The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

140. From Emotional Eating to Fitness Freedom with Caitlin Mundy

• Kristy Castillo

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I’m super excited to welcome my friend, Caitlin Mundy, onto the podcast today!


Caitlin Mundy is a NASM-certified personal trainer and macros coach. She is passionate about helping moms 35+ get in the BEST shape of their life, without giving up what they love, and gain more confidence in the process (I’m totally here for all of that!) 


In today’s conversation, Caitlin and I chat about the power of flexible coaching, emotional eating, and fitness freedom. We’ve both seen how vital it is to take a personalized approach when working with our clients. 


While we’re there to share our expertise and help guide them, it’s ultimately up to them to take ownership of their fitness journeys. We both LOVE seeing our clients have those ‘aha’ moments along the way, and realize they are in control of the outcome!  


We also dive into setting goals that aren’t *only* weight-loss focused, why macro tracking can be an incredible, non-restrictive tool that goes beyond ‘dieting’ or fat loss, the holistic benefits of building muscle and nourishing your body, and more.


Whether you’re looking to improve your fitness, redefine your relationship with food, or find inspiration to start a more sustainable health journey, I know you’re going to resonate with Caitlin’s story + all of the goodness packed into this episode! 


In today’s episode, From Emotional Eating to Fitness Freedom, we cover:

  • Caitlin’s journey from chronic, yo-yo dieter, to becoming a certified personal trainer and macros coach
  • Why your goals should be more than weight-loss focused, and instead, set from a place of ‘wholeness’
  • Why being in the ‘driver’s seat’ for your health & fitness is going to be more impactful, compared to having a coach tell you everything to do
  • The power that comes from eating food that truly NOURISHES your body
  • Realizing that macro tracking is a beneficial tool that goes way beyond you needing to be in a ‘calorie deficit’
  • Why reaching your ‘goal weight’ may not *actually* leave you feeling happy and fulfilled like you thought
  • Viewing your nutrition and overall health as a lifestyle change, vs. another ‘diet’ that you will cycle in and out of
  • Why embracing failure is essential for personal growth + understanding that tracking progress is helpful for areas of improvement (not harmful) 


Links/Resources:

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. I'm super excited. I have an amazing guest with me today. Her name is Caitlin Mundy. Caitlin is a NASM certified personal trainer and macro coach who helps moms of over 35 get in the best shape of their life without giving up anything they love. We love that. I will tag her in the show notes and put a little bit more of her information in the show notes as well, so you can give her a follow.

Speaker 1:

Caitlin and I have chatted a few times and have so many similarities in the way that we began our own journeys with obsessive thinking, restrictive behaviors, that all or nothing mindset which I know so many of my followers and so many people in general, I think deal with, and now we're both in a much better and healthier place ourselves. And we also have so many similarities in the way that we coach our clients, so I'm really excited to get started chatting. So welcome to the show, caitlin. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited.

Speaker 1:

I know that my clients are going to get so much out of just us bouncing back and forth and just talking about our own journeys, because so many of my clients and my listeners of course, my peeps have a very similar journey to my own. I mean, you can probably relate, since you have listened to the podcast for a few years yourself. But I always am getting messages like that's so relatable, you're so relatable. The way that you coach is. You know all of that stuff and you are like that as well, since I've been following you and watching your own social media and your own life. You're the exact same way. So I'm super excited about this. So, to get started, why don't you please tell us a?

Speaker 2:

little bit about your own journey, yeah, sure, so I'll try to give you a less of a long winded version, but I think there's value. So I mean, I'll start by saying that I do think it is a little bit wild that I today am an online coach when so much of my life I feel I have struggled with my weight. I did not see this being a career or anything that I would even be involved with. When I look back on my middle school years, my high school years so I started out a typical, I would say, overweight athlete. When I think back, I was always sort of like the heaviest one on my sports teams and in my group of friends. So I took on this sort of identity of okay, this is just who I am, this is just who I'm supposed to be. I sort of identified as the hefty catcher on the team and I sort of played this role of owning that, but then also constantly explored this other possibility that I did not think would exist for me of being healthier, being stronger, being more fit, being more athletic. And so for most of my high school and college career I really did struggle with that identity piece.

