Cori (00:00):
Hey guys, this is Corifrom Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a review or leave a five star rating or even better share with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

Cori (00:28):
Hey guys, it’s Cori from Redefining Strength, and I’m so excited to be joined by Julia today. If I could talk, that would be a good thing, but we’re going to talk about the cost of health. If you’ve ever felt like eating well, hitting your macros is just too costly. If you’re trying to work within your budget, Julia has some fabulous tips to help. So Julia, welcome. Welcome. Talk to me a little bit about the cost of health.

Julia (00:54):
Sure. So in our April challenge, obviously this month we’re working on conquering our excuses and one of them being like you said, that the cost of eating is too high, such a common one. So today we’re going to dive into why that may be, along with some tips and ideas to help you really cut those costs and overcome this excuse.

Cori (01:14):
So before we dive into that, I do just want to touch on something that probably a lot of us have heard, but what’s really the cost of not eating foods that improve the quality of our health? Because I know it’s very easy to get caught up in the short term. We do have budgets we have to work within. We do want to feed our family efficiently, but I think it’s also important that we consider some of the consequences of actions that might not impact us right now, but could add up later. Can you talk a little bit about why it is so important? Sometimes we do invest a little bit more in our nutrition now.

Julia (01:49):
Yeah, of course. So this goes back to one of my favorite quotes. If you think wellness is expensive, try illness, right? So it’s one of those things where if we’re not paying attention to it now we’re going to be forced to down the line whether we want to or not. So coming back to when we’re discussing the cost of healthy eating, it’s important to consider that the cost of not doing so can really hurt us in the long run, meaning that unhealthy dietary patterns when we’re eating high amounts of things like saturated fats, sugar, sodium, calories, they’re all linked to higher rates of chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, blood pressure, type two diabetes, just to name a few among many others. And there have been studies in the past, there was one in 2015, which showed us that a person with three to four chronic diseases will spend annually about 25,000 on healthcare expenses alone. While those without chronic diseases will spend about 6,000 annually. So there is a huge difference from there. And from this we can see that the cost of regularly incorporating healthy nutrient dense foods into our diet, it’s much less expensive in the long run.

Cori (02:55):
And we may be thinking, okay, I understand I get this, but eating well is just so expensive. Why do you think that we often default into this? Because as we know, there are lots of ways to hit our macros, eat healthy quality foods that can fit our budget. But why do you think this is often the first thought for people?

Julia (03:17):
I feel like because we think it’s a lot more expensive and harder to do, so we kind of just write it off where instead of we’re looking at it from a food per or that’s if we’re looking at it from a food per calorie perspective. But if we’re looking at it from a nutrient dense perspective, we find that we can find healthier choices that are within our budgets if we’re really just planning and making an effort to do so. An example would be if we’re just going to the supermarket and buying something like a can of spaghetti or Chef Boyer D to feed our family where that can be cheaper. But if we’re eating out, I mean the average meal costs around 14, 15, $16, and that’s at an inexpensive restaurant. So if we are eating at home and planning ahead of making an effort to cut those costs, sticking to really whole nutrient dense foods, we’ll find that from the kind of cost per nutrient perspective with real foods like potatoes, dark green, leafy vegetables, pumpkin, even things like canned beans, we can get packed a lot more nutrition in them for the cost versus eating out would be,

Cori (04:21):
It’s actually interesting you brought up eating out because I instantly went to this one situation that Ryan had when he was in Boston and working, and a lot of his coworkers would go out to lunch and we would go to sometimes Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or different things like that. And there would be sometimes where some of the foods were a little bit more expensive, they’d be like, oh, it’s so expensive to shop there. And he was like, but look at how much you’re spending on this one meal. What you don’t realize is that, yes, my grocery bill might be more expensive, but the way that these things are divided up over the week, my meal is actually cheaper despite even going to sometimes expensive stores per meal. Like you’re spending 11, 12, $13 on your meal and I’m spending eight when I meal prep in this way. How do you think we can shift that mindset that maybe cooking at home and maybe buying specific ways, even if you do go to more expensive restaurants to try and get more quality, or not restaurants, but grocery stores to get more quality food. It can actually be meal preps in a way that is very budget friendly,

Julia (05:20):
Of course. So this is just really where planning comes in. So so many ways that we can cut the cost while grocery shopping, as long as we’re planning ahead and being intentional about it, like you said. So that first step is really planning ahead, which means brainstorming your meals and snacks for the weeks, making a grocery list of the items that you need and that will allow you to not only cut down on food costs because you’re reducing that food waste, but also to limit the chance of eating out, like you said, because you know what you’re eating, it’s already prepped for you. And then I think the next step is really just being a smart shopper. So this means if you’re feeding a family, buying items in bulk that you can as well as just shopping store brands and being smart about it. So for a lot of items like meat, poultry, yogurt, things like nut butters, they have store brands available, which are the same ingredients as those name brands that you may see.

(06:11):
So you’re getting the same nutritional value for a lot cheaper. And also just being aware of sales, taking advantage of things like the frozen section. So that’s a huge one. A lot of us think that frozen produce is less nutritious and it gets a really bad wrap, but it’s actually usually harvested when it’s ripe, meaning that it often contains more nutrients than fresh for a fraction of the price. So it can be easy to fall into the marketing of expensive, healthy products, whether that be salad dressings, condiments, or even packaged foods. There’s so many different things today like almond flour, crackers, all these different things that we hear screaming that they’re so good for us, but honestly we have to remind ourselves that we don’t need all these things. For example, a can of beans for a dollar would pack more nutritional value than those crackers would for a fraction of the cost. So this is why we are here to also shop the perimeter, which is packed with whole nutrient dense foods that will offer more micro and macronutrients for a fraction of the price of most of those packaged foods in the middle. Well,

Cori (07:16):
I think it’s interesting you bring up packaged foods because I want to go off on a little clean eating thing and a lot of times labels that have to tout the food as healthy, if you think about it, fruits aren’t putting on their healthy fiber packed. We don’t see that on vegetables because we know these things are good. So a lot of these prepackaged foods that are trying to say they’re keto to fit your diet or they’re low carb or they have this health benefit, a lot of times they’re forcing things to be that way. And not that some of ’em don’t have health benefits, but a lot of times you are paying an extra price for these healthy labels for something that honestly isn’t that much better for you and you might be better served by gasp, getting the not clean variation, not to mention this sort of clean eating delineation with food makes us avoid foods that we shouldn’t.

(08:05):
As you brought up frozen foods, a lot of the fresh vegetables aren’t necessarily more nutrient dense or better than frozen vegetables or frozen fruits. A lot of times the frozen things are better, but even canned stuff, we’ll shy away from canned tuna from canned chicken, and a lot of those are just the meat. It’s not a ton of ingredients that are added, but we shy away from those things because we think canned stuff, chef Boyer D, right? So it’s really understanding and looking at labels even to know what we’re getting to not fall for the marketing terms that might just lead to a markup on some of the ingredients we’re buying.

