jokingly confessed to me that she only agreed to try the program to prove to Elizabeth that it wouldn’t work for her!
Instead, Katia lost 13 pounds in her first month. Her skin cleared up, her sleep improved, her hunger dissipated, and her energy skyrocketed. Coming from a marketing background, Katia was highly comfortable on social media and began posting weekly side-by-side transformation photos.
Her inbox blew up. Lacking the time to manage the influx, she started sending people to Elizabeth. By the fifth or sixth referral, Katia realized that if she coached a few people herself, she could cover the cost of her own nutrition plan. Between August 2020 and March 2021, Katia went on to lose 50 pounds. Within two years, her part-time coaching income matched her full-time marketing salary.
In January 2023, she made the leap to full-time coaching. The career change gave her the flexibility to be a mom, work from home, and crucially, act as a caregiver for her sick father in South Carolina before he passed. Her father was a Type 2 diabetic, which fuels Katia’s deep, personal passion for helping other families reverse and prevent chronic illness.
Becoming a “Health GPS”
When I asked Katia about her biggest professional challenge, her answer was surprisingly candid: “Myself, if I’m being honest.” She initially feared being perceived as a pushy salesperson and worried about losing friends over business.
To overcome this, Katia views herself strictly as a “Health GPS.” She provides the coordinates and the fastest route to a client’s health goals, but the client is always the one driving the car. “If we take the scenic route and it takes a little longer, that’s totally fine,” she told me.
Every week, Katia connects with her clients to analyze their progress. Everyone she works with uses a simple, $25 metabolic scale from Amazon that syncs to an app. Katia reviews this data weekly and maps out the strategy in 30-day increments. She has learned to divorce her identity as a coach from the client’s outcome, knowing she provides the exact same high-quality tools and guidance to everyone, but the client must be mentally ready to use them.
Controlling the Controllables
Katia places a massive emphasis on mindset and breaking childhood habits. “It’s easy to be consistent early on because you’re excited,” she notes, “but you have to learn to control your environment.”
She teaches clients to identify their emotional and environmental triggers. For example, do you automatically buy a giant popcorn, soda, and Junior Mints at the movie theater because you want them, or just because it’s a habit? Will you really enjoy the movie less without them? Maybe, maybe not.
Katia’s philosophy isn’t about extreme deprivation. If you travel to Italy, eat the pasta! She likes to look at health as a weekly scorecard, which I thought was so brilliant! If you make 6 food decisions a day, 7 days a week, that’s 42 choices. If 40 of those decisions are on point, you shouldn’t let 2 poor choices ruin your mindset.
By cleaning up your gut health and listening to your body, you quickly realize how sluggish and bloated certain foods make you feel. Because Katia models these habits at home, her own kids eat incredibly healthy for their age simply because they eat what she eats.
The Danger of Weight Loss Medications Without Lifestyle Changes
Katia partners with a nutrition company that focuses heavily on clinical studies and daily metabolic research. This scientific backing is crucial because, as Katia notes, the old “eat less, move more” advice is fundamentally broken. Eating less Taco Bell is not going to fix dangerous visceral fat (the fat around your organs), which can be high even in a person’s 20s and serves as a major indicator of future disease.
This science is also why Katia urges caution regarding the rise of popular weight loss medications. While she is not against them and actively helps clients who use them, she warns against letting the medication do ALL the work.
“Studies show that if someone loses 100 pounds on a shot, 20 to 40 pounds of that can be vital muscle mass because they are in a deep calorie deficit,” Katia explained. “Metabolizing muscle destroys your insulin response and wrecks your metabolism. If you hit the drive-thru three times a day before, and drop to one time a day on the shot without changing your food quality, the cravings will return the moment you stop the medication. You will regain that weight as fat, not muscle.” True health requires rewiring your daily habits.
Katia’s Top 3 Tips for Getting Started Today
If you are looking to kickstart your own health journey, Katia recommends dialing in these three non-negotiables:
- Water: Drink at least 64 ounces of plain water a day (not sweet tea or diet soda). Dehydration often mimics hunger. When a craving hits, drink a glass of water, wait 10 minutes, and see if you actually still want it.
- Sleep: We actively burn fat and build muscle when we sleep. Sleep deprivation cuts that window short. Katia, a self-proclaimed data nerd, recently invested in an Oura Ring to track her own sleep quality because she tends to stay up late and wake up early. Protect your sleep environment by putting your phone away and keeping your room dark.
- Food Intake: Prioritize protein and brightly colored vegetables. The American diet is overloaded with refined carbs, and restaurants notoriously skimp on protein while piling up cheap carbs to fill the plate. Focus on the quality of what you put in your body.
Real Victories Beyond the Scale
To date, Katia has helped over 600 people get healthy and completely come off their chronic medications. She has had clients call her within just two weeks of starting her program to report that their doctors took them off mealtime insulin or lowered their blood pressure medication.
Just last weekend, Katia saw a friend she has coached for six years who has battled severe, non-linear health issues. By locking into a metabolic reset, this friend lost nearly 50 pounds in five months and completely transformed her energy.
For Katia, scale victories are fantastic, but the real magic is deeper. It’s helping someone lose enough weight to safely undergo a much-needed hip replacement. It’s helping a diabetic client reverse their condition, saving them thousands of dollars in medical costs—money they can now spend taking their grandkids to Disney World because they finally have the physical energy to walk the parks.
Katia is incredibly passionate about educating our community and frequently hosts health talks around town.
Connect with Katia
If you want to learn more, find your baseline, or get a piece of Katia’s “Health GPS” guidance, here is how you can connect with her:
- Facebook: Find her on Facebook. She posts a healthy recipe every single day, alongside daily client transformations and education. https://www.facebook.com/share/197de49Bgk/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Free Metabolic Scan: Katia offers a free, 5-minute metabolic scan to help you see exactly where your numbers stand so you can make an informed decision about your health. https://mymetabolicscan.com/Assessment?slug=katiahatter