The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
If you've tried all the fad diets and are sick and tired of not achieving your health and fitness goals long-term, you've come to the right place! Welcome to the Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast with me, Kristy Castillo. I'm here to help you break the annoying diet cycle, gain confidence, and reach your health and fitness goals.
This podcast will show you how to be proud of the body you have, build the body you want, and enjoy the process along the way. I'll cover topics like how to get the most from your workouts, the importance of feeding your body what it needs, and key mindset shifts that will empower you. I've broken through the BS surrounding diet culture and built my dream body, all while being a busy wife, Mom and business owner, and I know you can too!
Connect with me on Instagram at @kristycastillofit
Learn more about working together by visiting my website: https://www.kristycastillo.com/
The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
186. Real Talk on Body Recomp for Women, Authentic Fitness Journeys, Accountability, and More with Aram Grigorian
Today’s episode brings the FIRE and laughs with my special guest, Aram Grigorian!
Aram is a fitness and nutrition coach known for his no-BS approach, sarcasm, and sharp insights into what actually moves the needle for women. As the creator of Four Weeks to the Beach program, he provides the best, full-service experience for his clients, focusing on training, nutrition, and lifestyle for lasting results.
In this convo, we dive into a variety of hot topics, like the concept of body recomposition and why more women are FINALLY ditching diet culture in favor of eating more, lifting heavy, and getting strong!
We also chat about how long your fitness journey will really take, food tracking myths, GLP-1 medications, taking personal responsibility for your health and life, and so much more.
Whether you’re new to strength training, frustrated with “mom guilt”, or just tired of the same quick fixes leaving you stuck, this episode is FILLED with humor and real talk to kickstart your journey (or get you headed in the right direction).
Tune in for some tough love, practical advice from two fitness coaches who GET IT, and a big dose of authenticity - you won’t want to miss it!!
Episode recap:
- Why authenticity online matters + how to spot the BS
- What body recomp REALLY means & why it’s not about getting “smaller”
- Building awareness & consistency with food tracking from day 1
- Most people eat more than they think + why this is important
- Why clear goals, strong habits & accountability are keys to progress
- Why moms need to STOP putting themselves last if they want to see results
- Thoughts on GLP-1s and when they can actually help
- Realizing that you’ll never “arrive” at your health goals, because it’s a lifelong journey
- Avoiding a mid-life crisis by being yourself, taking accountability of your life, and finding community
Links/Resources:
- Follow Aram on Instagram @4weeks2thebeach and @real.coaches.summit
- Check out Aram’s website
- Listen to the Other Side Lifestyle Podcast
- Join FIT CLUB, my monthly membership with workouts you can do at home or the gym
- PRIVATE COACHING is my 1:1 program (choose 3 or 6 month option)
- Connect with me on Instagram @kristycastillofit and @unfuckyourfitnesspodcast so we can keep this conversation going-be sure to tag me in your posts and stories!
- Join my FREE Facebook group, Kristy Castillo Fit!
- Click HERE for my favorite fitness & life things!
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. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, this episode is going to be a little bit different. I am doing an interview with someone I really, really admire in the online space in this episode and we chatted for an hour and 15 minutes about so many good things and for that reason, there will not be a Friday episode this week. I know an hour and 15 minutes at one time is a lot to digest and it's also quite a bit of time for you to take on at once. I like to keep my episodes usually a little bit shorter and more digestible. This one is so, so good. I do not want you to have to skip anything or shoot to Friday's episode and not remember to come back to this one, so for that reason, there will not be a Friday episode this week.
Speaker 2:Please do me a favor and listen to every single second of this interview. It's absolutely amazing. He is someone I trust in this space. Look up to in this space and just really know you guys are going to benefit from, and our conversation was just so real and so much fun. I know you're going to enjoy it. So I will talk to you next Tuesday. I just wanted to make sure that you don't look for a Friday episode, or? Don't think that I have lost my mind, because, you know, consistency is one of my favorite things, and so for me to miss an episode would be detrimental, but I'm doing it on purpose, so enjoy the episode. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. Excited to chat today with, I'm just going to call you my friend, is that okay?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean listen, that's what we're all at least. Acquaintances on Instagram, yeah.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the fun part about Instagram, I feel like. I feel like when you just when you get someone, you just get someone. Your page, just it does that for me. So, yeah, we're just friends. We're just going to chit chat today. So, honestly, I just kind of want to talk for a second about how this got set up, because it was so quick. So I actually did a live video with you a couple of years ago I think it was 2022. And then I got in this headspace of when I was like comparing you know how we do that fun thing.
Speaker 2:Kind of earlier on, I had just started the podcast, and so I was kind of comparing myself to people on social media and I would see like different posts from people and think I need to talk about that. I need to talk about that. So I unfollowed a shit ton of you know fitness content, and you were one of them, and then the other day, someone had reposted something that you posted and I was like, oh shit, I need to follow him again, popped in and said, hey, thanks for your stuff. And here we are. So that's how this came about, which I kind of love. So thanks for being on. I'm super excited.
Speaker 3:Of course, and thanks for unfollowing me, yeah you're welcome.
Speaker 2:I honestly I love that. I had to say that because I tell people all the time on the show like if somebody, if you're comparing yourself, if you're you know whatever it is like unfollow, write down their name, go back and follow them when it feels right. So yeah, sorry, don't mean to offend you. No, I know, you're not offended.