Julia (08:40):
Yeah, a hundred percent. Like you said, reading the labels is huge and really just taking the time to educate yourself a little bit and get to know the grocery store. So like we said, flipping around, checking out that nutrition label and seeing, comparing the store brand to the leading brand, looking at the store brand of peanut butter versus the gif peanut butter, seeing what those ingredients look like and seeing where you can really cut the cost there. Those little things can go a huge way because we know that, I mean, the marketing today is just insane on what they have for the food. And going back to even what you said before, one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan says, you go through the aisles and you see all these things screaming at you, telling you that it’s keto or low carb or whatever it may be, but you go to the produce section or the meat section or the seafood section, whatever it may be, and it says nothing, right?

(09:27):
It speaks for itself. It’s a great choice. It doesn’t need to advocate for itself. So I totally agree. I think we get caught up in thinking we need all these things and that’s why we write off healthy eating as expensive and kind of think that we can’t do it when we really just need to bring it back to the basics and remind ourselves that we don’t need all of these things. That’s just kind of another excuse that we tell ourselves. And we can do this if we’re smart about it and we plan for it and we’re intentional about it.

Cori (09:54):
And it also goes back to the food waste that you mentioned, but not only the food waste in a pinch, things that we buy, and I am very guilty of this, I think I’m going to be busy, so I buy a protein bar, and that protein bar is expensive, especially if you buy it from the store versus buying it in bulk potentially on Amazon, which could be a better option if you are going to go that route. But we buy these things that are efficient for our schedule and not realizing the markup even on those things versus if we got a big tub of protein powder and threw it in water, coffee, those different things. Or even then made our own protein bars at home. And that even goes back to your having a grocery list when you go in. So often if I’ve gone to the store and I’m just like, I don’t know, I’m going to make this week, I’ll buy a whole bunch of things that don’t get used.

(10:36):
Now. I’m really good about trying to freeze those things before they spoil or prep them and then freeze the prep so that I have it for later. But if we don’t go in with a plan, we can buy a lot of things that ultimately go to waste, which can make it feel like our budget is skyrocketing. So making sure that if you do get something even that you’re like, I don’t know what I’m actually going to do with this week, and you have it in your fridge, find a way to preserve it. So cook it and freeze it. Bulk prep, maybe a protein, a vegetable and a carb, more starchy carb that you put in the freezer for later. But think of ways you can make it loss. And then even don’t be afraid to get those canned items. They’re already frozen items, the items that will be there whenever you need in a pinch, because that can really make it easier to prep and stay consistent and then not add to your bill because we also do that, right? We don’t know what we’re going to cook, so we don’t end up prepping anything. And so the food goes to waste, but we end up going out to eat or grabbing something that’s an expensive quick option. And that adds to our food costs.

Julia (11:29):
And I love what you said there. I think so often we’ll just go to the grocery store kind of on a whim. We know we need to stack up on groceries, we want to eat healthy, we have really good intentions behind it. So we’re choosing all these vegetables and maybe we’re even picking up some packaged foods and we know that we’re trying to do good and trying to eat healthier and stack up on all these great foods, but if we don’t have a plan for it or any recipes or an idea of what we’re going to do with it, it really just ends up sitting in our fridge and it does go to waste. So like you said, if we can even just if we got vegetables like chopping it up, either freezing the spinach for smoothies or chopping it up, cooking it, doing it in a recipe, and then again, this is where that planning comes back in, and I’m going to say it again and again because if we plan for it, that also helps us reduce those costs.

(12:11):
And food waste, you’re not picking up food that you don’t need. Say if you want to incorporate those vegetables, maybe you’re going to find a recipe for a stir fry and then pick up those exact vegetables in the exact amount that you need for it. But like you said, Corey, just going back and if you do have food on hand that you feel like is going to waste, freeze it. Find a way to preserve it, find a way to use it because there are so many other options that we can do to help reduce costs there as well.

Cori (12:34):
And then explore different places to buy things because I know if I find a nut butter or something that I like, if I go on Amazon, if I go to a bigger bulk store, a lot of times I can find something cheaper, especially when you are buying in bulk, that won’t go bad. So that’s the opportunity to cut costs on certain things so that you can even spend more on other things that might be more important, like getting the grass fed beef or an organic vegetable, whatever you need. But even going to farmer’s markets, which you don’t think about often as being a cost efficient option can because you’re buying straight from the farmer, and those can be very fresh ingredients as well. So don’t be afraid to explore different stores. You might be surprised by how the costs really vary, especially based on the quantity you’re able to buy. And that’s even the great thing about prepping some of the stuff for your family, like sneaking in vegetables to different dishes, is you can buy in greater bulk, which ultimately lowers the cost and it improves your family’s health while you’re trying to hit your goals as well. Off of that, any real final summarizing tips so that people can really make sure that they’re being cost efficient when they’re trying to eat well?

Julia (13:39):
Yeah, so just honestly being honest with yourself about your efforts to cut the costs and where you can improve on things, right? Are you taking the time to research recipes and plan out budget friendly meals? Are you getting caught up in thinking that you need those expensive health foods like we talked about? Are you seeing where you can buy those items in bulk? And as we discussed, just being a smart shopper, so planning ahead to reduce those grocery costs, prepping meals with similar ingredients and then freezing them for later use. Obviously buying in bulk, like we said, taking advantage of those frozen sections, shopping the sales and building meals around those sale ingredients, checking the ingredients of items, and then seeing if you can find alternatives that are cheaper or store brands or even different stores that carry it. And then finally, just prioritizing that perimeter as well. Making sure that the majority of our diet is based off of those whole fresh nutrient dense foods can help us really, really cut the costs. But just to finally say, it does take a conscious effort to plan out those budget friendly meals, but in the long run, it will save you time throughout the week, and it’s pretty clear that those health benefits do outweigh the costs upfront.

Cori (14:48):
I did just want to touch on one of the things that you pointed out, Julia, about using the same foods in multiple different recipes. Because if you don’t have a family and you are prepping for one person, Ryan and I actually make our own meals, it can feel like you can’t buy in the same bulk, which makes it more expensive because you don’t want things to go waste. Again, that’s where buying the frozen stuff can come into play. It’s why buying canned stuff can come into play and be very helpful, but it’s also where if you plan ahead and you know can use that vegetable in multiple different dishes in different ways, you can buy in greater bulk, which can lower the cost and keep even still a diversity of foods in your diet and make prep potentially even easier, which if you’re lazy like me, it’s a win-win.

Cori (15:29):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating review or share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone I.

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript

(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a

(00:15):
Review or leave a five

(00:17):
Star rating, or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

(00:28):
Ever feel really overwhelmed by all of the different diet and workout options out there? Feel like there’s just information overload going on? Well, I wanted to reframe that feeling because I don’t think all the information out there is going away. I think if anything, there’s just going to be more opinions that we’re seeing, more comments on what’s right and wrong occurring, because social media isn’t going away and most of us use it daily. So I wanted to help really shift the mindset in how we approach all the options out there, and instead of seeing them as obstacles or overwhelm, see them as opportunities. So I wanted to throw out this analogy for all of you because I found it actually really helpful in reframing my perspective of all the different opinions out there. And I began to think of it more as a spice cabinet.