Speaker 2:

I got recruited and joined a Division II college program which was pretty competitive at the time, and I remember getting my physical there where you know you get your weight right which I avoided the scale, literally, I think. Just from my freshman year of high school to my freshman year of college I avoided the scale. I avoided the scale right. I remember stepping on the scale and being the same weight as, like, the heaviest girl on the team who had a very different body type as me, of course. But that was the moment where I opened my eyes and said, oh my gosh, you know I was shocked by the number and I said, if I continue going down this road and I said, if I continue going down this road, I'm at a crossroads where I'm going to have a much different life than the life I actually want if I don't make changes here. So I would have labeled myself very typical emotional eater, binge eater. I had all of those tendencies, but it was at that point I really started to dabble in this crash, dieting, yo-yo cycle. So that began my freshman year of college I happened to leave that program, transferred to a different school. I stopped playing softball completely. So I was sort of struggling with my identity. Finally transferred to a school, started playing softball again just for the fun of it.

Speaker 2:

It was at that point I found a part-time job working at a gym and again I was still crash dieting a lot of the time, really trying to figure myself out. And I remember having I was working at the front desk with the personal trainer who was sort of there all the time. There was like one trainer in the gym. He was always there and sort of just watching his habits really inspired me that he had preached or talked about or anything other than literally the way he carried himself, the way he showed up the foods that he ate, the books he read. I just sort of got curious and started watching. Right, yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2:

I'm sort of in disbelief that people actually live healthy, fulfilled lives. I just thought people diet, people lose weight, people gain weight Like that's just what people do and that's that's sort of what I did, right, like I constantly struggled with that 20 to 30 pounds, like it was all or nothing. So I started just modeling some of his habits. I could start to see my own transformation kind of take place, and it was at that point I decided to get certified in personal training. Never really thought that I would use it. I sort of just did it for my own benefit and thought, okay, if this becomes like a backup option if I never get a real job, then great, because like most trainers, I thought this would be really cool.

Speaker 1:

There's no way.

Speaker 2:

I could actually make money.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's no way I could do it Always like this okay, here's the plan A, here's the plan B. Personal training was like plan C, fast forward. I meet my husband, we have our three children, I have a career that I'm working sort of flexibly in my life, and it was in 2020,.

Speaker 2:

I was introduced to Kelly Roach by a mutual friend. She is a business coach and at that time she had hired me to be her personal trainer and work with her team as sort of like their consultant. So in that relationship I sort of got business coaching from that team as an exchange, and that's where I really started to look at this as more of a full-time income opportunity and I was able to launch my online business Coaching Women. I was able to leave my part-time job that I had at the time, and that was at the point where I really started to learn how to create an offer, how to actually coach women, give them the result they were looking for, and create the proper systems and tools to be able to deliver that. So that's what I've been doing since then.

Speaker 1:

And here we are. And here we are. How long have you been doing this? Are you full-time now? Is this the only job you're doing? I guess.

Speaker 2:

I am full-time, definitely not full-time hours, but yeah, I don't have another part-time job or full-time job that constantly.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. I love that. What a story. I think it's so interesting. Like I think my favorite part of all that was just that you saw someone modeling behaviors that you thought, because I think just something about the way that you said that was like you don't think that there are people out there living a happy, fulfilled, healthy life. And I agree completely. If I wasn't in the position that I'm in right now and I think maybe this is true for some of your clients they don't know how to make it happen. They don't have anyone to witness doing that, doing the things. What am I supposed to do? We don't have someone that models those behaviors. And you started to realize that you noticed that about him, but a lot of people, if you're not paying attention, you wouldn't even notice that. You know what I mean. There are things that it's just like we don't even pay attention to. So that was interesting, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I think and it's interesting too, at least for me it sort of didn't believe that it was possible to even feel good. So if you never really experience feeling good, if you never actually experience eating foods that nourish your body for the sake of just nourishment, not really seeking pleasure, I think that was a big aha moment for me was like, well, not everything that I put into my body should just be for the dopamine hit to an emotional, like a temporary emotional discomfort, right, like you know what if I could nourish my body, feel really good and also enjoy fun foods when, when the occasion calls for that and and like how could that, how could that look and how could that feel? So like, just getting curious about it is sort of like for me that was step one Like is this even possible? Can I feel good? It seems like it is possible because other people are doing it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, how could that for me? And how could my life change as a result of doing things more intentional but for different reasons? What if I'm doing this for a totally different reason, other than weight loss? Weight loss.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think yeah, that's so interesting. I was reading something the other day about Actually, it was a post I created too. I kind of put it all together in my head. It was it's one of those things you know as a coach. You kind of like see something and then you do. You see it through your own point of view and then you see it through your client's point of view and it's like, how do I put that out there?

