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I leaned out eating more. I didn't have to starve. This is a quote from one of the client emails I received, and it came off of the other day that I sent out an email asking what drew people to Redefining Strength and what really hit home. And in the emails I got back, the same pieces of advice actually kept coming up again and again. So go for a walk, listen as you meal prep or get comfy on the couch because by the end of this, you'll have the top 10 pieces of my best coaching advice according to all of you, plus one thing to do with each one. And number one, it's the one most of you fought me on the hardest, but said was the most impactful. Now, before I dive in, starting with number 10, I want to mention a word that came up almost in every single email.
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And I was oddly very flattered by it, but I think it also points to something that I really feel is a key component of what drives us to make change. In almost every email, I got the comment, "You're really real." Sometimes it was a little bit more tough love, "You're really real." Sometimes it was like, "You're fast talking weird." Sometimes it was the messy hair, don't care. But there was always a component of real. And I bring this up because I share honestly often of my own mistakes. I am very much into the practice what I preach, which is why when I have a day that I go off the rails, I share of it. When I am in a mini cut, I share of it because I think there is a component to understanding that all of this is life. There will be failures along the way no matter how much you know.
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And even the more you know, the more you recognize you don't know, so you have to keep learning. And I think sometimes we can get caught up in thinking we're more advanced than the basics and that's where we even start to struggle. So I hit on this word because when I share of everything, it's stuff that I've not only seen work for a lot of different people in a lot of different circumstances, but it's also things that I've learned to navigate myself. And so I understand the mindsets and the hangups on it because so often we just do search for a new tool or tactic or a habit to do when so much of what really holds us back is the mindsets we have with it. And you all hit on that with saying you're so real in presenting overselling the negative or saying suck it up buttercup.
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And it's those mental components that often make the biggest difference in allowing us to make the changes that we need. Now diving in with advice number 10, so I guess the least important, but the one that came up a lot still and number one is really cool. So now you got to stay to the end, whatever. But number 10, what worked before may not work anymore and it's never too late to change. I know I'm probably a broken record preaching this all the time, but I do believe that age is just a number and that strength is a choice and that at any and every age we can move forward to feeling our most fabulous. Now, does that look different based on health concerns, aches and pains? And yes, does age impact things? Yes. But it is never too late to make a change. And ultimately, because our body's evolving, because our lifestyle is constantly evolving, because of who and what and our mindsets and all these different things are constantly evolving, what used to work may not work anymore.
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And a lot of what we grew up believing has been proven even to not be as beneficial as we once thought, eating less, training harder, creating metabolic adaptations that we're now suffering from. And that means that defaulting back into what worked at one point could only be sabotaging you more now. And so I though this was really great to see because I do want to make that change of evolution isn't a bad thing. Clinging to what used to work and tying up our identity and like, oh, I'm a CrossFitter or I'm a low carb or I'm a this and defining yourself by those tools and tactics over realizing that they are something could evolve and how you're even doing them. Low carb can mean lots of different things. Doing CrossFit can mean doing lots of different things, but we have to separate out our identity from the habits that we are repeating and know that they aren't necessarily who and what define us because by doing that, we can evolve as our body needs.
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So with that, the action step I do want to give you is I want you to name one habit you might actually have recognized isn't serving you, but you've really struggled to let go of and sort of cut ties. Maybe it's a small change, maybe you've been resisting tracking because you've always sort of eaten intuitively, you've always sort of followed a list of these healthy foods, but now it's not working. Maybe you don't necessarily cut the healthy foods, but maybe even add by saying, I'm going to actually track. But I want you to think of one habit or one mindset that might not be serving you and say, Hey, how can I do the opposite and even test it just for a week? Number nine, no two bodies are the same. End of story. I'll have a lot of clients be like, oh, I want to see testimonials or what about this circumstance or oh, this person's in the same situation.