(01:16):
So you have potentially, or at least I know, I do a ton of different spices in the spice cabinet. Some really never get used, and I’m not even sure what I bought them for, and others get used on a daily basis, and I’m constantly replacing them. The heart of every recipe I make, I would say that salt and pepper are basically used daily, if not in every single thing I make. And so I would count these things as the fundamentals. So to me, this is macros and it’s workout progression. How you design your workout progression is going to change, but it’s always based on progression, what macro ratios you’re going to use, whether you’re dialing them in by actually tracking or whether you’re dialing them in by restricting specific food groups, whether you’re falling, paleo, whatever else. These two things are at the heart of everything we do, and they’re in every recipe we make.

(02:06):
They’re the fundamental things that are the basic seasoning. So on top of that, you have garlic, salt, and paprika and all these other things in there. And I’m not the best chef, so I’m sure there’s a lot of different spices out there that I don’t even know about. But there’s all these other things. And sometimes you buy ’em for one specific recipe, right? You want one specific goal, you’re going to follow one specific program, and maybe that program doesn’t even turn out, so you sort of throw it away. It doesn’t mean the spices were bad. It doesn’t mean the recipe was bad, it didn’t work for you. And so you might have those spices in your cabinet that didn’t work for you, but things that you’re never going to use again. And maybe eventually, hopefully you clean out your cabinet, get rid of ’em. But there were just options that were there.

(02:48):
And then there’s going to be recipes you make with spices that you really like, that you use a lot. So there’s going to be programs that you do, there’s going to be information or opinions out there that you follow that help you see the results that you want. And you might use ’em even a lot for a while to reach a specific goal. And then maybe those sort of go to the back of the spice cabinet. You don’t need them right now for the next goal, and you’re following a different recipe, or you’re going with different things that you want to try out different flavors, but they’re all options and none of them are bad. And some you might pull out, again, I might even forgot that you had there because now they really fit what you need right now. So what I’m getting at with all of this is that the more we see it as opportunity, as different ways to meet what we need, right then, the better off we’re going to be.

(03:33):
Knowing that some things are going to be used more frequently, some things are going to become staples because they really do resonate with what we need and our lifestyle. And some are just going to be tools that we throw in once in a while based on changes to different things, whether or not we’re doing a little bit more of a cut, trying to lose a little bit more fat, trying to gain a little bit more muscle. And it’s not even that we don’t like those spices, that we don’t like those systems, it’s just that they’re not necessarily right now. So I’d love to hear if this analogy in terms of shaping all the opinions out there into a less overwhelming thing really helped you guys, or even how you approach that overwhelm, knowing that there are a ton of different opinions out there, a ton of different options out there.

(04:12):
And really, it’s not just a thing of right or wrong, there’s not a clear boundary with that because there are just so many different things that can work for different people. Yes, there is some information that is potentially less credible or less, but at the same time, that system might’ve worked for somebody. And so they’re sharing their opinion and maybe trying to push it a little too much on you. But I think we need to shape or reframe how we think about all the different options out there because those opinions are not going away. And the more overwhelmed we feel, the more loss we feel with things, the more we hold ourselves back from taking even action. So I’d really be curious. Did think about this as all these different spices that you can use to really flavor season, create the plan right for you if it really helped.

(04:58):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes, and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript

(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a review or leave a five star rating or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

(00:28):
I don’t have enough time to work out. Most of us have made this excuse and to some extent it is valid. We are busy. There is not enough time in the day to do everything that we need to do. However, there is always a way to design for the time we have and even when something pops up and we can’t get to our usual routine, we can have that plan be in place. Not to mention, I think a lot of times that feeling of I don’t have enough time stems from us trying to force an ideal workout schedule over designing for the time we truly have and recognizing that what is realistic for us in our schedule may shift over time. So often our excuses pop up because of our priorities and not owning our priorities in life and our priorities are going to shift.

(01:13):
There’s going to be times a year where you’re going to have to prioritize family. Maybe over the meal prep you usually like or you’re going to have to prioritize work over getting in the workout of the usual time you like to get it in. And so I think owning the shift in priorities over the year, be it travel for holidays, travel over the summer, different things like that. The more we own those things, the more we can plan in a realistic schedule. Because discipline is built through what we can consistently do and to help ourself become more disciplined. We can’t always be relying on willpower to replicate the habits. This means that we have to be able to shift our habits so that we can stay consistent enough with the routines that when things are a little bit quieter, when other priorities aren’t getting in the way as much, maybe we can move forward a little bit faster, but we’re still maintaining those results during other times.

(02:01):
That’s why I wanted to go over some tips so that you could design fast and efficient workouts that will really work no matter your schedule, because if you have six days a week, you’re going to design differently and you’re going to potentially be able to use that full hour. Now note too, just because you have six days a week to train and an hour to train, that doesn’t mean that you should be making a HIIT workout, which should probably be about 20 minutes. Stretch that full hour a workout should only stretch the full hour because you’re using more mobility work, you’re lifting heavier, so you need those longer rest periods. You’re working. Different energy systems are on speed and power where that recovery period has to be longer and therefore the extent of your workout might have to stretch out a little bit more. But we are not just designing for the time we have because we have that time.

(02:39):
We want everything to be included with a purpose. So if you have three days a week and 30 minutes, if you have four days a week and 15 minutes, you can always design for the time you have and something is better than nothing. If you have five minutes, use that five minutes because as much as it might not feel like, oh yeah, I didn’t burn them many calories, how much muscle can I really build in this time? You’re not only keeping yourself in the routine and habit of it, so you’re keeping that time still set for yourself, you’re still making yourself a priority with those things, but you’re creating that success mindset. So often when we miss one workout, if we’ve designed for six days a week and we still do five, we feel less successful. And that can lead to us feeling like, well, I’m not going to care about my macros as much, and now who cares if I miss another workout and there’s this slippery slope of sliding off all the habits we really want versus doing three days, 30 minutes.

(03:24):
When we feel successful with that, there’s a tendency to want to do more. So it’s remembering that a lot of this is the mindset, the habit, the routine that it ingrains because also skipping your workout and being okay with skipping your workout is repeating a pattern as well. So if you’re short on time, one of the best things I like to recommend clients do is timed workouts. So this can be done in a couple of different ways, but if you have 15 minutes and you think about designing a workout, you’re like, well, I don’t know exactly how long this is going to take, or you’re watching your watch or you’re not being intentional because you only have 15 minutes. But if you time out everything, if you time out, how long you’re going to be foam rolling for, how long you’re going to stretch for, how long you’re going to do activation for, how long your circuits are, even the intervals of work, you know that you can for sure get in everything as is for that 15 minutes and you can be more intentional with your training.