Speaker 3:You'd have to do something wild to offend Way worse, I don't even. I'm not even sure what at this point would offend me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:Like I'm 41 years old, what can you possibly like? What words can you speak to me? I mean, you could call my mother a whore and it wouldn't make a difference, because she probably at some point was. She just wasn't getting paid for it.
Speaker 2:Right, which is also that would be tragic, to not be paid for it. But and also, who is that person that's, you know, saying that about, about your mom?
Speaker 3:Probably somebody who fucked her at some point.
Speaker 2:So good for you. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I think that that was part of kind of the unfollowing too is like that was part of my space, of my headspace was like I can't say certain things. I'm trying to figure out my, my voice online. What does this mean for me, All of that? And obviously I'm kind of no-transcript.
Speaker 3:I get to meet a lot of people in the space because of conferences and my conference, and what I notice very often is people show up differently in the real world than they do on Instagram, and I think that's doing their audience and themselves a disservice, because at some point you're going to have to actually talk to that person. It's almost like if you're lying on a dating profile and back when I was in the Tinder space, there would be times where women would misrepresent themselves, whether it was visually or whether it was what their preferences were and then you'd show up on these dates and you're like I'm going to see you in person at some point. Why are you lying to me and telling me that you're like this fitness freak and you're 60 pounds overweight? Like I'm good, I'm gonna know I'm gonna find out full of shit.
Speaker 3:I'm standing in front of you. Like, why like so in the same thing on instagram? Like, if you want people to buy your coaching or resonate with your message, just be exactly who the fuck you are and if that's for the people that are watching, cool. If not, they'll unfollow. Yeah, whatever, who cares at end of the day? Like I think people that are coaching on Instagram are so worried about what other coaches think about them. That's not my fault.
Speaker 3:I don't give a shit. A coach doesn't like my stuff or is going to tear my stuff apart, cool, don't buy my shit, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2:You're not going to buy it anyway, it doesn't really matter, yeah for sure. I was going to say before you went into that, like I love your authenticity and I think that's just one thing. Like when I look at your page, I'm like you know exactly who you are. Before, with like one post, honestly, of yours is just like you know exactly what you're, what you're getting, and that's very rare in this space and that's that those are the people I like to have on my podcast, because we'll just kind of that same thing for me. People are like I want to work with you because I know exactly who you are and what you're going to say, so I love that.
Speaker 2:Excited to chit chat, I want to dive into a couple of kind of important things that I and then I hope we get on some tangents along the way. So don't take these seriously, but also don't at the same time. But a hot topic over here obviously my audience is mostly women. I shouldn't say obviously, but my audience is mostly women and we've been talking a lot about body recomp and I'm loving the conversation and I didn't realize, honestly, that this when I started speaking about it. It was kind of from my own experience, you know, just saying it as a thing like body recomp, assuming people knew what that was, but it's becoming a very hot topic and I want to start here because it bleeds into so many other topics and I think the one thing that I really love about it is that women are finally started to the women I talked to, anyway are finally started to get excited about changing their body shape and eating more and seeing this as a form of lifetime instead of just being skinny, being smaller, and so I kind of want to start there.
Speaker 2:Do you? Is that something you talk about? Is that? What are your thoughts on all that?
Speaker 3:I mean every client that comes to me is a body recomp client Body let's define exactly what it is. Body recomposition is more visible muscle mass. And a body recomp client let's define exactly what it is. Body recomposition is more visible muscle mass and less visible body fat. That's it. So once we can slap a label on something and identify it, which helps people understand what the concept even means, because there's a lot of verbiage in fitness and nutrition that I think a lot of white people don't understand. And then they hear things like cutting phase and bulking phase and body recap and reverse diet, and they hear these terms but they're never really explained with any level of context, because God forbid, anybody spends five fucking minutes explaining something to somebody as opposed to just showing a picture of their ass or something else Like it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Like you standing in front of your refrigerator with your butthole out doesn't tell me what body recap means Like I need you to actually grab me by the shoulders and talk to me like I'm a three year old. I create content for three year olds, that's what I do Like.
Speaker 3:I assume that Mrs Jones, who's 48 years old, who's 40% body fat, doesn't know what the fuck a lean protein is. I'm going to assume that because, if she did, we wouldn't have a fucking 80% obesity rate in America. So I create content for people who, I believe, don't know anything about anything. What I think is funny is when people start coming into your ecosystem and they're like well, I've tried X, y, okay, cool, let's back up the truck. You don't know anything about anything because you're an accountant and you sit in an office all day and play with numbers. Let me do my job the way I do it and you can do what you do, and when I need an accountant, I'll hire you. So, at a base level, most women want body recomb because it's not like they're I don't want to say everybody, but most people aren't coming to me morbidly obese.
Speaker 2:Right same.
Speaker 3:Like morbid obesity is a very severe health issue. That's not an aesthetic problem. Like that's not. I'm trying to get to the beach by the summertime and feel pretty good in my bathing suit. It's no, I'm going to fucking die by 40 if I don't change my habits. So we have to understand that that's a qualification and a classification of people. Then there's regular obesity, which is wildly variable, which just means that your BMI is above a certain number, which we know is bullshit, because it ignores body composition, which is the level, the ratio of muscle mass to fat mass, that a person carries. So I'm kind of falling in that place. Of the women that are coming to me are somewhere between 130 and 200 and something low 200 pound range, and they want to look like not fat fit people.