Speaker 1:

But it's like, why we start our journeys, I think, is like I want to lose weight, but really what you want is to feel better and to be more confident and to have you know, to understand foods, like we want all these other things.

Speaker 1:

But when you have someone come to you, I'm sure they're like I want to lose weight, one of their goals is to. But yeah, you don't think about all the other things that come along with that. Like, oh, if I ate this food with the intention of it nourishing my body and being able to think better, sleep better, live better and also lose weight as kind of a side effect of those things, that is a completely different way of looking at things, and also that's the same as far as workouts as well, what if I yes, you need to enjoy what you're doing, but what if I thought of my workouts as lifting, as training sessions, as to change my body, as to build muscle, to be stronger, to be healthier, all of those kind of things? And then, yes, I will look amazing too in my clothes. You know kind of a thing.

Speaker 1:

So. But I do think it's important to have someone to model that behavior and I think you weren't necessarily looking for that whereas our clients come to us because we model that behavior. So that's kind of interesting as well and that's really cool. Like you were in that place, you witnessed that kind of took on, you know, that new life for yourself, and now you're doing that for other people. It's kind of as a someone in our position.

Speaker 2:

It's kind of it's interesting, but it can be a mind fuck sometimes I wake up and I'm like this is crazy that I even get to do this, considering I've failed so many times. Your own journey without a real mentorship can just honestly take a lot more time. And I was in a position where I was okay with it, because women can be so okay. I have to lose X amount of pounds by X date and it already feels like high pressure, even saying it feels like it's coming from a place of pressure. Or if I fail, what does that mean? The stakes always are very high. You know, like the stakes always are very high and I think that's one major barrier is like to be able to remove that and almost just throw out strict timelines, throw them out the window completely and, you know, allow yourself to really learn and be okay.

Speaker 2:

So many people are like, well, this is a lifestyle, this is a journey. But if it actually is that you wouldn't come into this with such high pressure, high stake. It would be like coming from a place of curiosity and compassion and feeling a sense of wholeness. If I set goals from a place of wholeness, I I know I'm already good, but let's see if I can lift this weight across four weeks, six weeks, however long it takes. It doesn't even matter how long it takes, but let's just see that to me already feels more fun. That to me already feels like okay, this is going to be a fun goal. That, if I hit, great, if I don't, also great, because I'm going to challenge myself in the process and see how I show up, and that's exciting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so much less pressure. It's not that you don't have a goal. You do have a goal and you have a target and you have a plan in place and you're taking action. But it's not so tight. You're not going to feel like a failure necessarily if you don't hit that certain thing, because you're going to get so many things along the way.

Speaker 1:

I've had pull-ups for me or something that I just suck at and I shouldn't say that because I will get better at them, that mentality kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

But there's something that I just really, really struggle with and in the past I've worked up to doing quite a few of them and there are times that I'm like, okay, I should be able to do so many of these by now, but I can't. But at least I'm better than when I started and at least I can now do rows more and it's like I've learned so much in the process of those things. Speaking of learning so many things, I think, yeah, if people came into a fitness journey with that sense of wanting wholeness, into a fitness journey with that sense of wanting wholeness, it does create that curiosity and it also leaves so much room for error and that sounds bad. But it's not. It sounds like a bad thing, I think, to someone who's like. I don't want to mess up in my journey, but the amount of things that I've learned by fucking it up, by failing at it, by falling on my face that's how I've learned everything, I guess in my fitness journey, because I didn't have a coach.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I think that's really, I also heard recently too, I think it was just like an Instagram meme or something floating around something like, well, you hire the mentor because that person already made those mistakes. So, like, what you're hiring in that person is their experience through it all. Absolutely you three times as long to go through it and you'll still end up making mistakes. Yeah, it's so true. You don't have to make those ones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's so true. I have clients who ask me all the time what do you think about this? Or I'm experiencing this and I can say from my own experience and it's kind of surreal to go back and I was having a conversation with a client this morning actually about, like wrist issues, elbow issues, things like that, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I've learned and it's just, it's kind of something silly. But also that took months, if not a full year, of taking the guesswork out for her, where I'm like, oh yeah, this is exactly how I figured that out, and so that goes for everything from macros to workouts to mindset. But no, you're right, that is exactly, that's exactly what we do.