(04:10):
So implement timed workouts, put either intervals per side of foam rolling or a set amount of time you’re going to foam roll and run through different things. Set the two minutes that you’re going to go through some dynamic stretches or even set intervals work per stretch for activations. Set the 30 seconds for the GL bridges or say, Hey, I’m going to run through GL bridges, scapular pushups, all those things for two minutes, but set a time so you know exactly what you’re doing. So you can be very intentional during that. And then I like to either use time sets, so more like density sets or density intervals or interval training In general. I know we think about interval training only for cardio, but it’s a great technique for building strength because of the training density that it creates. So when you have less time, you’ve got to use that time strategically.

(04:51):
And when you use time circuits that can help you keep moving and create that training volume but in a shorter amount of time so that training density can increase, which can drive progression, whether it’s doing a minute of work where you use weights that really you want to stop at 40 seconds, but you push through even if you have to pause for a second and you do those extra reps that you might not have done. And I think that’s really key to note is that a lot of time with interval work, we would’ve stopped at the eight to 12 reps and it might’ve felt hard at 12, but maybe we could have done 14, 15 and we didn’t do it because 12 is the top. Yeah, sure, we went up and wait the next round. But when we do that interval work, we’re pushing past failure a lot of times pass the point we would want to quit, and that can build strength endurance, it can help with our recovery and work capacity.

(05:30):
So it can be a great valuable asset to us as we’re looking to build muscle, even if we do have more time. But even with density sets, you can do a time circuit and cycle through things. Now with these intervals of work, you’re pushing past failure. You have to be strategic in how you’re using rest because when we have less time, we don’t have as much time to waste. And I put waste in air quotes, waste resting. Now that being said, rest is incredibly important. If you do not rest, if you do not recover, you are not going to be able to go at a true a hundred percent intensity. And that’s why we see people doing these long hour long hit workouts, but their intensity is going. Or if you’re actually trying to train speed to be able to run further faster and you’re not recovering enough, you are starting to train slowness.

(06:13):
So recovery is incredibly important if we want to be able to truly push hard and create that progression, because so often depleted states where we’re pushing hard for that depleted state, we’re not actually challenging our body in a way that it needs to really adapt and grow stronger. We’re just depleted in terms of our energy stores, so we don’t have the effort to give. So it’s incredibly important that when you’re even designing those intervals of work that you’re cycling through areas so that you can keep moving, but areas are resting while other areas are working. So you have to, this is tip number two, rest without resting. So the first tip is timed workouts. Whether you’re using time for all the parts for intervals of work, for density sets or time circuits, you also want to rest without resting. And what that means is changing the intensity of the moves that you use, it also means cycling the areas that are worked and the types of moves you include.

(06:58):
So I love to create more training volume for an area by sometimes even including a compound move and then an isolation move. But you have to know that you’re fatiguing area, so you have to at some point cycle to allow that area to rest, which is why a lot of times if you are shorter on time, more full body workouts because then you can work your legs, then you can work your upper body, then you can work your core. And even in that, a lot of times you think, okay, the leg and the upper body compound movements are going to be a lot more intensive. But that core exercise, a lot of times we can even reduce that intensity, which then makes it more of a recovery exercise while we’re still working and getting a lot of value. So you want to cycle the areas worked, but also cycle the intensity.

(07:37):
That might also mean that you do a big heavy compound lift for your lower body and then maybe an isolation move for your upper body. And while I do, yes, like to focus on more compound moves because they’re working more muscles that once you’re going to burn more calories from those workouts when you’re short on time and not that workouts should only be about calories burn, but it is an added benefit. While you generally want to focus on more compound moves, there’s always nuance to it. And that cycling of intensity might be really key, especially if you plan to work the compound upper body movement in another one of the circuits that you’re doing or on a different day based on your schedule. So cycling intensity of movements, areas being worked so you can rest without resting because that will help you get more out of the time.

(08:14):
But also be able to go at a true a hundred percent intensity, keep those 35, 40, 50 pound dumbbells for those lunges over having to go down and weight to keep the same intensity. And even going back to the time circuits, this is where you want to think, how can I make a move harder without adding more volume in terms of more reps at once? So when you’re doing those things, yes, if you have a minute of work, you might want to push more reps in that time, but you don’t want to turn it into cardio. Think how can I do a harder variation where I have to use heavier loads and I max that at five reps and then keep going even for the 30 seconds or we’re in that density circuit where you’re potentially going through multiple moves, the time circuit, we’re going through multiple moves, how can I do it so that I do five reps with a heavier load and ultimately end up moving more weight?

(08:55):
The volume adds up over the rounds, but I’m not resting because I’m not getting maxed out trying to do 10 wraps. So that’s again, even going back to the resting without resting. So time workouts, rest without resting. The next one is knowing when to go full body versus isolation. So the more days a week you have a train, and the longer the sessions can be, the more you can work in isolation moves because they aren’t going to give you as much bang for your buck. They aren’t going to strengthen as many muscles at once. But isolation moves are incredibly important. If you really are trying to drive muscle hypertrophy or muscle growth for stubborn areas, it’s Q, we include both. Now that being said, so often we only say then, okay, fine, I’m short of time. I can only do full body movements or compound exercises.

(09:37):
I have to keep all my workouts full body and I have to alternate areas work, and we don’t think about including as many isolation moves, but that can also hold us back because there’s a time and a place and a way we can design based on our needs and goals and even evolve those over time. So yes, if you have fewer days to train and you’re shorter on time, I will definitely tell you, especially as you get to five minutes, do as many full body or compound booths as you can. Those are going to give you the best bang for your buck. However, there is a way to also include a combination of both when you have stubborn areas, even when you’re short on time, and this is where compound burner type things, density intervals can come into play, but you’re working the same muscle group in back-to-back movements.

(10:14):
However, one is a compound and one is an isolation. And by doing it back to back, you’re using that isolation to push past failure to recruit more muscle fibers and drive better muscle growth through fatiguing a muscle. That might’ve been a big prime mover in that first one. And yes, got tired, but wasn’t pushed fully to fatigue because weaker smaller muscle groups fatigue faster. We were also pushing it just past that failure point by being able to lower the intensity, isolate it, and then use a lighter load, still a challenging load, but a lighter load than you had to use for the compound move to keep going with that exercise. And then after that, the two moves for that one area. Maybe then you cycle to another area. So you’re still potentially doing that full body workout, but you’re implementing isolation moves in a way that is valuable over just saying, Hey, I’m doing bicep curls for the five minutes that I have, which is not going to burn a ton of calories.

(10:59):
It’s not going to provide a lot of back for your buck If you did a back row, you’d work your back work on scapular movement and get your biceps all in one. So you can use a combination of both based on your needs and goals. It’s just recognizing that there’s more nuance than lots of time. Use isolation, not a lot of time. Don’t use isolation. Just think about how can you rest without resting? How can you vary intensity? How can you fatigue muscles faster in the time and fatiguing muscles faster doesn’t mean just feeling more destroyed from your workout. Okay? It doesn’t mean feeling slaughtered in a sweaty heap on the ground breathing like you just ran a marathon as much as that hard feeling can feel good. Really getting enough load for your muscles is about did they fully fatigue? Could you have done an extra rep the next week?