Speaker 3:That's it they want to they want to be able to walk into a room and nobody's going to question whether or not they lift weights, because it's evidently showing on their physique. We're talking about years and years of effort, work, transformation to get from where they currently are to where they want to be. That's the gap that we're trying to bridge as coaches is how do we get you from your starting point, which is going to vary from person to person, to get you to this place of body recomp? And does that mean that you have to lose fat first and then gain muscle second? Does that mean you gain muscle while losing fat? Ideally, you can gain muscle while losing fat. That is body recomp in a nutshell. It's just going to be slower.
Speaker 3:And if your only metric for progress is the body weight on the floor on the scale, you're going to be disappointed. If you're gaining muscle while losing fat, you're essentially net neutral, weight-wise, like if you're gaining let's call it 200 grams of muscle because you got to think about this stuff as very small changes and you're losing three ounces of fat. Well, you're going to be probably not even on the scale, so nothing's changed. But visually, if you compare, picture over picture, month over month, you're like, oh, things look different close to different, I feel and look different. Or other people that haven't seen me in three months are noticing some changes that I'm not seeing. That's validation that things are going in the right direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm so glad you said that it's going to take a long goddamn time, because it's going to take a long goddamn time and I think people are just aren't kind of ready for that. But I agreed. I mean, I think when women come to me they're not saying I want body recomp. I feel like that is just like a newer. It's not a newer term, but it's newer in their minds. As far as us putting a label on it, like in my world when I've said it on podcasts before, it became this really hot topic where people are like, yes, that's exactly what I want, whereas I'm thinking, well, yeah, I know, because you want to gain muscle and you want to lose fat, but them having like a term is so nice and when I can explain it like, okay, yeah, it's going to take a really long time. I think that's the part I need to stress even more so now. And to have someone like you agreeing with me is so nice, because it just takes forever.
Speaker 3:Two years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to say like what's your thoughts on that? I even say like seeing progress sometimes takes like six months. I give a good like six months to where you're going to. You know, like start being like OK, I think I know what the fuck is going on and that's that.
Speaker 3:Has a wide variety of variables, I think, but you like the two-year mark as far as Just budget for two years, like just blindly accept that some type of noticeable physique change will take about two years from wherever your starting point is and obviously the starting point, like the starting line, is really the definitive point that we need to understand as professionals Then we can explain that starting point to our clients better, because then they'll have a more realistic approach to this and just better set up from an expectation standpoint, because the worst part of the fitness journey is the unrealistic expectations that don't get met, that then frustrate the individual, that then make them think that they're failing or doing something wrong, when in reality there's probably some inconsistency issues, there's probably some some honesty problems about actually honestly auditing your own behavior. And then obviously we understand that if we're doing any type of precise work, whether we're tracking food or stuff like that there's a lot of human error involved in that. You know I used to actually ask people like, just show me a picture of what you want which can get, can get a little out of hand right. Like you know, I'm going to have some woman show me a picture of like Blake Lively and I'm and she's, you know, 220 pounds.
Speaker 3:I'm like, okay, five years from now, sure, sure With with a lot of loose skin, you're going to have to cut off. Yeah, okay, like, but honestly, we can get there. We can get there. I mean you're talking about an entire overhaul of your whole lifestyle, because obviously we're not doing well to get to 220.'s. Relatively like, she's not a small person.
Speaker 3:I think what women don't understand is the idea that like, let's say they're in this like ambiguous 130 to 160 range, which is where I see a lot of people. You might kind of stay in that range, but you're going to look a hell of a lot different in a few years if you apply the principles of progressive overload to your training, if you actually eat enough to train well, but not so much that it's maintaining your body fat levels, and you're not trying to circumvent the timeline, because a lot of people keep trying to accelerate the clock by adding more training or more exercise or more cardio, and if I just rest less in between sets and if I use lighter weights to tone, like all these bullshit marketing terms that women have been exposed to for the last 40 years, we have to like knock that shit out of their head, which can take us six months.
Speaker 2:Yes, I totally agree. I'm glad you brought that up too, because I think it's that part for me where I like the six month, because people are like when am I going to start to see something? When am I going to feel like I'm seeing something? And I mean, depending on what you're trying to see, what progress markers are you looking for? But I think around the six month area is when people are like okay, I'm starting to feel like I have a handle on this, I'm starting to kind of get it and nobody wants to really admit that it's going to take that long. I actually love that.
Speaker 2:I love things to take time, because I don't want to cut my calories a lot. I don't want to like. I want it to be gradual, I want to take my time. But I think I specifically feel like tracking food. I think you're the same on this, but if not, that's fine.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of women come to me saying obviously they're not tracking, they're eating. They're quote unquote eating healthy, you know all the things. But I find it really hard to believe that someone can get to where they want to go in a body recomp journey honestly, without tracking, without that knowledge of what they're putting in their body and tracking food. Obviously then we can track our energy output, calorie output. But tracking calories to me is kind of a non-negotiable. I've learned so much, obviously, from it. I just I can't imagine my life without it. But I know a lot of people don't want to do it because it's so hard, it's so time consuming all of that kind of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? I love pre-logging food. I love pre-logging all of the things. Just to make it more simple, instead of, you know, playing games on my phone at night, I pre-log my food. You know just habits I've had to change. But let's get into that for a minute.
Speaker 3:Do people still play games on their phone?
Speaker 2:I play Block Blast on my phone. I have teenagers and they got me addicted to this goddamn Block Blast game. No, I don't. I don't think so. I think people scroll social media. I don't, so I play a game on my phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're probably better off, I'm rare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:So let's just tackle it from, like, the 30,000 foot view. Do you need to track food to lose fat? No, you don't. You need to have a structure, though, because what tracking does is it defaults you to some type of a system of eating. Yeah, that's what most people lack is they just don't have any type of routines or systems in place. They eat whatever the fuck, whenever the fuck, and then they have these assumptions because food like.
