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Have you ever been so good that when you finally broke out of your routine, you really broke? And what I mean by this is I ate so clean my first cut that I literally made myself sick my first meal on vacation right after. I'd been eating chicken and broccoli every single day on repeat and only that. So one spicy sangria and some Mexican food later, it was bad news bears. And then after the vacation, I could not get back on tracks for weeks because that's what happens when your approach is so rigid. There is literally no room for real life. And that was just fitness flop number one. I actually have nine more I want to share with you today. And with almost two decades in this industry working not only on my own body recomp but helping coach thousands of women, I've made just about every mistake in the book, just on my way to figuring out what actually works for body recomp.
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But these flops weren't really failures in my opinion. They were just experiences I learned from, but they did cost me time, energy and results I can't get back now. So today I'm sharing all 10 because if I can save you even a few months or minutes of repeating them yourself, this episode is worth every minute. So go for a walk, listen as you meal prep or get comfy on the couch because by the end of this, you'll have 10 lessons that took me almost two decades to figure out. So you're welcome. Now to that first flop, eating too clean, ending up getting sick. This was my first realization that there can be too much of a good thing, but also that restriction ultimately backfires if we're not looking at what can be sustainable. Now along our journey, we will go at different paces. I still do many cuts and implement very intensive ratios and stricter phases, but I also recognize I always have an exit strategy for those.
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There was no exit strategy the first time. It was all in and then all out. And because I felt so restricted and I had the mindset that I had to do this over the fact that I was choosing to do these specific things and then evolve my habits as I went, that's why I went all in and then all out. It's why we repeat that yo-yo dieting cycle. It's the all or nothing attitude. It's not, oh, this is what I'm doing to get to X, but at this time I'm also going to shift my habits. So I learned from this a few different things that A, you should eat a diversity of food, but B, a lot of it is also the mindsets behind it. If we are restricting and depriving and thinking this is the way it has to be, we're going to have a big pushback against that the second we're done or we reach our goal.
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It's why we feel like we self-sabotage or don't have the willpower every single time. So if you feel like you are getting restrictive or obsessive with any of the habits, you need to really assess where it's coming from. And obsession is a good and bad thing, right? We can be obsessed in a good way, which makes us be very dedicated to the process, but we have to recognize when that becomes a negative, when we're pressuring ourselves so much to be perfect with something. And the more I recognized this and the more I ended up including a lot of the foods I loved, A, I didn't get sick again, but B, my recomp actually started to snowball in a more sustainable way. And I actually saw better recomp over time, not only from being consistent for longer, but from truly having that balance. And the mindset of it was a lot easier.
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Consistency became a lot easier. So instead of saying I have to have only chicken and broccoli until X date, I started to be like, well, how can I work my dessert in? How can I include more foods I love? And again, it made for a lot better situation where I could even enjoy vacations and not feel like I was being bad or have any guilt with it, but I also didn't get sick from it. So just recognize that there is a cost to what you think of as being extremely good and there's a cost in more than one way often. So fitness flop number two is excusing the 1%. So this is interesting. And when I was thinking about the nuance of this, now this is not saying you have to be perfect with things. That perfect leads to flop number one. But also with it, I recognize that when I wasn't all in, I was often very easily sliding all out.
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And sometimes it happened very dramatically where it was on vacation, off vacation, not back on track at all. But we can even see it happen after a new year where we've changed our habits where all of a sudden these 1% deviations creep in. And for me, the thought that I started to recognize was sort of the key to it all and recognizing the slide was the, I'm not being that bad. So during the summers, I used to not track as much. Now I pretty consistently track all year round, but I would not track as much and I stayed a lot more accountable because I still had the healthy habits ingrained. I had just come out of the new year where I had done more intensive macro ratios or more intensive progressions for seeing that recomp. It was also summer I was very active so I could get away with a little bit more, but I would let those habits start to slide.
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And so then during the holidays, all of a sudden I found myself making the excuse of, oh, I'm not being that bad as I wouldn't track something or I would have something off plan. And those little 1% deviations led to me feeling like I was starting over January. So I started to recognize the I'm not being that bad was a signal that I am actually allowing all those 1% deviations to add up. We get good at what we consistently do. And if we're consistently making those excuses, they are going to add up. So this is where there is nuance, we don't expect ourselves to be perfect, but it's also noting where we're starting to make a lot of excuses and then assessing where those excuses are coming from. It doesn't mean that we have to try and willpower our way through, but something's got to evolve to meet us where we actually are right now over where we used to be.