Speaker 1:

We do and I think what's so great about us if I can toot my own horn for a minute and yours is I know there are coaches out there that have a specific plan and they at least I have encountered them and I have clients who have encountered them and I think we talked about this a little bit on our call the other day but that have a specific plan and you have to do things a certain way and you have to check in very religiously and you have to be tracking every single thing and you have to be doing these exact workouts, and it takes out the personalization of it and it makes it impossible.

Speaker 1:

One thing I've learned for myself is it has to be for me, and another thing for my clients is like I can take what I've learned throughout my journey, knowing that I tailored it exactly to what I need. That's not what my clients need. I can say this is what I've learned, and take their life and their past experiences with dieting and figure out a way to help them with that, not necessarily say this is exactly how I did it, this is the best way to do it, but you and I are both the way that we coach are very good at figuring that out for the specific person, which, as we know, is the only way that it's going to work for them. So I think that's something that I've noticed about you.

Speaker 1:

I guess yeah.

Speaker 2:

I like that style. It's very. I think you know and can see from your own experience with coaching you're going to get the best out of your clients when you give them total autonomy. I think, ultimately, as humans yes, I think we like the idea of being told what to do down to the exact step by step. Ultimately, though, you are going to be so much better off when you're in the driver's seat, and it comes with asking the right questions and being able to really coach with compassion and have sort of like a similar style that we have.

Speaker 2:

But, yes, you definitely run the risk of wanting to just say no, no, no. Here's what you actually need to do. I'm going to ask some leading questions and allow the clients to draw their own conclusion here, which is going to be much more impactful. Give them a lot more confidence knowing they came up with it, and then they'll have a better execution as as a result. But yeah, it's, it's. It can be tricky at times and you want to just jump in and be like no, this isn't even something that should require your focus.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that does not matter. Yep, yeah, but you're so, you're so right, and I've learned that as well. It's just, and it's not that I, it's not that me telling them would be necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes they're wanting something too soon and I'm like, ooh, we're not there yet. You need to figure out. You know this step first, and the more that they figure out on their own, the more they take ownership of that, and that's where that confidence comes from, and I think that's where people stop looking at shiny objects and stop wondering. I wonder if that diet will work for me. I wonder if I need that workout program, because you know exactly what works for you as the client, because we've let you kind of walk through that. It's like we're obviously giving them the path and giving them all of the steps and the tools, but they are definitely making it their own, and that took me a really long fucking time.

Speaker 2:

Long time, for me as well, same with you?

Speaker 1:

probably, yeah, and it takes my clients a little bit longer than it would if they were to go to a coach. That's just like here's your meal plan, you know, here's your grocery list for the next 12 weeks and here's exactly what to do. And there's nothing essentially kind of wrong with the idea of that, but it's just it's so much different when they find foods that work for them and, like you were saying earlier, kind of learning to eat foods and a food, if we can talk about nutrition. For a second, learning to eat foods that nourish their body, that make them feel good, literally feel good.

Speaker 1:

I have clients that are just like just increasing my protein. This week I've slept so much better, I feel so much better. I had no idea that just protein would help me to do that. And when you just throw a client a meal plan and increase their protein, they don't understand that oh, it's the protein that helped me feel that way, or it's the extra carbs, you know. And then, along with that, you know having them just really experience this, just that, just those kind of like poofs of the brain like, oh, that's what's really helping me with that, and I love that part of just watching my clients figure that out and realize that they're in the driver's seat, they can find foods that they feel really good eating and also still fit in the foods that they love Totally.

Speaker 2:

I think with macro tracking specifically, it could be so easy to take a tool like that and use it in a super restrictive way. That may not feel restrictive. At first it may be like, oh, this is new, this is exciting, how can I implement this? And a lot of times, with my clients just starting, it's like oh wait, I realized that I actually am just eating the same foods over and over again, or I actually am unknowingly just leaving out a lot of my favorite foods out of fear that I might be over in my carbs or I might be over in my calories, that kind of thing. And it's up to us to then say, okay, let's get real, because this could be a tool that really provides a lot of flexibility. This could be a tool that really can change the game for you in terms of the way you're seeing food right now. This could be a tool that honestly, if you explore the other phases of it, doesn't even require you to be in a calorie deficit. That could be a tool that helps you hustle, find food freedom, eventually pull away from tracking completely because you've developed the trust, like there could be so many things if you choose to use it in those ways.

