podcast Archives | Redefining Strength

Consistency Is Key (Even With Minimum Effort)

by Cori Lefkowith | Jul 10, 2025 | podcast

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Transcript:

Open Transcript:

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast, everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. I am very lazy and I own this fact, embrace this fact, and I would actually say this is what leads to my success, but part of when I say I’m lazy, what I’m really doing is recognizing that sometimes it is not only okay, but good to do the minimum. And doing the minimum doesn’t mean you’re just sort of passing the buck or you’re not trying to optimize your results. It’s not mediocre as Michelle put it, which I’m super excited to be joined by Michelle. So we can really dive into this, but Michelle, let’s talk about why doing the minimum is sometimes the best way to see the best results and it’s okay to own our lazy, so to speak.

Michelle (00:50):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I think when we talk about the minimums, we often think partly because we were in a society where we kind of value people that are constantly going, constantly pushing, constantly doing it all. That’s what people post about on social media. People tend not to post when they’re doing the minimum. They tend to share when they’re going all out, but it’s in these moments of doing the minimum where we’re actually staying consistent and consistency leads to results. Being able to make sure even in those moments that you have a lot going on, your schedule’s changing, things are just kind of pulling you in different directions. You have these habits that you continue with and those habits are going to what keeps you to have success. So it’s really about keeping you moving forward and really making sure that you’re not getting to that point where it’s all or nothing. So often, Corey, you talk about if you get a flat tire, you don’t slash the other three. Doing the minimum is making sure that we’re not slashing the other tires.

Cori (01:53):
It’s actually funny to think about, but I would say a lot of us have a comfort zone on pushing harder, all or nothing. It is comfortable to be in control in that way and the discomfort comes by loosening the reins a little bit. And what we don’t realize though is that this inability to loosen the rain strategically, proactively is what leads to the restriction and then the completely self-sabotaging falling off summer party mode goes into holiday season goes into starting over January mode. And so if we can really embrace that, we’re stepping outside our comfort zone to do the harder thing by doing less instead of just taking pride in it, as you mentioned, the better off we’re going to be and it’s not an easy thing to do. How can we approach doing the minimum and help ourself embrace the discomfort of that?

Michelle (02:48):
Yeah, I love that you’re saying that because it is hard. It is because we tend not to trust ourselves. We tend not to trust ourselves. And this is where that all or nothing kind of comes into play. And I’m going to steal this because we actually had our fabulous coach, Liz and Coach Christie also speak on this and they touched on anchor habits and I loved that comment so much because instead of talking about minimums, these minimums are your anchor habits. It’s the ones that you are going to make sure that you can do even on your toughest day. They’re going to align with what you’re valuing at the time. And I think it’s important to recognize that those values can kind of shift during seasons and not pay. Your approach should also be able to shift and that allows you some of that flexibility.

(03:35):
And it’s really about making sure that we have these anchor habits so that we can build momentum. So when you do have the time where you can maybe be a little bit more aggressive in your approach, you are not starting completely over from ground zero. You’re actually getting ahead. That is something that we do with minimums is you are actually able to be further ahead because it’s a pattern disruption in the past, if you’re all or nothing, this is a way to disrupt that pattern that you often repeat where you’re still staying consistent. So not all of a sudden this is where we kind of get into that habit of I gain and lose the same 10 pounds over and over again. This is breaking that.

Cori (04:22):
And when we’re thinking about the anchors, what we’re really thinking about is what do I ultimately need to be better than I was at the same time of year? Instead of saying, Hey, how can I maintain the exact same habits I had from January to maybe single to mile or the summer? What can I do compared to last summer to create those fundamental foundational habits that move me forward, those 1% improvements. And so I think when we’re thinking about it, we think like, oh, well I need to track, okay, well why do you need to track? How is tracking helpful at this time of year? What would be the easiest way to track and think about the effort? Because a lot of times we think about how many changes we’re making more or less, but not the effort of the changes we’re making. And I brought this up in the past and I think it’s such a key thing, but what might not have felt like a lot of effort from January till now might have started to feel like a little bit more effort because we get bored so to speak.

(05:13):
We start to feel a little down in the things we’re repeating. We do want something shiny or new faster or we don’t always want to do what we should. So what didn’t feel like a lot of effort in terms of hitting a macro ratio might all of a sudden feel like a lot more effort just because you’re even tracking. And so you might notice that you’re not hitting your macros and then you’re seeing the scale go up and you’re feeling like you’re still giving the same amount of effort and you don’t realize those 1% deviations because of that effort. So it’s really key as you think about those anchor habits, it’s like what do you ultimately need to be a little bit better than you were last year? But also recognizing that the effort involved in some of the habits that didn’t feel as much effort was needed before might now feel like a lot more intensity is going into them. So it’s like how do we sort of navigate that to find what the anchor habits really can be, even knowing that we’re going to have to evolve.

Michelle (06:03):
I love that because it is that perceived level of effort that you’re putting in. And one of the things that I do see is March was a great time. I was able to hit that heart ratio. Well now we’re hitting summer, and yeah, you were able to hit that hard ratio, but now you have those backyard barbecues, more opportunities where alcohol is kind of being presented to you more foods that may be you are being, sorry, more events you’re being invited to where food may not be a hundred percent in your control. So yeah, that perceived, it’s going to feel like a higher level of effort because it’s not the same environment

Cori (06:41):
And we don’t even recognize sometimes the way that all or nothing attitude is impacting us hormonally, emotionally. We just all of a sudden hit the, I got a flat tire, I’m slashing the other 3M light the car on fire by the side of the road and I’m walking away. We get to that extreme sort of giving up point because we don’t realize the accumulation of things or the pattern we repeated. We honestly even sort of look back with rose colored glasses at the habits we’ve done right? We’ve gained weight and we’re looking to lose weight and we go, well, this worked in the past. No it didn’t because you’re back where you started. So yes, that might be your strategy, but you didn’t have an exit strategy. So part of it might’ve worked, but it’s really assessing the impact of the all or nothing attitude on so many different components, not just even the habits themselves. I mean, what do we see when we get that all or nothing attitude and how it really sabotages our mindsets, our body, all the different things so that we can’t create those lasting changes.

Michelle (07:38):
When you are kind of doing those things where all those things are kind of changing and these are things that are outside of your control, you can’t control that. The season changes, you can’t control that everyone else’s schedules around you is going to change, which is going to force your schedule to change. And if you, there’s always that saying, if you don’t have a plan, you plan to fill, and this is really where we see spike and cortisol. We see stall like being kind of flatlined and fat loss. We see energy somewhat draining. We see those sleep disruptions. You are more often, I mean the sun’s up longer, you’re more likely to be staying up late sleeping a little bit less. And this is really where we even see it can lead to even injury or inflammation. If you’re not planning that this is a season that’s going to shift and change and is outside of your control, you aren’t actually preparing yourself for the best things, which is how can you actually protect yourself in the season to make sure your cortisol isn’t getting spiked.

(08:44):
The other thing I often see is sometimes I’ll have women that will be like, oh, summer’s easy for me because I eat less. So it’s easy to stay in a deficit. And that may sound like a good thing because honestly heat does actually disrupt your appetite. It can actually lead to you eating less. And that again, for some that may sound like sweet, that’s a great deal, but if you are not eating enough calories and you are slowly disrupting your metabolism, you may see maybe even be one of those that you’re like, oh, I’m fine in the summer, I actually lose weight in the summer. But it’s actually that level of decreased appetite and decreased caloric intake that actually is leading you to fail in the fall because you’re not consuming enough so you’re actually causing harm to your metabolism. So instead of eating enough and making it so you can build in the fall, you’re hitting a wall in the fall,

Cori (09:42):
You’re also potentially not recognizing changes in activity level, which then impact how you’re fueling in the fall as well. Where if you are eating more with the summer but your activity level increased and you don’t own that, if you keep eating the same amount in the fall, that can also sabotage you. So it’s really recognizing all those changes to meet yourself where you’re at. But it’s as you said, recognizing all the other shifts going on outside of your control to control what you can control. But recognizing almost the mantras we need for different times of year, like January till the spring or even early summer, you might have sacrifices for success might be your mantra because you are willing to do more to really see that result. You don’t have as many things come up. Your schedule is optimized for specific things, but maybe during the summer and into the holiday season it is a slow down to speed up.

(10:27):
Maybe in the middle of the fall you have a little phase where you can make some more sacrifices, but it’s not bad to own those things because what ultimately builds results and what we don’t recognize is the importance of maintaining previous progress because the more we can maintain previous progress, the more we create that set point off of which to build. And that’s incredibly valuable because our body fights the weight loss process. If you’re trying to lose weight and you’ve lost the weight rate, your body’s trying to return to what it thought was balanced, even just during the summer, you can maintain all the progress you made during that January till the summer season, you’re going to go into the holiday season way better off. Maybe you have that six week stretch in the fall before the holiday start where you’re like, yes, I can do a little bit more. And so then you make a little bit more progress, your body’s not going to want to rebound and all of a sudden what you felt like would be fluctuations up after one vacation, one day off, they’re not happening. That’s like the importance of maintenance and slowing down to speed up. So we’re constantly progressing even if the scale isn’t necessarily decreasing and weight loss is our goal and we have to recognize that not to mention when we’re doing the minimum, we’re creating some pretty killer habits that we can stack off of.

Michelle (11:37):
Yeah, I love that because it really, I always say if you are staying consistent, that is what affords you the flexibility later and you’re a hundred percent so many people it’s like, oh, I got to my goal, this is it. But your body does fight. It can take up to six months. That’s what research shows is six months to actually reset your weight point of where you’re going to bounce back to. So that means six months of still making sure that you’re staying in and things aren’t bad, habits aren’t creeping back in. And that’s where these minimums and those anchor habits really are important. And that leads to the big thing, which is if we kind of said like, oh, you may be eating too less or maybe you’re eating more and it’s leading to this, you have to compare your summers. So this is a moment really that I encourage everyone to reflect what did they do last summer?

(12:32):
What did they see last summer? Because that’s also going to help them in choosing what those minimum habits that they’re actually going to employ is as far as what do they actually want to see. So if you’re someone that was like, Hey, yeah, I lost weight in the summer and then I really struggled in the fall may have been because yeah, your activity was up, your calorie intake was down, but you were in too big of a deficit, so you were actually harming your metabolism. So come fall you struggled. So this summer it may be just making sure you are eating enough as you go throughout your activities or if you’re on the opposite side of that where you were eating quite a bit and overindulged, more often than not, it’s looking at those habits and making sure that you have those anchor habits that’s also keeping you in check. So you’re not all of a sudden going into the fall with having rebounded that weight.

Cori (13:24):
It’s comparing seasons to seasons to see 1% improvements over what you did at the other season that really yields the best results. And it’s thinking about those fundamental habits that do build and going off of the anchor habits, I think this is where it’s super important. We recognize these are the fundamentals that allow us to reach a goal and maintain the goal with evolution. So I mean you might’ve heard all of us say this, you might’ve read this, but you don’t do the same thing to maintain a result that you do to get down. So what you do to lose the weight is not what you do to maintain your weight. And underneath that though, there are some fundamental habits that you’re creating. And while the exact implementation of these habits will evolve, the key is that you’re recognizing where they’re stemming from. When we’re thinking about doing these anchor habits, these minimums during the summer, we have to go to what is the foundation of what I need to be successful, which is why often we do recommend tracking. Now when you think about the habit of tracking, it can be done in so many different ways, but the fundamental anchor there is that what gets measured gets managed. So how can we implement some of these anchors in different ways to meet the minimums that we might need, Michelle?

Michelle (14:36):
Yeah, and I think it’s important to note that these habits still keep that the needle moving, right? We’re still seeing that progress. So I love that we’re talking about tracking. There are so many ways to track. My challenge is that you find what aligns best you in this phase and you track in some way. For some this is simply just tracking protein. For others, this is maybe they are sticking with the macros, but maybe it’s a little bit easier of a macro ratio than what they’ve typically employed. So oftentimes we’re looking at a 30% protein or a 35% protein kind of an even split between carbs and fat just during the summer months to allow for a little bit more flexibility when it comes to those social events that are going to have a little bit more food available to you. This is really also where even using things like plate method, and I always replace, this isn’t just the plate method.

(15:31):
I usually do a macro plate method, so you’re putting a little bit more emphasis on your protein. You’re actually putting also more emphasis on those non-starchy carbs or even using hand portions, just something that is going to keep you tethered in some way. So you do know, and this isn’t just to, as I mentioned before, this isn’t just to make sure you’re not over consuming. This is also to make sure that you are consuming enough because we so often we are like, yeah, honor those hunger cues. Summer’s a hard time to honor those hunger cues because with heat, if you’re in an area that has higher temperatures or even if you’re traveling to higher temperatures, oftentimes your appetite does naturally decrease because of heat itself. And

Cori (16:22):
I think with all of this too, it’s understanding that we’re trying to get data on what we need to make the best adjustments for us. And I bring that up because owning who we are and what we want to do is super key. And you might have those barbecues, those parties, those vacations you go on that you’ve always felt in the past had a lot of impact. What don’t we want to do on those days, if myself included, is track. We don’t really want to see those days, but guess what? It happened anyway. And I would urge you as you go into the summer months to do the opposite and track some of those days, it might not be perfectly accurate, but it can be eyeopening in the impact it actually has on the rest of your week. And while I do like macrocyclic and keeping the same ratio and keeping consistency and a daily consistency because that actually shows you if a ratio works.

(17:11):
If you’re going into the summer and you’ve been tracking and you know what ratios sort of work for you and you know that you need a certain amount of protein track those days that now might be creeping in, that might be throwing off your weekly averages, it becomes the, I’ve been good all week, right? Where all of a sudden the weekend’s adding up and you’re like, well, five and two, it should be okay. But you don’t realize how much you’re really changing those averages over the weekend. And the more you start to recognize those through a little bit of tracking, the more maybe you do adjust your habits during the summer to account for that in the ratio you use during the week versus what you do on the weekend. Or maybe you start to say, Hey, I need to evolve my weekend habits. But I think so often we just try and force the same habits at all times of week, even not only through the seasons and then by not owning what we actually want, the changes in those routines and habits we sabotage ourselves.

(17:56):
So it’s really using this to collect data and information to be a little bit better then. So yeah, you might’ve been logging a full ratio and even going 50% protein doing mini cuts all January, don’t do too long. But using those different strategies and then get into the summer, I need to go to a 30% protein minimum and find that’s the max you can do, or you just are taking pictures of food and that’s holding you accountable enough. It’s really knowing what’s going to help you be better then because that leads to the success mindset, which helps you build even further. So off of that, what are some other minimum habits you might recommend for somebody looking to meet themselves where they’re at that seem a little silly, simple, I’ll even say, but really create that success mindset of wanting to do more over feeling not successful. So we kind of didn’t do anything.

Michelle (18:42):
So I know we kind of touched on this before. So one, obviously track two don’t go empty for too long. This is really what I see with upcoming travels with just, again, I know I’ve hit on this already, but with the summer heat improving is we just go too long without eating. And this can cause an issue for a couple of reasons. One, obviously it can make it so your overall kelp caloric intake goes down and we can actually harm your metabolism, but we can also create a restrict binge cycle by making those eating windows too long. So if you have a travel day, you’re going somewhere and you’re kind of going crazy, plan, plan, plan, at least a snack, something in your bag, something you can eat, Vista, I always say we’re going to take the infant line, but Fed is best. So making sure that we’re getting some type of caloric intake in is also going to help you not get into that habit where I haven’t ate all day and you get home and what most likely are you going to grab?