Speaker 3:There's actually been studies on food recall, which is basically the person's ability to recall what they ate and how much of it they ate, and food recall is wildly inaccurate. Like and a lot of studies that they do on human behavior around food is self-reported information, which is garbage information that we can't rely on. Period A client of mine sent a study to me the other day. It was evaluating 20 women that were in the obese category, all post-menopausal, and what they did was every one of them got a 1,500 calorie diet, but the group A would eat 700, 500, 200, or however. The breakdown was so biggest meal in the morning, smallest meal at night. Second group was eating the other way around, so smallest meal in the morning, biggest meal at night, and what they reported in the study was that the people who ate less at night lost more fat.
Speaker 3:At the end of the study Ignored a couple different things. It ignored the fact that exercise or movement was not accounted for or evaluated whatsoever, so energy expenditure was not tracked. And then the other part of the study that was fucked up and that was immediately something I can just immediately throw out as a study was that all of the information on calorie intake was self-reported. The second you see a study where the calorie intake of that individual is self-reported. You can immediately discredit that as a reliable source of information, because I've been doing this professionally for 15 years.
Speaker 3:I've personally been tracking my food for a decade and I'm very good at it, but even I take some liberties here and there. Right, and here's the thing that women need to understand. If you're operating and maintaining your weight under 2000 calories is where most women are you don't have a lot of flexibility and you don't have a lot of fuck around and find out room, and at some point you're going to need some level of precision to understand the difference between a 1700 calorie day and a 2200 calorie day, and that 500 calories can can very much mean the drink that you didn't account for right or right you know the, the nibbles and the bites off of your kid's plate at night when you're cleaning up their shit, the couple of handfuls of dried fruit and nuts you had at the office in between passerbys of the.
Speaker 3:You know the front gate, the cookie that your coworker handed you, that you didn't bother to track. These little things for a small human being which women are, small human beings by default are going to make a difference. So if you don't know to the gram where you are, well, how do you know how many calories are you maintaining weight at? If you don't know how many calories you're maintaining weight at, how do you know what to cut from and how much to cut from a calorie standpoint to achieve a deficit?
Speaker 3:Now, if you're wildly obese or very overweight, like, just put a structure in, make sure the structure is a lean protein, a vegetable or a fruit, a natural starch on your plate, three, four or five meals a day, and then you'll probably start losing fat, like most people. Once they have a structure, they start seeing some changes and some benefits. But if you're like in the 120 to 150, 160 range and you want to see like body composition changes, you're going to weigh and measure your food, like there's just no way around it. Like, especially the closer to the top of the mountain you are as far as your achievements and your. You know your habits, your routines. If these things are already a part of your life, like will you?
Speaker 3:where's the next logical step is we have to assign numbers to it yeah you just don't know, like you're not, you can't like the guessing part where people go like they're resistant to tracking because they have the idea that they're eating well. But we also know that a handful of nuts is wildly caloric and the cream in your coffee is caloric. I mean, everything is a calorie unless it's sugar-free or fat-free. But we have to account for these things because, as professionals, especially people who are paying us like I'm not going to have you pay me money and then me just sit back and like well, let's hope for the best.
Speaker 1:Like that's not fair for them.
Speaker 3:So what I do is I start everybody off on tracking. I see how they do with it and if I have to pull back because people suck at it or it's too daunting for them, I'll tell them to send me pictures of their food and by doing that at least it gets them involved in a structure that they previously didn't have and then they can earn their way back into tracking. But most of the time they kind of sit there for a while because I want them to build that routine you know, relatively consistently. But then for some people I'm like you don't have a choice, like this is what you told me you wanted. This is the only way we're going to get there, because if I don't know, you don't know, then we're both lost and that's unfair to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's not going to be any progress made. I think too a lot of. I mean obviously even myself. I thought things about different foods. I think, just growing up a certain way, hearing family talk about their bodies, whatever it is different foods were good and bad, of course.
Speaker 2:When I started tracking, I realized that everything is it's just a macronutrient. It's either a protein, fat or carb. A lot of things I didn't like. I thought, you know, bread was bad. Well, when I tracked it, I'm like it's like 25 calories, like it's, or I don't even know what it is now anymore, but it doesn't, it didn't matter, it was like it just falls into a category and it took out all the good and bad it took out. And then again it was like oh, the coffee creamer, oh, the olive oil that I'm putting out, all of that counts. I have to count everything and this was a long time ago for me, but yeah, it just made me realize literally everything that I'm putting into my mouth does matter, and a lot of those things, like you said, add up so quickly.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of clients that are like oh, I didn't realize, I thought this was more protein. Eggs, I thought eggs were a shit ton of protein. They're not. So they think they're eating. I'm having two eggs for breakfast. That's my protein. It's not. And when they log it for me to say, well, that's not a lot of protein, they need to expand on that. And I find that, obviously, when people track it themselves, they're doing it, so they're they're learning a lot more, you know, on them for themselves, by themselves. So for me, like that's just how I learn is like I want to fucking do it myself. I want to call myself out, but that's that's a whole, nother issue, um, not even an issue.
Speaker 3:That's a good thing, but let's also make the distinction too, because I think a lot of people start tracking food and expecting a result of fat loss right, like. That's a massive problem, that we have to change the narrative of. Like just because you started doing something that was uncomfortable to you and that was challenging your daily habits and belief system doesn't guarantee you a result. All you're doing is collecting data.