(11:39):
Did you progress in terms of reps, variation, tempos, any of those different things. But sometimes doing that isolation moves so that you have to do 15 reps and you have to pause at 10 to get out the last five. That’s also fatiguing a muscle group. Even if after the workout you’re not laying on the ground dead, okay, that can be good. So do combine things. Don’t just think it has to be either or. But do think that if you are doing fewer times a week to train to create that training frequency over the week that each workout does hit multiple muscle groups so you can hit ’em two to three times that training frequency has been shown to really be beneficial. Even when we’re training for six days a week, you want to hit an area more than once a week for the optimal benefit, then maximize.

(12:18):
And this is the final tip I wanted to go over. Tip number four, maximize how you train through fatigue. So this partly goes back to the isolation moves, but it also goes back to how you use the intervals of work when you’re pushing through fatigue. Sometimes we have to use rest, pause, and I say this because sometimes just stopping at a rep range because we’re tired and then never picking those back up, we won’t have time to come back to it. Sometimes if you can do eight reps with something, but you really wanted to shoot for 10, do the eight pause for just a split second or two even though you’re short on time, and then do those 10 because that will be more valuable than just having stopped at the eight and potentially getting in another round at a different point. So sometimes you want to push past failure, whether it’s using that isolation move after the compound move, whether it’s using that rest pause technique, whether again, it’s going back to those intervals of work where you pause during them very briefly, but you keep going past the point you would’ve wanted to stop had you just hadn’t done traditional reps and sets.

(13:11):
This also goes back to those timed circuits. So often with the timed circuits, we do just push sort of to make them cardio and try and move faster, but think about lowering your reps. So if you do a weight that really challenges you for five reps and you end up getting out more rounds in that time, you could end up creating a greater amount of loads lifted in that time because you kept moving. Instead of just pushing to 10 reps with something, even if, let’s just say you end up usually doing four sets of 10 with a weight, if you can break it down and do that same volume in a shorter amount of time and do it by doing five reps when you’re at home in that short amount of time because you don’t have the ability to rest as long as you did when you did those four sets of 10, you’re going to see great benefits because that training density moving more loads in a shorter amount of time creates progression and it can create growth.

(14:00):
So maximize how you’re training through fatigue and again, cycle those areas work. So you can go at that true a hundred percent intensity short on time doesn’t mean a workout can’t be quality. It doesn’t mean it can’t be designed with purpose. It doesn’t mean it can’t be focused on your needs and goals. And even when we’re doing five minutes and we’re designing maybe a workout that wasn’t exactly the type of training we wanted to do because sure, maybe you’re not being able to go to the gym, set up your heavy bar for a deadlift and all those different things, you can still do things that move you forward. And this is the final point I really want to touch on before I check for any questions, comments, or concerns. But with this last thing, sometimes it’s remembering that if you can’t do the optimal, you got to do something and you can do something that moves you forward, even if it’s not directly what you usually would’ve planned.

(14:43):
So if you have five minutes to train, and usually you’re doing these heavy lifts right now, maybe this week you just look at it and you’re like, okay, this isn’t going to be the day that I have five minutes to train. How can I maybe switch my focus and do a little deload work on some of the weak links I even noticed popping up last week when I was doing my heavy lifts so that next week when I get back to it, I’ve worked on something that will ultimately move me forward. So yes, sometimes we do have to shift our perspective with training for a short amount of time or less frequently to a different goal than we had normally had. But the more we can plan ahead and own our reality, own our schedule right now, own even our mental state right now, because when we get busy and all the priorities come into play, we can get stressed and we can not feel like doing our workouts, which makes us skip them more.

(15:24):
Shift your focus so that you’re giving yourself a purpose for the workouts that you are designing that are based on your schedule that ultimately does move you forward even if it’s not the same, because I think sometimes we just do it as a comparison of, oh, well, this five minutes isn’t as good as my gym workout. Okay, but how can you make this five minutes ultimately pay off for your future gym sessions and keep you in that routine and keep you in that positive momentum because something is better than nothing. And even if we have a week where we maintain our previous results, that is success. We’ve maintained a previous result, we’ve created a new setpoint now this is a new launching pad for the next phase of our journey.

(15:58):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free work out of nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know.

00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness X Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a

(00:16):
Review or leave a five

(00:17):
Star rating or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in.

(00:28):
This is not the last donut I will ever see. You might be like, what the heck are you talking about, Cori? But I want to go into 20 different sayings, quotes, mantras that I found really helpful in guiding me on my journey, things that my coaches have found helpful for them, and even things that you guys commented on my story and shared, which was one of them being this is not the last Don I’ll ever see. And I wanted to start with this one because it really ties into probably the most motivational, meaningful saying for me. But these things are really helpful to have these phrases in our mind to help us stay on track, to help us navigate the hard to help pick us back up. And the more we can have those little concise sayings, the more it’ll remind us of all the other snowball things we need to do.

(01:11):
So number one, and this is where this ties in. It’s your choice. I think for me, this was the overall statement that changed everything the most and really impacts every other thing that I’m going to talk about today because ultimately we are choosing everything we’re doing. For the longest time when I was making dietary changes, trying to work towards specific goals, I was like, well, I can’t cut that out. I can’t restrict this. Oh my goodness, I feel so deprived, right? All the changes feel so hard and we almost act as if someone else is forcing us to do them, but it’s our choice. If I choose not to go out and have a cocktail tonight, or if I choose not to have the food at the party, if I choose not to eat the way I’ve always eaten on weekends, it’s my choice. Yet we act like it’s being forced on us.

(01:56):
It’s restriction, it’s bad, but there are sacrifices that come with reaching any goal and we have to recognize, Hey, this is my choice and I can make a different choice tomorrow. I could have made a different choice today. So I really love that someone wrote in, this is not the last donut I’ll ever see because I think that’s such an important point. Hey, skipping dessert tonight. Hey, not doing this thing today. Hey, going to my workout instead of going to this other thing. This is my choice, and this is not the last time I’ll be presented with this choice and I can make a different decision later, but this right now is in line with my goals and it doesn’t mean it’ll feel easy, but recognizing that it is our choice and we can make a different choice at a different point is so key.

(02:32):
That’s number one. Number two is take ownership. So maybe it’s the control freak in me, but taking ownership was very relieving for me. It helped me reduce a lot of the stress associated with making changes and lasting changes because it also gave me back agency. I think a lot of times just the choice thing. We give away our power, we say that it’s something else being inflicted on us. We blame our failures and other things and it’s hard to accept fault, but the more we can take ownership, the more we realize that there’s a lot within our power to control. You can’t change your genetics. You can’t always shift your priorities, but you can work within these things and take ownership to control what you can control to move forward. So I think that reminding yourself that you can take ownership of your journey and that ultimately you need to put in the work to achieve results, that there’s nobody else that can do it for you, is really empowering.