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They're not. And it's down to we each have different genetics. Yes, we each have different lifestyle patterns that we've led up into this point. We each have different lifestyles now, but even the mindsets we hold are different. The amount of pain people can endure in different ways and this discomfort with change versus even just being comfortable with restriction or even the people who say there's people who can't make it to the gym or don't like working out, but then there's other people who are like, I'll exercise all day, but changing my diet, no way. We all are comfortable being uncomfortable in different ways. And so even those mindsets, even the tools and tactics we've built up resistance against or we're open to can impact how we're going to see changes, how we're going to respond to them. Some of us are more type A, some of us are more type B.
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Some of us, the second we're told we have to do something, instantly feel restricted versus other ones of us do better with really defined rules. And the more we can own that we are unique and that we have to focus on where we are currently and even what we've done in the past to build out how we're going to approach moving forward for the future, the better off we're going to be. But the more we try and slap these ideal molds on ourselves, we think this one size fits all approach will work, the more we're going to hold ourselves back. And I see this often tied to the word should. I should be doing X. Why should you be doing that? Does it actually match you and what you are? Is that the form of the habit that's needed? Because we do get very stuck in, oh, tracking macros is this one thing.
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Lifting heavy is this one thing. It's not. There's lots of variations of that and we have to own who and what we are in order to move forward. And the way that we ultimately respond to things is going to be different. And yes, there needs to be a science backed reason for doing what we're doing, how we're adjusting our nutrition, how we're adjusting our workouts, but we can't just so fall into there is this one definitive science says this is best, this is what I have to do because there has to be nuance to it. We each want different things out of life. We each enjoy different things. And if you're an endurance athlete, me telling you, well, this is technically scientifically best for X, Y, and Z, it's good to know and we have to weigh the cost and reward, but ultimately we still have to find the balance that works for you.
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And that's the only way that you're going to get consistent enough to see results snowball. So I want to ask you just this next week, change one thing and then watch what happens. Give it two weeks, see how you respond. But really even in that, reflect on who and what you are and what you've been resisting and why you've been resisting it. Because the more you own your mindsets, your lifestyle, what's really non-negotiable in your life, what are your priorities, what are your values, the more you can make changes based off of that, that don't feel like you're sort of creating so much pain pushback against what you ultimately want. No, every change doesn't feel sustainable to start, but we do need to meet ourselves where we are if we want to move forward. And sometimes that means breaking things down into silly, simple tools and tactics that almost feel too easy, but owning that we might need the too easy versus being the all-in person can be a good thing.
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Number eight, train smarter, not harder. So as much as I talk about recomp and getting abs was one of my big goals and I prove so much more to myself in that than just losing a little bit of weight, seeing the recomp happen, for me that was a really big confidence builder because I proved to myself I could do something hard that I had told myself for the longest time I couldn't. I took my body to the next level. It shaped a lot of different things far outside of what I actually though I was working on in terms of just losing fat as the goal and it changed a lot of different practices I have. But before any of that journey, I actually started in corrective exercise because a lot of what makes me so real is that I experiment on myself. A lot of what I research even has come out of my own exploration into things and now even the exploration that I do for clients help them navigate things.
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But I got injured actually after competing in a power lifting competition where I won best overall raw lifter and my weight class as well. Though it was the strongest ever. And then I get injured right after and I'm like, holy moly, how can this be? My form looks good with everything. And yes, there were even some form corrections I found I could do, but I recognized that being an advanced lifter, I was actually very gifted at cheating. I could mimic a proper looking movement pattern while overusing incorrect muscles, seeking out mobility from other joints. And this is what led to overload and injury. So this set me down the rabbit hole of actually probably the second single most used word in all of the emails was prehab. And it's the three part prehab process of foam rolling, stretching and activation, but especially the activation. But this whole process I would say has basically, and now knock on wood, kept me injury free for the last decade and some.
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And it's because, and I've had things happen outside the gym, but in terms of in the gym, it's kept me injury and pain free so I could train the way I wanted. And part of it is regressing to progressive times, knowing where overload is starting to occur, things are starting to break down to go back to more prehab, but it's using it in every warmup so that I'm making sure that I'm mobilizing joints, relaxing overactive and tight muscles, but activating underactive ones. And I think for me, that was part of the key component because I actually ended up deadlifting like 30 pounds more than I did at my strongest for that competition because I really got my glues activated after the hip injury. And it was this whole process that made me recognize where I didn't have the mind-body connection, I didn't have the proper recruitment patterns.