Speaker 3:That's all you're doing. Tracking food is collecting data which, hopefully, is reliable enough for you to use as the end user or for me to use as the coach. Like the way that when people sign up for my program, I send them an email called the food tracking standards email, and it lays out exactly what my belief system around tracking is. So like to me, if you're not putting food on a scale, you're not tracking it. If you're not weighing it to the gram or using grams as a measure, you're not tracking it. Now, do I allow people to have whatever they want? Yeah, I don't give a fuck what you eat, and if you want to go out to eat five times a week, go right ahead. When it comes to restaurant meals, do the best you can estimating, because that's the only choice you have. I don't expect you to bring your scale to the restaurant. I'm not trying to be a psychopath coach who's like weigh your restaurant through. That's wild to me. I don't expect you to bring your your scale on vacation with you. Like there's going to be reasonable measures, and I also give people a 20% limit, so like, as long as you fall within 90 to 110% of the targets that I set up for you, you're doing fine and you're probably going to see some results. And then people also have to understand too that, like, calorie ranges are truly ranges. There's no pinpoint to this stuff. It's not like if you, if you're maintaining weight at 1700 and you eat 1705, you're going to lose, you're going to gain weight. Or if you eat 1695, you're going to lose weight, like most. Like, the higher your calorie threshold, the more space you have on either side to fuck around. Now, the lower your calorie threshold, the lower you have that wiggle room. Yeah, so that's why I think again, like, if you're living under the 2,000 calorie range, spend at least a month of like, consistent, accurate tracking, estimating your restaurant meals out to the best of your ability which we know is going to have a ton of human error and at least just start to see, like what is a what is a normal day look like versus what is like a fucking blowout day look like. Because if your blowout days are 3,500 and your maintenance is 1,700, you're in a net surplus all week long because your body operates off of a net weekly average. It doesn't operate off of a daily, a daily number. It's like anything else, right. So if you take the number of calories on average that you're eating which is nice, when you're using a program like Chronometer, which is what I use to track my food with my clients, I can see. When I run their two-week average, I'm like, okay, cool, your average is great.
Speaker 3:You had high days, you had low days, awesome, awesome. It evened out at the end of the day. So, like if you had a fuck around day on sunday and your husband went out to eat and you had a few beers and you had the nachos and you had the tres leches cake at dinner and you had a 4 000 calorie day, you're gonna wake up the next day feeling a little shitty about yourself because you're gonna be bloated. Your belly is not gonna be the same. You're gonna be carrying around some water and some fluid, but you didn't gain fat. And if you're not making those types of decisions or having those types of days three, four times a week, you're probably not at risk for stalling your progress.
Speaker 3:So what it does is it shows people that they're able to actually be flexible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I find that a lot too is the people are like well, I thought I thought this blowout day, as you call it like well, I thought this blowout day, as you call it like I thought that day was way worse. I think that's something too. That I find with tracking is that people think either start out with a negative mindset about it, or think I can't, or think it's the magic thing, Like if I start Weight Watchers, I'm going to lose weight. If I start tracking my food, it's like it's not, that's not what it is. But also like people do realize what it is as far as food wise what macronutrients, how much, what are you actually eating? But then too, though I have that happen a lot where they're like well, I went out with my husband totally bombed, I'll start again on Monday when they track something in there, they realize it's not, it's probably not as bad as they thought and my and their good days are really good. Their off days are fuck around days, like who cares? When you average it out over the week which is what I do too they realize they're not doing so bad. It kind of loses that mindset of like good, bad, all of that.
Speaker 2:So I love tracking. I love it. I make my clients do it too, and obviously within different ranges. But I think part of that is too which I want to jump into is kind of like the personal accountability part of taking accountability for how you got to where you are also taking accountability for getting yourself out of it. I'm pretty good at like holding myself accountable for things. I don't really need a group. I know that's really important. We can talk about that too. Really important. We could talk about that too. But as far as just like I look at tracking as just like this is a way to be accountable for myself. I love to budget my money. I love, I'm very like, I love all of that stuff I do.
Speaker 2:It makes a lot of sense. Not, I'm not like not perfect data. I'm fine with, like, my calories being loosely tracked. I'm fine with like you know all of that, but for me that really helps. I know some people don't, but what do you find as far as like people who say, like they, I think it's just they don't even say they're not going to take accountability, but they just don't. It's more of like I can't do that. That's not going to work for me. That's not how I grew up. I'm not going to plan my food, I'm not going to eat out of containers, I'm not going to do certain things. It's kind of just like for me that's not really taking accountability for moving forward. Like then you don't really want it. I don't know. There's kind of a fine line between do you not want it or are you just kind of stalling your progress based on limiting beliefs, how you grew up?
Speaker 3:easiest way to tackle that is to ask them what they do want to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, you know what I mean. Like I'm at a point in my career now like here's.
Speaker 3:Here's context right In the industry for 15 years, 46,000 followers on Instagram. I don't have a tough time finding business. Sure, Right when I was brand new, I would have fucking taken anybody for a hundred bucks a month. And please come to my door. I want to help because I need to start making money, because my $900 a month rent in the basement apartment of a fucking woman's three-story house was barely enough for me to afford. Life is a little easier for me now because I've earned my way to a place of financial freedom, so I get to pick and choose who I work with. So if you come to me with all those challenges, I'm going to ask you what is it that you want to do? What is it that you want to do? How do you expect to lose weight? And I just sit back and I listen and typically it's horse shit that comes out.