(03:18):
It’s also intimidating, but really empowering so that we can truly move forward at any stage or phase of life. Sure, the goal that we reach the exact outcome might not look exactly how we expected it, but we can always move forward by taking ownership. Number three, your expectations make or break you. So a lot of times we come into a new plan program, we start a new journey having an outcome that we really want. I want to lose weight, I want to gain muscle, I want to achieve X. Well, just because you work hard, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get to that exact vision, especially in the way you envisioned it, but the more we come into something just saying, Hey, my expectation is to learn what I can to empower myself to be better so that I can keep moving forward towards this outcome so I can keep improving.

(03:59):
Because I can tell you I’ve done different coaching programs, different plans where I didn’t achieve the exact outcome, but I learned a whole heck of a lot even from things I didn’t like that ultimately did move forward towards my goals. So we can’t see it as this linear progress or process. So the more we say, Hey, how can I manage my expectations to always seek to learn, to implement new habits, to become more self-aware, the more we’re going to get out of everything we do to ultimately move forward towards our goal a lot faster and see a lot better results than we even expected. I can tell you sometimes I’ve surpassed what I really thought was the outcome I could achieve because I’ve now managed my expectations to learn from everything instead of just saying, Hey, it’s only a success if I hit X goal, otherwise it’s a failure because it’s not.

(04:38):
If you learn. Number four is oversell the negative. I’m not saying that you want to just doom yourself a doubt, say everything’s not going to work out. Be really pessimistic with this. But I think a lot of times we go into a new plan, like our friend tells us that keto really worked for them and it was so easy and such a lifestyle and so sustainable and so wonderful. And then we go in thinking it’s going to be this easy thing and change never is. And then when it’s not this easy thing, we think there’s something wrong with us. So I think the more we can say, Hey, this is a new plan, what are going to be the pitfalls? What have I struggled with in the past? What are my priorities and how are they going to hold me back from achieving this goal or implementing these things?

(05:16):
The more we can oversell the potential negative things that might happen, the setbacks that might occur, even just being aware that setbacks will occur, the more we can plan for those things and often the less they do pop up, not to mention the more where we’re readily able to navigate them because we’re in the mindset of this won’t be easy, so I’m going to have things pop up. So when you do encounter the hard, you’re like, ah, this wasn’t that bad. So the more you can oversell that negative, be prepared for things to come up for failures to happen, the better off you’re going to be. Number five, regress progress. So along our journey when things pop up, there are going to be things that set us back. We’re going to have to take sometimes two steps back to take one step forward. And this is not only with our workouts, regressing moves to progress and honestly, often modifying moves makes them harder because we’re meeting ourselves where we’re at to move forward.

(06:02):
But in so many areas we might say, Hey, I’ve tracked macros in the past. I’m really good at it. But maybe right now you can’t do that full ratio because of the way life is going, the priorities you have, the schedule you have, so you go back to doing the minimum. We have to regress or take that step back sometimes in a lot of different areas. And the more we embrace this and don’t see it as we’re failing, we’re moving backwards but more say, Hey, how can I use this to now build up stronger? Right? You get an injury, go back to the drawing more, take it back to basics. You come back even stronger. When I got injured, deadlifting more weight than I’d ever deadlift, I thought that was my max that I could achieve. I was all of a sudden realized all the different recruitment pattern issues I had.

(06:38):
I went back to the drawing board, took things back to basics, really dropped my weights and I ended up becoming even stronger than I thought possible originally just because of doing that. So sometimes we need to regress and progress and move forward faster and we got to take our ego out of it. So regressive progress is one of those phrases I love to always return to those boring basics, take the ego out of it. Number six is effort doesn’t guarantee outcome. A lot of times we will feel like we are working really hard and we deserve a result because of it, but effort does not equal outcome. Just because we are putting in the daily work does not mean the scale is going to show the weight we want at the end of the week. It doesn’t mean we’re not doing all the right things and then we won’t see weight loss occurring over time, but it just doesn’t guarantee an outcome.

(07:21):
And the more this goes back to managing expectations that we just see it as I am implementing these habits that is success in and of itself and I’m learning what I need to move forward, the better off we’re going to be. Because also being caught in defining success in only one way is the scale changing. It can make us miss out on the fact that our performance is getting better, we’re getting stronger, we’re actually seeing that body recomp and we can sabotage our own consistency because we don’t see that desired outcome. It also, the reason I wanted to bring someone up effort doesn’t equal or doesn’t guarantee outcome is because I think a lot of times we get caught up in the feeling of working hard and the feeling of working hard just comes from making a hard change, doing something we’re uncomfortable with. So simply tracking what you’re currently doing right now and tracking alone could be really hard.

(08:02):
And so you might feel like you deserve results and you deserve weight loss just because you’re tracking what you’re doing. But technically, yes, you’ve made a habit change, you’re tracking, but if you haven’t changed the food portions you’re eating, you haven’t made a change that might be moving you forward towards your goal. You set that first stage, but that might feel really hard. And so then you’re going to feel like you deserve an outcome when you haven’t actually made a change. So we have to diagnose where is this feeling of I deserve results, this effort coming from, and then even realize that sometimes maybe we are doing a lot of changes that are moving us forward and the effort doesn’t feel worth it to get the outcome we’ve so far gotten. So that means that we have to sort of change the pain of change because the pain of staying stuck, the pain of where we’re at right now has to outweigh the pain of change in order to get us to move forward and want to do all the uncomfortable things we really have to do.

(08:46):
And if that pain isn’t outweighing the pain of change, sometimes you have to change the pain of change. So we have to make the habits a little bit less so that we don’t feel like we’re giving so much effort so we’re more willing to stick with them to let that snowball occur. And this is sort of where number seven comes in, weigh the pain. So as I just mentioned, you have to consider the pain of staying stuck. So what is the discomfort in your situation? Why do you want this change? What is motivating you to move forward? What are the changes you have to make and does what you’re dealing with feel worth making those changes feel worth the sacrifices you have to make? There really is that fast to sustainable continuum. When we talk about making habit changes and sometimes we’re willing to make more sacrifices to get results faster, sometimes we’re not.

(09:27):
So this is where if you’re motivated to move forward but those changes don’t feel worth it and you don’t feel like you can be consistent with them, how can you break those changes down so that they do feel worth it so that the effort feels worth the outcome you’re achieving and you can celebrate those habits as win. We have to weigh the pain to see what’s really worth it for ourselves to implement new habit changes in a way that feels sustainable to get us to move forward. Because what might feel small could be what we need to inch forward right now to get that momentum going. And often the more we do, the more we do. Number eight, you can’t outwork time. I know we all want results yesterday, but we cannot outwork time. And I like this reminder because anytime I’m feeling like results aren’t happening fast enough, I have a tendency to want to do more.