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Yes, the movement looked correct, but I wasn't using the correct muscles to power it. And this ended up changing my physique and my approach to muscle hypertrophy or muscle gains as well, because if you don't feel the correct muscles working during something, you're not getting the full benefit. You're overusing smaller muscles, so you're not burning as many calories. The muscles that you're trying to target aren't even getting the value of those lifts. So the prehab process and training smarter, not just harder, really changed everything, but it's not just the prehab. It was also focusing on the fact that there's so many different forms of progression, that rest is not a bad thing, that not every strength workout should make you feel sweaty and out of breath. And if it is, you're turning all your strength workouts into cardio. It was really understanding that working out wasn't just about the calorie burner training harder.
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It was truly about training strategically with intention and purpose focus at a goal because too often we do just try and get through our workouts, burn those calories, but the gym as a training ground to not only show ourselves how we can push ourselves to be stronger, to conquer new things, to challenge ourselves to things we might have been intimidated by before that builds confidence in everyday life, but it's also a way to learn to move better for everyday life so we can twist and turn without risk of injury, so we can get up off the ground, so we can jump and chase our kids and grandkids. It's something that helps us move well for life. And it is that training ground where we have that opportunity to really be intentional and focused so we can respond in everyday life. Now number seven, consistency beats intensity and this is in every single area.
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I am a very intense person, probably why I talk so fast and I have a bumblebee brain. I'm a very intense person. I go all in with things and I like to go all in with things and I know this about myself, but I also recognize that sometimes my desire to be intense with things can ultimately backfire. It's why I can end up restricting and then going so far with the restriction, my brain is like, "Oh, heck no, I can't do this anymore." So it's recognizing where we get that intensity with things and where we feel like we have to be perfect with things to recognize that that's also slightly our brain giving us an excuse to ultimately bail on the things because it repeats a pattern that is comfortable even if we don't like it. If you've ever been like, "I've been so good all week," and then you self-sabotage on the weekend, that's a pattern you sort of train and it's a pattern that's familiar to your brain even if it doesn't like it.
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And that's where your brain is trying to keep you safe in the familiar over the discomfort of change. It's why it's so hard that first weekend when you're like, "I can't repeat this pattern." So it's why you got to find strategies, but it's also why you've got to embrace that consistency. And as a person who is a perfectionist, is an all or nothing, it's defining consistency and perfection in different ways. So setting those minimums is how can I be perfect with these minimums? Not try and do more, but actually see these minimums as the perfect thing. And the more you start to do that over searching for some ideal, the more you say, "Well, I'm here. I want to be here," and set that just a little marker, not all the way at your goal, the more you can actually ingrain that consistency. But we are what we repeatedly do.
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We are what we repeatedly say to ourselves. So we have to recognize the consistency in our environment, in our mindsets, in our habits, and how that is all adding up to us basically having the outcomes that we have. So we have to shift some of those things and it's not based on one sprint we do one week out of the 52 that's really going to add up. It has to be something we're doing for 50 out of the 52 weeks. And that doesn't mean you have to be perfect, right? There's going to be weekends you go on vacation, you're not going to care. Holiday seasons that you're doing the minimum, but it's almost not about thinking about how can we be more perfect during the perfect times. It's how can we be a little bit better than we had been at other times that weren't as ideal, that weren't fully in line with where we wanted to go.
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But consistency always beats intensity. Sometimes backing off and doing less is exactly what we need, which I also forgot the action item for train smarter, not harder, but I do want you to add five minutes of activation or even the pre-hub process, foamoral stretch and activate. Pick one area today, do it five minutes daily. You're going to see a great result. Couldn't believe I forgot that. But consistency beats intensity. I want you to even say, "What's a minimum I can do in this?" Especially if you're going into the holiday season, if you're going into a busy season, what's one way that I can make the effort of this habit feel like less? And I say that because sometimes tracking can feel like a little too much. Sometimes hitting a protein or a full macro ratio can feel like too much. So how's one way you can simplify one habit that's feeling a little bit too much right now?