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It's got to assess what our stress levels are, how the habits are being implemented, what we really need. But so note even if you've done that too, where you start to see 1% deviations creep in where you're starting to say, I'm not being that bad. We want to catch the drift and shift before we actually get so off course that we feel like we're starting over. Now fitness flop number three was doing too much cardio and needing to feel destroyed from every workout. I have to admit, I still like when I'm extra sweaty during the summer and that's why I keep the door closed even when it's 90 degrees outside and we don't have air conditioning and I don't even turn on the fans in the gym because I like the sweat feel. However, I've also recognized that feeling sweaty, feeling destroyed, feeling out of breath, feeling tired does not always mean a workout was really good or what I needed.
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It wasn't designed with purpose. It can be hard and not hard moving you forward. Hard truth to recognize for me. But I started recognizing that when I was just doing more cardio, trying to burn more calories when I was cutting out rest, I wasn't working at a 200% intensity and I also wasn't pushing progression with purpose. My training was not intentional. So the second I stepped back and said, "What is everything being designed towards?" I actually got better results. I started designing with purpose. I started including rest, recognizing how much it helped me lift heavier. I started including even cardio with strategy. And if you're an endurance athlete, you can work it in, but everything has to be done with strategy. It can't just be to feel worked. That being said, if you do take satisfaction in those things, you can do things you enjoy, but you also have to own the cost of them.
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If you really want to enjoy your workouts and you only enjoy a certain type, but you also know it is not going to reach your goals, is that really worth it? I guess is what you have to ask yourself. Or how else can you adjust systems to maybe account for it or find that balance? Or can you work towards your goals and then work in specific systems or types of training that you know are not as beneficial for your goals at a different point in a different way? But I was of the train harder, do more attitude thinking that was going to lead to better results. And I realized all that was doing was beating me into the ground and making me feel like I worked really hard not to see the gains that I wanted. And especially with strength training, sometimes feeling like you could do a little bit more is actually a good thing.
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Feeling really rested to lift heavier is actually a good thing because just because you feel like you're giving everything you've got in 100% intensity does not mean that you're actually giving a true 100% to push that progression and create the change that you want. Now on the flip side of that is actually fitness flop number four, which was only lifting heavy. Once I got off the cardio cycle, I was actually taught spin for a while, was very into doing all those cardiovascular activities and now I think I'm kind of crazy for wanting to do those things. I got into power lifting. And so on the flip side, I was like one rep max only compound lifts, real meathead. And that also backfired because A, diversity is truly key and the more we can use all the different things, the more we're going to improve our health, the more we're going to improve our recomp.
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And the more we improve our health, the better our body functions, the better recomp we see. The more we improve our recomp in a way that is actually sustainable, better our long-term health so we can age strong. So it's really interconnected. You're not choosing between looks and performance and health. You should be finding something that does sort of all of them. And the more I embrace that, the more I got off the just lift heavy train. Yes, I think lifting heavy for lower reps for compound moves is incredibly key, but I think that also means a diversity of things based on a person's fitness level, age, injuries, all that different stuff. But also I recognize that isolation moves had incredible value for working on those stubborn areas to even improve my compound lifts. And I recognize that strength isn't just maximal strength. Strength is those muscle gains, that muscle hypertrophy, which is a different rep range.
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It is that strength endurance which is a different rep range. And different muscles even have different breakdowns of type one versus type two muscle fibers so benefit from different things. So the more I got off the lift only heavy train, only compound move train, the better results I actually saw in terms of my muscle gains, but also in terms of my performance and feeling like I could conquer anything. Our body adapts to what we do consistently. So a little diversity can help create that adaptation even through progression through the same but different. So if you've been really sort of saying no, only deadlifts, squats, bench press and you've not been seeing the results that you want, while those are fundamental moves and I don't think one move in one form is right for everybody, you might want to consider diversifying just a little bit. Now off of that though, lifting heavy means that you're always challenging yourself for whatever reps or sets you're doing.
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I never like to say you're lifting light. It's lighter weight because the high reps or the smaller muscle group might dictate it, but that weight is going to feel heavy for whatever you're doing. Now number five, fitness slot number five, deciding I was above tracking. And this one might ruffle a few feathers because I know everybody's like, "I don't want to track forever." You don't have to. I like to sort of say now to people, "Well, what if you do have to? Is it worth it to maintain your results, to feel fabulous, to be able to eat and include the foods you like?" And I actually don't log every single day, but I do log pretty consistently over the year and I know it's my way of the, I'm not being that bad to shine that light on the reality of what's going on, get into all the dark corners.