(19:47):
You’re going to grab what’s fast and easy and that’s not a bad thing, but if your options are chips and ice cream in the freezer, that may be what you’re heading to. And pretty soon you may be like, oh, I’m going to, as you mentioned, stay in that caloric deficit because I kind of didn’t eat all this steak, but you can so quickly blow out a caloric deficit when you have not been eating enough to kind of just having these high calorie foods available to you. So it’s really making sure that we’re not getting into that. And truthfully, that can also have a negative impact on your mindset as well when we just wait too long so that we get into that restrict binge cycle.

Cori (20:24):
It can create a little over-correcting attitude of, oh, I’ll save all my calories for these different things. And don’t get me wrong, I think there’s something to working in the foods you love if you know have a little less flexibility at dinner and you’re going out saving calories to those things. But we also don’t want that mindset. They’ll see people not eat all day to overeat, but also not fuel their workouts to be able to perform well, their energy levels to feel good during the day. So it is very key. We recognize that plus there are so many foods during the summer that we can really use to be refreshing even and be more fun and create that new reinvigorated sense of eating well, I would say. And also your favorite thing, hydrate, but smoothies, you can make popsicles. There’s so many different options. I’m going to use the ninja Creamy every single day, not that I don’t already, but I’m planning to use it every single day during the summer and even make Ryan have some, which I don’t think he’ll complain about. But there’s just so many options and different ways you can tweak to really even have fun during the summer and explore new opportunities in how you’re fueling.

Michelle (21:25):
I love that. Lean into the summer flavors. This is the time where we can be creative with some of those smoothies. We can be creative with our hydration, which you know me well, that actually is on my list. My next thing is one of those anchor habits should be hydration. So even if you’re looking at creating a lemonade mint thing to kind of make sure that you are enjoying those summer flavors, but also leaning into those habits of hydration. So it really is about hydrating with intention. So you guys know I always talk about water at some point and that really is, is my goal for everyone is truly to try and get about that 70% of body weight in ounces that really is going to help reduce fatigue. If you are traveling, you’re going to have more energy, it’s going to support that digestion, which oftentimes, again, depending on what you’re doing, can often be disrupted because we are also introducing new foods, new flavors during the summer.

(22:19):
Can summer sometimes take a little bit of a toll on our digestion itself? This is also going to help support both muscle building and fat loss. So it’s really a good time to make sure that we’re leaning in to this habit and hopefully making it so it carries on into the fall and into the winter. So if that’s something that you’ve struggled in the past, sometimes summer can be a little bit easier to remind yourself to drink those fluids, but this is really that time to build that momentum so you can carry that in through the rest of the year.

Cori (22:52):
I love that. Thinking of the things that you can do that will change habits for the future as well. Because I do think we just often talk about, or even think about the summer as being the time where some healthy habits we try to implement go to die a little bit. Not to be negative, but I think owning the benefits of this time of year two and how it does change your routine, being more active. I know I want to go out for more walks, be outside a little bit more. So I know my activity level does increase in cold Southern California, but it does increase. And so I might even find different ways during the January, February, March, April to do a little bit more muscle building, not include as much cardio, and then in the summer steer into that cardio even in how I design my strength workouts.

(23:35):
But then again, also recognizing how we fuel. We talk about the summer as more party time. So yes, there can be that tendency to overeat or macros be really off due to those days, but there can also be a tendency, as you mentioned to under fuel, but because we might’ve been demonizing carbs for other reasons or use lower carb ratios in the past to lose weight, we can fear increasing carbs, which ultimately then holds us back if we are more active. So it’s not only the under fueling that can have an impact, but potentially macro ratios that need to adjust that we need to embrace things that we were potentially uncomfortable embracing before.

Michelle (24:11):
So often it’ll be like, oh, this ratio worked for me before. Well, did you consider what activity you’re doing? Did you consider what your day to day is right now? Because oftentimes it is going to change. There is a little bit more walking, and this really goes to show, my saying is life’s never stagnant. Your diet can’t be, and this is a prime example of that. You cannot have a stagnant diet. You have to make sure that you are truly evaluating yourself as far as what you’re actually facing, what goals you have, what sacrifices are you actually willing to make during this particular moment

Cori (24:49):
And off of that. So we can’t get married to just one macro ratio. We might have to embrace having more carbs if we are being more active doing more cardio, maybe we’re doing a lot more racing even. How can we think about building a plate that hits our macros so that we can see effective results but maybe track in a different way than we have in the past?

Michelle (25:09):
Yeah. Okay. So I’ll start with the plate method, right? So when you’re building your plate, if you were to look up the USDA recommended plate method, it’s going to split the plate into half fruits and vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter carbs. I like to actually change that a little bit. So we would actually be looking at potentially thirds. That’s kind of a quick dirty way to kind of think about this. So really more of a third of a protein and we’re kind of keeping that third of the plate being those non-starchy fruits and vegetables. Ideally more vegetables than fruit. I like to keep fruit in the summer, don’t get me wrong, I’m going to be eating loads of watermelon, but when I’m actually building that first plate or that main plate fruit kind of tends to stay as a snack. I’m looking at those non-starchy vegetables that are going to be higher in fiber.

(26:04):
And then that way when we’re looking at those carbs, we are looking at those high fibrous carbs as well. This is the time where we’re looking at adding in that the spaghetti squash, we’re adding in those fibrous vegetables. So sweet potatoes an excellent one to make sure that you’re adding into your plate, but this doesn’t need to be a huge massive amount. It really is making sure we’re having a little bit more protein, a little bit more of the non-starchy vegetables, and then whatever is left, we’re filling with those carbs because you’re going to be getting those carbs more through in your snacks as well,

Cori (26:43):
But it’s not demonizing the carbs if your activity level has gone up, even if lower carb worked for you at another point. And I’m not saying that everybody now just needs to go out and eat all the carbs every single day all day, but it’s being open to the opportunity evolution in so many different ways. Even if you are keeping in some of the habits you already had, nothing as you said is standing still. So we need to evolve off of this closing thoughts on being realistic for our lifestyle as we do the minimum and we’re entering summer or even just dealing with changes at another time of year.

Michelle (27:17):
Yeah, I think it’s just being honest. Some days you’re going to have energy for the structure, for tracking, for creating recipes, and I always say, if you have the time, do something your future self is going to thank you for. So if you have the time, do a little extra meal prepping. Make sure your freezer is full of something that you can grab that’s fast later on. Don’t get in the habit of not, or get at the mindset of you don’t have to do all the things. We just want to make sure we’re doing the right things, the foundational things consistently, and even those things in the mountains and how intense we’re doing that can shift and that they should shift. And really make sure that what you’re doing is fitting into your life. And we always said it should be a slight challenge. I’m not saying like, oh, if it’s easy, great.

(28:05):
If it’s easy, you probably aren’t pushing yourself just enough, but you should make it so it fits without friction. And so really making sure that you’re finding things that you value. I’m going back up to what we kind of talked about before with the anchor habits. This should be something that you align with, that you’re valuing, that you know can do even on your toughest of days to make sure that you are hitting that consistency. So anything is going to, there’s always going to be things in life that are going to get in the way, whether it’s the season, whether it’s a holiday, whether it’s travel, things are going to come up. And if you develop these skills now you’re going to make sure even later on, and I kind of look at this, this is practice for when you do have a trip coming up. When you do have that week of work that was a little extra stressful, or maybe you have a family event that added a little extra stress to your life or perhaps made it so food wasn’t entirely in your control, you were at kind of the mercy of others catering to you. So that is when we want to make sure we’re asking these questions so you can pick and choose what those minimums are that are going to still help you moving forward.

Cori (29:17):
It’s planning ahead now to back off because when we do, it doesn’t feel like we’re giving up or we’re going easy. What really ends up happening is so often in the moment in a response to something, we then feel like we can do less. And that’s where that guilt has almost been created over slowing down to speed up. But when you’re proactively planning in that deload, it’s not because you need it, it’s because you need it, right? There is a difference in how we’re choosing to perceive it and how our body responds to it because it doesn’t feel like we’re having to give up or give in or weak or can’t handle it or whatever else. It’s not a negative, right? It’s not in response. So the more you can plan ahead right now to be like, Hey, these are the minimums I’m going to go to, especially if I feel my effort levels creeping up or these are just things I’m going to do proactively, and if I want to do more, I can always do more. But the more you plan ahead, the more you’re going to feel like this is just the plan, this is just the balance. And I can always do more over feeling like you’re somehow giving and giving up too weak to do the other, because that’s not the case. There’s simply evolution in life and the more we own it, the more we can keep moving forward. Michelle, any other final closing thoughts? Now that I went on that tangent?

Michelle (30:26):
I’m just going to end with this. I think it’s always important to keep in mind we aren’t chasing trends. I know everything we just went over, it’s not sexy, but it’s the daily actions that no one sees that really everyone actually ends up noticing because it’s going to be what keeps you moving forward and actually getting those results at the end of the day. So this is the time that’s really about building that resilience and playing belonging.

Cori (30:55):
Love it. Couldn’t have said it better. Perfect ending. Won’t say anymore. Thanks guys for joining us. Hope all those tips helped. Would love to hear how you are doing the minimum to keep moving forward.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Building Inner Strength (5 Tips To Increase Your GRIT)

by Cori Lefkowith | Jul 3, 2025 | podcast

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Transcript:

Open Transcript:

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. Grit isn’t something you’re born with. It’s built from every setback, from every straight knee, from every struggle that you overcome. Your strength is really revealed through what you prove possible to yourself. And grit is the same way. It isn’t the absence of struggle, it’s struggle plus that comeback. And I want to talk about five steps to really building grit. We’ll call it your grit builder framework even. Because so often we don’t give ourselves credit for all that we have conquered, and we don’t realize in reflecting back on previous wins that there was the struggle involved. We just see the outcome. But if we want to get stronger, if we want to achieve more, we have to have that grit and that ability to come back after that setback, and it’s all built.

(00:56):
And I want to go over a framework to help you do that. There’s also a great PDF so that you can really go through all these different questions and write down your thoughts about everything in the show notes. So check that out as well. But step number one, it’s proof of power. So I just said that grit is built, but the crazy thing is, as much as it’s built, it’s already there, all the foundation, all the building blocks, you already have them. You have the ability to overcome anything you choose to overcome, and a lot of this is tied to our perspective, opportunity, or obstacle. How are we seeing the thing when something happens? Is it happening to us or for us? Is it a lesson or are we simply letting ourself become the victim? Grit, yes, is built through us showing ourselves the grit we already have inside of us.

(01:50):
So the more we can recognize our own, show ourselves, proof of our own power, the better off we’re going to be. But it’s recognizing that we have the ability to reframe any situation and overcome it if we choose to. But this requires us to step back. It’s not easy by any means, but anytime you’ve hit that hard, recognize it, own it. Say, yes, this is a struggle, but how can I move past it? How can I break down habits that might seem too hard right now? How can I find a way around, how can I avoid this even in the future? Use that reflection so that you can move forward and you can show yourself the grit that’s already there for you. And I mean, even think about it before I move on to step number two, think about all the hard things you’ve actually already overcome, all the wins you’ve already had, there were struggles in those things.

(02:39):
You just managed to grit your way through them. So go back to all those things. How did you show yourself your grade, even reflect on ’em. But you can do hard things and you’ve proven that in all that you succeeded in so far. Now, step number two, the turnback point, and I mentioned reflection already because it’s really key that we reflect on all the struggles we have, even the wins we’ve had, the hard things that we have accomplished, the comebacks we have had, because in all those times that we’ve succeeded, we’ve pushed through that turnback point, but in all the times we haven’t succeeded, we’ve turned back and it’s probably at a similar heart. So what I mean by that is not that. It’s like, oh, I cut out carbs this time and this time I cut out fat. And those are different things, right?

(03:22):
It’s this fact that it’s the same heart and that it’s restriction. I have restricted to this point where I’m no longer comfortable with this restriction or it no longer fits my lifestyle balance, and so I turn back. So recognizing the commonality between those different things can help us realize that we always hit the same type of hard and turn back to allow us to push through. Because so often our struggles where we fall down and we can’t seem to pick ourselves up to conquer is really the same thing just disguised in different ways. It’s the same mindset repeating. It’s the same pattern repeating. You might even notice it’s the same timeframe repeating. You always get to those six weeks and at the end of the six weeks, you just can’t seem to keep going. Whether it’s self-sabotage with having succeeded enough and being like, oh, I can let this one thing go, or it’s not having seen results fast enough.

(04:07):
At that point, it might even be a timeframe that we just don’t seem comfortable pushing through with habits that we get bored with them. We feel the monotony, but recognize that pattern and that turnback point because the more you can and the more you say, Hey, I’ve been here before at the heart, you can then make that choice to push through this time. And that’s where that struggle really becomes something that you can overcome. You see the opportunity in keeping going where you would normally give up, but it’s recognizing that it isn’t a wall. It’s a door that’s maybe even a little stuck, that if you just push a little bit harder, you can make your way through. Then step number three is reframe the failure. Having grit again, isn’t the lack of struggle. It’s having struggles and overcoming them, but sometimes it takes multiple takes, multiple tries to overcome that struggle.

(05:01):
But that’s where we really need to reframe the failure and realize that we’re only failing if we’re not picking ourselves up. Success is struggle. So every time you hit that hard, every time you fall down, instead of seeing this as the end, this as that wall, see it as that sticky door. How can you push harder? How can you learn from it? How can you shift that perspective from obstacle to opportunity? Again, are things happening to us or for us? And the more we see any failure as a learning experience and the best learning experience possible, the more we’re going to move forward because it really is. Failure is really learning with frustration. It’s stinky, but it’s truly the case. So the more we can really reframe it, the better off we’ll be. It’s like when you get a flat tire. I use this analogy a lot when we talk about mistakes we’ve made with our diet.

(05:55):
We have something off plan. We get a flat tire, but instead of pulling over to the side of the road and fixing it or calling a tow truck or aaa, we go slash the other three. We go eat everything in sight because we already ruined the day. But when we have a failure, the more we just pull over to the side, we get that flat tire, we assess why did this thing initially happen. The more we can learn from it without causing other issues and setting ourselves back. We don’t want to just light the car on fire. There’s no way we’re going to move forward then, and we’re going to end up holding ourselves back, even be more frustrated. We’re potentially not going to want to implement some of the habits that we really need because now they’re associated with such a negative thing of being so miserable of failure.

(06:33):
So we want to reframe it as, I just got a flat. What can I do to move forward as fast as possible? Call aaa, fix it, replace it, put on the spare, right? Don’t go slash the other three tires or light the car on fire then, and this is one of the most interesting, I think, steps in it is really step number four is creating that B at origin story. So I call it the beast at origin story, but it’s really an assessment of where you are currently. It’s understanding your current pain, your current desire to change, but your current lifestyle as well. Because when we think about building grit and we think about overcoming things, there is only a certain amount of grit we have, right? A certain amount of desire to push through a certain amount of discomfort we are willing to embrace.