Speaker 2:I was going to say what did they say? Because I can't even think of one.
Speaker 3:It ranges. It's like well, you know, so-and-so did this diet. I said cool, do you want me to walk you through how that diet's great? Then you can coach me on how to coach you. And then you can still pay me. I don't give a fuck, I still have rent to pay. I live in Southern California. If you want to pay me $290 a month and I'll just watch you fuck off, great, perfect. That's an easy client, awesome, no maintenance, whatever. But I also want to empower people and change the narrative, because if you keep living behind your own self and saying shit like this, well, it's hard because you don't prep your own food. Like we have to understand how one action catalyzes the next action. So, if you're somebody who eats out of a box or a bag which, by the way, is actually pretty easy to track- yeah.
Speaker 3:Again what do you need to track? You need a tracking app. Yeah, you need a scale you can right, like what do you need to track? You need a tracking app. Yeah, you need a scale, you can right. And you need four minutes throughout the entirety of the day, like I.
Speaker 3:And then there's two types of people that track. There's me, who works at home, who has a fridge full of food that he's already prepared, like I don't have to ever be prepared, because if I really wanted to, I can just run to the stove, throw something on, cook it fresh, and. But I don't even want to do that, because I want to be able to do my life Like. I want to be able to work and answer messages and create content and write and like live my life. I don't want to be having to think about how I'm going to prepare my next meal.
Speaker 3:That's why I pre-cook everything and I batch cook everything two to three times a week. Why? Because it saves me fucking time and it saves me decision fatigue. I don't mind eating the same shit over and over again with different flavors. It's not that hard. Yeah, I don't either. But then there are people who have to leave the house for work, which means you have to be a little bit more proactive than you or I, because they have to actually either spend the time the night before putting their meals together in containers and then putting those containers in the fridge so that they can just grab and go when they leave the house in the morning and they can have like a protein shake in the morning before if they don't feel like getting up early enough to make a full breakfast, and then at dinner time, if you've bulk prepped your food, throw a bunch of that shit in the bowl, put it in the microwave and sit down in front of the tv with your husband and your dog yeah right.
Speaker 3:Or what about my kids? Like, fucking, feed your kids the same shit you eat, right. Or what about my kids, fucking, feed your kids the same shit you eat. This idea that like, like Johnny and Julie, all the different things, that's your fault as a parent, like I was nine years old, I didn't have any semblance of an idea of nutrition quality or food quality or protein. I didn't grow up like that. My parents had no fucking clue and they didn't have time and they didn't have time. If you're the parent, like, most women in the household are the ones who do the grocery shopping, they're the ones who plan the meals, they're the ones who cook the meals. So if that's you, stop asking everybody what they want. Just fucking put stuff on a table and eventually, if my dog is a picky eater and it doesn't want to eat, cool, don't eat by day three you're going to be hungry.
Speaker 1:You'll be hungry enough, yeah.
Speaker 3:Like at some point like either learn how to flavor your food, have conversations with your family about the journey that you're on and the support that you need and the changes in the household that are going to be made, and make life as easy for yourself as possible. Stop placating to everybody else's needs and wants and ignoring your own, which is what 99% of women do. Like I'm going to do everything I need to do to take care of everybody else and I come dead last. Fuck that, that's your fault.
Speaker 1:You set that standard.
Speaker 3:You're the one who didn't ask for help, like I had a woman the other day texting me saying like I just can't, I'm overwhelmed. Everything is going crazy. I'm like what's your husband doing? She's like well, he's sitting on the couch. Whose fault is that? Why have you set the standards?
Speaker 3:to allow him to come home from work while you have three children that you're chauffeuring around, also trying to clean the house, also trying to go to work and also trying to cook dinner, and all he does is go to work and come home and sits.
Speaker 3:That's not his Like, if he doesn't get told that he needs to do something, his default is not to do it. But your job is a shitty communicator because you haven't fucking asked them for anything. If you don't have a cohesive environment at home, you're not going to succeed. You're going to find every point of resistance of why this doesn't work, as opposed to if I have a system and I have help, which is everybody like.
Speaker 3:If you have kids that are over eight or nine, they can put something into a microwave. They can probably figure out how. If you have kids that are over eight or nine, they can put something into a microwave. They can probably figure out how to use the dishwasher and the fucking laundry machines. You don't have to do any of this stuff. And the fact that you, as a mother, is running around the house having to take care of everybody, that's your fault. You've set that standard because you don't want to be bothered with the resistance that they're going to give you. But what are you doing to your family when you set them up like that? You're making these people reliant on somebody else for the rest of their life. You're creating unproductive adults who don't know how to fucking do anything the amount of 45 year old people who I know who don't know how to boil water is astonishing to me, and that's because their parents coddled them their whole lives. Like, I'm not saying like-.
Speaker 2:And then complained about it. Probably Complained about being so tired.
Speaker 3:Like I'm not saying like, don't have chips in the house and don't allow your kids to have snacks. Like, of course, be a reasonable human being, but also teach them the foundations of why a vegetable is important, of why protein is important, like, if your kids see you doing this stuff and living that way, guess what? By osmosis, they're going to probably figure some shit out. Yeah, but if you're sitting there and being like, well, no, I have to make sure everybody else is okay and their sensitive feelings are being accounted for, then you're just making your life fucking miserable and you're the one who suffers. Nobody else gives a shit.
Speaker 1:That's the problem. That's exactly right.