(10:09):
And I see this in the way people comment when I’ll share photos of results or different things like that, they’ll say That’s a lot of hard work right there. That’s a lot of grind, that’s a lot of mental intensity off the willpower, and I think we’ve so valued hard work, so valued willpower, so valued doing more that we put such an emphasis on what we can accomplish short-term that we don’t really see how that’s holding us back from the longterm snowball. So I want you to think, am I trying to outwork time? Am I trying to do more now to see faster results? And will this ultimately sabotage me because I’ll get burned out because I am trying to will out my way through and that these things aren’t sustainable and I’m not truly learning what I need? How can I value the slow build a little bit more?

(10:47):
And I’m not saying you won’t be willing to make more sacrifices, but even in making more sacrifices, knowing you’re making those sacrifices for a short-term outcome, how can you have an exit strategy? How can you have that plan be in place so that you can transition into more sustainable habits? But I think that reminder, we can’t outwork time can get us sometimes to slow down. Also to recognize how long it actually took results to build to get into your situation. It usually wasn’t a couple weeks. Usually it was years of us not doing the things we should or improper dining practices or snowballs of different things, overload occurring and injury occurring that we didn’t even recognize until it was too late. But just think about that time and then give yourself time to correct those patterns to make those changes, and I think that will also allow us to give us more grace when we do make mistakes.

(11:31):
Number six is stop lone wolfing it. So I found myself especially guilty of this having a lot of ego saying, I can do it on my own, feeling like I was somehow inadequate or not motivated enough or not knowledgeable enough if I couldn’t do it on my own. And I realized that this was kind of a bonehead move because I was holding myself back from learning from other people’s mistakes standing on their shoulders to leap forward faster and you can’t know what you don’t know. That’s a simple fact. No matter how much we try and step outside our perspective and lens, we’re still looking for a critical opinion, a different opinion through our own lens, and the more we try and loan will foot and value doing it on our own or see coaching only as cheerleading, not as that outside perspective. The more we hold ourselves back sort of repeating the same loop and I see it with the change loop especially, which is where we get really excited about a new program.

(12:22):
Do all these new habits ultimately fall off these habits and then look for a new program because we never really assessed why something worked or what we need to double down on to move forward. So if you’re lone wolfing it and you’re feeling like you’re staying stuck working really hard, consider that you’re holding yourself back by not embracing another perspective and by thinking that coaching or another plan is just you admitting somehow you’re not motivated or knowledgeable enough. You can know a lot and not know what you need because you can’t give yourself that perspective. Number 10, love your failures. Failing is just learning with frustration. The more you can love your failures, the more you can learn from every failure, the more you can pause. When you fail to assess what happened, the more you’re going to grow. The more we try and brush past things, try and ignore that they happened, not log that unplanned eating, that emotional eating.

(13:07):
Pretend like the missed workout didn’t happen. The more we don’t own what happened, the more we keep ourselves feeling bad about those deviations when we shouldn’t, but the more we also don’t learn to avoid or plan for them in the future. So love your failures. They are chances to learn and often move us forward faster because we don’t want to repeat them. Number 11, something is better than nothing. It’s not fun to not feel like you can’t do the perfect thing, but you have to remember that a 1% improvement over what you would’ve done in the situation is better than nothing and going to move you forward. I think so often we compare what we can do during ideal times. What we’re motivated to do during January to what we really feel motivated to do during the holidays or the summer or a time that’s not as perfect usually for reaching the goals we want.

(13:51):
But if instead of comparing to a perfect time, we compare this time to the same time even last year, it’s thinking about how can I make these habits 1% better? Hey, during the holidays I want to have more holiday cookies and more holiday events. I’m not going to skip things or be as consistent and meal prep the same way as I was during January, but how can I make the holiday season a better holiday season? How can I be a little bit more consistent the more we compare and make those 1% improvements and think, how can I do something? Hey, usually on a day like today, I would skip my workout, so I’m going to do one minute of mobility work. That is something and that’s going to make you feel successful and that success mindset is going to make you want to do more.

(14:26):
This goes with number 12, which is do the minimum. So I see do something as different than doing the minimum because when we do the minimum, we’re planning for the minimum. We’re embracing that times of year other priorities are going to take precedent and that we’re going to have to shift how we’re addressing our workouts and our nutrition. Going to three workouts a week because work is busier or family life is busier, doing a minimum with just tracking our food, but not necessarily setting a strict macro breakdown and focusing just on protein or even trying to get more meals at home. But sometimes we have to plan to do the minimum over just even having that plan be for when our day gets sabotaged and we do something over nothing. Number 13, sustainable doesn’t mean easy or comfortable when you are making habit changes, you do want to be creating a sustainable lifestyle, but what feels sustainable is what you’ve always done.

(15:12):
Change is never going to feel easy. Think about how many times you’ve even made a change and look back and be like, why didn’t I do this sooner? And it’s because it felt hard to start because it felt different than what you’ve always done because you’re unlearning old habits as you’re trying to learn new ones. So when we’re thinking about creating something sustainable, it’s just more about acknowledging that we’re trying to learn the basics. We’re trying to learn about macros to understand how our portions impact us. We’re trying to learn about workouts and how our body feels. We’re trying to build a self-awareness of what we prioritize in life, how we respond to different situations. By all this learning, we can really find our lifestyle balance and constantly tweak it, but that’s where the sustainable comes in. You’re going to do things that are making sacrifices that you do not want to make longterm.

(15:50):
What you do to reach a goal is not what you do to maintain it, but this is why we’re thinking about how can I learn more about myself to understand what feels sustainable for me at the most fundamental level and then implement different habits? Even embracing that sustainability is going to be different at each time of year. During January, you’re not traveling. You’re really motivated to get extra lean for that beach vacation coming up in the spring or whatever else, so you do more, but hey, during the holidays you don’t have that same motivation. Sustainable is something different. So embracing that sustainable doesn’t always mean easier or comfortable too, and that there are still going to be sacrifices even as you make a lifestyle. I don’t want to wake up with an alarm every day. There’s days that I want to track my food, but I also know the value of it.

(16:27):
The more we can embrace some of those habits too and just say, Hey, this is a downside to the upside. Number 14, when you want to quit, keep going. When you want to quit, keep going. I’m going to repeat that one more time. When you want to quit, keep going. I can tell you that often it isn’t someone doesn’t have a good plan that they’re not doing the right things with their macros, that they’re not working hard enough that anything is even off. They just want to quit. Think about how many times we’ve done those 30 day challenges and we feel like, Ugh, I haven’t gotten the results I want. This goes back to weighing the pain because the pain of staying stuck may not outweigh the pain of change. We have to shift our habits at that time, but we have to remember that a lot of times we just haven’t seen the results.