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But I decided I was above tracking at one point and was like, "I don't need to do this. I've learned my portion sizes." Yeah. Well, your portion sizes shift based on stress. Your portion sizes shift because you feel entitled to more. You also stop recognizing what's in certain foods, especially foods you haven't eaten before, but deviations creep in. And also sometimes that can lead to under eating. That's the other thing I want to point out. Tracking is not just a cutout. I actually found tracking incredibly important for reversing out of the fat loss fees and focusing on building muscle in a sustainable way because sometimes we're afraid to eat more or sometimes our default is to restrict a little bit if we're not tracking because we want to be good. And so when I thought I was above tracking and though I didn't need to do it, that's when I saw the most slide in my progress and actually myself not fueling in a way to promote optimal health.
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I also think tracking is such a great tool to notice changes in food tolerances as we get older. It's ways to address what our body always needs as our lifestyle, our hormone levels. They are shifting. Age does impact things. So tracking is a tool that I feel like, no, you might not always do consistently, but you always have to come back to. So not thinking you're above something is probably the first sign that you really need to get back to basics and that you're seeing those deviations creep in. Anytime I think I'm better than something, I'm like, "Wow, where am I ignoring the basics? What's going to happen with this?" So it's kind of that reassessment, just like the other phrase of I'm not being that bad. I start to see these mindset shifts and I know something's coming and that I have to do something else.
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Plus it also created the mindset for me, "Oh, I'm done. Oh, I'm tracking to get here and then I'm done." You're not done. What you do to reach one goal is not what you do to maintain it or even work towards another. So sometimes going through those evolutions until you are more in a maintenance phase where maybe you say, "I do want to let off the gas. I am going to vary how I'm even holding myself accountable," great. But recognizing too that so much of why we even lose the progress we've made is because we only do the habits to get there, but then we never strategically track or adjust or measure how we're adjusting habits to get to the next place. Now number six, avoiding testing minimums. I am a very type A person. I like my lists. I am definitely on the obsessive side of, I like to go all in with things and try and do things perfectly.
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I have the perfectionist mindset. So it was very hard for me to say doing less is actually a good thing, but I also recognize that this was slightly an excuse to let myself off the hook because if I couldn't do things perfectly, don't do them at all, which if you really think about it as a perfectionist is kind of funny, but I guess I'm being perfect at being imperfect, but at the same time it was that all or nothing attitude, even though that nothing was way worse than doing a little of something. And so what I did as a challenge to myself was say, "I'm actually going to challenge myself to do less before I need to do less." So a lot of times we do go to doing the minimums when life has shifted, like we're sort of forced to, right? You're forced to only do three days a week.
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Instead, I was like, "Well, hey, let's see what progress I can actually make and challenge myself to do less and do this really well." And when I framed it that way for my mindset, it really worked. But by embracing minimums proactively before I needed them, it didn't become me letting myself off the hook or giving myself grace or slacking or not having the willpower. It became something done with strategy. And a lot of times that slow down before I even needed it helped me speed back up and do more at a time when I normally wouldn't do very much. It helped me avoid complete burnout and it's truly making those lows less low that make us maintain better results. It's not even being more perfect or doing better at the highs. It's really just impacting those lows because the less deviation we have from the habits that really reinforce the identity that has the results that we want, the better off we're going to be.
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So proactively sometimes implement those minimums, do less strategically, make that the challenge because that shifts how you really see those things and helps you implement a lot better habit minimums long term. And I do say this knowing that sometimes when you shift to those minimums and you test them, sometimes you might have to see the scale go up or progress go a little bit backwards and that can be scary, but also know you're running an experiment and even set a checkpoint at which time you're going to switch, but embrace it till then saying, "I won't know until I've tried it." Because so much of the time we don't know what is possible for ourselves until we prove it possible. And so many of us say, "I'd love to do less and see better results," yet we never actually test that. We're either on or off.
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Now number seven, only focusing on the hard stuff and ignoring recovery. I don't like slowing down. I like going at 110% speed most of the time and it feels really good. But I've also recognized because early on I got an injury and it was actually after my power lifting championship where I won Massachusetts, Rhode Island State Powerlifting Champion, best overall raw lifter. I got injured right after that when I think I'm the strongest I've ever been. Newsflash myself, I actually ended up lifting weight years later that was way far surpassing what I did at that competition, but partly because after that I got injured and recognized that I was not recruiting the correct muscles and that recovery and prehab were incredibly important. But I recognize that by only pushing hard, you're ignoring so much of what helps you actually rebuild from it and that being sore and going at that one intensity wasn't allowing the recovery that was necessary.