(07:16):
And the more we understand where we are truly starting from and the pain of staying stuck, the more we will embrace the pain of change, but we can also adjust the pain of change to really fit what we need to make it easier to gr our away through. Because there is only so much we can push ourselves into the hard before we do turn back that pushback against us becomes too much. So I want you to really outline where am I at currently, right? You’ve thought about proving the grit that you already have inside you by looking at hard things that you’ve already overcome, potentially you’ve looked at the cycle that you repeat and where you usually turn back. You’ve started to think about how you can reframe failures. Now think about where you’re at. What is that first step into the hard that you can grit your way through that you have that ability to push into the hard.

(08:05):
It’s sort of that grit is fit. You have to have enough grit and it has to fit the situation and pushback that you’re dealing with because no matter how much you really want something, if that hard is just too much, you’re potentially not going to have the grit yet or have proven that you have that grit yet to yourself to push through. So the more you own where you are, the struggles you have, the pain of staying stuck, the more you’re willing to embrace the pain of change and the more grit you’ll find that you really do have to push in the hard, but the more you can adjust that pain of change so that it really meets you where you’re at. I think about this in terms of some of the hard habit changes we make. Tracking, tracking itself might be hard without you even changing what you’re currently eating.

(08:45):
And so that’s where we can get the effort doesn’t equal outcome thing where we’re giving a lot of effort to just track, but we’re not actually making any changes yet to our diet. And so then we can feel like we’re not getting the result we want while we’re trying really hard. But trying hard doesn’t mean we’re actually making changes. So that’s where we have to assess, okay, I’m grading my way through just tracking and I’m not seeing results snowball. Well, how can I make tracking a little bit less challenging so that I can make a few more changes to actually see that momentum build? Am I applying grit in the right way? But that really comes back to understanding where you’re starting from. So outline that B at origin story. And the fifth and final step is really grit in action. What is one small action you can take today to overcome a hard to overcome a struggle?

(09:31):
And it might be something small. It might be that you’ve really just struggled recently to drink more water. So you just put that water out first thing in the morning and you drink it. And that is you’re griding your way through a harder change for you. And sometimes hard changes aren’t really hard changes. They’re just something mentally we can’t get ourselves to do. They’re just something we can never seem to prioritize. So finding that way to prioritize it, but you need to prove to yourself that you have that grit, right? It goes back to step number one in order to want to build that momentum because success breeds more success when we get that momentum going. The more you do, the more you do, right? If you’ve been skipping your workouts, it’s a lot easier to skip your workouts when you’re in the consistent routine of doing your workouts.

(10:08):
Not only do you keep doing your workouts, but you tend to want to do a lot of other things. So if you’ve struggled to prove to yourself that you have this, that you can overcome these things, really go back to the foundation of the habits that you have. What are habits that you’ve built in the past? And this is again, drawing from those steps. But what is the hard that you’ve already overcome? What’s a habit that you’ve implemented? How did you implement it? How did you shape your environment? How can you now put that into action to help show yourself your grit to keep moving forward? And I think it’s really key. We pause and reflect on all these different things and write down some of our ideas, but even go back to times we’ve succeeded and times we failed in the past because we can learn so many lessons from them.

(10:48):
And again, it’s not thinking, oh, well, I failed with dieting because I had to cut out carbs, and this time I’m cutting out fat so I get all my carbs. That’ll be better. No, no, no, no. Really assess what’s underneath that. Don’t just go surface level. When you’re reflecting on these different things, dive deep and I mean uncomfortably deep, even in your B at origin story of really understanding the cost of staying where you are right now. And you might think, well, it’s only five vanity pounds. Does it really matter? Okay, well, have you not been taking pictures? Have you not felt good in your clothes? Have you not proven to yourself that you deserve to care about those five pounds? Right? There’s so many other whys often attached to things, even just us saying, Hey, this is something I’ve wanted and I’m going to prioritize doing it for myself.

(11:29):
Because that prioritization of self, that feeling that we deserve more, even if it is something that, hey, it’s not life or death, that allows us a lot of times to build confidence and strength and that grit to even overcome other hards in other areas of our life. But I want you to take some time to really reflect on all of these different things. And I think in doing that, you’ll realize not only some underlying mindsets that are holding you back, but the habit and environment that you’re creating that’s holding you to this old identity. And then this even comes back to, you have to act as if you have that grit. You can’t just fake that you have the grit. You can’t just say, I have grit. You’ve got to prove it to yourself through your actions. And a lot of times, smaller actions than you think really pay off. But just recognize that struggles aren’t bad. They give you that chance to prove to yourself that grit through how you can come back from them. But you got to picture yourself back up, and you got to realize that you can see opportunity and obstacle. It’s all in your perspective. And whether you choose to learn lessons from those failures or succumb to them.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Why Weight Training Is Important For Results

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 26, 2025 | podcast

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Transcript:

Open Transcript:

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. You are strong. Now, act like it. Lee asked about doing this title for our talk today, and I’m super excited to be joined by her, but she asked about doing this title and I’m like, heck yes. Let’s talk about muscle strength training, all those different things because we are so much stronger often than we give ourselves credit for, and I want to talk about with her all the things that go into that. So Leigh, thank you so much for joining me. Joining me today, let’s dive into why it can be so hard as women sometimes to own our own strength and all the different things that being strong really entails.

Leigh (00:47):
So I’m super excited to do this topic with you. It’s something I’m super passionate about. So yeah, so it can be a real challenge for women to kind of jump into strength training. It’s just a little bit of changing norms around how society views a woman who lifts weight. For example, I am a product of the early two thousands, so that was when I was in high school, which is low rise jeans. Everybody was doing cardio. And I feel like my generation and older, it’s almost like that cardio culture has been sort of imposed on us as women. So it’s this idea that a woman should be eating the least amount of calories doing cardio bootcamp classes, anything possible to just decrease the amount of space that she takes up because the goal is to be as small and petite as possible. And so really recognizing why it is so difficult to maybe step off the treadmill and go into that male dominated gym, gym where it’s mostly guys there.

(01:57):
It can be really hard. The treadmill may be all we’ve ever really known, the treadmill’s safe, but honestly, weightlifting has really recently become a really widely socially acceptable thing for women to do. And so there’s a lot of popularity in social media, lots of popular sports. Women are becoming more active in sports, and there’s also a lot of traction in the research area around women and women’s health. So I think that that’s a big driver. So women are starting to really understand the importance of strength training and why they need to do it. And so when you know better, you do better. So yeah, it’s a big thing around getting away from cardio and the treadmill, but when we understand the importance of it, I think that’s why we’re starting to see that shift.

Cori (02:49):
And the more we start to value it, we start to push into this uncomfortable territory, the more we’re inspiring other generations to do it as well. I know for me, a big part of what really brought me into weights was I saw my mom growing up lifting weights at a time that wasn’t popular to do so. My mom played tennis, she was very active. She actually went to college and played field hockey. She played these sports at a time where it wasn’t really the popular thing to do, so there weren’t even fully sometimes full female teams for them. And so for me, really exploring this avenue and all that it means to be strong for us, there isn’t one definition of strength, but that empowerment that we can even feel from lifting heavy proving what our body can accomplish, it’s honestly why I called the company redefining strength because for me, I found so much empowerment through the gym, through lifting through feeling stronger because it is conquering something you couldn’t overcome before or thought you might not be able to overcome, even if it’s the discomfort of stepping into that weight room. I think you touch on something super key. We stay in our comfort zone, which is partly that the treadmill might make us feel like we won’t look silly doing those things. We feel comfortable with the form, right? There’s risk involved in lifting weights, but also we fear that judgment or we fear letting go of something we’ve done in the past to reach an aesthetic goal, not realizing that there might be something better. Can we talk a little bit about maybe how to embrace the discomfort of stepping into that weight room?

Leigh (04:21):
Yeah, definitely. And I love that you had such an amazing example from your mom, and I think that’s really important too, thinking what sort of example are we setting for the younger generation? There’s always going to be that next generation coming up, but yeah, so kind of just recognizing that inner strength that we already have. So again, when I first came up with this title for the discussion that we’re having, I was like, this might be a little bit harsh, but I don’t think so. I think it’s something that we really need to recognize that we are already strong, we just have to act like it. So as a female, I completely understand that it is a challenge and it is hard to break that routine, like you were saying, it’s something that we’ve always done. It’s hard to step away from something that maybe worked for us in the past when we were younger, but it’s that imposter syndrome or that feeling that we don’t actually be long and it’s just a matter of time before somebody is like they find us out.

(05:23):
And so really through my own personal and professional experience, I’ve been really fortunate to work with a lot of women. So as a physical therapist, I’ve gotten to work with a lot of strong females in a variety of just awful situations. I always say you’re probably not meeting your physical therapist on your best day, not always, but you’re usually not going to PT for the fun of it. And here at Redefining Strength, getting to work with women through so many of life’s challenges, big and small, and oftentimes here working with women as a personal trainer, I actually get to work with women for much longer. And really what that does is it kind of shines a light on all that women that we overcome day to day life is really hard and it can have some really, really hard moments, but I’ve seen time and time again that women are so resilient and so strong. There’s a lot that’s expected of us as a woman in society, physically and mentally. And I think sometimes we just don’t recognize how strong we are. We balance careers. We have kids, we’re caregivers, we go to school, we have relationships, we take care of a household, and we do the physically demanding jobs that our male counterparts also do.

(06:45):
If we’re a nurse, we’re lifting patients up, or if we have older parents, we’re taking care of this. So the list is literally endless. I could go on and on and on about all the hard things we do, but we’re also expected to do these things and we never expected to skip a beat, even though we may be on our periods where we’re literally growing a human in our bodies, we’re pregnant or our hormones are shifting and we’re still expected to just show up the same way time and time again. And we do that and that is incredibly strong of us, and we’re very critical too. We just don’t recognize our strength. So something that we can do is kind of just reflect on that and realize when we have that self-doubt or when we’re afraid to go and try a new workout plan or something, kind of recognize that you felt that way in the past.

(07:39):
You felt that self-doubt before, and then you did the hard thing, so you felt the feeling and the fear and you did it anyway. So recognizing that you’re entirely capable is very helpful and can be very empowering and just recognizing how strong you are, even physically and mentally, physically, you’re entirely capable because you’ve probably already done 16 hard things that day before you went to go do your workout, or you’ve probably picked up something that was way heavier than the dumbbells sitting there. So yeah, I think it’s a little bit of recognizing our own inner strength, like taking a look at taking a stock of our life and all the hard things we accomplish and how we felt fear, but we still did it. So it’s

Cori (08:32):
Truly that ownership, ownership of all that we are flaws, good parts, everything. And recognizing how we overcame the hard in the past because so often we don’t see that hard is hard. And yes, how you handle the heart of some other area of your life might be different than how you embrace the heart of going in and working out and lifting heavy. But that ability to overcome that ability to push yourself into this discomfort is something you’ve learned. And the more you reflect on those other hard situations, the more you can see the mindsets that went into it, how you shaped the environment, how you got yourself to embrace those things. So it is using that reflection on all the other hard things you’ve done to build the confidence, get in the mindset, and then go conquer. As you know, I love the phrase act as if. How does that really play a part in embracing who we are, taking ownership, stepping into that weight room and then making changes there?

Leigh (09:28):
So just acting as if just by gaining that reflection and that understanding of like, oh, okay, I’ve done this hard thing before. It can really translate to taking up space in the gym. You do belong there. You can lift weights. You’ve done many, many hard things before in the past, mentally and physically. And so it’s a direct translation because how you carry yourself and how you approach the gym is the same thing as approaching a difficult situation with your family or your friends or with your job. So even though it is a workout and exercise, it really can translate very easily from just your day-to-day strength and just how you’ve recognized that

Cori (10:21):
With all this. Someone might be like, okay, I think I’m strong enough. I could step into the weight room, but I’m not sure I want to. I love my runs. Cardio’s always worked for me to maintain my weight, even though maybe now with menopause or different hormonal shifts, I’m seeing some weight gain around my middle. Why should I care about stepping into the weight room building muscle building strength? I don’t want to get bulky. We have these discussions often. So I’d love to really touch on how you answer those questions and address the importance of lifting weights or strength training in general, which sometimes means using different equipment or even progressing body weight.

Leigh (11:00):
Yeah, so the fear of getting bulky is a huge thing for women, but it’s definitely not the norm to get that bulky. And I think starting to really pay attention to the benefits that go beyond the aesthetics with weightlifting and with building muscle, especially as we shift into perimenopause and menopause, it becomes super important. So when we start thinking about what happens to our bodies as we age, it just really shines a light on the importance of building muscle. So starting in our thirties, we begin to lose lean body mass at a rate of about 1% a year. So that’s just normal aging. We just start to lose some muscle mass. So as that muscle mass decreases strength and power, so you suddenly realize like, oh man, I can’t jump up onto that curve like I did. I might’ve done in the past. Your balance decreases, so you’re not quite as confident in doing single leg stance, standing on one leg, putting on your pants.

(12:09):
You’re like, oh man, my balance isn’t great. So less muscle mass also means you’re going to expend less energy. So the body requires just less calories to function. And as we all know, life changes across our lifespan. So in our thirties, forties and fifties, life does not look the same as when it did when we were in our teens and twenties, when we were in our twenties. We could work all the time because we didn’t have jobs and we didn’t have families. So that takes away time from our ability to go and exercise. And so all of this kind of compounds and we also have some pretty significant metabolic changes, especially in women that occur in midlife, and that’s intensified by our hormone decline. And that really leads to that unfavorable body composition where you have less muscle mass and you have excessive visceral fat.

(13:02):
So that leads to a myriad of health problems. So you have increased inflammation, which is going to increase your cardiometabolic disease. So things like stroke, heart disease, diabetes, all that risk increases. And even if you step on the scale and you don’t see the scale weight changing, there are still body composition changes happening. So you’re losing muscle and you’re gaining more fat. So these are just those normal things that happen as we age. And if we start to think about the importance of strength training and how can we counteract that, I think it’s actually very encouraging to think of the power that just strength training and building muscle can have on our entire wellbeing. So if we want to get into it, I can kind of break down a little bit of just sort of the basics of the physiology behind lifting weights. I think having that knowledge is very helpful.

(14:07):
So the key with weightlifting is really selecting a weight that is going to be challenging enough to your muscles. So that’s key. And so when you lift heavy weights, this action is going to put microscopic tears in your muscle fibers. And these micro injuries trigger a biological process that initiates repair of those micro tears. And so this creates newer, stronger muscle fibers that replace those damaged ones, and that results in muscle growth over time. So that’s muscle hypertrophy. You’re getting bigger fibers. And so the backbone of strength training is this principle called stress and adaptation. So really what that means is when you lift weights, you’re subjecting your muscles to a form of stress and your body naturally will react to that stress and heal the damage. So that’s going to fortify your muscles, make them stronger and more resistant to the same level of stress.

(15:13):
And this is going to lead to muscle growth and increased strength. So same thing is when you just do mentally hard things, you become more resilient. When you put your muscles and you make them do really hard things, they get stronger and more resilient. So it’s a direct correlation there. And so I don’t know if you can think back to when you first started lifting weights very early on, you get a significant gain in your strength when you just first start lifting weights, and that’s something called neuromuscular adaptation. So really what that is is your nervous system becomes more efficient. It activates motor units. A motor unit is a muscle fiber, and the motor unit just controls all the muscle fiber. So your nervous system gets more efficient at activating motor units. So you kind of notice, oh, I can lift heavier, I can lift more weights pretty early on. And that’s important because that helps you build the strength as you go along. So lifting heavy, it does all that physiological stuff. It also triggers a hormone response where your body releases testosterone and hormone growth, human growth hormone, and that is a key for muscle repair.