Speaker 2:

You know, if you're going to a lot of times when I'm back and forth in the DMs and I ask the question how long have you been tracking macros? I give out like a free guide or whatever it is and the answer is always not always, but most of the time on and off for X months or on and off for X years. And the problem is immediately you're associating this one thing with dieting, Because if you weren't, then you wouldn't be on and off. Macro-swapping is definitely not synonymous with dieting or with fat loss. Most people just don't know that, right? So you know it's always just interesting. When I bring up these things it's like, hey, are we cutting, are we maintaining, are we reversing, are we bulking? And the answers are like wait, what you could do all these other things. I literally just thought this was like calorie deficit or not. So you get to kind of deliver this whole new world that most people didn't even know existed with macros, which is what I find exciting personally.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that was when, even when the little alarm went off in my own head like oh, you don't have, like Christy, you don't have to just track macros to try to lose weight or to see how little you can eat. I feel like that's what a lot of my clients do is like they track to see how little foods they can eat during the day, which would be essentially a calorie deficit, but they don't even realize that. They just get their numbers from MyFitnessPal and then try to eat under that. I don't even know if they know, honestly, what their goals are sometimes. But yeah, I love the first question being well, what is your goal? Do you want to lose fat? Do you want to build muscle? Do you want to do both? And it's kind of like oh, like you said, there are options.

Speaker 2:

I didn't, it's almost like oh, I didn't even realize I could choose. So it's funny when you're starting out and you're kind of like okay, so we want to lose 20 pounds, but why? What is it that you think is on the other side of this? Is this a goal that you have for yourself or is this what you think you should be doing? Do we really want to build muscle?

Speaker 2:

I think you might be happier, honestly, with 10 pounds more muscle mass on your body, which would be a totally different process. We're not even talking about a calorie deficit, and that is what, truly why? And so you know, getting real specific as far as okay, if this is the goal and I think this is part of the reason why women don't fully commit or they'll have this all or nothing mindset is it's like, well, I feel like this should be my goal, like I should, but I can't really say why, or you know like where this goal is even coming from. Yeah, it's just probably years of programmed thinking that we need to be eating a certain way to even, you know, maintain a specific physique but it's like why?

Speaker 2:

We came up with that because we're conforming to societal pressure. That's never going to feel good. The goalpost is just going to move. You're never going to feel like you've made it or you've reached the goal. So yeah, getting very specific in terms of like what you actually even want and if it's the 20 pound weight loss, great, I'll validate that Absolutely. But it's gotta it's gotta be from a real deep why and not just like what you think you know this could be really nice or what you think you should do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if it's a conscious decision and I've had so many episodes on that, like we have to be so clear because you can't it's just like opening you know a map to go somewhere and if you don't know where you're going on vacation, then where are you going? You can get there. You don't even know where to. You know where you're starting at, but you don't have any direction north, south, east, west. From there. You have no clue where to start, which, again to your point, I think, is why we get so lost. Our all or nothing will start restricting foods, and then we're like well, why this isn't really working. I like those foods. You don't even know what our goal is. And if your goal is weight loss, awesome, but do you have to restrict those foods for weight loss? Probably not. So yeah, being very, very specific about your goal, and I think there's so much power to and well, I know there's so much power to and having that intentional choice. You know, when I ask a client and it's always before we even speak if I have a client comes to me and they fill out the form or just sign up for coaching, and then we get to talking and I'm like okay, this was your goal to lose 20 pounds, as, like you were saying, if you lose 20 pounds, you will look like a smaller version of what you look like now. That's great. Nothing wrong with that If that's what you want.

Speaker 1:

Do you also want to look stronger? Yes, do you also want to learn how to eat your favorite foods? And do you also want to sleep better? Do you also want you know what do you actually want? What do you want, Not what does your mom want for you, not what does your spouse want for you? Like, what do you fucking want for yourself?

Speaker 1:

Once we walk through that like once I walk through that with a client that's so empowering for them and for me I just feel like I want to give them the biggest hug, like you just made the first decision for yourself and for me. I was a grown ass woman, which is embarrassing to say, kind of, because we do conform to societal pressure. I was a fully grown ass woman before I made the first conscious decision about what I wanted my body to look and feel like, which is crazy and then, from there, I made the decision to go all in, and here I am, but I think it started, and I'm sure it did with you too. You did the crash diets and then one day you were like this isn't it, this is not it, I want something else.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I know, I experienced that myself. And what's interesting is I'm seeing a lot more clients reverse clients and maintenance clients coming off of weight loss drugs. And from my own experience when I was chasing a number on the scale, like when I had that magic number, whatever I thought it was, whatever I thought it should be on the scale, I can tell you with absolute certainty, once I did reach that weight I was my unhappiest, unhealthiest self. And what's interesting is now I'm seeing clients coming off of Ozempic Wogovi with that same mentality, chasing the number, and they make it there and it's just they're not happy with the results still, because that's what happens when you're chasing a number and not a look right, and it's it's interesting when you do sort of change your relationship with the scale and you sort of redefine like I I'll be perfectly honest, I'd probably be happier with like five to 10 pounds of muscle on my body currently Like I would love to see the scale five to 10 pounds up from what it is. But that's only because I've reframed the meaning of scale weight, which has taken time, of course. But I will say this if you are somebody who has this number in the back of your mind. I really would encourage you to get clear as to why.

