Reset Your Mindset (Do You Feel Beautiful?)

Reset Your Mindset (Do You Feel Beautiful?)

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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. Do you feel beautiful? I didn’t ask, are you at your goal weight? Are you happy with your performance? I’m asking you if you feel beautiful in your own skin. And this isn’t an external thing, it’s actually an internal feeling. And I bring this up because we can feel beautiful at all stages and phases of our journey in life, and we should. And if we don’t, we need to take a deeper dive into what is going on inside our head. Because if we’re not pausing to appreciate where we’re at right now, as cliche as it is to say, enjoy the journey. If we’re not enjoying the journey, we’re not going to pause when we get to our goal and feel fabulous at that result.

(00:49):
We’ve worked so hard for. Yes, we do value what we fought for a lot more than what came easy to us, but we won’t see all the struggles as being worth it because we won’t ever pause to appreciate having gotten there if we’re not in the practice and habit of doing it prior. And we always think that reaching some point in life, reaching some goal will make us happy, but it’s really in the journey and in us becoming who we want to be, that we do feel more fabulous. I can tell you in my own quest to get abs, it wasn’t actually achieving abs that made me feel strong and fabulous and beautiful. It was realizing how much I could overcome. I had set this challenge for myself, and it was a challenge that was silly or vain or not that important. It wasn’t life threatening.

(01:34):
I didn’t have to do it, but I prioritize myself and my goals over other things, which for me was something I didn’t usually do. I usually put myself and my needs second. So it was prioritizing myself. It was going all in with something I thought I couldn’t achieve and proving to myself what was really possible. And through that I built so much strength. I felt so much perseverance. I felt so much resilience. I learned so much about myself that had nothing to do with getting abs. But when I actually finally got abs, I was so happy with the result. And the funny thing is they weren’t near as defined as they later would become because I wasn’t yet really fully knowledgeable in the area, but I was so proud of what I accomplished because it was something I didn’t think I could do. And I had built so much in the process, but it requires us to pause and appreciate.

(02:21):
So when I ask, do you feel beautiful? I really want you to look at the language you’re using with yourself, the mindsets you have about yourself and assess where did this all come from? Where did the self-doubt come from? Where did the talking down to yourself come from? Because if we think about how we would speak to a friend, a lot of the times we would never say those things. And we think, well, I’m being critical and being critical is good. I want to see my flaws. And yes, that’s all the case, but we have to recognize the language we’re using around those things because it’s very different to be like, oh, I’m a type A personality. And also own that or be like, I’m a type A personality. I just can’t ever let loose. There’s a difference in how speaking about our flaws that can make us feel positive about them, make us feel empowered by them, even as weird as that sounds or that can detract us from really seeing our fabulousness.

(03:09):
So I want you to take a deeper look. If you’re thinking, actually, I don’t feel beautiful, and be honest with yourself, be honest with how you feel right now. And remember, this can also change, right? We are all going to have those moments. We’re down on ourselves, what we’re doing, all those different things because we’re human. But I want you to take a look at the mindsets at the language that you’re using at why you’re doubting yourself or putting yourself down because it truly can be eyeopening. Because in building your beauty, you want to think about what is my relationship with other people? What is my relationship with myself? What is my relationship with food? With working out with all these different lifestyle factors, because so often we just keep doing some of the habits we’re doing because we’ve always done them and they seem to serve the purpose, but we don’t actually assess how are they making me feel?

(03:52):
If you don’t like where you’re at currently, your habits are what built your current situation. This is a result of all your habits prior. Your past hustle has led to your current situation. So if you don’t like where you’re at, really reflect on how these habits are making you feel. Yes, they might be easy. Yes, they might be comfortable, but are they really serving you and making you feel your best? But this assessment, as weird as it is, this reflection, which can be so hard because we’re stepping back to look at ourself and analyze our mindsets and really question where did some of the self-doubt, the self talking down to this language come from? It’s so key because that is the only way for us to realize all the really good things we have. And while it might feel like you’re sort of Pollyanna yourself, you’re thinking, but I feel like you’re faking it.

(04:38):
Even you want to say, Hey, I’m acting as if I’m a person. I want to be this person that is confident, states things in a confident way. This person that is confident talks to themself in this way. So you’re not just blowing smoke up your own butt was saying, oh, I’m beautiful. Oh, I’m this, I’m that. No, you’re looking for the things you believe and you’re also thinking about the person you want to become and all the traits that they have. And you’re telling yourself, I have these things because you’re going to prove to yourself, you do. You’re going to build them in the process of becoming that person. You can conquer so much more than you believe is really possible for yourself if you just say, Hey, I can build this strength. I can build this person because you can. But it starts with small tweaks and sort of owning where you’re at right now, even if it’s a place you don’t necessarily want to be.