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So instead of trying to go all in with it, instead of being like, "I have to meal prep for the week," well, what's one way you could set yourself up with planning that's not that same meal prep? Is it knowing a restaurant out that you could go to? Is it having a few protein snacks that you could have? Is it just prepping even your protein to use in different ways? What's one way you could simplify and create that minimum? Now number six, the more ways you measure success, the more ways you give yourself to be successful. End of story. So often, yes, we do want the scale to change. We do want that re-comp goal. We have, I want to do a pull up, pushup, whatever it is. We have this one specific outcome we want to have happen. But so often when we're actually making progress towards that, we stop or sabotage ourselves or think we need to change things and we don't keep going because we aren't measuring all the other ways the habits are actually adding up that will eventually lead to that outcome.
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We're just staring at the scoreboard instead of staying focused on the field and playing. So I will tell you the more ways you can measure success, the better off you're going to be while recognizing the fickledness of some of the different tools that you use, like the scale, all the reasons why it can fluctuate, which is why sometimes you weigh more, sometimes you step off it completely. But if you are trying to see the scale change, what are other ways you can know that your healthy habits in terms of your nutritional changes, your workouts are paying off? Is your performance in the gym improving? Is your sleep improving? Is your energy improving? Is your skin looking healthier? Are you feeling better throughout the day? Are you noticing that your clothes are fitting a little bit better? All these other signs are signs that you need to keep going.
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And if you aren't seeing a lot of these, that might mean that you need to make a change, but you need to measure success in more than one way to really keep that progress going. And I say that too, because often maintaining itself is progress because a lot of us are actually really good at losing weight. We're not good at keeping that loss and that's part of the problem. So we always think, oh, I'm not good at losing. No, you're actually pretty good at losing. You lose the weight, you regain it. The problem is that you're not doing that strategically and then you're also not embracing that maintaining is progress in and of itself. And a lot of times that's even where we see reconp happen. And maintaining isn't standing still. I just want to make that very clear. Often when we're moving into a maintenance phase, you're still going to see reconpapen.You're still going to see strengths happen.
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You're still going to see fat loss happen because things aren't really standing still. And as you even maintain at one calorie intake, if you're building muscle, you might find that you actually need to increase your calories further while maintaining your results. But if you go into holiday season and usually you gain 10 pounds and this season you even gain one or none, that's a huge win. But we need to see that as success by also recognizing the better than at specific seasons. So when we measure success in multiple ways, it's not just progress based on where we are right now. It's also based on what would've happened at other times of year or the same time of year, but in other years. Let me clarify. So like a holiday season right now, maybe you do gain a couple pounds, but if in previous years you've gained 10 and this year you gain two and this isn't even maintaining, this is seeing a backslide, that's still better then.
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And so that's still measuring success because you were better than you were the previous year. You're now going into January in a better spot. And if you keep doing that year over year and you're going to find that even because you feel so successful going into January, it may make things easier, you found better strategies, that snowballs. So measure success in so many ways so that you can really see that the habits are paying off or have true clarity that something does need to shift. But I would tell you, pick three ways that maybe you aren't measuring success to really monitor. If you've been struggling with sleep, if you've been struggling with energy, if you've been feeling off, maybe you do decide to get DEXA scans or have labs done or whatever else it is. Maybe you're using your clothes and progress pictures, not just the scale, but measure success in multiple ways, even making one of those ways that you're measuring success, there we go, as consistency in the habits.
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Celebrate that. That's you shifting your identity. That's you ingraining new things that are the launching pad for the next phase. Number five, choose your hard. I was very happy, but also slightly surprised to see this one come up. And this is a big one for me, choice, that word specifically, choice. Everything we do is a choice. It's hard to own that because it's very much easier to blame outside circumstances. And do not get me wrong, I do not think I can control everything in life. I do not think anybody else can control everything in life. I think a lot of things happen to us. However, we always have a choice in how we move forward. And if we don't choose to move forward and we allow ourselves to wallow in, we can feel down for a while. It's not that, but ultimately we have to help ourselves move forward by making a choice.