Speaker 2:

So why that number? First of all, if you get there and see that you are, like you said, literally just a smaller version of yourself, with a lot more fear, a lot more anxiety, um, it's fear of weight gain, fear of specific food, like, yep, yeah, is the cost of that really worth it if you could potentially get there and still hate the result, both external, external and internal, because that's going to be very expensive, that's going to be a whole lot harder now because the process of building muscle especially after 35, becomes way harder than losing body fat. The process of building muscle it takes longer, it's going to require a lot more patience, it's going to require a lot more delayed gratification. It's always going to be worth it because it comes with a much better look, it comes with better quality of life. I mean, muscle is really the organ of longevity and if we're being honest about what we're working for, that has to be included.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, I agree.

Speaker 2:

A part of the process. I mean, if you're getting to the gym five days a week, I would argue you should be lifting all five times. But even if you're only lifting three of those five times probably an upgrade from what you're doing now. You're going to have a lot more confidence, you're going to love the result and it's probably You're going to get to a point where you're realizing okay, the last five to 10 pounds that was vanity weight and it doesn't even matter. I would much rather somebody get to that place and realize, yeah, the last five pounds doesn't actually mean anything, not?

Speaker 2:

a big deal yeah, good where I'm at, rather than keep chasing, keep chasing, keep chasing. Now we've got this long road of muscle build. We've got a longer reverse, we've got a longer maintenance. Um, not to say that it's it's not going to work. Or you know that can't be executed, but it's just going to work. Or that can't be executed but it's just going to be much, much harder and you're going to get to the point you're going to have to redefine these things anyway. So you may as well bring muscle building into the process and allow your body to really work. You can work with your body as opposed to working against your body, and it's going to feel much better if you're able to work with it yeah, 100.

Speaker 1:

I think when you, when we think about working with our body, when I'll even say that to a client and I'll say, like, what do I do when I feel like this? And I'm like, acknowledge that you feel like that and and work with that. You know, if you're starving one day, then we need to eat more. I think that's just such a foreign concept, which is so fucked up, that listening to our bodies and doing something good for ourselves is something that we have to learn, but we do. Also, I know that a lot of my clients coming off of those weight loss supplements or drugs. It's a step backwards and I mean I know people get into it with the idea of losing weight only. I mean from my client's experience and the things that they aren't told and don't realize is that their metabolism is slowed down, their muscle mass is gone. It's such a huge step backwards and you can't maintain that. What are you going to do afterwards? It's like a really bad crash diet and then they have so much work to do, so much work to do. If we could list out all of the things that that does damage for and then all of the things you're going to have to do going forward. I was talking to a client the other day and I'm like man, if there was one thing I knew, it would be in my twenties to start lifting weights and I actually talked about this on a podcast that will come out before this one. But I was just like if there was one thing I could do going, you know, starting over, it would be to just build as much muscle as possible and eat as much protein as possible and just learn to love my body and do things that were healthy for me.

Speaker 1:

And unfortunately, that's just mostly because I grew up in that era of skinny, skinny, skinny, skinny. You know people, famous people. Jessica Simpson was one of the people that I remember being like overweight in my time and she was probably my size I mean, she was not huge and you know just the magazines and the people that were out, you know, at that time and just it was growing up in that culture of just being skinny, being skinny A certain size. Jean, I thought I looked really good in when I was in high school and it's just, you get attached to those things instead of thinking, yeah, what do I want, what do I wanna feel like, what's healthy for me, and it's just again making those conscious decisions, and macro tracking is a huge piece of that.