(16:30):
So that’s kind of like the science behind building muscle. And so you can kind of see if I put my body under the appropriate stress or I challenge my muscles, I’m challenging myself too by going into the bro gym, I become more resilient and I become stronger over time.

Cori (16:50):
And off of that really hitting on how to build muscles, circling even back to getting bulky. A lot of this is about fueling as well, because if we’re not giving our body adequate fuel to repair and rebuild, we’re not going to build back muscles. So unless you’re giving yourself a ton of extra fuel, it’s very hard as a female to get bulky. It’s not that we can’t, but you have to be very strategic in how you build. And you also have to have specific builds and then work muscles to specific extent. So there’s a lot of strategy that goes into building muscle. And the longer you’ve be training, the harder it actually gets. So if you’re like, gosh, I’ve been training for a really long time and I’m struggling to build muscle, yes, it gets harder. You’ve adapted to more, but you have to focus on that fueling.

(17:28):
And I bring this up too because a lot of times due to the way we’ve dieted in the past, our cardio trends and cardio reliance, I’ll say we’ve created metabolic adaptations, which when we then start to fuel properly dialing in our macros, even though we might have weight we want to lose, we can often see ourselves gaining muscle first because we’re finally fueling to create that progression and allow our muscles to build back. So you can see the scale increase even when you want to lose weight before it then goes down because you’re building that lean muscle because your body is finally able to, which will ultimately help your metabolism. But if you’ve wondered like, Hey, I’m going for weight loss and I’m eating more and I’m trying to trust the process and I feel like I’m building muscle, but I haven’t lost the fat yet, so now I feel like I have a little fluff over my muscle.

(18:11):
That’s partly why. But then recognizing too, when we’re talking about creating that progression in the gym, that means repeating things. And I bring this up because I think I’ve seen, and I want to get your take on this too, Lee, but I’ve seen a big trend in the industry to completely no progression. So I’m not the strict, you have to do something for 12 weeks. I think that there could be a lot of ways to create progression, but if we don’t ever repeat the same workout, if we’re constantly randomly stringing things together, we can never really drive muscle growth because we never have that clear progression of did I do a harder variation? Did I add one more rep? Did I progress the movement by becoming more efficient at doing it with a better mind body connection? So can you talk a little bit about how you design your workouts, both picking weights, but also in terms of progression and repeating workouts and your take on that?

Leigh (18:59):
Yeah, so I mean it does take time and doing the same thing. I mean, if we think about how our body moves, we do kind of like we can squat, we can hinge, we can push, we can press, and that’s just like our muscles moving our bones and we’re putting weight and we’re stressing our muscles. And so having that repeatability and that progression, because we just talked about neuromuscular adaptation in the beginning, you’re actually not building a ton of strength and muscle. You’re just training your nervous system. So you have to train your nervous system, you have to get used to those movements, and then you can progressively add weight. So it is important to train muscle fibers in a similar way for a period of time so that you can slowly add that weight so that you do more micro tears, more repair, and then you can change your workouts a little bit where you’re doing a press in a slightly different variation to hit slightly different muscle fibers, but then you stay there for a little bit of time and you progress the weights because really, I mean there’s no way around it.

(20:10):
The physiology of how to build muscles is these micro tears and repair over time, progressively getting stronger, getting more resilient. It’s not doing chaotic workouts all the time, but it can be boring in the beginning and it can feel repetitive. And I think once you start to see the results and you start to see, oh, putting on I’m adding more weights, you have all these little micro goals that happen in your workouts of like, oh, well my back squat, I did this. Let see if I can do that. So starts to become fun in itself, but really what I like to do for programming workouts is get those main important lifts, those compound movements, the back squat, the deadlift, things like that. And then you can change up the accessory movements so that you start to hit those muscle fibers in different ways, but you’re still doing that. Let’s stay here for a little while. Let’s push the weights over time. Let’s learn the movement and get better over time. So it’s really that adaptation, stress and adaptation is the key for building muscle.

Cori (21:25):
And let’s talk about light versus heavy weights too, because pushing that progression means going heavier, so to speak. And I sort of use the air quotes around that because there’s always the question, do I do higher reps, lighter weights or lower reps, heavier weights? And I never like to think of the higher reps as lighter weights because if it challenges you, it changes you. But why is it so important that we go heavier? And I know you really touched on this, but I just want to highlight it again because it’s not that the weight won’t match the rep range and it will by nature be lighter if you’re doing more reps. And that can be good still in pushing progression. But it’s key that you have that challenge for specific reasons, right? Just going light won’t do anything if you’re really comfortable with it.

Leigh (22:08):
Yes. So this is a question I get asked a lot and I feel like it’s a reasonable question to ask, especially when you’re new to working out is you just don’t know what weights to pick up. And so to dress like the lightweight high rep, so there is a time and a place for doing high repetition lighter weights, but it’s not necessarily going to get you stronger, bigger muscles. It’s not necessarily going to be the only thing that works. And so the lightweight high rep has essentially been debunked by current research as how to do a lot of strength building and muscle hypertrophy because choosing very lightweights something that’s not challenging to your muscles, it fails to create the metabolic and hormonal environment that’s needed to build muscle. So if you pick up super lightweights, you are just simply not putting enough mechanical tension for bone density.

(23:07):
So when you lift weights, you put stress on your muscles, but you inadvertently also strengthen your bones, which is super important, especially for females as we age to reduce our risk of getting osteopenia, osteoporosis, and fractures. So if you pick up lightweights, you’re really not driving that pathway. And then you also minimally will recruit type two muscle fibers, and that is really important for strength maintenance. You also don’t stimulate that release of testosterone or growth hormone. So those hormones are really essential for repair. You just are not creating that environment and then by picking up lightweights, you really have a significantly less impact on your insulin sensitivity. So just touching back on all the benefits of muscle, the more muscle mass you have, the more insulin sensitive you are. So basically your muscle mass becomes like a metabolic buffer, so to speak. So your muscle is much better at taking up blood glucose, which stabilizes blood sugar levels, reduces your risk of type two diabetes.

(24:18):
So if you’re not lifting heavy, you’re not reaping that benefit and you just really don’t never really build the muscle. So you never really see that shift in that metabolic rate improvement. So the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body needs. So that’s why you start to see like, oh my gosh, I’m eating so much more food than I ever ate before, but my body’s changing. How is that possible? Well, you’re building muscle, you’re fueling that muscle. Your body doesn’t really create muscle from recycling other things in your body just doesn’t work the way you have to eat the food to make the muscle happen. So yeah, that’s just kind of shines a light on why picking up that two pound dumbbell again and again and again, you’re not getting those results well because of all those things. It’s just not happening.

Cori (25:11):
I love that you hit on again and again and again because a weight might be light compared to the rest of the Dumbo rack, but challenge us for the reps, the move, the whatever, and we have to meet ourselves where we’re at. But if you can do that weight and you have your rep range of eight to 12 reps, if you can do that weight for 12 reps, one, two or all four sets, let’s just say that you have that next week, you got to go up. I even like to have clients if they’re experienced with lifts, if they’ve done it for the first set and the rep range is eight to 12, hey, go up for the next one, go up until you hit eight or even air the more advanced you are on hitting six reps having to pause for a second to complete the eight, then stay there.

(25:52):
That’s called double progression where we’re increasing the reps we’re doing with weights and also increasing the weight with reps. So you want to think that you have those two things to play with. If you can do the top end of the rep range, you don’t want to just stay there because it feels kind of hard. You want to be like, okay, how can I work down to the bottom of that rep range and then earn more reps with that weight before I then progress again? Because if we’re not pushing ourselves something, feeling hard doesn’t mean it actually is driving us forward. And I can tell you the more I focus on a muscle building phase, the more uncomfortable sometimes I am and the more I’m like, I got to do this today. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that, but that’s definitely my response because it has to challenge you to create that change. And I think that’s the key thing we don’t often hit on and using that diversity of rep range even to our advantage. Correct?

Leigh (26:43):
Yeah. So it is hard. It should feel hard if it’s always feeling easy, it’s not creating that stimulus. And so yeah, the rep ranges and the prescribed reps are there for a reason. One thing that I do really like to implement and talk about is the use of the rate of perceived exertion or reps in reserve. I find that that really helps, especially people who are just sort of starting out and really questioning what’s hard, what do you meet? What’s hard? Finding that use of RPE rate of perceived exertion helps you be more subjective and take some ownership over your weight selection. So subjective, meaning it’s arising from oneself. And so thinking about using RPE as a subjective scale to measure intensity of exercise or effort, so you can really gauge how you feel during a lift or a workout by using RPE, it takes into account factors like breathing, heart rate, muscle fatigue, RPE.

(27:57):
So it typically ranges from zero to 10. So zero is rest and 10 is your max effort. I like to use RPE too with individuals because they can understand their intensity of their workouts and they can also adapt their training intensity based on how the individual is feeling that day. So it takes into account like recovery or stress, things like that. So it helps with autoregulation so that you’re able to be adaptable, reduces risk of injury too, so you’re not just pushing to failure all the time. And so then think about RPE and then you also layer in that reps in reserve. So that is a method used in strength training to kind of gauge intensity based off of how many reps you could leave. So thinking that reps in how many reps left in the tank before your form breaks down. So always key is good form with a lift.

(28:58):
And so if you think about that zero to 10 scale, if something were written like 10 reps at RPE of eight, you would think, okay, well I am going to give pretty heavy effort when I get to that 10 reps, I have two reps left in the tank. That’s a pretty heavy effort. That should feel pretty hard when you get to that eight rep, but you could still do two more repetitions. So you’re formed didn’t quite break down. Then once you start training a little bit more down, you’re talking about further down in that rep range to the six, it starts to get pretty spicy doing six reps at rp, that’s hard effort, but changes based off that rep range. So you would pick lighter weights for 10 repetitions at RPE eight as opposed to six repetitions at RPE eight because you obviously are doing less reps, so you can do heavier weights and have it meet that RPE. So I really like RPE reps and reserve to help people figure out what’s hard, what’s challenging, and that changes over time too. So the longer you train that RPE eight, RPE becomes a different weight for you as you get stronger.

Cori (30:18):
And as you even mentioned, it can be different things on different days. And I want to highlight that because we don’t often give ourselves credit that not every workout is going to be pushing progression by adding weight, going and doing another rep because we might not have slept well. There might be other hormonal factors like if you are in a little bit of a calorie deficit, your expectations have to potentially shift or if you’ve even changed progression and changed the order of moves, which I do want to touch on. And then I have one other final question for you too, but if you change the order, and this is why having that weekly schedule you repeat for a while is so key, especially if you are working to track those numbers. But if you do your back squat on Monday and all of a sudden in the next workout progression it’s on Thursday, you might find you aren’t able to keep the same numbers whether you’ve changed rep ranges or just because of the other moves before it.

(31:05):
And that’s not a bad thing. It’s just always remembering too that what is Max’s effort, what is really pushing that movement can depend too on all the other things around it. Now, off of this one final question for you, Lee, and I have to bring this up because I know it’s a topic that comes up often and I have my opinions on it and I want to hear yours, but soreness. So anytime we’re talking about building muscle, people expect to feel sore. If they don’t feel sore, I didn’t work hard enough. Can you talk about soreness in your opinion and what it really means and all that jazz?

Leigh (31:39):
Yeah, so soreness. So delayed onset muscle soreness, DOMS oftentimes will happen when you do something for the first time. When you’re very early on with working out and you are doing all kinds of new movements, new lifts, you’re probably going to be pretty sore When you change your workouts up and you just do a movement that you haven’t done, you’ll also feel sore. It’ll probably be to a less degree than when you first started working out. However, you do not have to be sore in order to know you had a good workout. In fact, the longer you train and the more muscle you have, the less often you’re going to feel that soreness. So you shouldn’t always be chasing soreness. That’s not the goal of a workout. It’s not always the goal to just beat yourself down with a workout and get the most sort the next day.

(32:37):
It’s inevitable to happen every now and then. It happens less frequently the more trained you are, but anytime you change something, you change the order, you change the rep ranges, especially working at a lot of higher rep ranges. If fueling is off, if you are not properly fueling or if you’re in a cut, something like that, you’ll have more muscle soreness. However, I am a big proponent of we’re not chasing soreness the next day. That’s not always the goal. And so oftentimes people feel like, well, I’m not sore at all. I didn’t get a good workout in. That’s not true. You have to kind of consider all the other factors around the workout to qualify that as a good training session.

Cori (33:20):
Couldn’t agree more. And I come from the no pain, no gain background attitude, and I like being sore as much as the next person. There’s something oddly satisfying at times about it, but if you’re constantly getting sore, it means you’re probably mixing things up too much. It means you’re probably jumping potentially weights or reps too quickly. It means you’re not fueling correctly, recovering correctly. If you’re doing that prehab process that should help with that. So soreness is often actually an indicator that something else is off. It can also be an indicator that we’re potentially doing too much volume or frequency for a muscle loading it really a ton under stretch, which can then lead to more muscle tissue damage and potentially some of that muscle soreness as well. So it’s really assessing is the soreness just, Hey, I switched things up and I pushed really hard this one time and then I’m adapting to it, or is something else off? Now off of that, any closing thoughts for someone being like, okay, I’m sold. I’m going to go build muscle, I’m going to embrace strength training. I’m going to act as if any thoughts for them, Lee?

Leigh (34:17):
Yeah. Yeah. So this is something I get super hyped about is helping a woman understand the importance of strength training and why you can’t just do cardio forever. It’s also really exciting because I kind of can see the future and I’m like, okay, I know you’re going to make some really awesome gains here soon. But honestly, just to kind of wrap things up, I think it’s just taking that moment to reflect on your life as a woman and just thinking about all of the incredibly hard things that you do mentally, physically, how you felt afraid. Probably during those times you felt the fear, but you did it anyway. That’s the same thing, this shrink training, it is not beyond your capabilities, it’s just something new and you just haven’t jumped in and done it. So realizing all the health benefits, health, realizing how this can improve your life, make things easier for you in terms of eating food and fueling and having these body changes, sleeping better, having perimenopause and menopause symptoms reduce. There’s so many benefits. So yeah, it’s my favorite thing to help women realize like, wait a minute, I’m strong. I can go pick up a really heavy weight and I can lift it.

Cori (35:33):
Health benefits, aesthetic benefits, mental benefits. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen so much confidence built through what I’ve been able to overcome in the gym and picking up that heavier weight. So can’t say enough about it. Couldn’t agree more. Leigh, thank you so much for joining me today. Guys, have a great rest of your week.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

How To Maintain Weight Loss (10 Tips For Long Term Success)

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 19, 2025 | podcast

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Open Transcript:

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear, you lost the weight, you feel amazing. The question is now what? Often we get really good at the weight loss phase of things and then all of a sudden we start to self-sabotage. Let those habits slide. Think about not tracking things that we’ve been tracking. We let a miss workout slip in. All of a sudden we find ourself back at square one, all our old habits back in place and having regain the weight and potentially even more. And then we again find another program. We go back on a diet, we get really good at that dieting down. The question is how do we maintain our results? And this is a difficult thing because what you do to lose the weight is not what you do to maintain it, but you can’t go back to old habits or you’ll get an old result, which is exactly what we want to avoid.