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And I think this even goes to restriction, right? A lot of times if we are looking to lose weight, lose fat, we cut things out. We feel like we have to. No, you are making a choice and you want to weigh the cost and reward of every choice you make. Hey, you do choose to indulge on that Friday night going out even while you want to see fast results. Well, that's a choice and owning it and understanding it is also what helps you avoid the guilt cycle and move forward faster. But choose your hard. And that really comes back to at every point we are making a choice and we're weighing the cost and reward. And basically it slightly owns that you can have the hard now potentially making a change that feels uncomfortable versus falling back into the familiar, or you can have the hard of potentially not being at your goals later.
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And I don't think it's fully that cut and dry. And I think sometimes it does depend where you have to balance both, but I think it is taking ownership of that and recognizing the power of your choice. And I think that's why that resonated with so many of you. But I also think it's that we do want to look for the good. We want to be like, this is the next best thing or have all these different promises. Well, the reality is that a lot of change is hard to start. It doesn't feel sustainable. It doesn't feel comfortable and we're sold that it should feel that way, but it doesn't because it's not what we've always done. There's going to be some dissonance that goes on. And so we have to pick that hard. And the more I even feel like we oversell the negative and recognize that it will be hard, the more we ultimately set ourselves up for success because we're prepared for it.
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And that's even where you get the, oh, that wasn't that bad because you expected it. So I would actually tell you to take this week and think about some of the goals you want to reach, some of the habits that maybe you've been resisting and own how hard they are, but then also own the choices you have with each. Okay, this Friday, I have something coming up and I really want to go out with friends. Here are my choices. What do I really want? And then when it comes to the situation, things don't always go as planned, but you'll at least go in prepared and say, okay, I made this choice. I don't have to do this, but I made this choice because this ultimately helps me reach my goal now. But it's also then recognizing you can make a different choice at a different phase of your journey.
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It's not set in stone. And I think that we too often get this lifestyle, one thing forever, and that also holds us back from making the choice that's valuable now. So I would really urge you, name some of the hard things this week and recognize your choice with them. Now, number four, and this is one of my favorites because I love this analogy, but don't slash all four tires. And I use this when it's talking about the situations that happened and the situations I've had happen far too many times that ultimately held me back for the longest time and sabotaged my consistency. And part of it was related to the fact that I would always cut out dessert first instead of planning it in to my macros and then finding it became more non-negotiable over time. But I would restrict dessert and then basically be thinking about cookies and cake and ice cream the entire time.
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And so ultimately what would happen is those would be around, I would have one and it was like, okay, bye-bye, to everything in the pantry. And so that was not only getting a flat tire and pulling over and looking at the flat tire, but then going and slashing the other three. And sometimes it even felt like lighting the car on fire and just walking away with it burning. But that attitude is really what set me back more than even having the cookie or even the 10 cookies at the time. It's that guilt, it's that spiral that then makes us feel like we're starting over and we're actually digging ourselves a hole because this isn't a video game where it's like, oh, my dad. Okay. I'm starting back over fresh. You have everything that happened prior and even all the mindsets, the feelings about even the habits you had because of how restricted they felt that are sort of going to sabotage you because it's that buildup, right?
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You don't recognize it, but every time you go into a new dieting phase, all of a sudden you're like, oh gosh, this is miserable because of X, Y, and Z thing. And it's the past experiences coloring you and the guilt you created around them and the restriction you created around them. So what it really is, is A, owning your choice, but B, recognizing when something happens, how can I just move forward? How can I just reflect on this? How can I see the pattern that might still be lingering there or lurking there that draws me back into this old identity to repeat this? How can I shift my environment? Because the more you recognize that, the more you get the flat and the first few times, maybe you do slash two of the other tires instead of all three, or maybe you slash all three, but you didn't like the car in fire, right?
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Slowly but surely you can make things better. And there's going to be times no matter how experienced you are or no matter how much work you've done that you are going to self-sabotage and all four tires are going to be gone. However, those times become fewer and farther between, the more you recognize the guilt spiral and how that ultimately holds you back more than the actual thing. That's where I even like starting people with tracking and just logging without guilt because it separates out even tracking from any restriction or any changes. But recognize that it is often the guilt spiral and the feeling of what we should have done, could have done, all those different things that really hold us back. But also that restriction creates that. And I say this because cravings are data. And when you start to have those cravings that are going to lead you down to the, I'm just going to slash all four tires feeling, recognize where maybe you're trying to do a little too much and you need to let off the gas just a little bit proactively so that you don't have that reactively happen.