Speaker 3:You're the one that die inside, feeling horrible about your body image, can't stay in the sight of yourself in the mirror, but you're running around backwards for everybody else. That's your problem, that you have to fix.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been a hot topic around here too. I actually have some episodes about that coming out. But yeah, I've never felt like I do have mom guilt. You know a little bit and all the things. My kids are older now, 16 and 19.
Speaker 3:But yeah, You're in the perfect fit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm good, but I started working out like my fitness journey, whatever, when my son was born, so like 16 years ago, and always ate different. I mean, I ate different than my kids. They were babies, but like as growing up, my husband travels for work, even now when I was pregnant with him. So he's traveled for work. Like our home life is just, it's crazy. We eat here, there, now they're in sports, they're all over the place. My kids don't eat.
Speaker 2:I've never understood. First of all, I'm not good with excuses anyways, I just don't, I can't, I don't grasp it. Like my brain doesn't go there. So when I hear something that's an excuse, of course I try to reason with it or whatever, but I'm just like, figure it out Like I don't have it in me to not. But there's dishes in my sink right now from I don't know three days ago, I don't know. But like somebody else can do them or I'll wash plate real quick.
Speaker 2:I have to go work out, I have to go for a walk, I have work, say that. But when I'm like, hey, here's pizza for you guys, I'm not having pizza tonight. I have goals, I have physical goals. You don't work out, you're five, I work out. We have different goals, so we eat differently, and that's okay, or it's okay to be like this is what I'm making for dinner. You fucking eat it, or don't Go have some cereal, I don't care.
Speaker 2:I've never really struggled with that, but I have a so many clients that do, and I know so many women do, and I know it's just an issue of and, honestly, it's easier. It's easier to put everybody first, because then we don't hear about it, and I think that's how a lot of us grew up too. Well, I shouldn't say that because you just gave me your example, but as a woman like I saw, I saw my mom doing all the things, so I think I have to do all the things, but it's just it's, and I think that's where the accountability comes in. It's taking like that's not what I want. I want to have time to work out, I want to make time to work out so I can't do other things. I've always just been like I will figure it out and I'm coming first, no matter what that looks like, and I think a lot of women just are kind of stuck in that.
Speaker 3:Well, and then also just like triage, like what's the most like, are the dishes in the sink an emergency? No, you have your own neuroses about this dumb shit, right? Because that's really what it is Like. If you were to actually like, oh my God, we have people coming over Saturday. We If you were to actually like oh my God, we have people coming over Saturday we have to do a spring cleaning session where all the baseboard get licked clean. First of all, if you have the resources which most people on Instagram that are following our content could probably afford a hundred dollar a month. Housekeeper who will come in and spit, shine everything you don't want to do one time a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I live in.
Speaker 3:Southern California. I had a woman here come in for $80, and she literally cleaned the grout in my bathtub in both bathrooms Beautiful, okay, like I don't want to do that, I don't either. I don't want to go to the grocery store. I pay Instacart to do that for me, like if you have a little bit of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have some resources, right.
Speaker 3:Like you're going to have to do one of two things You're either going to have to spend time which is really valuable and you don't have a lot of or you're going to spend money which will always be able to be replenished at some point if you have a decent enough system of making money. So it's like you're spending money on this dumb shit all over the place, like how many Amazon boxes are showing up to an average woman's house of shit that they probably don't need? But then they're like well, I can't afford a coach, or I don't want to pay for Instacart, or the $10 delivery fee is too much, or the housekeeper is too expensive. Offload as much shit off your plate that you possibly can so that you can buy your time back and now use that time effectively for something else. That's it. Like the strategies are there and the times that I've told people about Instacart, their brains exploded out of their head. They're like, oh my God, you mean I can do grocery delivery. I'm like, yeah, what fucking rock have you been living under? Yes, what.
Speaker 3:Like get it, get, go on Instacart. Is it going to be the perfect vegetable and fruit that you would have picked out? No, are they going to come back with rock hard avocados or super soft avocados? Sometimes, yes, but if you're like asking for meat and frozen stuff and the basics and condiments, like just offload that duty onto somebody else so you don't have to worry about it and I just, I see there there's so many convenience things that now we can do because we have the luxury to do so, because we have the technology for it, and there's still people that are so tightwad, resistant against it. Now, granted, listen, if you're a single mother with three kids and you're barely making ends meet, am I giving you the same advice? No, of course not, but you have other problems.
Speaker 2:Body composition probably isn't a concern for you Right, probably not the top of your list, but if you're bitching to me about body composition, you're sitting like oh my God, I.
Speaker 3:But if you're bitching to me about body composition, you're sitting like oh my God, I want to look good for my friend's 45th birthday party in Punta Cana. Like, clearly you have means.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And clearly you're just not managing your time very well. No-transcript. You a better wife who's not going to be fighting with her husband constantly, and you might actually fuck every once in a while, which is going to make you happy again yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:These are not hard concepts and, like you, wonder why you're walking around as a shell of yourself and wondering back why, when you were 25, life was good? Well, because you had time for yourself to do whatever the fuck you wanted. And now you, that time is gone, because you've decided to have three children and a full-time job, and you've also decided to assume every responsibility in the house, which were all your own decisions yeah, that's the problem.
Speaker 2:You also have to figure it out like that they're all your decisions and you also have to either decide to change that or I can't do it for you. I don't, I just don't know what else. That part just kind of drives me crazy, like taking accountability for that, of like, like you were saying before, then what do you, what are you willing to do then? And if it's not any, if you're not willing to change one single thing about your life, then I, then nothing will change, and then we have.