(17:04):
We want snowball because we’ve quit. We have not embraced that. We just need more time doing those things and we’re going to hit dead zones, we’re going to hit plateaus, we’re going to hit times. We’re not motivated, but we’ve got to find ways to then do the minimum change. Our strategies change what’s sustainable to keep moving forward, but too often we just quit. We go back to old habits, which are definitely not going to move us forward. Number 15, suck it up buttercup. I probably say this to myself once a day. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but I do. This one for me is just a reminder of almost all the things I’ve already talked about and all the things I’m going to go over. Suck it up. Buttercup just means there’s going to be hard. Life isn’t going to be easy.

(17:39):
Changes aren’t always going to be easy. I’m not always going to do what I want. Even saying, suck it up buttercup, you want to embrace not doing what you should and there’s going to be consequences because of that and you’ll deal with them tomorrow. But I think the key that we remind ourselves that life is not always easy, especially in this day and age of all the social media where people are posting all these things of how easy things are for them or how good life is, and we’re seeing this highlight reel all the time, it’s really key that we remind ourselves that there are times we are going to have to say, I don’t want to do this, but it is my choice. Suck it up buttercup. Keep on going. Number 16, always question. The more we can ask ourselves why, the more we can assess why things worked or didn’t work, the more we can constantly step back to reflect and even set periods to reflect.

(18:19):
The more we’re going to learn from everything, and I can tell you that building self-awareness and constantly trying to build more self-awareness is what always drives me forward and helps me constantly grow and feel like I’m improving. This doesn’t mean that if progress is linear and that every week is better, there are weeks, there are setbacks, but then I learned from those, which ultimately I do feel like helps me lead forward after, but the more we question things, the more we question, why didn’t this work and dive deep into the things or why did I have this reaction? Or Hey, I’ve been really trying to work around this, but yet still flare it up. What’s going on? The more we ask ourselves questions and separate the emotion when we can, even if we have to throw a temper tantrum first, get upset, cry, whatever else, the better off we’re going to be.

(18:56):
So always question even if someone presents an opposing opinion that you’re like, no, that’s wrong, okay, even when you have that response say, wait, hang on. How could this be right? Or how could this work for them? Be curious with it. Number 17, don’t doom yourself with doubt. So I’m not telling you to go into a program saying, oh, this is going to be perfect. Everything’s going to work and not have some questions about it. I want you to question things. I want you to ask, why this macro ratio? Why would this work? Why this workout program? Questioning is good, but too often we go into something saying, this won’t work, and the second you said it won’t work, you are not going to embrace the systems or patterns or mindsets in order to make it work. It’s basically faking it till you make it and you’re not going to make it because you’re faking it.

(19:36):
We’ve got to act as if. So with this, you got to not doom yourself a doubt. You got to say, okay, I am doing this. Why could it work? And if it’s not working, why might it not work? Okay, but now let’s implement all the habits and try and maximize all the habits. Go all in and then take a time to assess you have that end date, set that end date, then assess at that point. But don’t doom yourself a doubt because otherwise you’re not really going to embrace the mindsets, the true actions. You’re going to do the workouts, but you’re not going to be intentional with all the training. You’re not going to try push loads, you’re going to do the macro breakdown, but potentially not address as mealtime and making you feel good, or are you sleeping well because of this? What other tweaks can you make to the food quality to even dial it in?

(20:12):
We’re not going to maximize the plan as is, and we’re going to do ourselves, so it’s almost like, why are we doing this? Don’t do yourself without. Number 18, pause and breathe. I can tell you when something is not working, when I’m getting frustrated, I instantly either want to go into extra research mode, do more mode, hard work mode, but sometimes we just have to pause and breathe. We’ve got to take that step back. That’s it, that pause, breathe. If you feel yourself pushing back against a change, even like someone’s telling you to do this, you’re in coaching, even embracing it, and you feel this instant rebellion against it, someone tells you to increase your protein. You’re like, no, I don’t want to increase my protein, and you try and find all the reasons not to do it. Be like, Hey, pause. Why am I trying to find all the reasons not to do something?

(20:55):
Is it maybe that it’s really uncomfortable? And yes, it’s really easy to reach for those reasons, but could this be the one thing I’ve never tried that might actually make the difference in reaching our outcome? If we have a goal, we are not going to like all the systems, processes, things we have to do to get there, and so often we say, if it doesn’t have this feature, it’s not worth it. We look for a plan that has x, y, and Z thing that has follow alongs, that has specific macro breakdowns. Then we don’t have to track in, but we want an outcome. What’s more important, having to track and that little pain or the outcome. Every upside has a downside, so sometimes we have to pause to breathe to assess. Number 19, you’re never above the boring basics period. No matter how advanced you are, you’re going to go back to them and the more advanced you are, probably the more you’ve done those basics over and over again.

(21:40):
I can’t tell you how much I’ve read on macros at this point. I’ve written a ton of macros. I look at studies all the time, but when I start a new nutrition course, even though every nutrition course starts with proteins are this, carbs are this, fats are this. I read through that stuff and I never skip it. I used to skip it and I realized that I was holding myself back from hearing something said in a new way that potentially even would make something in the program connect in a different way. For me, sometimes we need to hear something said in a different way at a different time to get a new interpretation. So don’t skip stuff that seems like, Ugh, I know this already. That’s the most important stuff to do because a lot of times it’s reminders that we need that we’ve forgotten as we’ve tried to learn more advanced stuff as we’ve progressed in our journey.

(22:19):
So you’re never above the boring basics, and the more you return to them, probably the more solid and faster you’re going to move forward overall and be able to implement more advanced stuff correctly and efficiently. Number 20, success is struggle. That’s it. Success is struggle. Failures are a part of success. They’re not the opposite of it. If we want success, we have to plan to see setbacks, mistakes, mishaps, plateaus, all those things, but a lot of times what we see as not moving forward ultimately does launch us forward faster. All of this to sum up, and probably the one saying I’m not including fully on here, but adding in as the bonus is act as if all of this relates back to creating the mindsets, the attitudes, the actions of someone who has the goals that you want. So to sum up all 20 sayings, it’s act as if you are becoming the person that you want to be because you’re acting as if until you’re acting as you are.

(23:09):
Our personality, our lifestyles, everything in our life are constantly changing. Our body’s constantly changing, and the more we can say, Hey, where do I want to go? How can I act in a way that is in line with where I want to be? The more we’re acting as if we’re implementing these different things, we’re believing these different things, the more we’re going to see those results snowball. We can’t fake things. We can’t just say, oh, I want to do these things. You got to actually work the plan if you want the plan to work. So acting as if it’s super key and creating those mindset sayings for yourself to remind yourself of the things that you need to do at the times you least want to do them is going to help you keep moving forward, shifting that identity and growing into the person you want to be because that’s a great part about life. We can constantly evolve and we should be constantly evolving. We’re actually changing whether or not we want to be. We just want to control the direction of the change and how it’s happening. I’d love to hear sayings that really motivate you, all that help remind you guys of the different things that you’re doing and which of these 20 sayings was most helpful for you, so please share in the comments. Hopefully this was really helpful, guys, so that you can keep rocking those results.

(24:12):
Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free work out of nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating, review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone 

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript