The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

150. Empowering Women in Fitness: Breaking Stereotypes, Embracing Authenticity and Building Strength + Confidence

• Kristy Castillo

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Today’s episode is a very special milestone, because…we’ve hit 150 episodes!!




As I reflect on my (almost) 3 year podcasting journey, I can’t help but feel immense gratitude for this space, and this community. Podcasting has allowed me to be my unfiltered, authentic, and very (im)perfect self. I get to be a human, and show up and do what I love every single day. 




This is truly my FAVORITE way to connect with you!




For this 150th episode, I’m sharing an EXCITING announcement (trust me - you don’t want to miss it)! I also want to dive into a topic that I’m passionate about, and NEEDS to be addressed.




I don’t know about you, but I am pretty tired of all of the stereotypes surrounding women in fitness (i.e. the very common women ‘shouldn’t’ be lifting weights, because it will make them ‘bulky’). Men (and even other women) tend to have strong opinions about what women ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ be doing when it comes to their health & fitness, and frankly, I’m OVER IT! 




While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow your glutes or build your biceps, fitness is SO much more than aesthetics. The strength training benefits for women are endless!! 




When you commit to focusing on YOUR fitness goals and surround yourself with a community of other women, you will be unstoppable. It’s time for us to be strong, be confident, take up more space, and be empowered as women. We are badass, and we are capable of SO much! 




Thank you again for being here - what a wild ride, and a GIFT it has been. I look forward to helping you unf*ck your fitness for a very long time!!



In this episode, we cover:

  • Celebrating my podcasting journey + an EXCITING announcement
  • The all-too recurrent myth that is ‘lifting will make you bulky’
  • Common stereotypes affecting women & their fitness
  • The endless strength training benefits for women
  • The unnecessary hate women receive when they share their fitness journey
  • Building confidence in your workouts at the gym, at home, etc.
  • Overcoming pressure + judgement from others when you’re on your fitness journey 



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Send me a text with episode ideas or just to say hi!

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.

Speaker 2:

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. I'm super excited to be recording this episode. First things first. Yes, I am still sick. I sound raspy, I kind of sound like shit, I kind of feel like shit. This is crazy. I'm recording this episode about a week before it comes out, so maybe by the time we're listening to this live together, I will be feeling better.

Speaker 2:

But I have been sick since before the beginning of the year. I remember going out to dinner on New Year's Eve with my husband and we ate. The food was phenomenal. But I remember on my way home feeling like, yeah, still sick, still going to sleep as soon as I get home. So I 'd already been sick even before January began and I'm still sick now. But hopefully by the time this comes out I'm feeling better.

Speaker 2:

But if you're not following me on Instagram, I was kind of talking about my sickness a little bit more over there, of course, and sharing stories and stuff. But I started with what I believe was COVID. I didn't get tested for it, but I've had it before and I know what my body feels like when I have it, so pretty sure I started out with that and then I went to the doctor and found out I had pneumonia and then a week later I went to the doctor and found out I had influenza A. So currently I'm still getting over pneumonia and influenza A. So it's been crazy. But thank you to everyone who's reached out to me and everything and kind of helped me through and deciphering things. I don't know how to feel okay through that, but I'm really bummed, honestly, that I feel kind of shitty as I'm recording this because this is a huge episode that I'm so excited about. But the show must go on and, in true Christy Castillo fit fashion, we're going to show up, we're going to do the damn thing, we're going to do our best.

Speaker 2:

But this is the 150th episode of the Unfuck your Fitness podcast and I am so excited, I'm shocked. I'm excited. I'm shocked that I've had 150 topics to cover. That was one of my biggest concerns when I started the podcast was like what am I going to talk about every single week? How am I going to come up with a topic for even one year of the podcast? And coming up this year is three years in April of the podcast and I've now thought of 150 episodes or topics to talk about for 150 episodes so unreal.

Speaker 2:

I love talking to you guys. I hope you know that this is easily my favorite part of my job right now is talking and coaching. So this podcast that allows me to talk to and coach essentially so many of you and just kind of spill out my heart and tell my stories to just strange things about me eating crust out of the trash can and saying don't eat like an asshole, and this shit isn't optional, and some of the things that come out of my mouth that you guys send me messages about and tell me that they stick with you. I love that from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for accepting me and all of my little quirks and all my little sayings and just thank you for being here. It's been really not to get too deep, but it's been really nice to have a place where I remember and I kind of want to dive into an episode about this. So let me know if you'd like this.

Speaker 2:

Actually, I would like to dive into an episode a little bit about myself, which sounds weird, but talking about how when I started to be very brief with this, when I started my fitness coaching journey, it was with a company Beachbody but also outside of that as I hired coaches and just tried to navigate the space, I thought I had to be perfect and I thought I had to show up as yes, as the leader and the person who knows more than you, essentially in the space that I'm in. Right, if you're going to hire someone to coach you in something you hope they know more than you. But I don't even know how to really say this. I was taught and I thought that I needed to show up and be perfect and to really not mess anything up and I don't know the exact word, honestly, but what I've learned is that it's okay, obviously, to be myself and to lead you and to also be authentic and to also talk about my struggles, and you welcome that and you appreciate that because I'm a human.

Speaker 2:

It was almost like I was taught and thought that I couldn't be a human, that I had to be perfect, that I had to show up on social media a certain way, and if that wasn't aligned with how I was feeling, imagine having a really really bad day and feeling really insecure about yourself or whatever. A lot of things can right, you can have a lot of things going wrong in a day, but on social media you have to show up and be happy and lead and be this other person. It's like you're always fighting against. How you're actually feeling and how you're showing up is different and it's very inauthentic and it's a mindfuck and it was very, very hard.

Speaker 2:

So this has been a space where it's taught me that it's okay and accepted and welcomed to not have a beautiful Instagram feed all the time and to not have a very clean aesthetic home all the time and to show up and want to work out all the time and just to say those things to you. And it's been so nice to just have this space is what I'm trying to say. But I would love to walk through that on another episode as well, because I feel like that's something that's missing from social media. We still expect a lot from people on social media and a lot of us like that. It's our job, so we're going to show up and give you the facts, but you're not getting everything. But this space is just so different and it's crept into my Instagram and my social media as well, where now I feel like we're just friends and we're just family. And yes, I still get some hate, obviously, but I don't care because most of you accept me and it's been really great and, honestly, I know you're benefiting from the realness.

Speaker 2:

If I felt like I always had to be perfect or I always had to be right or I never messed up, if I couldn't share my failures with you along my fitness journey, then you wouldn't have been able to relate right. If I'm just always acting like I know everything and I knew everything the whole time, then I'm not able to share experiences where you're like oh yes, I resonate with that. That's me, christy. So I think that that's really, really important. So thank you so much for being here for 150 episodes and there will be so many more episodes coming, which leads me to a very exciting announcement that I've been holding on to.

Speaker 2:

So, on this 150th episode of the Undercut your Fitness podcast, I am going to announce that I am going to start Friday episodes in addition to our Tuesday episodes. So now you get to hear from me twice a week and that starts this week. So coming this Friday, I will be dropping a new episode for you, so you get to hear me twice a week. These Friday episodes will be a little bit shorter I'm hoping between like 15, 20 minutes. They're going to be a little more digestible. I don't know where it's going to go. The options are kind of endless as far as what I want to do with them, but it's going to be sweet, it's going to be short, it's going to be spicy and I'm pumped for them.

Speaker 2:

I have been feeling lately like I just want to talk to you more and give you more information and show up more for you. I have so much to say and so, yeah, very, very soon. You're going to be hearing from me on Fridays as well, starting this week, so I'm very, very excited. I cannot wait to hear the feedback. So let me have it on Instagram. I can't wait to hear from you and hopefully, you're excited about hearing from me twice a week, so I can't wait for that. That was a super big announcement that I was also excited to bring to you on this week, so I can't wait for that. That was a super big announcement that I was also excited to bring to you on this episode.

Speaker 2:

So let's dive in to today's topic. I want to talk to you today about fitness for women and yes, I know there are men listening, and this goes for you too, of course. I know there are stereotypes for men, I'm sure, in fitness, but this is specifically going to be about women in fitness. But I want you to listen anyway, because if you have a woman in your life and I know that you do whether it be your mom, your girlfriend, your wife, your sister, you're a friend. You're at the gym watching a woman work out not creepy, but you know what I mean. This can relate and I just want you to know how women are told and taught and what we hear and things. So this is very important for everyone. But, ladies, I want to talk about breaking some stereotypes and empowering you in your fitness journey, because I still think this is less and less these days as far as things that I hear and things that I see.

Speaker 2:

My Instagram feed personally is full of badass strong women who go to the gym and lift, and it's not really uncommon in my world to see women lifting and having strong muscular figures and having a good relationship with food and feeling confident about themselves. That's not unknown in my world, but that's what I like and that's what I follow and I'm also not new to this. So I do coach women and I have friends who and I see comments on social media. I'm mostly on Instagram, by the way. So when I talk about comments on social media or really even social media, it's really only Instagram. I'm not on TikTok much, I'm not on Facebook much and Instagram is kind of where I live and I love it and I see a lot of comments on there still and questions from women asking about lifting and things. So I know lifting is still new to a lot of people, to a lot of women. I know it's still scary. I know the gym is still a place that usually is at least the machines and the free weights and the bars. It's still very heavily men in those areas in the gym and so I know it's still hard and it's still new to show up there and feel welcome.

Speaker 2:

But I really just want to dive into this. So I think this is a great topic as a woman in fitness and breaking stereotypes and shutting down all the bullshit that we talk about this on the 150th episode. So I'm sure you've heard things, ladies, as far as lifting makes you bulky, or we even think that lifting will make us bulky, because generally we see men who are trying to get bulky, who are lifting really heavy weights and they're maybe taking something to even bulk even more. So we associate weights with bulk, with big muscles, with men right. We also hear women should stick to cardio. I even see comments still from men on women's posts saying women should not lift free weights. Women should get out of the gym. Women should not lift. It makes them look muscular and men don't like muscular looking women. And all these men throwing their opinions around as if we give a shit. But women don't look good with muscles. Women look good smaller Women, blah, blah, blah. There's all these things right From men and even from women who maybe don't want to look muscular. There are women out there who don't want to look muscular and who think muscles look gross.

Speaker 2:

I was watching a reel the other day as I was scrolling on Instagram and it was this younger girl, probably, I don't know, early 20s maybe, and she was showing her grandma this outfit she had gotten and it was a really tight one-piece workout outfit and she showed her grandma and the grandma was like, wow, you look really good in that. She's got an amazing body. And she was looking at it like, wow, where'd you get that? And she told her and then the girl flexed and the grandma said, oh, don't flex, I don't like muscles, I hate muscles. Those don't look good on you and it's still very much a newer thing, when we think about it, that women with muscles it's different, and so that is still very much a thing where we can even flex, sometimes. Not right now because I've been sick and I haven't really lifted in an entire freaking month, so I don't really probably have much muscle right now to flex.

Speaker 2:

But when I do lift super heavy and build, I flex sometimes and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's kind of big and I get that thought in my head like, is it too big? I'll even kind of turn to my husband sometimes or I used to, not so much anymore but I'd be like is this too big? Am I getting too big? I kind of second guess that as well, and our clothes fit differently and the scale goes up right. There's a lot of things that come along with lifting weights, building muscle, being strong. It's a lot. When we really get down to it, it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it and this is a pretty heavy topic if I were to really dive into it. But I want to talk about the misconceptions and empower you to think about those things when they arise.

Speaker 2:

Or think about if you're scrolling through social media and you hear someone say something or you see a video talking about why cardio is best for women and women shouldn't look strong, or whatever you can think to yourself, I don't really agree with that. It empowers you to figure out if this resonates with you or not, right? So a list of the common stereotypes that I can think of are what I mentioned Women should avoid heavy lifting. It's not good for them. Women shouldn't lift mentioned. Women should avoid heavy lifting. It's not good for them. Women shouldn't lift heavy. Women shouldn't take supplements. Women shouldn't, and that's simply not true for so many different reasons.

Speaker 2:

Cardio is the best way for women to lose weight Again, not true. We think that We've heard that, even if we haven't heard it, even if someone hasn't said to us, cardio is the best way. We think when we go to the gym. Or we think when we want to lose weight, we think I need to run, I need to walk, I need to do cardio, and that's not really true. And then also something else is that fitness is only about aesthetics, which I do hear a lot, and I've also been thinking for myself lately, I hear a lot of glutes are something really popular right now. It's like you cannot get on Instagram on my feed anyway. I cannot get on Instagram right now and not see a glute building workout or a girl talking about growing her glutes and that's great. We all love a big butt, right? I get it. We want to look a certain way in the hourglass figure where you have a juicy glutes. What else do you want to call them? It is what it is.

Speaker 2:

But fitness is more than just aesthetics. It's more than just building a body. Fitness is about having a good quality life, good health, being strong, being flexible, being able to bend over and pick things up and not injure yourself. It's not all about building an hourglass figure and not all about having the body that you want. It usually starts there. We're usually like, yes, for vanity's sake or whatever, I want to look better, I want to fit in these clothes better, but when it comes down to it, it's more than just the aesthetics.

Speaker 2:

So those are things that I hear a lot that women should not lift heavy, that cardio is the best and that fitness is just about aesthetics, as if there's no other health benefits. A lot of men will say, even in comments women don't even need to go to the gym. Women look better with fat on their bodies. Women are supposed to give birth and have this fat on their bodies and they're supposed to look a certain way and their hips are supposed to look a certain way. Yeah, obviously we do give birth to children, but we can also shape the way that we look. So there's a lot of things that are said or implied that are not necessarily true. These are stereotypes. They're things that are very common and it doesn't mean that they're true. So the truth is that there are a lot of strength training benefits.

Speaker 2:

Strength training improves bone density, metabolism, overall health. I've talked about this in episodes many times before. Right, it builds your confidence. It builds your functional strength. So it's not just about growing your glutes. Yeah, that's great and that's a great bonus, and growing your glutes does make them stronger, and the glutes are the core of your body. So it's very important to grow those, but not just for aesthetics. There's so many different reasons. Right, beyond aesthetics, there's mental health benefits. Beyond aesthetics, there's mental health benefits, energy, longevity. Muscle is the longevity of your body. You need it. So, just like in men, it helps our bone density, it helps our metabolism, it helps confidence. These things are the same for men as they are for women. It's not different in those terms. And then also as far as just hormones and endurance and, like I just said, muscles, perimenopause, menopause these things are becoming more researched and more talked about now, where even during pregnancy, before pregnancy, after pregnancy it's so important to just be fit beyond aesthetics.

Speaker 2:

And I think a lot of times when I don't get this so much on my posts my Instagram is not thank God I'm not famous yet, but I see women in the gym posting, I should say, in the gym, and the comments are all about you're sharing a glute workout and your glutes aren't even big, or you're sharing this workout and you're not even that strong, or it's like cutting them down. And there are other reasons that women work out and share their workouts. Okay, I don't think that I look perfect or I'm the strongest, most amazing female on the planet, but I'm still sharing my workouts because there's other reasons to work out. It's crazy when I see someone tearing someone down on the internet in those ways, as if she has to have the perfect body and not everyone's going to think this female has the perfect body to be sharing. You're always going to get hate and that's something else I want to talk about as well but it's just crazy to think that there's only one way you can be working out for flexibility, for mobility, for aesthetics, for fitness, for your mental health. You don't have to just work out to grow a certain area of your body. You can do it just to maintain, you can do it just to feel good, just to be mentally healthy. So there's so many different reasons. So, when you see someone working out and also I'm talking about this in the sense of when you see someone working out and if you have those thoughts in your head like who is she to tell me she's overweight or she's not perfect, it doesn't matter, she's not working out for you, she's working out for herself and then sharing the journey or helping you along. So that's something that I want to talk about too. But I know for myself and my journey that, yes, I feel more strong and more empowered.

Speaker 2:

And my clients, when they come to me and they are really nervous to start lifting weights and they start at home and they have five 10-pound dumbbells at home and I'm like you're going to need 15s, 20s, 25s, maybe even get an easy bar. We're going to need to get some more equipment in your gym because you're going to feel strong and you're going to like how you feel. And it does make them feel strong, obviously, lifting weights and getting stronger and noticing some muscle and feeling like not only are they now working out to sweat and lose weight and become smaller, they're now working out to become stronger and it's so freaking cool and they're like my husband noticed my biceps, my husband noticed my legs are stronger. My husband noticed my ass looks good. My husband noticed. Or my wife noticed my kids noticed, my parents noticed, I fucking noticed. Right, it's so nice when they feel strong and they feel confident and they feel empowered and they feel good and they feel understood. This is the feeling I've been chasing this whole time.

Speaker 2:

A lot of this happens when clients come to me thinking I want to be smaller, I want to be smaller, I want to lose weight. What they really want is to feel good and to feel confident and to feel empowered and finally they're like oh my God, you understand what I'm saying. Or, even if they didn't say that, I understand what they want. They want these things to feel confident, to feel good, to feel empowered. What they're saying they want is to lose weight, but I understand the difference because I felt the same way. I guess I need to work out, I guess I need to lose weight. What I really wanted was to feel fucking good about myself. So there's a lot of different ways that that happens, but this is one way that lifting weights has really, really helped me.

Speaker 2:

And so when I see women in sports now, even like the women wrestlers, women powerlifters, martial arts, any kind of sport where it's mostly men-dominated and you're like you know, you see a woman doing something that you're like, oh my God, that's a girl doing that. Like MMA fighter, whatever, it's just like is that a girl? It's so freaking cool because good for them. Why wouldn't it be a girl, right? Anyway, those are just some things that I wanted to get across as far as stereotypes and how we feel, because it really goes so far, like I just said, you'll see a girl doing something and think like, oh my God, is that a girl doing that? And then you stop and think, well, of course, why wouldn't it be a girl? Of course it's a girl doing that. Also, it's okay to be alarmed that it's a girl too, because we've kind of been put in these boxes of girls can lift weights, girls can be power lifters, girls can be strong, girls can talk shit, girls can get it done.

Speaker 2:

It's fun to kind of think that, but then acting that out is a little bit different, or kind of seeing that in real life is a little bit different. But I think there are a couple of different ways that we can start with this, because it is different, it is scary. It's still kind of scary for me to go to a gym and show up in and I've talked about this before. I have a home gym, so I don't go to the gym very often, but it is a little intimidating for me to go in there and show up in those areas where, first of all, if I'm at a gym that I don't belong to, of course it's going to feel weird because I don't know where anything is. No one knows me, it's strange. If I was a member of said gym, it would be different for me to obviously show up in there and yeah, of course I would feel confident in there. But I think as women it does feel different.

Speaker 2:

But I think we need to start. I know we need to start just showing up and owning that and starting small, because confidence, confidence in the gym, confidence with even workouts from home you feel weird. I remember starting to lift weights and feeling like I was at home and I'm just working out with myself or my husband and I still felt like my form is off. This feels weird. This doesn't feel. I don't know. It's not something that I'm used to, so it feels different, right? So as far as building confidence in the gym and as far as lifting weights, please come follow me at KristaCastilloFit on Instagram. Please follow other women that are kind of paving the way and lifting heavy and being strong and showing up and empowering other women. I think that's so important.

Speaker 2:

But start with small goals. Start with small, manageable goals. Always go into the gym with a plan. You can't walk into a gym and expect to show up in the dumbbell section and not know what you're doing. You need to have a plan on your phone that you can look at, where it says you're doing 10 bicep curls and then you're doing 10 tricep kickbacks and then you're doing that again, and then you're doing that again. You need to have a plan that will make it so much more simple. Hire a trainer, use videos, write something down so that you have it with you.

Speaker 2:

Or go to a class. Go to a weightlifting class that's scripted and there's other people and there's a coach guiding you around. Or start boxing. Start an MMA, do some jujitsu, go rock climbing, go do something else that's focused on becoming stronger instead of smaller. It doesn't have to be weightlifting in the gym right off the bat. Start with a class if that gets you outside of your comfort zone. Start with Pilates. That shit's hard. So start with a class where you have someone guiding you, but something like, I said, boxing that would make you feel so badass. I love that. Start with that.

Speaker 2:

And then also we need to talk about overcoming the pressures of this type of thing. I remember when I first started changing my body, people noticed that I was looking good, that I was looking toned quote unquote toned. People would say, oh, you're looking so toned, you're looking so lean, never strong, never badass. It was just like you look so good, you look like you're losing weight, you look so toned, you look so lean. When I get bigger, I never get compliments. I only get compliments pretty much when I'm smaller, and I do hear a lot of people say like, oh, you lift weights. Oh, you lift really heavy. Oh, you squat.

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's like there is definitely judgment from other people, and I want to talk about this in the sense that when you are doing this, it's hard to talk about like, oh, I hit a PR in the gym today with people who don't go to the gym. It's very important to have a community of people, which I have, my community of my gym goers, and I have my community of my ladies, my clients, my hundreds of ladies on my app that talk to each other, and I'm in there as well, talking. But it's so important, I'm feeling stronger, I'm eating more, I'm feeling confident. I'm in there as well, talking, but it's so important, I'm feeling stronger, I'm eating more, I'm feeling confident, I'm feeling like a badass. My husband noticed this right.

Speaker 2:

We are saying these things inside here and it's nice, because when you are getting hate and you're getting judgment from other people which has nothing to do with you, by the way if someone is saying to you like, oh, you're looking so strong, I personally don't want to look like that, but it looks good on you If that's what you want, good for you, kind of like those backhanded comments. We're going to get those right. We're going to get comments from people I'm putting myself online so I'm going to get even more. And in real life people aren't going to say that to your face so much, but I have had people say that to me before. I've had friends say that to me before, like, oh, if that's what you want to do, I'm not looking to get bigger, I'm looking to get smaller or whatever. But that has nothing to do with me.

Speaker 2:

This comes from their insecurities, their lack of knowledge around how they want to look, how they want to feel. They're scared to lift weights. I remember watching women go to the gym and being like, oh my God, that's so badass that that girl can go into the gym and just squat. How freaking cool. I can't imagine she can do a pull-up, she can do a deadlift, she's doing all these badass things so strong. I don't know how to do that. So it feels weird, it feels like it's foreign. So of course I'm like, oh, I don't understand that. So I want to say something negative, when in reality it's because I didn't understand it and that's on me, right. So it's really important to feel confident in yourself where.

Speaker 2:

If someone says something to me about my body, I don't care. If someone says, wow, your legs are huge, I don't know if they mean it in a good or a bad way. They're not saying, wow, you look so great. Wow, what are you doing? They're saying like wow, your legs are huge. I've never seen your legs get that big before. Okay, it's just, it's weird. That has nothing to do with me, and if I like my legs and I feel confident with them, that's all that matters.

Speaker 2:

But it is very important to have a community of women around you. It's okay to be big. It's okay to take up space. It's okay to be strong. It's okay to be confident. It's okay to be a badass woman.

Speaker 2:

It's okay for people to say, wow, you have a lot of muscles. I personally don't want that much on my body, but good for you. It's okay for someone to say something kind of rude to you and not take that personally. Okay, girl, you go be skinny over there. I'm going to be over here being strong. I don't care, right. So lifting weights will not make you bulky. Having fat on your body is really what makes you bulky. If you do feel that way, women can build as much muscle as men. It takes longer, it's harder, it's so hard, but we can. It's okay for us to be muscular. It's okay. It's not not feminine, it's not not healthy.

Speaker 2:

Fitness isn't only about weight loss. Fitness can be about looking good, feeling strong, shaping your body. We can do these things too. Women can do these things. So I want to empower you and, yes, this is like so many different directions, but this is a really big topic and we can also take it a couple of different ways too.

Speaker 2:

I hope I get some feedback on this and maybe ask like hey, christy, how do you feel about this? How do you feel about this? This is what my Friday episodes will be about, too, which I'm really excited about. I can kind of dive into topics a little bit deeper and be like Ooh, let's chat about this really quick, right, going into the weekend. I want to leave you with this, so tell me if you have had people say certain things to you, or if you have been led to feel a certain way, or if you thought certain things, or if you still think certain things. Right, because this is something that we can dive into together. But what I mostly want you to know? Is these things that women?

Speaker 2:

No, we are not equal to men. That's not what I'm saying. And I mean we are equal to men. Okay, that can get a little deep. We're not equal to men as far as muscles, right. We are not built the same way as men, but we can lift just like men and we can be in the gym just like men, and we deserve to be in the gym just like men and we can work out the same way. Yes, we have different hormones and, yes, we should treat our bodies differently and, yes, we should chill out when it's that time of the month and, yes, there is a lot of differences about women and men. That's why, in that sense, we're not equal to. We're not the same as a man physically. But when it comes to lifting weights, when it comes to growing muscle, when it comes to being strong, when it comes to being confident, we deserve to show up in the gym and do a bicep curl and flex in the mirror.

Speaker 2:

You know those men that walk around the gym and they just are flexing and they've got their arms pumped out. Why can't women do that? We can do that. We can show up too and say, hey, are you done with the cable machine? I need that. Are you done with the squat rack? I need that. Let's pick up the pace here. I need it right.

Speaker 2:

We can show up, we can be strong, we can look good, we can take up space. We don't have to be skinny, we don't have to be smaller. We don't have to shoot for a smaller size of jeans. We can just choose to fit into those jeans differently. We don't have to look a certain way. Our clothes can fit us. We don't have to fit into a certain pair of clothes. We can buy clothes that fit our new, strong bodies. We can be whatever we want. We can be whatever we want. We can look however we want. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:

And if someone doesn't like the way I look or the way you look or the way you want to feel, someone doesn't like that you go to the gym. Someone doesn't like that you're addicted to protein. It doesn't matter. No one's going up to men really and saying why are you going to the gym all the time? Why are you eating like a bro? Why are you going to the gym all the time? Why are you eating like a bro? Why are you eating so much protein? Why are you chugging protein shakes?

Speaker 2:

No one's doing that, really for men. Why are you lifting so heavy? Why are you getting so muscular, dude? No one's doing that. Why are we doing that with women? So let's stop. And then women too, stop doing that to other women. It's none of your business how someone wants to look. If your friend wants to go to the gym and she wants to train her ass off and she wants to have big muscles and she wants to be strong and she wants to eat protein and she wants to look a certain way, let her go Cheer her on. Okay, understand it. You don't have to understand it, but understand that that's her journey and you can cheer her on. Okay, let's stop kind of this men-women thing when it comes to fitness in the gym. Okay, ladies, it's okay to lift, it's okay to even look a little bulky, it's okay to be big.

Speaker 1:

It's okay to do cardio and lift weights.

Speaker 2:

It's okay to do everything, it's okay. If you want to do everything, okay, it's okay to do everything, it's okay. If you want to do everything, it's okay. So let's break down some of these stereotypes. The way that we do that is by showing up and doing it. The way that we say we don't have to do this, we don't have to do cardio, we can lift heavy is by showing up and lifting heavy. So let's just do it. Let's just do it and let's cheer each other on and support each other along the way. I hope you love this episode. I freaking loved it, and I will talk to you on Friday.

Speaker 1:

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 any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at ChristyCastilloFit. I will see you next time. Bye.