(05:18):
So I would really encourage you if you had that, the question I asked, do you feel beautiful? Assess why you answered yes or no. And even all the different mindsets, language, you’re using those different things behind that and assess what beauty really means to you. What does it mean to be beautiful? It means so many different things to so many different people. But what is beauty to you? What do you want out of this life? Because again, what we want out of this life that is beautiful, seeing our own strength, that is beautiful, but I’d really love to hear how you’re doing that reflection and how you’re even taking steps to change your internal language, your internal dialogue, to be that of a friend really pushing you forward. And just remember, it comes back to acting as if you are the person you are building, because in taking those steps, you are going to become that person, but you have to believe it’s possible and that you can prove so much more to yourself.

 

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

Why You’re Not Losing Fat

Why You’re Not Losing Fat

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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. What if the reason nothing is working is you not stress, not the plan, not the week, but you hear me out with this because it is one of the hardest things to face. But the self-reflection is the thing that we really need if we want to reach our goals. And probably the reason we’ve been struggling to see the success we want is because we’re not facing ourselves and truly taking ownership. It is really easy to place blame on everything outside of ourselves. It’s much more comfortable. We don’t like to admit that we’re wrong, but by not taking responsibility, by not doing that hard reflection on who and what we are, we are never going to own the reality of our lifestyle, and we’re never going to be able to meet ourselves where we’re at to move forward.

(00:53):
We’re going to keep forcing ideal after ideal mold after mold program and diet after program and diet on ourselves. And we’re never going to see lasting changes because we’re going to keep going on a diet versus making a true adjustment. So the hardest thing to do, and the thing we often need to do is really take a look in the mirror and look at our lifestyle, look at who we are, look at our flaws, our past failures, look at the traits about ourselves that we even really love and use those to our advantage. But we need to take that hard look in the mirror at ourselves to be able to meet ourselves where we’re at. So if you are not seeing results, instead of blaming something outside yourself, take ownership. Take that blame and say, what could I have done differently? How did I not somehow own who and what I am to be able to meet myself where I’m at?

(01:44):
And it’s not comfortable. We want to blame all other things. That’s way easier, but that doesn’t allow us to truly take ownership of our joint journey, and that’s what keeps us stuck. So I wanted to really boil these down into some steps to take, and the first step is stop skipping. The hardest part of reflecting on who and what you are. I want you to take some time today to even write down what your current lifestyle looks like. Because your results, what you have right now is a result of all of those current habits. And maybe you’ve already started to make changes. So you have to go back a little bit to assess what you were doing before those changes. But you need to remember that your current situation is a result of your past hustle. And so what we do in change right now is going to impact our future selves.

(02:31):
So take a look at your lifestyle. What does it really look like? Think about the habits that you even like. Are those really what you need to move you forward or are doing the habits that you like keeping you stuck and not allowing you to see the results that you want, but take an honest reflection and honest look at your current lifestyle. What are the habits that you are doing on a daily basis that are building the results that you have? Who and what are you in terms of your lifestyle? And what I mean by this is think about your good traits. What are your strengths? How could those be used to move you forward? What are some of your weaknesses? How are those holding you back or fighting against some of the habits that you’re trying to implement? The more we understand ourselves and our triggers, our patterns, what cues certain behaviors, the more we can really work around those things even to move forward.

(03:19):
It’s even thinking about things that are non-negotiable for us. Think about things that you really enjoy in your life. Have you always tried to cut those things out when you’re trying to make a healthy lifestyle change? And is that part of the pushback that you’re seeing? And why you always fall back into old patterns is because you’re doing something that’s too far outside who and what you are and the lifestyle you truly want to lead. And for me, as silly as it sounds, dessert was one of these things. I always would cut out dessert first. It was high calorie. It wasn’t healthy for me, but I was someone I defined as a dessert person. I like sweet. I wanted those in my lifestyle, so I would cut them out, but it would be so short term, and I really didn’t have any thought of cutting them out long term.

(03:56):
So I never saw sustainable results. And I often felt that pushback and felt restricted so much more because of trying to make that change versus embracing, Hey, I’m a dessert person. I’m a sweet person. I want to end the night with a sweet treat. So maybe how can I work it in macro friendly variations? How can I plan in that thing I want first? How can I find this balance to work this in and own who and what I am? And this can be so many different things. It’s not only dessert, it can be bigger lifestyle factors. It can also be traits. I know that I am a planner. I like to know what I’m doing. So therefore even on times where I can’t plan, how can I plan? Because I am very type A, I like to be very meticulous with my macros when I’m trying to hit them.

(04:34):
I had that all or nothing attitude, and I’ve loosened the reign since then because I embraced that I was that way at the start, and that allowed me to not feel so restricted. It allowed me to feel more choice, which then often makes things that we think you’re even non-negotiable, more negotiable. But because I knew that and I knew as a planner and I knew if I didn’t feel like I was doing things perfectly, I would fall off. I’m like, well, how can I make myself feel like I’m doing things perfectly? So that was sometimes giving myself less to focus on or it was saying, Hey, I am planning in this buffer when I’m going out to eat so that I feel like I’m still really rocking those macros. But steer into some of your traits to evolve habits around them. But that comes first with taking an honest assessment of what your current habits are and who and what you are.

(05:16):
Then recognize that all the mistakes you made in the past are data. They’re not proof of failure. They’re not proof that you stink or don’t have enough oil power. They are just data off of which you can make better decisions if you really analyze them. So often we try and run from them. We say, well, this just didn’t fail or this just failed for us. This just didn’t work. And we think about even things like keto and we’re like, well, it was low carb. That’s why it didn’t work. Okay, well, how many other diets have not worked? There’s a common thread there, and it’s you, but it’s also you responding to that thing. So maybe it wasn’t the low carb. Maybe it was the fact that you were cutting out foods you love and have you done that even if it was lower or if it was a diet that said only eat these foods, right?

(06:00):
Where else are you creating that restriction? That was the same thing as saying, I can’t have carbs. Where ultimately you wanted the food. You didn’t know how to work it in. You didn’t know your balance, and so you fell off. Really think about your past mistakes and think about how you can a, avoid making the same mistake in maybe a different form or even be plan and prepare yourself for the struggles that will come, because there are going to be hard times no matter how much you’re really trying to meet yourself, where you’re at, because we don’t want to do what we should do all the time. Even when we slightly enjoy the habits, they become sometimes too much effort if we’ve had a stressful day, a long day or we’re tired. So really assess those mistakes to plan for them because the more you even can predict something’s coming, the more when it happens, you’re like, oh, this isn’t that bad.

(06:45):
Or you have strategies to overcome it. Or when it happens and you are human and maybe you still make the same mistake, you get back on track that much faster because you’re slightly prepared for it. Even after vacations, maybe you come back from vacation, you struggle to get back on track. So you meal prep and the first time you go on vacation, that meal prep gets you right back on your healthy habits. You’re feeling really good. Maybe one time you come back from vacation and you do that same pattern thinking, okay, this was perfect last time, and you don’t get right back to that meal prep. But instead of it being weeks, it usually is you feel like you’re starting over. Maybe you have a couple days and you’re like, okay, I have this here. I can do this. Or maybe you don’t go back to the meal prep, but you eat healthy enough and you track eating out because you want to get back to the healthy habits enough.

(07:26):
Even if you’re not fully motivated to get back to your intensive ratios, maybe you hit a minimum, but there’s always improvements that you can make by owning the past mistakes that were there if you treat them like data instead of like you failing. And again, when we make mistakes, it’s the perfect time to analyze what was off in meeting ourselves, where we’re at, where do we not notice triggers of effort, not feeling worth it even because sometimes it’s even evolving habits just to match what we need. Now with a new season, maybe tracking and doing intensive macro ratios, and we even did a mini cut before vacation felt really good, but it’s a struggle to get back to those intensive ratios right after instead of trying to force them. If we find that that just sabotages us more to want to do it even less, why don’t we come back and do minimalist macros?

(08:10):
So it’s assessing where can we feel that pushback a little bit more to even proactively give ourselves permission to step or evolve? Because I think that’s another part of the problem is sometimes we feel like we’re giving in, we’re giving up, we’re letting ourselves all the hook, and then makes it even harder to make a change, and then we pressure ourselves to try and do all of it even more, and then we end up doing nothing. Instead of saying, Hey, proactively, I’m going to just give myself this because I know this will end up creating the success mindset that makes me want to do more, but recognize that mistakes are data and then embrace even these mistakes that life is going to happen instead of trying to fix everything, so to speak. Because so often we do try to force this ideal on ourselves, which ultimately only creates worse mindsets about tools, about things like tracking.