(00:58):
So I want to give you 10 tips to help you maintain those results, and it’s really key when we think about maintenance, to not think about we’re creating one lifestyle in one form forever. Because I do think when we think maintaining, it’s like, oh, so I just do the same thing forever. Well, no, nothing in your lifestyle is ever standing still. So going into the 10 tips, number one, expect fluctuations. Your scale is going to still fluctuate if you’re using your scale as a measurement tool, even your body measurements, if you’re doing that or progress pictures, they’re going to fluctuate. Your body is a living organism. You drink water, you’re going to gain weight. You might see a little bloat with certain foods. You might see more or less definition based on if you’re retaining water or you had a hard workout. Yes, if you had a hard workout and you really worked your triceps, they might not be as defined the next day because there might be muscle tissue damage, so expect fluctuations.

(01:49):
That’s why you have to watch trends over time and it’s why you almost have to set boundaries or bumpers on your bowling alley lane, right? You’re trying to always bowl a strike. Give yourself those bumpers to keep you in line. So give yourself the top end of a range and a bottom end of a range to allow yourself to watch those deviations but not panic at each and every one. And especially when coming out of that deficit, you want to do it slowly to transition into maintenance, and I say transition because you do have to retrain your body to eat more, but as you’re transitioning your calories up potentially from a fat loss phase, your muscles are going to store glycogen and water weight and especially the more muscle you have, the more storage capacity you have, but you’re going to see the weight creep up a little bit because you’re simply not depleted of everything.

(02:32):
So you’re going to have to expect that as you’re transitioning to maintenance, you’re going to see the scale go up a little bit and then you’ll find that balance, and that’s where taking measurements and progress pictures can also come in really handy and doing it very slowly and still tracking through this process, which I can’t highlight enough, is really key because you can see yourself doing the healthy habits that you know will lead to results and then you’ll adjust your macros and the longer you maintain your results, the easier it gets. The exact same thing that made it hard to lose. The fact that your body does not want to change from its setpoint is what makes it easier and easier over time to maintain your new result because your body adapts to fueling in that way to training in that way, and maintaining that weight has that balance and functioning at that balance.

(03:13):
So embrace the fluctuations as your first transitioning to maintenance and starting to maintain, and even over the course of the year, you’re going to be more or less focused on this, which I’ll touch on more a little bit in a bit. But next, don’t restrict the fun stuff as you go to maintaining your goal is to still keep potentially tracking, still keep in that workout routine, but start to add in more of those things that strike that lifestyle balance. Because if we don’t start to loosen the reign strategically, we’ll end up loosening them anyway and we won’t be in control of how we have, and then we’ll start to see that backslide where it’s like, oh, well this doesn’t matter or that doesn’t matter, and all of a sudden it really does matter because we’ve regained all the weight and we’ve lost all the healthy habits that we really worked hard to ingrain the environment that we worked worked hard to create and the mindsets that we worked hard to have.

(03:57):
So you want to loosen the rain strategically. If you’re still tracking, let’s just say you’re doing 40, 30, 30 as your macro ratio. Work in a few foods that you know aren’t as healthy or aren’t as clean. Try to work in a new restaurant or say, Hey, I am actually strategically going to go to a protein minimum and a calorie cap and now work in some of the foods and see that balance, but work in some fun things so that you can start to see how maintaining can be that lifestyle balance. The sooner you can do that, even as you’re maybe at the end of your weight loss phase, the better. Of course when you’re trying to push that new level of leanness, there is some precision involved and that might not be the time to play around with it, so it depends on your goal, but in transitioning, you can’t just stay depleted.

(04:36):
You can’t just stay restrictive. You’ve got to find that balance. And so finding ways to work things in is super key. Little by little overthinking, it has to be perfection or not because that’s where we get into dieting down, losing the result, dieting down, losing the result when we think restriction or perfection. So work in those fun things, work in a cocktail, work in dinners out, include those things, but you have to loosen the reins and that’s where you also have to embrace those little fluctuations from salt or water weight being gained when you go out. Then number three, use mini cycles. So this is what I was sort of touching on before. You’ve got to embrace over the course of the year that you’re going to be more or less dedicated to different things, and maintaining doesn’t mean maintaining one weight the entire time.

(05:16):
You have to even set different goals. I’ll set a muscle building phase where I know I might get a little fluffy, but I’m going to add muscle or I’ll set a fat loss phase where I want to look extra great for this vacation, so I’ll do a little mini cut, but set those little mini cycles because they also give you a focus to keep wanting to move forward, but while allowing you to shift those habits to meet where you’re at during the holidays, say, Hey, during the holidays I want a better lifestyle balance. This is not the time I’m going to drive for fat loss. I’m going to maybe even embrace just maintaining my result right now with including more fun foods. But think about mini cycles based on the time of year and the schedule that you have, the mindsets that you have, the things you want to do, and then set goals that compliment.

(05:54):
Don’t set your mini cut fat loss phase during Christmas. If you really like Christmas cookies say, Hey, I’m going to do this in January after maybe enjoying a few cookies extra, but I’ll set actually a muscle building phase to even set myself up better for that fat loss phase. Now, this is an excuse to just forget all the healthy habits that you have, but it’s managing your expectations to be in line with what you also need, which ultimately creates a better maintenance for me. For the longest time I wouldn’t track during the holidays and I realized that was actually sabotaging me, even though I could get away with it during the summer because I was using the excuse, oh, I don’t need to track. I did it for this period and didn’t track and was fine to really eat whatever I wanted and not do any of the things that I should.

(06:33):
So now during the holidays I do track with just minimums that I hit to keep me in line, and that ended up turning into more intensive tracking, which actually felt really good while still working in a balance. So things will shift, but recognize even the excuses you’re making and how you can create that balance to maintain within a range while allowing yourself some flexibility. Then number four, chase performance goals. You need to have a focus. If we don’t have direction, we’re driving around aimlessly and that’s often where we end up lost or potentially just going back to where we started, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to go home. And so that’s where we see ourselves regaining the weight. So set performance goals. That might mean lifting more in the gym. It might mean testing out a new workout program. It might even mean saying, Hey, how can I get away with doing 15 minutes and see if I can maintain my results so it doesn’t just have to directly be lifting more or doing a race, even though those can be great options.

(07:23):
It can even be how can I meet myself where I’m at seeing performance improvements or maintaining my results with testing out this new thing where I have an end date and I think that’s the key point. I have a focus. I have an end date. I’m going to commit and test and be consistent and track my progress in this area towards that, where I’ll even go on a slight deviation from the performance goals and say, maybe it’s that you’re working in new recipes or new meals out, and that’s your focus of how you can create that balance, but you need that outside goal. And I do like performance goals because I think it puts the emphasis on doing the healthy habits that still fuel us and also even really in building muscle, which preserves our metabolic health as well, and it can be really fun to see what you can conquer and overcome.

(08:02):
Then number five, track strategically, especially when you’re first coming out of the fat loss phase, I would tell you please try to track just as intensively as you did, and I know we can be a little burned out if we’ve been dieting for longer on all the healthy habits that we’ve been doing because even things we know we should do or weren’t. That bad effort at some point becomes greater just because we mentally fatigue or our life has shifted, but track strategically and really be intensive about it being like, Hey, now I can work in more fun things, but I’m going to log everything. Or if you’re like, Hey, I really need this balance and the effort has become a little too much, how can I go to more minimalist ratios maybe or bump calories or do different things that allow you to still measure because what you measure you can manage, but it gives you that tracking and that data but in a way that allows you to keep going with it.

(08:47):
So assess your mindsets at the end when you are transitioning to maintenance, but give yourself that data. Something we so often don’t do, and that’s why we think eating more or changing our habits resulted in us regaining the weight when it’s really not that. It’s really that we weren’t tracking anything and we didn’t realize how much everything went off. So track strategically and then as you maintain for longer, you may take time where you don’t track, but then maybe you do log a few things to get some new meal prep in line and really reassess your portions if you feel like you’re gained a little bit weight that you don’t want to gain or you track really intensively for a mini cut or you track even intensively for a muscle building phase because you want to be very strategic. So it’s allowing that tracking to evolve and how you do it to meet yourself where you’re at, but knowing that that is a tool that you should always return to just to keep yourself in line with those little bumpers that you’ve set for yourself.

(09:32):
Number six, motivational fade. You’re not always going to be motivated. Own it when you feel the effort of the habits you’re doing becoming greater than they feel worth, really assess what’s shifted in your life and how you can meet yourself where you’re at because too often we don’t go to doing the minimum to keep moving forward and maintenance is still moving forward. We don’t do the minimum to keep something in there. Instead we just say, oh, well I deserve this, and that’s where the self-sabotage creeps in and we don’t track anything versus seeing even just tracking calories as still being something that keeps the boundaries on it. So make sure that you recognize motivation will fade and meet yourself where you’re at, especially during maintenance. We got to set even that clear direction because we don’t have direction. We get even more unmotivated often. Then number seven, embrace your minimums.

(10:13):
I’ve been talking about this one a lot, but it’s so key. Finding the least amount you can do in order to maintain your results at times is really important. I know there are certain times a year where I’m really busy. I’m like, okay, I’m going to do three days a week and I’m going to design for this and I’m going to just track my protein and make sure I’m not going over my calories. I’m not going to worry about food quality at all, which might sound horrible, but I know that’s the minimum I need to do to maintain, and ultimately often when I do that and give myself grace and permission before that time even comes to start doing that, I want to do more because I feel successful. I don’t feel restricted, I don’t feel pushed into something. I don’t feel like the effort isn’t worth it.

(10:50):
So often proactively even backing off or recognizing that you can back off allows us to do more because we don’t feel so pressured or pushed or overwhelmed by the idea of trying to maintain something. So recognize what can be minimums for you to keep you moving forward even during those toughest of tough times as a good thing and the more you embrace it as a good thing versus, oh, I’m not being perfect, the more you’re going to do them and the more you’re actually going to do more, which ultimately will lead to better results. Number eight, don’t diet on holidays or vacations. So you know what I will tell people sometimes when they’re on a fall loss phase, Hey, you got to find this balance if you want results at X speed, I’ll be very honest about that. If you want results yesterday and you’re going on vacation, that might look very different than what you do when you’re on vacation and maintenance because you get more flexibility the more you’re at that set point and they could choose a different balance if they want to go a little bit slower, but it’s owning our decisions and choices with that and then recognizing that especially in maintenance, that’s not necessarily the time to restrict.

(11:46):
I mean, if you want to set your fat loss goal over the holidays, great, that’s you, do you? But remember that you’re also sticking to all these healthy habits so that you can have more times where you go on vacation and you just enjoy. Maybe you have different boundaries that you set for yourself or you enjoy the holidays, and this isn’t an excuse to enjoy every day because we could make the excuse that every day is legendary, but then no day is legendary. So just recognize that you do do these other healthy habits to have times where you might not do what you should, and that’s a okay, that’s the whole point of consistency long-term. Then always have a day after plan, so the more you’re maintaining, the more you’re going to find that you do have that weekend day where you do something or that holiday or that vacation.

(12:27):
The key isn’t restricting on those days, and I would even argue during a fat loss phase, the key isn’t restricting on those days or not having the occasional day. You don’t do what you should. It’s always the day after because if you really think about it, even if you give yourself 65 days a year, there’s 300 some odd other days that often we aren’t optimizing to see results. We come back from vacation, we don’t have stuff in the refrigerator, we don’t have meal prep, and all of a sudden that day that we came back becomes the day after and becomes the next week we’re starting. So we really want to make sure that whatever happens if we have a day off plan, we have that day after plan because that gets us right back in line and often makes that other day not only really enjoyable, but keeps us moving forward towards our goals.

(13:09):
So have that day after plan and know that as you’re trying to learn what works for you, you might hit on some things that don’t feel guilty. Just assess, Hey, why didn’t this work for me to get me back on track? Or what do I need to get back on track? That might mean doing a mini cut around vacations. It might mean not doing it and doing the exact opposite and going to minimum so you don’t feel restricted, but it’s assessing what you need to get back to doing the habits that will ultimately move you forward. Because the more time we have off of them, the more we fall back into an old pattern that we probably don’t want. One day is just a deviation, but 2, 3, 4 becomes that pattern becomes a slipping back into old habits and routines. Last thing, tip number 10, keep it fresh.

(13:49):
You get bored with doing the same thing and I actually like doing the same meal prep for a very set amount of time, and all of a sudden it’ll be like one day I wake up and I’m like, all right, I’m sick of this. I don’t want to do this anymore even though I did it for the last few months. Right? So fresh can mean a lot of different things. It doesn’t mean you have to include diversity every single day, but don’t be afraid to evolve things even as you’re maintaining. Shift your macro ratios, even if you’re seeing results on one, just to give yourself different meal prep type stuff. Try different meal prep companies. Try different recipes. Try different ways of planning, try different workouts even if something’s working, it’s not bad over time to adjust to just test because we do kind of like shiny and new.

(14:27):
We’re always hoping for a magic pill or quicker fix, so don’t be afraid to keep things fresh as you’re maintaining. Again, the worst thing we can do for ourselves is think that with maintaining, we’re doing one thing for the rest of our life because we’re not. Your body, your lifestyle, your needs, your goals are going to shift even as you’re maintaining and you might want to gain a little muscle, you might want to lose a little fat, you might want to train for this race. You might have the schedule that makes it not as easy to train in the way that you were adjust and adapt, and the more you do that, the better you’re going to see your results really be maintained longterm. Remember, it’s not a set it and forget a thing. Life is constantly about improving and growing. Give yourself the opportunity to really maintain your results through constantly meeting yourself where you’re at.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

Hack Your Hormones To Lose Weight

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 12, 2025 | podcast

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Change Requires CHANGE

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Transcript:

Open Transcript:

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. Are you blaming your age? Are you blaming your hormones? Well, guess what? Michelle and I are going to bust those excuses today. Okay, got to be a little weird. Have a little fun. But seriously, I know it can feel like our hormones have just been thrown out of whack and we’re seeing weight gain and all these different symptoms that we don’t know how to navigate, and we think, what can I do about this? Am I just doomed? But you’re not, and there’s so much we can control in our diet to help us see fabulous results at any and every age. So thank you, Michelle, for joining me today. I know this is a topic that you are especially passionate about as well, so I’m excited to jump in with you.

Michelle (00:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I always love talking about women’s hormones. Health, we

Cori (00:50):
Hear a lot of excuses, right? We hear, oh, well, I’m middle aged. I’m just doomed to gain weight. Oh, well, menopause means the Meno pot. I have to accept it. What do you say to that?

Michelle (01:02):
I say throw it all our way because it’s just like you said, it’s an excuse. There’s some things that we tend to just accept as the new norm when we don’t have to. And truthfully, it’s easier to accept it as the norm versus actually changing to actually confront it and make it so it’s not your normal. And that’s really what I want to bust through is you can take your power back from this, but it does require some work on your end. And we don’t like getting uncomfortable and it’s sometimes it’s going to make you a little

Cori (01:32):
Uncomfortable and it’s a thing of your body has changed, therefore other things in your lifestyle need to change. And it’s where we see that disconnect. And I actually had a comment just today on Facebook about this of, but I haven’t changed my diet. I haven’t changed my workouts. Why am I gaining weight? And that’s actually the problem. Our body, our needs, our goals. Heck, sometimes even without hormonal shifts, our lifestyle has changed. And if other things don’t evolve, including our diet and our workouts, we’re going to have a system that’s not matching where we’re at right now, and then we’re not going to see the results and progress forward that we really want.