Speaker 1:

I think, to kind of circle back to where we started, like, macro tracking is yes, it's awareness of what you're feeding your body you can use. It's a tool not only to lose weight but to build muscle to gain weight if you need to. A lot of people have trouble gaining weight and learning to eat properly and that's a tool to do that. It just takes the food and literally tells you what it's made out of carbs, fats and proteins and it's not good, it's not bad, it's food. And the more you track, the more in my opinion and with my clients, the way that I think you and I both coach it helps you to have a better relationship with food. It takes out the good and bad and really creates that confidence around it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really. It's interesting when you know you get to working with a client or a group of people and they start to look back at their logs. I coach averages, I don't know about you, but we look at weekly averages and really focus on a lot of data. And what's cool is to be able to take that data and say, wow, I was able to eat ice cream every single night this week and still see results. Or I was able to still eat my kid's snack when I wanted it and it actually fit into my macros. It didn't light up red when I plugged it into my fitness pal saying you should not eat this, you are bad for eating this. That actually doesn't exist and it can totally fit. Or guess what? We're all human. We can be a little bit off here and there and we can quickly redirect. So, bringing it back to a quantitative yes, these were the numbers, but also what was the level of enjoyment that I had in this process? Because there's got to be a balance of the two.

Speaker 2:

I mean, if there's just no enjoyability, you're going to have a much harder time really getting that question that you need to keep up with this stuff Because if you can find the balance of enjoyability, it's going to be a whole lot easier to stick to yeah Right Long-term, and that's what we all want. Nobody wants to lose the 20 pounds just to gain it back. You want to lose the 20 pounds and then keep it off, but not in a way that feels restrictive or feels like fear. You want to keep it off in a way that feels comfortable. I got this.

Speaker 2:

I know that I can bring back the tool of macro tracking if I want to, but I also have the trust that I don't need to do it. I've been doing this for a long time. I don't got to weigh the food. I can eyeball things. Now I'm good. That, I feel, is the ultimate end destination I hope everybody I work with gets to. Is this point of an ultimate trust feeling yeah, absolutely. I've failed many times. I've learned from failures and I have the trust and that just that's a feeling that can't be bought or manufactured in any way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, agreed, that's. The one thing that I found with macro tracking is that it just gave me that absolute freedom. And if we're being honest and saying this is, you know, this is a lifestyle, this is a journey, well then, yeah, we do want to enjoy it. I don't want to hate the foods that I'm eating for the rest of my life. I do have a lot of people that will say, like, what I'm eating has bad ingredients or I'm eating processed foods and what I eat is my business and I don't care what anybody else thinks. But yeah, I'm not going to sacrifice foods every single day that I love. This is a lifelong journey and I feel good and there is an enjoyability factor. Food again, to be honest, because I think that's a huge part of this is just, if we're just being honest, a lot of this kind of irons itself out, but food is something. When you're celebrating something, when there's a birthday, when there's a holiday, there's food everywhere, and I mean, honestly, food is our fuel, so there needs to be food everywhere. But also, there is food everywhere that it is a way to enjoy ourselves and that is a huge part of our lives.

Speaker 1:

I personally remember I've said this in podcasts before. I did not want to be 60 years old. I remember that number in my head and it was a little further away than it is now. But I would be like I don't want to be a 60-year-old woman carrying around my Beachbody containers and eating off of this food list and fucking measuring everything. And, yes, that was a tool.

Speaker 1:

And for macros, if I have plants that want to weigh and then they want to go to measuring and then they want to go to eyeballing, and then they just know that's the way to go through it, but they have to get themselves through that. I can't weigh it for them, I can't track it for them. That's something that they have to do. But that's where that confidence comes from. And knowing when my friends are doing some flashy diet, I'm like good for you, I don't need any part of that. I know exactly what the fuck I'm doing over here. So, yeah, I think being very intentional with the macro tracking and, again, if you do want it to be lifelong, you do have to have some enjoyment. You are going to fall on your face, you are going to mess up, you are going to have bad days, you're going to have shitty workouts and I think the part of that knowing it's fine, that's fine, there's tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Reframing that piece specifically. The failing is good, the failing is a part of it and nobody actually looks forward to failing. I get that, I understand. But if you can go into it, understanding, failure will come, even with the best intentions. You can choose to learn from it or you can choose to try to run away from it. But if you do choose to try to learn from these experiences, you could get so much value.