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And I saw it actually impact my health where my sleep wasn't as good. I did see changes in how my skin, hair, and nails were actually growing and it was only years later that I connected the dots with that, but I saw more brain fog, fatigue, I became way more irritable. There were so many different changes that I didn't recognize were because I was eating less and training harder. And so when I finally stepped back and recovered, I was amazed to see that yes, at first it felt like I stepped backwards, but ultimately I ended up seeing better results and it felt sustainable. So sometimes the exact uncomfortable habit that we need is to do less, but we don't want to go there because it doesn't feel like as much control. And so assessing these mindsets is super important. And I know it's not sexy to say, but so much of what's behind all these different things, even the habit changes with lifting heavy and whatever else, it's really assessing the mindsets we have with different tools and tactics and how we've used them in the past to separate out what is necessary for our goal and then even what fits our lifestyle right now and assessing where we are.
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But I will tell you that only focusing on the hard stuff, really trying to push, made me constantly blame willpower, feel like I never was going to be able to get the results that I wanted. It made me ignore some 1% changes that could add up far more. And again, most of us say we want better results doing less, own it, embrace it. But also I recognize that I wasn't measuring success in so many other ways, which made me so focused on one thing that if I wasn't seeing progress, I was pushing harder. But when I started actually tracking my sleep, seeing how my body was performing, seeing how energized I felt and seeing all these things as win, not just body reccomp, I started to embrace recovery a lot more and it made me slow down other times when I wouldn't necessarily have because I started to recognize the warning signals basically with that.
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Then number eight, getting caught up in optimization. And it's sort of funny because I recognize I actually have like two wearables on basically at all times and I'm like, I don't actually even use these the way most people do. A, this is a watch. I use my Apple watch as a watch. That's all I do with it. And the Whoop, I like to track things, not because I actually make any changes fully based on that. And that sounds weird to say. So I like to track things, but I don't do anything with the data. I do in that I note when there are consistent chronic or changes that are adding up and it's not changing back. So if I am hitting that point of burnout because I'm consistently seeing my HRV drop or my sleep change. So I'm looking for consistent shifts to signal a change.
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But for a long time I got very caught up in optimizations, whether it was like mealtime or exact foods or foods that are supposed to be paired together or only this amount of protein in a meal to optimize for utilization or I can only train on these days or with cycle syncing or all these different things. There's so many different things. And what I recognized is this was not only adding more stress, but it was making me deviate from the 10% that actually mattered the 20% even that actually mattered and those basics of tracking my macros, hitting my calories, not stressing a lot, trying to sleep well. And it wasn't owning real life. Yeah, it might be great to optimize for you do it at the strongest point in your cycle. And A, there's research conflicting all over the place with just about everything in health and wellness.
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At the same time, I also recognize that that's not sometimes the reality of life. Sometimes you train when you're tired and even the strength of pushing through when you're tired builds something more important than whether or not you could perform optimally during that workout. It builds the strength to be like, oh, I did a hard thing. I stayed in that routine. And even staying in the routine is more beneficial than whether or not the workout was good. Maybe you only do 15 minutes even that day. But I recognize the more I stopped focusing on optimizations or stopped focusing for some quick fix or some 1% detail and just consistently went back to the basics, even tweaking and adjusting those and then owning where could I optimize in those like, oh, where did I not hit my macro ratio perfectly? Or where did I not necessarily break down the food in a way that made me feel good?
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That always wins out. Nine times out of 10, that always wins out. But the more we try and optimize, the more complicated we make it, the more we overwhelm ourselves so that we don't even get started sometimes or we don't make the changes that were needed because it feels like too much to break down or it literally feels impossible. I mean, I see it all over social media, right? All these people being like, do these 50 different things for this. Okay, just do one. But then you feel like, where do I even start? What's even right for me? Because all of them sound good and some of them worked for other people, but ultimately you have to know where you are to know what 1% changes add up the most. So don't get caught up in all the optimizations. Have fun maybe looking for some as you dial things in to see what you can even get away with, what lifestyle balance you can create, what might feel good.
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I think experimentation is great, but do it because you've got those things dialed in and you're adding something that doesn't add stress, but feels more sustainable or you feel it could have benefit to make the other things better. Now, fitness flop number nine and fitness flop feels so fun to say, even though some of these looking back, I'm like, they're groan worthy, but ignoring mindset and my stress. So as much as I recognize how important mindset was, I also didn't like doing mindset work for the longest time. And even though going into college, I was the lowest recruit in my class, my coach actually didn't want me. Sorry Leslie. She didn't want me. I was only there because my assistant coach saw something in me as a national ranked player, but I was the lowest recruit in my year and I went in being like, you know what?