Michelle (02:10):
I love that. And that’s honestly something I see that comment all the time is I’m not changing anything. So why is this happening to me? And a hundred percent it’s because life isn’t stagnant no matter how much we try. You can’t stop your body from aging. It’s going to happen. So if you can’t stay stagnant in that moment, your diet can’t stay stagnant. Your exercise state can’t stay stagnant. You have to adjust and work with your body and stop trying to work against it.

Cori (02:40):
But one size doesn’t fit all when we’re making changes, and I think a lot of times we hear about the recommendations for a specific age, for a specific time of life, and so we jump right to doing those things and then it doesn’t fully fit and then we feel even more broken. So because of that, I’d love for you to really dive into what’s changing in our body at different times and what hormone fluctuations we might be seeing so that we can understand the impact and then determine what the right course of action is for us because our activity level, our lifestyle, are going to impact things, and it’s not just the hormones that completely dictate everything. So what’s going on that we might have to navigate so we can dive into then how to navigate it?

Michelle (03:17):
Absolutely. So the first things first, and this one, I want to say it almost is in charge of everything else. It’s the domino effect. It starts here and then other hormones become affected. Your lifestyle needs to change, and it really comes to estrogen. I know you probably aren’t surprised that we’re talk about this because you hear about it so much when you are hitting perimenopause. Menopause age is estrogen does decline. That’s natural. No matter what you do, you cannot stop that clock. Your estrogen levels are going to change. However, what this is actually affecting within your body is it is going to affect how you actually metabolize food. It’s going to affect your muscle mass, how your capability of actually being able to gain muscle, and again, this isn’t another excuse that I’m handing you where it’s like, oh yeah, this is a harder time in your life where it’s going to be harder to put on muscle.

(04:12):
No, it’s just different. You just have to make sure you’re providing your body with the right nutrients. We’re doing the right workouts to combat that. Estrogen is a little bit lower and it is going to affect that muscle mass. Those are going to be the key things first. And I’ll be honest, so often I see people just be like, oh, estrogen’s low. I need to do X, Y, Z. Like you were saying, I have to get on the HRT. That’s going to be the number one thing. And that’s not bad. It’s an option. It’s something that you can pursue. But something that I really, if this is the only thing you walk away from, this is what I hope it is, is no matter what you are doing, even if you get some hormone testing done, no matter what that test is, you have to continue to reevaluate and you can’t fall victim to a rigid result.

(05:01):
And I say this because if you are actively trying to improve your diet, trying to improve your workout, putting on that muscle, that is going to affect those results in a positive way. So we want to make sure that we aren’t getting stuck in, oh, well this is what my test said a year ago or six months ago. If you are actively trying to improve, those levels are going to change. I just had a client who has had RMR testing done to see what it was, and within the program, she actually found that because she’s regularly testing, she found that it increased by 200 calories. And she’s like, what happened? It went up. And I was like, well, yeah, because you are putting on muscle, you’re improving your metabolism, you’re doing all these things, and so you are going to see some changes at a hormonal level as well.

Cori (05:55):
And I want to equate this. I think when we’re talking about these things, we want to understand what’s going on, not to place blame, but to allow us to make accurate adjustments. And I want to use this example because I don’t think we often think of it this way. We do. We just say, well, I have to write myself off because of this. But estrogen levels changing means that other things in our diet and our workouts need to evolve so that we can still put on muscle because it is still possible. Yet going back to the muscle building thing, we don’t really hear people just blaming, oh, well, I’m an experienced exerciser, so I can’t put on muscle as easily, so I’m just doomed to be stuck, never putting on muscle. But actually the more advanced you are, the longer you’ve been training, the harder it does become to build muscle because you’ve adapted to more training stimulus.

(06:36):
Yet we rarely actually just blame that and write ourselves off. We say, oh no, I can push harder. I can do these other things. We almost see it as more incentive to do more. And so I would say when you do all these different things, it’s owning the reality to address it, to move forward because knowing that it is harder to building muscle, that you actually are potentially using protein 40% less efficiently as you get older, even you just increase protein knowing that as an advanced exerciser that you’ve adapted to more training stimulus, you find new training stimuli to use to help you improve your results. It’s owning your reality and even understanding that what once was could shift, and that means that you have to continually adjust and adapt even more. But it’s all opportunity. It’s not placing blame and writing yourself off.

Michelle (07:24):
Yes, and that is so key because it is so important that we are making those little adjustments. You are your unique self and you are going to be the one that’s going to help drive that forward. And you can’t. I feel like the biggest disservice we can do is just allow ourselves to be placed in a box.

Cori (07:44):
And with seeing these hormonal shifts, we can think, oh, well, my metabolism is now more sluggish. I need to eat less. But we wouldn’t generally recommend that. And as you even brought up with your client, when she learned to fuel properly could build more muscle, she increased her metabolic health and her caloric demands actually went up. So it is a weird thing of we think dieting means deficit means eating less, but that could backfire during this phase where we see these hormonal changes.

Michelle (08:13):
And that is often because, and I’m going to say the science is still there, calories in versus calories out. Yes. But the problem is there’s so much nuance to that. So even this client that still is having great results, we’re increasing calories, she’s doing that and she still is technically in a deficit. We just have in our mind that again, we have that rigidity issue where it’s like, oh, well I was losing last time. I was losing weight in my twenties. I ate this many calories, so I need to go back to that. And you’re not taking into account, but you’re also putting on muscle mass. Do you still have the same muscle mass as you did in your twenties? Have you improved it a lot? I see a lot of women in our program improving that muscle mass and they have more muscle than they have in their forties and fifties than they even did in their twenties,

Cori (09:01):
And that’s despite it’s supposedly getting harder to do so, but it’s owning your reality. And with that, we’re seeing estrogen levels decreased. What can we do or what other dominoes might we need to address that might be hit by that falling over? And then what can we do from a nutritional standpoint to help ourselves own where we’re at to move forward?

Michelle (09:22):
Yeah, so when estrogen kind of goes it, like I said, it kind of dictates the balance of a lot of other ones. So it’s one of the things that your body is kind of like, oh, well, it’s a feedback loop. So when that starts to dip, we’re going to start to see other hormones also dip a little bit as well. And then in some cases even have some higher levels. So this is where progesterone, testosterone, yes, women, we have testosterone as well, and it’s something that we want to make sure that we’re staying in balance, but it all kind of comes back to what’s happening with our estrogen levels. So some things to keep in mind, and I’m going to start very basic and then we’re going to get into a little bit more nuance, but one is going to be protein. We highly recommend that you are hitting at least 30% of your calories coming from protein.

(10:12):
And the reason being is that is really where research actually shows the benefits start. That’s not to say 30% is the cap, but if you are looking at trying to make sure that we’re seeing some of these improvements, you’re able to put on more muscle mass and make sure that we are improving strength metabolism and even insulin sensitivity, which guess what? Estrogen actually affects your insulin sensitivity, which is often why we do put on a little bit more weight if we’re changing our diet because we have issues with some carbs. I’m not demonizing carbs. We just have to adjust. So it’s something that we want to make sure that we are actually consuming more of is going to be that protein and specifically dividing it throughout the day. One of the things that I see often is, I call it back loading, where you wait until the very end of your day and then all of a sudden you’re trying to get all your grams of protein in before you go to bed. And the reason is is we do want to make sure that we are balancing some blood sugar throughout the day. Protein’s really going to help that. It’s going to help with satiate, satiety said that word wrong, satiety and going to help even some cravings throughout the day. So that’s really where we want to make sure that we’re spreading that out.

Cori (11:23):
We also don’t utilize it as efficiently and we need more of it to stimulate the same muscle protein synthesis response. So by spreading it out and even getting larger portions of 40 grams in a sitting 30 grams in a sitting, we’re going to see a better response to that, especially around our training. But I bring this up too because a lot of times you’ll hear, oh, 20 to 30 grams is all you can use, guys. These are done on supplement studies first off, and also that’s what goes to muscle protein synthesis alone, and protein isn’t just involved in building muscle. It is important for so many other processes, which I can let Michelle touch on. But on top of that, we have to recognize that our goals really dictate what we need. 30% is sort of that magical starting point where you can really see great results, whether you’re building muscle or trying to lose fat, but especially in a deficit, you need a little bit more protein because you not only will help improve the thermic effect to burn more calories so that you’re seeing better fat loss results, but also protect your lean muscle because you’ll always have those amino acids readily available to repair the muscle tissue and you’re deficient technically in enough calories to really do so as efficiently.

(12:30):
So you need that extra protein versus in a muscle guine phase, yeah, you might be closer to that 30% where you were at 40% for the fat loss phase, right? Different goals will dictate different amounts, but it’s understanding when it’s even important to increase further for other reasons outside of just that muscle building. Protein is oddly a really good weight loss tool because it is so filling because it does protect that lean muscle and because it puts us at less risk for putting on fat. They’ve done studies where carbs have been higher, fat has been higher, but ultimately what really leads to the best results is always protein being higher. But Michelle, I do want to touch on the other benefits of protein because we so often just hear about only consuming this much and we forget that that’s just the amount that goes to muscle protein synthesis, and especially as we’re going through menopause, it is important to get protein for so many other things.

Michelle (13:19):
And you kind of touched on it a little bit, but one is people when they hear protein and they tend to think animal products, there’s other plant-based options as well, but they still are only looking at the product as just protein. They’re not realizing what comes within the package. And oftentimes that is going to be the micronutrients. There’s vitamins, there’s minerals, there’s things that are in there that we tend to need that we gloss over. But one of the big things too is when you are looking at what women respond best to, and we’ve kind of touched upon it, I’m going to talk about fat in a little bit, but you are looking at making adjustments to mainly your carbohydrates, probably going to see a little bit of adjustments within your carbs. And when we do that, you can’t just take away, you got to fill that gap with something that’s going to be where we look at protein.

(14:08):
And one of the big things, we talk about the amino acids for the muscle mass and making sure that we’re protecting that lean muscle mass when you’re in a caloric deficit. But one of the things that we kind of, I feel like gets glossed over is let’s talk about metabolism when you are getting adequate amounts of amino acids and specifically even making sure that you’re getting enough calories in general, but if you’re making sure that you’re getting those amino acids, getting those vitamins and minerals, those pathways that we tend to turn off, I always say it’s like having light switches. We can flip on or off. When you aren’t providing your body with adequate amounts and with adequate amounts specifically in a caloric deficit because we’re trying to lose weight, your body will start turning off those light switches. So there’s no such thing as a broken metabolism.

(14:58):
It’s often that you’re not providing your body with enough of those micronutrients and amino acids that your body’s able to actually perform all those pathways because we put things in a hierarchy of needs. Your body just trying to keep you alive, running your organs efficiently is going to be top priority. When those switches get turned on, you’re going to find, oh, you’re, and I know we’ve talked about this before and it seems so small, but it’s such a big thing, you’re going to actually find your cellular turnover increase. Your skin itself is going to have some improvements in it. You’re going to find your hair growing, your nails growing. I’ve had clients that were like, I wasn’t sure about this. And all of a sudden I realized I haven’t shaved in two years and I needed to start shaving because my body, she goes, I just thought that my body stopped producing hair on my legs. Turns out, nope, your body had turned off that switch because you weren’t providing it with enough quality nutrients. So that’s something important to keep in mind and why we want to make sure that we’re giving our body not just adequate, because truthfully, if you look at the RDA, that’s just for to stay alive, to keep things running. We want optimal nutrition. And to do that, we are going to be increasing, most likely you’re going to need to increase your protein

Cori (16:16):
And optimal as our body changes. And that means potentially having even more than prior, even though often we think protein bodybuilders, we think the bros in the gym, nope. The older we get as we go through menopause as females, we need extra protein. It only helps us. Now I do want to tangent a little bit into the carb discussion and touch on fiber. And before I let you go into that, this is where I want to circle back to what I mentioned at the beginning of understanding why we’re making certain recommendations is really key because there’s always nuance or the but situation to them because you’ve already alluded to the fact that we might see a little bit more insulin resistance creeping in when we’re getting a little bit older as we’re going through menopause. However, just demonizing carbs can sometimes be what’s holding us back because we hear in menopause, reduce your carbs, but then we have someone super active come in who’s an endurance athlete and that backfires massively. So understanding why the recommendations are being made to also understand why they might not fit you is super important. But Michelle, let’s go into a little bit adjusting your carb intake, why fiber is so key.

Michelle (17:26):
So oftentimes we’re usually low. In general, we are low in fiber, and the reason why we really want to put an emphasis specifically when we are in perimenopause menopause age is because fiber does actually help bind and eliminate excess estrogen. Now I know you’re probably like, wait, you just told me that estrogen is dropping, so why do I want to put an emphasis on this? And this is where it’s key to know is estrogen doesn’t just disappear. It still exists in circulation, it’s still there, it’s still in your body even in menopause, and your body’s still going to produce some small amounts usually from adrenal glands and even from fat tissue. That’s actually why we kind of get the menopause is because that’s kind of our body’s a little bit of a, I don’t want to say defense mechanism, but basically a little bit of a defense mechanism because we start to produce more estrogen there.

(18:19):
Or of course you could be getting it from HRT if that’s a route that you’ve chosen. And the goal isn’t to with fiber, it’s not to eliminate estrogen, it’s to make sure that we are properly metabolizing and clearing any excess or unbalanced estrogen metabolites. So what can happen is even if you have low estrogen, if your body isn’t actually metabolizing that correctly or even utilizing it in the correct way, we want to make sure that we’re providing the body with a way to eliminate what is going to potentially cause us to have issues. So you can still be low estrogen and be considered estrogen dominant about that balance of estrogen to even progesterone within your body. So this is really where fiber is key. And I know, yes, we talk about fiber not just for satiety, we talk about fiber. If you’ve heard of GLP, fiber can actually help produce more GMPs within the body so you can actually have that kind of going for you as well.

(19:21):
And we do, one of the big things too that I’m going to touch on briefly is fiber feeds the gut bacteria. We’ve talked a lot and you probably have heard a lot about the gut microbiome. There’s been a huge emphasis on it. And if you’re not providing your body with fiber to make sure the good gut bacteria is getting fed, you are actually going to have an imbalance within your gut and be having issues with digestion and all that fun stuff. So that is just a few reasons why fiber is so key at this stage. It’s really to make sure that we are helping our body actually be able to find a balance even with estrogen

Cori (20:04):
And fiber is magical for our health and a lot of times that’s what we even think about fiber for gut health, overall health, but it really is essential for faster fat loss too. And that’s the sexy component that we don’t think about. So we don’t prioritize it, which I know sounds weird, but let’s face it, a lot of times when we start making dietary changes, it is for aesthetic reasons and that’s not a bad thing, but these can also pay off our health, but we have to own how much fiber is involved in that fat loss process and really important. And part of that too is even the balance of blood sugars, which we really need to focus on even more as we see these hormonal shifts.

Michelle (20:40):
And I’m going to still saying from one of our coaches that you can eat your carbs naked but don’t eat a naked carb. So again, we’re not demonizing carbs. Carbs are needed carbs often, or you’re choosing a different one. Oftentimes you’re going to have that fiber package be part of it, but we do want to make sure that we are doing that so that our body is also not having these huge spice and drops with insulin itself. So it’s natural to have rises and dips with our blood sugar. We want that, but we don’t want to have these huge spikes and these huge drops. We would like to keep it more steady throughout the day.