Speaker 2:

When I first confronted my emotional eating, my binge eating, that was something I could have chosen to turn a blind eye to forever. Chosen to turn a blind eye to forever. And I think that will struggle forever. If they just think that's a problem that could be solved with the next diet or the next plan or the next program. But getting really real and saying if I confront this, I will be likely to still binge on occasion. However, if I do a really good job at bringing my emotional intelligence higher to what it is today and I work on not having such knee-jerk emotional responses to things, am I less likely to? And that's all I needed? Am I more likely to or less likely to? And again, getting curious, right, Because for sure, that could have been a struggle that you can continue with and mask that yeah absolutely there's a lot of things in our life that we could just turn off or turn a blind eye to, and we can function right.

Speaker 2:

But is that surviving or is that thriving? At the end of the day, I think we as humans, we want this predictability, this certainty, but we also need to constantly grow, right, and you really can't grow if everything you're doing is certain and you know exactly what's coming. So, even binging and restricting, it's a cycle that people stay in because of the familiarity. Yeah, yes, changing and growing and evolving from that requires a leap of faith. That's a little scary. There's going to be some fear there. Yeah, that's a little scary. There's going to be some fear there. Right, I think you know. Do you want to level up, or is the fear of growing outweighing the fear of change? Right, so like, or saying the same, and that's a hard question to ask yourself. But if you look in the mirror and really get honest, you will get much better answers and you will much better action. That feels in a lot more alignment than the action that you're taking because you're comfortable or you're feeling stuck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, agreed, I think that cycle, the cycle of suck, I like to call it, it's just like where? But it is comfortable because if you've been, and that all or nothing you've been binging or restricting, that's exactly what you're used to. And clients will just say I and I'm guilty of this too I just said I suck at pull-ups, it's that. You know. It's that very firm thing of like no, I just binge eat, I just can't stop eating. I love sweets, I, you know, I start over every Monday, I fall off every weekend. It's like those types of things that are just we keep saying and saying it's because like that's, yeah, that's what you have done in the past. Is that what you want to keep doing? Do you believe that there is a different way? And I think that's obviously where we come in, showing that like, yeah, we, there is a different way.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of muddy to get through it. It's a little helpful with the coach. I love, love that part. It's a hell of a lot easier. I'll see my clients be like man, you really got the hang of that a hell of a lot faster than I did. That took years to figure that out. It took you like three weeks. That's crazy, but yeah, I think that's. It's so cool to watch and have that ability to just kind of teach people and, honestly, just to kind of end this. Unfortunately I don't want to stop talking to you because we could talk about all the things.

Speaker 1:

But I think, just going through that own, I've never looked back on my journey and thought like, oh, that was terrible.

Speaker 1:

Or I think, like you said, we only learn when we fail. If we're always predicting the future and it's always going to plan, and we always know exactly what we're going to eat and it always goes perfectly and we never have to go out to eat and leave our homes, then that's perfect. But that's not the case. And if we kind of can set ourselves up for, yeah, we're gonna fall sometimes and it's not the end of the world, we're not going to gain 10 pounds of fat because we ate a piece of pizza, you know, just kind of falling and then realizing it's not so bad, getting back up and then learning to trust ourselves. I'm always very grateful for what I went through in diet wise, just because now I get so much gratification, teaching my clients and just knowing that it's making a huge difference because health and fitness does affect your entire life and that's something that I think is probably super important to know as well when you're coming into something.

Speaker 2:

The hard experiences. At the end of the day, as difficult as they are, they are typically the things that shape us. So I can think of all of the turmoil I was going through in college feeling depressed, constantly binging, crash, dieting, transferring schools, trying to find all of the things like my identity, schools, trying to find all of the things like my identity. Through all of that stress, I was still able to have an athletic career that I was proud of. I was able to meet my husband because I transferred to a different school. None of that would have happened. I had to go through all of that, and for a lot of us too, if we really think about the hard things that we've been through, there has been something on the other side of that that has been so much greater than we could have even predicted or planned.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, it really is. It's the hard experiences that we really don't want to go through in the moment that end up being so rewarding, totally worth it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think tracking is so important because you can go back and show your clients like, yeah, you've had your ups and downs, you're trending downward or you're on the right path. I think a lot of times if we don't track and we don't have that information, then you just think you're constantly maybe still in that cycle and it's hard to get out of. But having that information at hand is really helpful too to see your progress and count all of your wins. So well, that was such a good conversation. Thank you for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. I loved this. This was fun.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was so good to hear your story and about your journey, so I really really appreciate it. Again, I'll tag your. I will tag Caitlin in the show notes so you can go check her out, follow her on Instagram and say hi, tell her that you found her here on the podcast. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.