(08:54):
We feel even worse about doing them. We feel even more restricted doing them because we’re trying to force these fixes on ourselves versus embracing what is the next step for us based on where we’re at right now. But all of this comes back to self-awareness, self-reflection. The more we can take time to pause at different checkpoints to be like, how am I progressing? What is actually going on? What could I evolve the better off we’re going to be versus just saying, oh, I didn’t hit my goal. It doesn’t feel worth it. And then throwing everything out. I know it’s really hard to do in the emotional moment, but even owning that of like, Hey, this is the pattern of self-sabotage that I have when I don’t see progress. This is what I want to do. Well, how can you then address that before you step on the scale?

(09:32):
You write out all the positive things that you are seeing. Look at your true consistency. So then you can sort of say, okay, I was consistent this week. I should see the scale change. If it doesn’t, well then what am I going to do to adjust? And that way you go in just seeing that as data versus if you just step on the scale and you feel like you’ve been consistent and maybe you even weren’t, but you didn’t look at analyze the data, then you just throw everything out. Instead of saying, oh, there is room for opportunity. I wasn’t as consistent as I thought I was, or I was off in these habits. Or Here’s room for improvement. Because guess what? No matter how good you are, how perfect you are within your macros, there’s always an area to improve. Maybe you were eating things late and it was simply that you ate closer to the time that you weighed.

(10:09):
Maybe you started a new workout progression in you’re sore so that it doesn’t even have anything to do with how perfect you were with your nutrition. But it’s like in analyzing those things too, we can also assess where our mindset is. Because effort is about mindset. These things feel like a lot of effort. It doesn’t mean that we actually made a lot of changes. And so that’s where we have to break things down and embrace even evolution in things. Embrace the failures that were there potentially, or the lack of outcome that was there to create strategies, but not just turn to how can we fix this? How can we force some mold? But all this relates back again to taking that hard look and facing yourself and really reflecting on who and what you are and what your lifestyle looks like to evolve that versus going on another program. We go on a program, we’re not truly acting as if we’re not embracing the true lifestyle change that comes with reaching a new goal. We have to focus on adjusting, not just on going on a new plan. As much as that can seem like the way.

 

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

Why You Gain Muscle Before Losing Fat (And Why It Works!)

Why You Gain Muscle Before Losing Fat (And Why It Works!)

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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. Have you ever thought, I’m gaining muscle, but it feels like my muscle is covered by just that little bit of fluff that won’t seem to budge. I want to explain why we can actually gain muscle before losing fat, even if we’re starting on a weight loss or fat loss journey. And this all comes back to previous poopy dieting practices. Sorry to put it that way, but it’s true. Things that we even thought worked to help us lose the weight in the past might be now why we’re struggling. What do we blame instead? Our age, our lifestyle, our willpower. But often it is the previous dieting practices that have created metabolic adaptations, which are now being, yes, potentially made worse by an unideal hormone environment due to perimenopause or menopause or getting older and seeing more insulin resistance or even less ability to use protein as efficiently or even other lifestyle factors like we’re not as active.

(01:04):
So yes, all these things can compound those metabolic adaptations, but a lot of them have been created by how we’ve dieted in the past and then the way we maintain our weight. And because of this, we can sometimes see when we start to feel properly and implement these proper training and guiding practices, not to say that your things were bad, so to speak, but just potentially misguided or out of alignment with what you needed. This is why we can see ourselves gaining muscle before we actually lose weight, even when we feel like we have 50, 60, 70 plus pounds to lose. And especially with that last little bit, we might find that by gaining muscle, we look leaner. So all this can be incredibly frustrating because a lot of us come in saying, I want the scale to budge and I want it to budge down. And it’s not only not budging at all, but it’s potentially going up.

(01:53):
It’s where you can even see inches being lost, clothing fitting looser in specific areas, a little bit of tone in specific areas, but then other areas not changing at all. And often the areas we want to change the most will be the last to go. So why are we gaining muscle before we’re losing fat? It’s often because when we come in and we’re doing the proper diet practices, the fueling with macros, eating enough, yes, not under fueling and then strength training. We are giving our body all the stimulus that needs to really create that muscle growth. And through that muscle growth, we will build our metabolic grade back up. But so what’s happening is you eating potentially, let’s say 900 a thousand calories before and not losing with increasing calories, you are technically putting your body into a calorie surplus to start because your body has downregulated, other processes, it’s turned off light switches, so to speak, to save energy, and now you’re starting to turn those things back on.