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So I would love if you could plan your next meal rule. What that means is say, Hey, when does this tend to happen for me that I just go off the rails? Okay, so let's look at this. So what's a strategy that would help me get back on track faster? Not even not go off the rails in the first place. Can I have meal prep already planned? Can I make sure the next morning I have a workout planned? What can I do if this were to pop up? Because when you even have it, there's a little assurance in it and it almost even makes you question more in the moment, do I really want to do this? Okay, but if I do this, I have this thing. And then all of a sudden you don't do as much, right? The more we have those plans in place, even though those plans themselves might be kind of useless, the act of planning prepares us and it makes it easier to navigate the ups and downs.
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Now off of that, number three, no food is bad. I'm sorry, no food is bad. Yes. Are there more nutrient dense foods? 100%. Are there less nutrient dense foods? 100%. But the more we start demonizing things, saying things are good or bad, clean, or dirty, the more we just create guilt. And I'm sorry, there are. And I love you people. I am not one of you, but there are people who do not crave bad processed whatever foods that maybe food isn't as much part of celebration they can separate out. I'm not one of you. I am a person who likes foods that are not healthy for them. I am a person that likes to celebrate with foods. Food adventures are part of my travels. And I think the more we can recognize that is okay, food has become part of our societal norms, part of how we experience life.
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We enjoy it just for the simple fact we enjoy it. And the less we create guilt around that, the better off we're going to be. So instead of this next time you try and achieve recon being like, I can't have any of these things, say, how can I work these in with balance? Because the more you try, and I found this to be the case, instead of cutting out dessert, the more I was like, Hey, this is the dessert I really want. How can I work this in? I'm going to put this in, but I'm going to add in some other good things here. The more I start to work things around it, the more I realized, oh, I actually have to eat more nutrient dense foods to make this balance when I'm trying to hit my macros. But the more it also became negotiable, the less I found myself drawn to some of the things that weren't serving me as much because I didn't feel like I didn't have a choice, again, that powerful word, a choice in the matter.
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So stop demonizing foods because all that really does is create mental resistance, create guilt. It doesn't serve you in wanting to eat more healthy foods. It also is pushing you towards all the shoulds versus basing things on where you're at right now. Think about how hard it is for many of us to make changes. If right now you're going out to eat for every meal, the idea of having a meal prepped chicken and broccoli might seem impossible based on your schedule or based on your travel or based on whatever else. Instead of that, be like, "Hey, how could I find a couple meals out that have a few more vegetables? How could I even have a snack that's a little bit healthier from the grocery store where I buy baby carrots and hummus? What's one thing I can do or add or change that can make it a little bit better then instead of just demonizing these foods?" Because the more you tell yourself you can't have something, something's bad, honestly, the more we just set ourselves up for failure.
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So stop saying you have to have some cleaning standards. I can tell you too, I have a lot of clients who come in having very, very healthy diets who are not seeing the recount they want because their portions are out of line or not matched to what their body needs in terms of hormonal balance. They're undereating carbs, they're undereating fat, whatever else it is. And so I will tell you right now, no food is bad. Just get that through your head. There is no standard of clean eating that everybody can agree upon. I have even been told on videos that water is not healthy, please drink water. But we need to make sure that we are truly adjusting our lifestyle and owning what is important to us in that so that we can plan in those food events that we do enjoy to strike balance even around them, recognizing that creating balance, creating consistency doesn't mean that every day looks the same.
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There are unbalanced weeks, but balanced throughout the year or years, even though we don't like to think that long term. So check whether you're actually. Or actually instead, I'm going to say plan in one of your favorites tomorrow. I was going to say, look at what you've been demonizing, but I'm actually going to say plan in something that you've sort of written off as you can't have or is not good for you, even tomorrow to your macros. Find a way to work it in. And if you're like, "Okay, Corey, I really am intense with my macros right now and I'm really enjoying this intensity or this is strategy," find a way to plan it into another macro ratio or know that you can work it in this specific way because we have done mini cuts, I have done diet breaks with clients, and there are times where strategically we do cut things out as a little reset, but understand how you can work it in and that nothing has to be off limits.