Cori (21:19):
And with talking about fiber and protein, there’s another component that I know is very near and dear to your heart, hydration. How important is adjusting our hydration? Which we know the answer very important, but can you talk a little bit about the importance of hydration and not only how it helps with that hormonal balance with everything in terms of fat loss because it’s very important for fat loss as well, even though for some reason this very simple habit is very hard for a lot of us, myself included at times, but I feel like one of your favorite subjects, Michelle.

Michelle (21:50):
It is my favorite subject because it’s one of the cheaper, one of the easier way it wants to do. And no one, I’ll be honest, hardly anyone that I coach or chat with as probably is coming to me drinking enough. And I always say, it wouldn’t be a chat with me if I didn’t say something about water. So it’s going to impact your thermo regulation, how your body’s actually able to break down and digest foods. It is a huge part of your hunger cues. Oftentimes as we age, our thirst signals go down and we actually misinterpret hunger cues for when we’re thirsty. The other reason is you mentioned is fat loss the role it has in fat loss. So for your body to go through the process of lipolysis of actually breaking down those fat cells, it has to start with lipolysis where the water is required to actually start that process of breaking it down.

(22:45):
If you are not providing your body not with enough water, now again, I’m staying away from adequate, we’re talking optimal water, optimal hydration levels, your body isn’t going to prioritize that process, so we want to make sure that you are getting enough water. So we probably always have heard the saying of drink six to eight glasses of water a day or half your body weight in ounces. That is typically just making sure you have adequate water. We’re looking at optimal. I tend to recommend that we are looking more at 70% of your body weight and ounces of water. And the reason is one, because we are doing optimal protein levels. And when you do that, that means your carbohydrates are naturally going to typically be decreased and carbs hold onto water. So you’re going to be a little bit more inclined to be slightly more dehydrated because of, but we also want to make sure that we are providing the body with more water because as estrogen declines, estrogen also circulates the body and kind of acts like a sponge.

(23:55):
So I’ve had some women that were like, I had zero menopause symptoms except I had to start taking eye drops or my knees are starting to hurt, and typically that’s a sign that their hydration level is off. So this is really where it’s key. And we’re going to talk about muscle too. Yes, you have to have proper hydration levels to even make sure that the transient system of getting nutrients to the right spots is well armed and that’s going to require water. So drink your water. If you are sitting there right now and you don’t have a water bottle near you, I want you to be that person that is always walking around with water in your hand. And I am going to talk just a little bit too, because it’s not just about that hydration, but it’s also about making sure that you’re properly hydrated, not just water alone. Most of us will benefit if we add at least an electrolyte throughout our day.

Cori (24:51):
Hydration truly is key and all these components are these fundamentals. If you focus on them and emphasize them, you’re going to see such a better balance and faster results towards your goals, whether it is muscle building or fat loss or that elusive body recomposition we’ve been told can’t happen losing fat as we gain muscle, which it can. You have to prioritize one goal a little bit over the other, but that process can happen. When we go back to these basics and other symptoms, we see skin health is a big issue or concern. Drier skin, crepey skin, right? Focusing on protein, focusing on water, wanting that fat loss and to address bloating and different digestive issues a lot of times. So a little bit more focused on water and fiber can be really key. There’s so many different ways all these things combine to make us feel our most fabulous.

(25:37):
And I love that you brought up muscle and water too because a lot of times when we’re trying to build muscle, we see the scale sort of jump initially where we’ve increased calories potentially. And with that we’re storing carbs, but we’re storing water rate and this is needed. It’s why with creatine when someone goes on it, it does bring water into the muscle that helps with the anabolic process. Now, with all these, there’s one final component that I know is so important. Fats, fats don’t make us fat and they’re often super essential during menopause. And before I let you jump into that, Michelle, I do want to bring up too, guys, when we’re talking about hormonal balance, what we’re really talking about is optimizing for your current hormone levels. And I only say that because I think we have this idea that we’re bringing up or we’re bringing down and we’re doing that and not that we aren’t sometimes changing the levels of different things with how we’re fueling, but a lot of it is about optimizing our diet and our workout to work with our hormone levels and address what we need to see the improvements that we need.

(26:34):
But Michelle, I want you to dive into fats and even your commentary on that.

Michelle (26:39):
Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you’ve shared that because I think it’s important to when you’re going, and I’m going to just put this plug in right now, when you’re making these dietary changes, it’s going to feel a little hard, a little bit weird at first. You are going to have potentially even some dietary distress where it doesn’t feel quite as well. And I’m saying that just because your body is working on learning how to break it down, working on developing the good bacteria, so it’s better to break down. So when you’re doing these changes, don’t just try it for a day or a week and be like, well, that doesn’t work. I’m out. We do want to make sure that we’re at least giving this at least a solid month and actually comparing what our energy levels are at what we’re dealing with and kind of addressing from there.

(27:21):
So off of that, going into fat. So one of the biggest things when it comes to hormone levels changing is oftentimes we kind deal with a level of inflammation that’s going to occur. Oftentimes you’ll hear menopause is being the slow simmer state. And one of the big things with that is, yes, we’re going to be able to eat high anti-inflammatory foods, so making sure that we’re having omega threes is going to help with that. But one thing that I don’t think is emphasized enough as to why we are focusing a little bit more on fat is because when you eat dietary fat, it does help with hormone production and it helps it in a more like what you have said is finding that optimal level for you so that your body can actually produce things accurately. So one thing that does happen is because estrogen is heart protective is we often find cholesterol levels jump when we hit menopause.

(28:20):
And this can sometimes cause people to overcorrect where they’re like, oh, I got to avoid fat, I got to avoid cholesterol, I got to avoid all this stuff so that my cholesterol level is good. Your sex hormones are actually produced by cholesterol, so it’s still something that your body requires. I’ve seen some people take it way too low and we’ve had and have kind of worsened their response and their symptoms because their cholesterol was too low. So we’re really, the recommended level is really about 300 milligrams of cholesterol. Then that’s really just to make sure that we are being able to actually create and produce those hormone levels. So we’re really looking at those healthy dietary fats, omega threes, monounsaturated fats, saturated fats. So we’re looking at the olive oils, the nuts, the seeds, the fatty fish. That’s really what we want to make sure that we are focusing on so we can maintain optimal hormone production. And I’m going to say that optimal level changes with age. So this isn’t us trying to get to the same level that we were in our thirties or twenties. This is us making sure that our production is where it needs to be at the phase we’re in.

Cori (29:33):
And it’s also remembering that fats have benefit in terms of our nutrient absorption from other foods. I think we forget about that and we start to just see foods or macros in only one way or is only one benefit. And we’re like, well, then I’m getting enough because I’m doing X. And if we’re eating a lot of vegetables, making sure that we’re getting fats with them and healthy fats. Not only are we getting the healthy fats alone that really help, but they’re making other things more valuable. Everything really is so interconnected and I don’t bring that up to make you feel like you have to do everything at once, but also to recognize where maybe one area is lacking and that could be impacting the benefit you are seeing from something else else if you feel like another change isn’t fully paying off.

Michelle (30:19):
And I think that’s huge too because I mean, I think we know that bone health is important. We talk about bone health, we talk about getting in that calcium, but if you’re not eating enough fat, you’re not getting enough, your body is not able to absorb as much vitamin K and vitamin D. And those two vitamins also decline our ability to absorb and produce, sorry, not produce. Our ability to absorb does decline when we age. And so we want to make sure that we’re getting adequate fat because that is what’s required to actually be able to absorb those. And you need vitamin K. I know you probably pieced it together, but you do need vitamin K and vitamin D along with calcium to actually be able to improve your bone health and bone density.

Cori (31:02):
So we’ve touched on fats, we’ve touched on hydration, we’ve touched on fiber, we’ve touched on protein and the importance of all these things and adding them in to some extent. And we really do like that nutrition by addition, focusing on controlling what we can control in a positive direction to feel really full and fueled. Now I do want to touch on two things that we might want to reconsider our intake of. And I bring this up as a person who consumes both probably wants to consume both for the rest of her life, but also wants to understand the impact of everything I do so that I can weigh the cost and reward. Because for me, one of these things, well, I’ll give a little hint. Alcohol, I’m a craft cocktail girl, but there are phases of the year where I’m driving towards a specific goal and I might not include it knowing it is detrimental to that goal. And then in another time of year I’m like, this fits this balance. So choosing to include or not include with understanding the cost and reward of these things is really key, but also understanding the changing impact they might have. So Michelle, two things we might want to at least understand more of the cost of when we’re seeing our hormone levels change.

Michelle (32:12):
So that’s going to be caffeine and alcohol. And this is really, and again, I like that you’re saying this, it’s the balance, right? There’s going to be times where you are going to be like, yeah, this is worth it to me, and that’s completely fine, but it is just owning that choice. So when it comes to alcohol in particular, oftentimes we just kind of change in how we’re able to metabolize it and hormones do affect that. So you probably have heard like, oh, if you drink alcohol, it can slow your body’s ability to build muscle or loose fat. At the end of the day, alcohol is something that your body is going to prioritize to get out and remove from your body and how we’ve talked about your body has a hierarchy of needs and a focus that is one that it will focus and prioritize. I’m not saying that you can’t drink alcohol and lose fat and gain muscle, but I am going to tell you, your body is going to prioritize the removal of that from your body first and foremost. So if you’re someone that’s drinking a lot and very consistently and not seeing results, it may be something that you want to start removing and seeing if that is actually going to help you move forward faster. Now, oh, go

Cori (33:29):
Ahead. Oh no, I was just going to say sometimes we don’t understand how much things are linked. And if you think about menopause being the low simmer state, the slow simmer state where you see that chronic inflammation and then you’re adding in another inflammatory thing on top of the fact that it might make you feel like you’re sleeping well, but trust me, it is not improving the quality of your sleep. And if you’re feeling tired the next day reaching for that caffeine, which we’ll talk about shortly, not feeling energized, you’re creating this bad cycle and you might not realize that it’s linked to this one thing. And maybe just by cutting it out most nights and having it only on the Friday night, that fixes enough for you. It’s not that you have to do one straight elimination or maybe if you are like, I want fat loss and I want it yesterday, you do cut it out for a little bit knowing you’ll add it back in during your maintenance phase. But it is really looking at what are the struggles that you’re having and if you’re controlling a lot of good things, where might there be something that you don’t realize the impact of because of how your body has evolved.

Michelle (34:30):
I love that you touched on sleep. Yes. I so often will hear I end my evening with a glass of wine because that’s what helps relax me. That’s what helps me go to sleep. So the problem though is oftentimes alcohol, it can help relax you and can help you fall asleep. The problem is it actually affects your deep rem. Now when we are in menopause, that is something that actually is a little bit harder for us to have is good quality deep rem. So it’s something like you said to be aware of. If you are being like, oh, I just need this to be able to sleep, you may not realize that you’re putting yourself in a negative feedback where you are using that glass of wine to relax you to fall asleep, but you’re not getting good quality sleep. And so you are relying on the caffeine and the extra coffee at the end of your day to get through your workday. And then you’re building yourself up to meet to a state where now you have had this caffeine and now you need to relax yourself again so you can get on this negative circle and need to jump ship. And this is just way that we can kind of make sure that we are doing that is play around with it and see what that level is for you, see what that balance is for you, what’s worth it.

Cori (35:47):
But it’s also recognizing that what used to work might not now work and that it’s going to not feel good in the process of getting off this spiral, so to speak. You’re going to feel low energy, you’re going to feel a little cranky. That doesn’t mean it’s not working. It means that it probably is something you need even more. Now jumping into caffeine, and I want to start this off by saying I have in the past for fat loss phases, done coffee black in the morning before my workout. There’s a lot of now pushback against that with cortisol levels and different things like that. And my answer is always, that’s what worked for me in that phase to have the energy I needed to find the balance I needed just for the routine that I needed and wanted and how I like to break up my macros.

(36:26):
However, I would not necessarily recommend that for a lot of different clients or for a client in menopause. And I think it’s understanding that that doesn’t mean it was wrong. And honestly, I don’t do it as often now for a lot of my fat loss phases or I definitely don’t do it during a muscle building phase, but it’s understanding the nuance to things and how we can meet ourselves where we’re at to find something sustainable for our lifestyle. But I do want to talk about caffeine because I think it is both beneficial for fat burning but can also be detrimental with the hormonal shifts.

Michelle (36:57):
Yes, and that’s key too, is caffeine. Unlike other things, there are benefits to certain levels. So starting your day or even before if you work out in the morning and you’re using that black coffee as kind of a little bit of a pre-workout, isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Where we can get into trouble is if you are someone that has high stress levels, you’re seeing the me, you’re seeing the Meno pot, you’ve done some testing, your cortisols super high. That is something if you are starting your day with caffeine alone and you’re not eating, this is in combination with food, you aren’t allowing that cortisol level to kind of come back down. So what happens is our body’s natural rhythm, and I know this is kind of exact and everyone’s a little bit different, but they find that we tend to have spikes in our cortisol usually between six to eight in the morning.

(37:50):
So if you’re someone that is drinking caffeine and you are working out and you’re not consuming any calories or any protein in the morning, even after that workout, you’re setting yourself up where you are getting higher and higher levels of cortisol and you’re not allowing your body the things that actually requires to bring it back down. So that’s where people can kind of get in trouble with caffeine specifically in the morning. Now what I see is when we are having it later in the day is when we are hitting, and this is where it even goes back to hydration and electrolytes. So oftentimes I’ll find people feeling fatigued and when they’re feeling fatigued, they’re feeling tired, they’re like, oh, I need that extra cup of coffee or maybe an energy drink to get through the workday or to get through whatever their day has that it’s thrown at them.

(38:42):
Now the problem with that is, is it does take our body a while to actually metabolize caffeine. Women’s sleep is so affected by our hormone levels when we’re going through the shift of hormones that it can negatively affect again, that deep rem. So that’s really what we’re protecting, and it can take up to six hours to actually be able to metabolize and remove caffeine. So even if you had that cup of coffee or that extra energy drink and that afternoon to get through the day, if you’re hoping to go to bed at eight, nine o’clock to try and get a full, I know that’s early for some people, but if you’re trying to get to bed at a decent time and get good quality sleep, your body may still be trying to process that. And what I’m leaning back with the electrolytes is oftentimes if you’re hitting that fatigue in the day, it can also be a sign of dehydration. And so I often recommend if you are someone that has been reliant on a caffeine drink midday or afternoon, I have seen so many clients have so much better results by replacing that or kind of reducing the caffeine with an electrolyte drink.

Cori (39:54):
It’s understanding the nuance and everything, and again, assessing what am I struggling with and what am I doing both positive and negative? And if the positives aren’t paying off, what might I need to eliminate? And I like going to the positives first because sometimes if we do a little bit more of those, we can find our balance as well. But adjusting simply the timing of your caffeine if you really enjoy your cup of coffee, could be enough. Maybe even if you do like it in the morning and you like it on an empty stomach, then maybe you shifted a few hours later after waking up even. I’m not recommending this for everybody, but there’s so much opportunity in seeing the options when you understand why with cortisol levels being higher at that time, or even if you do enjoy coffee before your workout and you really just, it’s part of your routine, maybe mentally you feel like it gives you that little push.