(02:47):
That’s why you’re seeing that muscle come back on. But it’s also why you might see the scale go up a little bit. Things might feel a little bit tighter to start because you’re also going to be storing glycogen and water weight in the muscle tissue that you’re now building. The more muscle you have, the more storage capacity you have. So as you’re increasing your calories, which is why we like to do it slowly, because if you increase it really quickly, you put yourself into a greater calorie surplus from what your body’s functioning off of. But your body will slowly start to rebuild all those processes, turn those light switches back on, use the energy efficiently, and that’s where you might see if your hair hasn’t been growing, your hair start to grow, your nails start to grow, you might start to feel more energized, not that afternoon lull.

(03:23):
You might not wake up at three or 4:00 AM in the morning when you usually find that you do wake up, you might see your stress levels even decrease. All these things can start to change as these processes reregulate, and you start to use the calories as efficiently. And then you might even start to become hungrier as your metabolic rate increases, which might mean that you have to still boost calories. All of this allows you to then build muscle so you can see that muscle coming on while you haven’t yet lost fat because your body doesn’t yet trust that it’s getting the energy and getting it consistently, and it’s still, again, learning to use that calorie surplus. At some point though, you’ll find that you balance out, you start to see those inches really going down. And if you’re lucky, and if your body hasn’t been too adapted for too long because the length of time we’ve spent undereating under fueling, doing the improper practices potentially at our set point, the longer it’s going to take to break that.

(04:12):
But you might find that all of a sudden you are starting to now see that fat loss or the scale go down. So if you’re lucky, that’s great, but if you’ve seen the scale go up or stay still and you’re building muscle vanes and fat, this is why. Okay, so from here, once you’ve rebuilt your calories to a certain point and you’ve been doing the strength training, really pushing that progression, whether adding weights, advancing movements, trying to do a few more reps, even changing up workout designs and different tools and techniques, and you’ve been pushing that muscle growth, you’ve seen those muscle gains, this is where you can then potentially use a small calorie deficit or even adjust your macros further. So in that rebuilding process, high protein is incredibly important. Over 30% I would say is the minimum, but you might even find that in that rebuilding phase, as you’re increasing your calories, your protein is at 40 or 45%.

(04:56):
And part of that is to help avoid gaining fat in the process as much as possible as you’re increasing or putting your body into a calorie surplus before it adapts. But then that will also help you as you start to shift and even see that calorie surplus or once was that surplus become a deficit because as you build lean muscle, as your metabolic processes increase, as you’re turning on more of those light switches using more energy, that once what was a surplus becomes that deficit. So that high protein will then help you preserve that lean muscle mass. And so you want to think about really focusing on protein as you’re increasing the calories before. Then, once you hit sort of that maintenance level calories, you’ve increased ’em at least hopefully 500 from where you were. That’s where you can start to use little mini cuts where you may go into a deficit of even just a hundred to 200, which is a little less than I would usually put someone in for a big mini cut if they’d been eating at maintenance or even in a true surplus for muscle building for a while, and they’ve been at their goal weight.

(05:49):
But you might do a very small surplus for only one to two weeks, which is where the mini cut component comes in with higher protein. But that’s where you can start to use some of the fat loss once you’ve rebuilt, but you’ve got to rebuild, and this is why we can see that muscle coming on. It can be a frustrating process because we’re reversing a lot of what has happened to our body to get our body to function optimally. Okay? So if you’re seeing yourself gain lean muscle, but not yet losing the fat, I know it’s frustrating, and I know you wanted to fall back into all those practices, but that’s only going to make matters worse and worse, and your body composition become worse and worse over the years. You’ve got to embrace building that muscle first to then lose the fat, and you’ve got to embrace increasing calories to then be able to create that deficit.

(06:30):
Otherwise, you’re going to end up eating 600. You body’s going to function off of it. You’re going to have a whole host of things that you see going on that are not good. You’re not going to feel energized. You’ve got to learn to fuel. So if you’ve been gaining muscle and not losing fat, embrace that reverse dieting process, increasing those calories over time, even 50 to a hundred per week for a few weeks. And even then using that higher protein. And you can cycle macros as you stay at different calorie levels to help your body adjust. But it is a slow process. But take those progress pictures, take those measurements, celebrate success in all the other ways so that you can see success leaving clues so that you can then help yourself at the right time, go back into that fat loss phase, but not rush the process.

 

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

Consistency Is Key (Even With Minimum Effort)

Consistency Is Key (Even With Minimum Effort)

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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)

Building Inner Strength (5 Tips To Increase Your GRIT)

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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

Why Weight Training Is Important For Results

Listen:

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

Change Requires CHANGE

If you’re feeling stuck and know deep down that you could be doing better, don’t wait any longer. Your life is not going to change until you take action and make a bold move towards your goals. If you’re ready to take control of your life and start moving towards the results you want let us help you achieve your goals. ⬇️

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.