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And the more you do give yourself that flexibility, the better off you're going to be. Now, number two, we're closing in on number one. Number two, you can't live in a deficit forever. And I see this more and more for women where they even think their maintenance is a whole heck of a lot lower than it is because they've died it down and then they feel like they're trying to survive off of 800 calories, seeing their recomp even become worse. They're telling me, well, I'm eat 1400 and not losing. That does not mean the 1400 is your maintenance. That means that that is what you've restricted for long enough. And ultimately at some point, what often happens and why we've gotten really good at the weight loss process is we do our weight loss habits and then we go back to old habits, which is potentially overeating, but also that we haven't ever slowly increased our calories and our metabolism does regulate the intake that we have coming in.
(28:04):
That's how we survive. And that's also why sometimes you do change deficit, you do change macros, we adapt. So you have to do a reverse dining process and retrain your body to eat more, but you can't live in that deficit forever. And as scary as it is sometimes to see that scale go up when you've worked so hard to get it down, you need to embrace that that is glycogen storage, water weight. It's not fat creeping back on. And if you do it with strategy, if you track into maintenance, because maintenance itself is a process, you will be able to eat more, feel more energized, see your metabolism be healthier, build leaner muscle. And guess what? All of a sudden you'll be like, "Oh, it's actually easier to maintain my weight than ever before eating more." This is not magic. This is not some mythical thing.
(28:43):
This is reality and it's a hard process. And the reason most of us don't have that is because, and I can tell you because I resisted it for the longest time, we don't ever embrace that process. We just think everybody else knows some secret we don't, when really we've been fighting the exact process we need of slowly increasing our calories, allowing the scale to ebb and flow a little bit, measuring success in other ways so that we can embrace that. But you've got to retrain your body to more. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck in that yo-yo dining cycle, eating less and less and ultimately, honestly, feeling worse and worse, seeing worse and worse recrump, especially if you go through perimenopause and menopause, and especially as you get older, when you're already going to be struggling to build a retaining muscle, your body is not as optimized to work with whatever we throw at it.
(29:19):
When you're younger, you can get away with a lot of things, your body's optimized too. As we get older, it's not reality. So I would actually argue if you haven't been tracking, just track what you're currently doing. Don't make changes, just take a look. You might be surprised for some of you, yes, you might be overeating, but some of you might be eating a lot less than you thought and especially a lot less protein. But just track, no changes. It'll help you build that habit. And then if you have been in a deficit for a while and you're like, "I'm eating only 800 to 1300 calories and I'm not losing or I struggle to lose or I feel like I gain the second I go on vacation," that's your body feeling like anything above that is a surplus because you've so trained your body and you've seen your metabolism so adapt to the amount you're doing.
(30:00):
Got to embrace that diet break or that reverse diet a little bit. So really be aware of that. Are you seeing big jumps on the scale at just anything? If you look at a cookie, does it feel like it jumps? That's probably a sign that you need to actually go through the process of eating more with proper macros to not heal your metabolism, but upregulate processes, allow your body to trust that it's going to have the energy coming in to have your hormones imbalance, to fuel so that you fidget more, to really push your intensity in the training, because sometimes we don't even recognize we're not being able to push inour workouts the way we think we should. It feels like we're giving 100%, but our 100% is in a true 100%. So you might be surprised by how much better you feel, how much better you sleep, how much your hair and nails are even growing and your skin is feeling more elastic, a little bit plumper and healthier because you're actually feeling well.
(30:46):
So I will tell you, take a look at that. If you've seen that scale jump a lot very easily while you've been trying to lose and it feels like one little thing sabotages you, it might mean that you've been in a deficit for far too long. And now the final tip that seemed to be the most impactful, and it's tied to number two very, very tightly, and it's the one that I get fought on the most. And trust me guys, more than anything, I want you to see the exact results that you want as fast as possible. Not only because that makes me look magical, but because I want you to succeed. That's why I got into this. I wanted success myself. I want you to succeed. I want you to find the empowerment through training and nutrition that can be found. I want you to feel your most fabulous, most confident because I also believe a rising tide floats all boats and that as we change our life, we inspire others to do the same and prioritize themselves.