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I'm going to fricking prove them all wrong and I'm going to play on this team and I'm going to earn that scholarship that I got, but I'm going to be better than anybody else in my recruiting class. And I ended up playing, having a great winning record. And I did that because I acted as if. It wasn't just saying that to myself. I was then training hard, putting in the effort, having the mindset, really acting as if the person who was successful with these things. And so you'd think that recognizing that early on and even having act as if be a mantra for the longest time, I would embrace mindset stuff, but I didn't. I didn't like stepping back to pause. I wanted to find a new tool or tactic I wanted to implement. I didn't like doing the reflection work of even why I felt certain ways about certain things, but I recognized that was ultimately what was holding me back and it was adding more stress.
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It was also not allowing me to account for stress, which is why I would have different seasons that were so dramatically different and felt like I was starting over every new year because instead of reflecting during the holidays on what I actually wanted during the holidays, I was trying to willpower my way through. I didn't recognize how stress had shifted even potentially during some of the new years with work being a little bit busier, the gym being fuller. And so the more I started to recognize that all stress goes in one bucket, the more I recognized that habits could shift in their implementation and the less I had a mindset or resistance against change. I was actually talking to one of my coaches today on a live and we talked about how change is a skill and it really is. But I started to recognize the more I reflected on mindsets, the more I could create actions that felt sustainable or at least that felt like my choice and therefore were better embraced by myself and were implemented better, which saw better results because so much of how we actually enact habits, how we show up in the world is based on the mindsets we have, whether we see things as obstacle or opportunity.
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So even changes in stress, obstacle or opportunity. Hey, maybe tracking in this way actually feels too stressful. And that's even where we say, oh, it doesn't feel worth it. Tracking is just too much. It's like, no, maybe there's other stressors that added up. And I started to notice for me, that really was it. There were other stressors in my life that had added up. The tracking in one form did not work for it. But instead of saying tracking is bad or even feeling like I was working really hard and making all these changes, I started to recognize I wasn't making changes. It just felt like a lot of effort to track. So how can I make that effort less so that I was actually more consistent? But it took that reframe and really that mindset work to understand how all stress goes in one bucket, how you have, even if you want another analogy, and I like this one a lot, is you have a habit budget and all the different habits that you're doing do cost you things like showing up to work on time, being nice to people, especially people you don't like potentially, but also your tracking habits, your eating habits, your workout routine, all those things are an expense.
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And if one of those expenses like work gets more stressful, goes up, all of a sudden you might not have the budget for tracking or working out in the same way. And so by adjusting the expense of those things, you can make everything fit. Sometimes you can even reflect on the stress that is there with one of the other habits to reduce the cost of that, but sometimes you can't. So it's constantly evolving everything to fit within that budget. But it's recognizing truly that where your attention goes, your energy flows and mindset dictates so much of what is possible for you. And off of that, which was a huge mindset shift for me, fitness op number 10 was not embracing my own lifestyle. I'll own it. I am never going to be a person that wants to eat perfectly clean. I am never going to want to be a person who wants to work out extra hours every single day of the week.
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I love working out. I like challenging myself, but even I get burnt out on it. I like food. I like traveling and sometimes taking days off when I shouldn't. I like exploring foods. I like overeating. I like doing some of these things at times. I like being what I consider to be very human. Owning that allowed me to find my balance. It allowed me to know that sometimes there were unbalanced parts of the year where I do mini cuts. It allowed me to own that there are times where I do diet breaks. It allowed me to own that there are times I work in more foods that are less quality to my macros while still trying to hit intensive ratios and there's times that I don't. And this has allowed me actually more balance over the year where I'm not on or off. It's allowed me to feel better, which makes me want to do more of the habits that I like.
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But I started owning what I actually wanted out of things and owning the cost and reward and choice I had in everything I did. And that allowed me to have my cocktails when I want, but also say no to cocktails when I was traveling and didn't want them at that time without guilt, without apology to anybody else. And so the more we own our lifestyle balance and the fact that this will look different potentially at different seasons over different years, the better off we're going to be because we're constantly seeking to be more authentically ourselves and that's a good thing. So off of this, I would love to hear maybe either which fitness flops you've repeated or which ones you're noticing yourself going down the route of repeating and how this really helped you potentially shift your focus on them and reframe them to move forward in a sustainable way.
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