(40:40):
Hey, I now do shakes. They’re protein, coffee drinks, right? Or you can make your own protein coffee shake or you have protein in a little overnight oats, not protein, coffee in overnight oats, but you can make little tweaks to routines where it doesn’t feel like you’re having to completely do something different or throw out things you enjoy. It’s just understanding why these might be important, or even owning, Hey, this is a non-negotiable. What else can I adjust? Hey, I really like my coffee first thing in the morning, but I can give up the cup of coffee later at night. Or, Hey, I like my coffee early in the morning and I have wine at night, so maybe I’ll only try one because this other one’s more non-negotiable, right? It’s all about that balance. We’re not recommending everybody do everything all at once. And so with that closing thoughts, what you would have someone start with Michelle, how you would approach these different changes to meet ourselves where we’re at?

Michelle (41:31):
Yeah, so you mentioned this couple of times, but I’m going to repeat it, is this isn’t about restriction, it’s about rebuilding. It’s about working with your body, not against your body or trying just to force yourself into a box that you don’t have to force yourself in. So really when it comes to this, I know this probably isn’t going to come as a surprise if you were only to start with one or two things. My two things, and I know Corey’s going to reverse the orders, but my two things is water and protein. If that’s the bare minimum that we can do, and we’re looking at those changes, that’s going to be where I would say, let’s put the effort there. But if you are someone that has done, has gotten a little bit more information of where your body is right now, you can also tackle, you don’t have to, you can still see results with those two things, but if you want to be more pointed at whatever your results are, maybe you found that your C-reactive protein is super high indicating that you have high levels of inflammation, and for you, you want to focus on those fats to make sure that we are taking away some of those inflammatory triggers with the olive oils and kind of focusing on that you can.

(42:44):
But that would be kind of my main suggestion is I would say start with the basics. Start with the water, start with the protein, go from there and build.

Cori (42:52):
It’s addressing the lowest hanging fruit while understanding that sometimes the lowest hanging fruit are actually the hardest changes to make. And if we try and force those, like say, cutting out caffeine or cutting out alcohol, we ultimately sabotage ourselves. So just because it technically is the easiest to reach and pick doesn’t mean it’s actually the easiest to do, which I guess the analogy kind of dies there, but just really think about what will have a big impact, but might also feel so silly, simple. You could start it today because that’s going to lead to you wanting to do more to seeing those results snowball because you’ll be able to build off of it. So just because something seems like it would have a big impact or be in theory, easy to do because it’s just cutting out X doesn’t always mean it is easy because you have that mental resistance, you feel that restriction. It doesn’t feel like a choice. So really address not only the importance to you, to your health, but also what’s a change that seems really doable. Michelle, any other thoughts?

Michelle (43:54):
No, honestly, I would just say, like you said, I’m just going to reiterate, just start with whatever the lowest hanging fruit for you is not what someone else is going to say. I know I said water and protein, but really what it is going to be that you can work into your lifestyle.

Cori (44:10):
Well, this was fabulous. A lot of great tips, guys. I hope it really helped you see the opportunity in making changes to evolve your diet, to meet your body where it is at right now, and not use hormones or age as an excuse, stop blaming them, address them instead. Have a fabulous day and a great rest of your week.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

7 Habits Of Highly Consistent Humans

by Cori Lefkowith | Jun 5, 2025 | podcast

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Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey, even the stuff you don’t want to hear. You don’t need more willpower. If you want to succeed, you need a better system. And I really think it boils down to seven habits. So I was thinking about Stephen Covey’s seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I wanted to boil down what I see as seven habits of people who succeed. And instead of saying it as Seven habits of successful people, I’m going to call it seven habits of highly Consistent Humans. And the reason I word it that way is because it’s not just about the outcome and what someone’s doing when they’ve actually succeeded, it’s about the consistency in the changes they’ve made in the boring basic habits. It’s not about perfection, it’s about finding that plan and putting in those actions and learning from every experience.

(00:56):
So that’s why I’m calling it Seven Habits of Highly Consistent Humans because that consistency in those changes, in those mindset shifts in those actions. That’s what makes them ultimately successful. Because I do think too, when we’re thinking about success, we look at a person who is successful right now and what they’re doing right then and there, not what even got them there and what they’re doing at their end goal is going to be very different than the habits they might have started with. So if we’re just going to be like, well, this athlete trains this way, they’re training that way at that stage to get to that stage, you might have to do other things and by only trying to mimic what they’re doing, then you might be holding yourself back from moving forward. So it’s consistency in those changes and in the habits and in the mindsets that I think really pays off.

(01:37):
I wanted to break down the seven habits that I find very, very valuable to help you be consistent. I will tell you that none of them are perfection. The most successful people aren’t perfect. They’ve actually probably failed a whole heck of a lot more times than any of us have. And in those failures, they have learned what they need to move forward. So we have to really reframe it in our head of, I won’t fail to, how can I fail and learn from it? But number one, and this leads into it, is assessing before we act. This is habit number one, assessing before we act. How many times have you seen a new program been like, that’s it. That looks perfect. They say that it’ll achieve all these goals, and you jump right in, it looks perfect, it looks ideal. Did you actually assess if that fits you where you’re at right now?

(02:23):
Is that person at all in the same lifestyle or having the same experiences that you’re having? What makes you think that plan will even work? So often what we’re really doing is we’re planting a seed in a field just full of weeds, but we have to clear that field first. If we want to see results, we have to do all the prep work so that the seed is primed to really grow, yet we don’t treat our goals the same way we’re planting this new habit, this new program, this new whatever in this lifestyle that’s just overgrown with all these bad habits. It’s why I always say when we’re learning new habits, there’s an unlearning phase that also has to come with it, but often we just try and force the new habit on top of what’s already there instead of even embracing that unlearning. So the best thing we can do if we want to see success, if we want to be able to get consistent with something is first assessing before we act, do the prep work.

(03:14):
Slowing down to speed up is not sexy and least, but it’s super important. Then set a personal GPS. Where do you want to go and where are you currently? And I say that because a lot of times we do have our goal. I want X. Okay, well what does X really look like? What does your destination really look like so that you can get a very clear plan in place to get there? But also where are you currently when you set your GPS, you have to enter both destination and current location to get an accurate roadmap. Yet so often we don’t really reflect on where we are now to see how far we have to go. We just assume and sort of point at a direction on there. And then on top of that, we pick a plan based on potentially what looks good based on somebody at the goal.

(03:54):
But what we don’t recognize is we’re looking at the last couple turns we have to make to get to our destination, not what they did at their starting location. We have to first start with the turn out of our driveway. I dunno about you, and maybe not quite this bad, but if we turn the wrong way out of our driveway, which I probably have done, honestly, we’re not going to be set up for success at all. We’re completely heading the wrong direction even. And then you have to turn around right from the beginning and no wonder we’re frustrated. That’s what it is when we go on a perfect plan versus assessing a plan that actually meets us where we’re at. So set your personal GPS really say, what does it look like to be at the destination? What does my current location look like and what are some steps I can do to build to get there?

(04:35):
Not just what are the last steps someone does while they’re at that destination. Then number three, spot the loop and break it. I call it the change loop because often what happens is we are really excited with a new program. We go all in and we create this habit overload where we’re doing so many changes that we feel like we’re just will powering our way through and we get more and more depleted and we think this isn’t sustainable. And then life starts to get in the way. We don’t see the exact outcome we want. The skill doesn’t seem to budge, right? And we hit a little emotional sabotage where we’re like, is this even worth it? And once we hit that point, it’s a very quick downturn into I quit and we fall off. And then eventually we get re-motivated because we don’t like where we are and we go for another program promise.

(05:17):
In order to break down a break out of that, we have to double down on what’s working. But that means that we also have to assess what’s causing that habit overload and even that emotional sabotage. So we have to recognize when are we trying to do too much? When are we trying to do habits that are too hard? When are we trying to do habits that do not match our lifestyle currently, even if they might be ideal or habits we need. Now, I’m not saying everything’s going to be easy as we’re making changes, but we do have to meet ourselves where we’re at. So if right now you are looking at a habit change that always creates that overload. And then if it doesn’t pay off that emotional sabotage where you want to quit, how can you break down one little part to double down on?

(05:57):
So if you’re like, Hey Corey, you always talk about macros. I want to track macros, but they just seem so overwhelming and I can’t hit my carbs and I can’t hit my fat. And I get really frustrated. Well, can you focus just on calories? Can you focus just on tracking? Can you focus just on protein? Can you focus just on adding protein to one meal and not even tracking to start? What is the habit you can do to build that success and that momentum over creating that overload? And then from there you can build more. But what we have to recognize is that effort doesn’t equal outcome. Effort doesn’t equal change either. It can feel like a lot of effort to do something that’s not making a whole heck of a lot of changes, which is why we’re not moving forward, which is where we can get that emotional sabotage when it doesn’t feel like the effort is paying off because effort doesn’t equal change.

(06:40):
We have to make changes to see that outcome, but we can feel emotionally like we’re working really hard without making a lot of changes just because the things that we are doing are very challenging to us. So really assess where am I repeating that loop? How am I causing myself to fall back into the same old pattern? And it’s not only breaking down habits, but recognizing things in your environment that are promoting it. If you put out your workout clothes and that always triggers you to go out, it’s not that you really got in the habit of just working out. It’s also that environment that shifted, that promoted you to do that or push you to do that. And so that can help you break out of the loop shifting your environment. If you’re always stressed and you always repeat the same pattern because you always walk into your house in the same way, how can you break that pattern, create that interrupt, that’s what will help you be consistent.

(07:24):
But you’ve got to recognize the hard you always hit that you want to turn back from. Then number four, sharpen your ax. So there’s the tail of the two wood cutters and they’re both trying to chop wood and the older wood cutter sits down to sharpen his ax at points because he knows that by sharpening his ax, he’ll be able to chop wood more efficiently. And he ends up beating the younger wood cutter who gets really mad because he didn’t take any breaks. And he is like, well, I should have beaten this guy because he only saw him as resting. It’s the whole slow down to speed up. He only saw him as resting, but really he was trying to be more efficient in his work. We don’t think about efficiency enough. We just think work harder, work harder, do more, do more, make more changes, make more sacrifices.

(08:08):
Instead of saying, Hey, how can I own? What is a non-negotiable to me? How can I own my lifestyle to plan for it? Because a lot of times when we do, we create a lot better consistency, we create a better mindset and we embrace changes more to allow them to snowball. When you feel successful with something, you want to do more of it when something doesn’t feel that bad to do, because if you’ve even owned all the struggles with it, you’re like, oh, I can do a little bit more. Right? And so we can create that efficiency in our work by how we plan ahead, how we assess what we want, how we even own that there will be struggles. And setting that GPS is a big part of it. Understanding where we are currently is a big part of it. Doing that prep work beforehand is a big part of it, but we’ve got to think about how can I be a little bit more efficient?

(08:49):
I even like to call it how can I be lazier? I’m always assessing how can I be lazier with something? How can I be lazier with hitting my macros? How can I be lazier with making it easy to get into my workouts every single time so I never miss one? How can I make it easier or be lazy with coming back from vacation so I get right back on track? The more you can start to say, Hey, I’m lazy. I want to own this and plan for that, the better off you’re going to be. It’s the efficiency of work. Number five, build systems. Don’t just rely on willpower. Things aren’t always going to be easy, but the more we make changes that meet us where we’re at, the more we’re going to build a system that drives us forward. And in building the system, it’s not just actions, it’s not just habits.

(09:27):
It’s not just tracking macros or doing workouts. It’s shifting mindsets too because our mindsets will ultimately dictate the actions we value and prioritize. And in creating systems, it’s recognizing when we don’t value or don’t prioritize something naturally, and then finding ways to make ourselves be able to do that. So something that if you don’t do at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day because you don’t fully yet value it, even though you know should value it, you know, should value meal prep, you know, should value doing your workout, but you don’t. And so at the end of the day when you are tired and you have to do all these other things, you’re going to do all those other things. You’re going to sit on the couch, well put that workout, put that meal prep first in the day, and then put at the end of the day the things you know that you will do no matter what because you do value them.

(10:10):
Creating that system is owning what you need to do to shift those mindsets, shift the environment, shift those habits, but it’s truly assessing what you need and steering into that. But it’s also making it almost so easy that you’re not relying on willpower because self-control isn’t an infinite thing. It’s like a gas tank. It gets depleted, it gets depleted from handling maybe kids getting sick and you having to pick ’em up or a boss at work doing something you don’t like, right? There’s all these other things in our life that drain our willpower and self-control when we have to respond positively or just handle them or whatever else. And so sometimes the things for us, there’s no self-control left for right. We deprioritize ourselves in favor of doing these other things. And so recognizing that to create systems that make it easy to not rely on willpower or self-control, that’s where success really happens.

(10:59):
And sometimes it’s not about doing more, it’s about doing less. It’s about learning to love the minimum even and embrace the minimum and maximize the minimum to move forward. Number six, turn pain into power. It’s painful to fail, it stinks to fall down, to have that setback, to not get the result we want, but in that is our power and that it is the best learning experiences. They stick with us. So anytime you have that struggle, own it. See the opportunity in it, see the power in it. See even that by saying, Hey, this is a positive. I can learn from this. I can get feedback from this. You’re showing yourself your own strength. That’s where strength is revealed, and confidence is built through what we overcome. So embrace that there is power in that pain and don’t minimize your goals. It might be five to 10 vanity pounds, it might be getting abs.

(11:49):
It might be things that you feel a little weird talking about, or they seem life or death are as important as your health or all these other things. Don’t minimize those goals though, because in what we overcome and what we conquer with those goals and the fact that we can dedicate ourselves and put ourselves first and get what we feel we deserve and optimize this one life too, and the struggles we overcome with those things, even if they seem for not as important a why, we’re even not valuing what we should value, that ability to overcome for those things, that pain almost, it’s powerful. And when we overcome it, it’s very, very powerful. Powerful. So don’t run from the struggles. Don’t hide from your goals. Don’t minimize them. Conquer them because they will teach you so much, which will help you move forward in so many areas of your life.

(12:38):
And honestly, the more we even say, Hey, there is pain in struggle, there will be setbacks. The more we own that and oversell the negative, the more we help ourselves get consistent with something or find minimums we can do even when there is that pain pushback. And then number seven, don’t start over. Just adjust. There honestly is no starting over in life because everything you’ve done prior has some impact on you. It’s not like a video game where you just come back and you get to restart in the size and you don’t have any of the negatives or the positives or any of those things. Don’t play enough video games, but you’re just starting over. But now with the knowledge, you’re not starting over. Everything that happened prior now has an impact. All those previous dieting attempts, they’ve turned different mindsets towards different habits. They’ve created metabolic adaptations.

(13:21):
There’s all these things that have built up. That’s why I always say when someone’s like, well, how long between these two photos? Well, six weeks, but my entire life led to what happened in those six weeks. Because I can embrace certain sacrifices. I can embrace certain tools or tactics because of the mindsets that have been created around them prior, my experiences with them, the knowledge that I have. So just recognize you are never starting over. So all you can ever do from where you’re at right now is just to keep moving forward. And the more you see it as that, the less guilt you also feel because you’re not starting over. You learn a lesson now you’re going to enact that lesson and you’re going to learn from it again. There is power in pain, but just recognize that you are not starting over. You are adjusting, and you’re going to be constantly adjusting because nothing in your life is standing still and nothing will work forever. So just remember when you are trying to move forward towards your goals, you can’t just think about the success you want. That’s why I call these the seven habits of highly consistent humans, because that’s ultimately what builds towards your goals. Getting consistent, but owning who and what you are and really reflecting on what you need at each stage to keep moving forward. That reflection, I can’t say enough about it because that really underlying all these different seven tips and habits is what makes you be able to utilize these as effectively as possible.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.

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