(31:29):
But anyway, number one, you can't out exercise your diet. You can't change what you don't know. So I say this as being very guilty of it, and this is part of the eat more, which is attached number two. But so often we do try and just not change your diet. I was like, oh, I'll train in the gym to try and burn more calories. That leads to burnout. You can't out exercise your diet because at some point there's a point of diminishing returns. You do get injured, you're not using your workout strategically to actually build muscle. Often you're turning your workouts into more cardio, which is actually catabolic to muscle, which then leads to faster metabolic adaptations and you losing muscle, which means you burn fewer calories at rest. It's just a whole host of bad things which then can lead to hormonal imbalances. And ultimately you don't look leaner, you don't feel more energized, you feel worse and you don't like how you look.
(32:13):
So stop trying to out exercise your diet. You can't do it, at least not truly for very long. We get away with things for a while, but they're also why we're in a worse place later on. So I though it was really interesting that a lot of you have struggled like me because we're more comfortable being uncomfortable in the gym. Some of us grew up doing athletics, whatever else it was. We feel like we're also doing something with the training so that feeling of control feels good, but it's hard to adjust our nutrition because we want things. We see other people eating things. There feels like there's entitlement with it because of all that food has become in our life so much outside of just fuel, but we have to adjust our diet. And now off of this, part of that is often eating more because we have done the cardio queendom with the under eating to try and lose, but what gets measured gets managed.
(32:57):
I resisted tracking for the longest time and I can tell you it is the single best habit because if you can't see what you're actually eating now, you can't make the accurate changes. And then you get really frustrated that you feel like you're doing a lot and nothing's adding up. Tracking doesn't have to be done forever. I like to have clients come in with the attitude that they could because then we find strategies for it, but it's so many different ways. It can be pictures, it can be writing it down, it can be only tracking protein and calories, it can be tracking for macro issues. It can be tracking based on handwriting things out, what you're eating. As I said, pictures or using an app. There's just so many variations to make it work for you, containers, all these different things. But what gets measured gets managed.
(33:32):
And the more you have that accurate picture of where you're starting from without even making any changes, the more you can make small changes that meet you where you are and drive you forward. You don't have to make all the changes at once because you might be surprised by how a few changes actually snowball in a great way and you don't have to do all these other things. And by adding on all these other things, all you do is sabotage yourself. So track, see where you're currently at and then make changes. We track our workouts. If you're wanting to run a race, you track all your mileage to make sure that you're actually fueling well, that you're getting to the point where you can do the miles you need and that you have the pace that you want. We track budgets, we track all these different things because we want clarity.
(34:09):
We don't like being uncertain and that's what creates part of the frustration. Tracking creates uncertainty. Yeah, is it frustrating? Okay, yeah, but choose your heart. It goes back to that one. I can tell you what gets measured gets managed and it makes all the difference. So track just for seven days, just for seven days. See where you're at. Don't make any changes. Don't even try and make any changes. Don't feel guilty about anything. Just be like, I'm just tracking. And then pick something you can even add. Something that feels so easy that you're like, this isn't even going to do anything, but do it. That builds momentum. We don't recognize that at the heart of all of these things is the mindsets we have about all the changes we're making, the mindsets we have about our belief in our abilities. It's the mindsets. It's the mindsets that are shaped even by our environment too, but it's the mindsets.
(34:53):
So the more you recognize like, hey, this is easy, the more you're going to feel successful, the more you're going to want to do more and the more then you're going to see the progress actually snowball. So I would love to hear if I hit on ones that you would've written in about the top 10 pieces of advice, or if there's something actually missing from this list that you would add in terms of what you felt was most impactful that you've heard me say over the last, with redefining strength, 12 plus years, but in the industry almost two decades. But I'd love to hear what your favorite or even most impactful tip or piece of advice from me and Redefining Strength has been. Hope these helped. Have a fabulous day.
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