Speaker 3:We have no business here but I think you're the perfect example, right like, how many kids do you have? Two, two, and you have a husband who's really not home very often yeah, he's home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, half the time.
Speaker 3:Maybe you know like he travels a lot, but so, like most of the shit is on you yeah and you run a business yeah now granted, you work from home, but still like you start the work and you have. You have clients to take care of and bullshit to deal with, so it's like you're living proof of what's possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's the annoying part too. You know, as someone who is in that place, I'm like you're preaching to the choir here with not having time to do anything or having responsibilities, like, yeah, I 100% get that, I get it. But I also am just like I'll figure it out Again. I have a sink full of dirty dishes and I've always been what you said about like time. You can't get the time back.
Speaker 2:And another thing I think of is as moms. Like if my son came to me right now and said, hey, I have a baseball game, right, like a last minute baseball game. I totally forgot. Or I have practice. I would drop what I needed to do and go to that baseball game and watch the game. But then why is it so hard for me to drop everything and get to my garage and work out? You know, like I would drop if you would drop everything. And it's not for me, I'm just saying, but I think for parents. I say that to a lot to my clients. Well, if your children needed something right now, if they were sick and needed to go to the doctor, if your husband, if anyone in your life called you and needed something, right now you would figure it out, but you can't figure out how to hire a cleaner for a little bit.
Speaker 2:You can't figure out how to make 30 minutes three times a week to go work out Like that just blows my mind. To me that's not like if I'm willing to do it for everybody else, why the fuck can't I figure it out to do it for myself? And I get stuck there with people and I know there's underlying issues for that. That's the part that you have to dive into. It's not always that simple, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it is just when I heard someone say that to me it was like, well, if your kid needed something and there was an instant game or something that he needed as my child, yeah, I'm gonna give up. I would cancel a client right now and go to his baseball game 100%. So again, why the fuck can't I get up and go for a walk? Why can't I do my 10 minute sprint Like I can, I can. I'm just saying that I can't.
Speaker 2:So I think that was something for me that I heard. That was like, yeah, I need to stop, I need to stop this bullshit for myself and and it just kind of stuck. But yeah, I think that's. I think for women. It's just, it's different. I don't coach men. I actually don't have any, any any men right now that I'm that I'm coaching, so I know that's different but I see they're the worst clients oh, fantastic men, don't men, men, men fall in the line of of thinking of.
Speaker 3:I have it figured out, you're just gonna close the gaps for me, okay Like half the times, like they won't submit their training videos, they won't track their food consistently, they won't show up to Zoom calls, they won't ask for help, they won't reach out to me ever. Like I have six guys that I work with Wow, and I hear from one of them.
Speaker 2:Wow, really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Wow, really yeah. I hate working with men Like I just signed up two guys and they literally quit within the first two weeks.
Speaker 2:That sounds right. Honestly, yeah, they're all I would wait.
Speaker 3:First of all, women are more fun, because once women have that light bulb moment, you've literally changed somebody's life forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because they're never going to unsee or unknow what you taught them. And they were going to be the best ambassadors. Like the best ambassador, I have a woman right now. Her name is Jennifer. She's amazing. She's lost 30 something pounds in six months. She had it to lose but she lost it.
Speaker 3:But now she goes out to like lunch and goes to brunch with all of her girlfriends who are all constantly bitching about how much they weigh and how unhappy they are, and then she tells them about what she's doing and that same point of resistance comes up in the conversation. Well, I of resistance comes up in the conversation. Well, I don't know how you live like that. And it's like well, do you want to live and be miserable emotionally, spiritually and physically every day? Or do you want to place a little bit of elbow grease into the problem and actually start Like she hasn't sacrificed anything? She still goes out to eat, she doesn't fucking spend seven hours a day in the gym, she doesn't do a ton of cardio, like she hasn't had to overhaul anything. She's just had to eat like an adult and behave like an adult. And she tells these women that and they're like I'll probably just get on Ozempic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh for sure, go ahead.
Speaker 3:So get on Ozempic. And then you still have to eat protein and you still have to lift weight. Yep, or else you're going to be princess pancake ass with a fucking gut disorder and a gut issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about this. This is a good. This is.
Speaker 3:I'm all like. I'm a hundred percent Like. I have multiple people on GLP one drugs, I'm a massive advocate for them. In the right case use right Like. How can I, as somebody who's taking performance enhancing drugs, tell a woman don't take Ozempic? I would never, ever do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But, like if you're 140 pounds and you're taking Ozempic, like we need to fucking figure some shit out. Yeah, like you obviously have body image issues and body dysmorphia and you have unmet expectations and you have a lot of shit trauma that you have to deal with. If you're 250 pounds and all you think about is fucking cookies all day long, triseptide all fucking day long, all day long yeah, like, get that food noise out of your head, get a couple of wins under your belt, lose the first 20, change your habits and let's fucking start moving down the right path. That's who needs Ozempic.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know what I mean. I'm all for that.
Speaker 3:But like and again like. There's also other anti-inflammatory properties and orthopedic properties to it, and insulin sensitivity, aids and hunger regulation. There's all sorts of positive things. They come with some negatives as well, but if the negatives don't outweigh the positives, then sure, if you need it, take it. Understand that at some point you're either going to have to get off of it or it might be a medication you're going to be on for the rest of your life, so just be prepared for that. I think people need to be informed to the risks and the rewards of anything advocates for themselves, as opposed to just being like well, susan did it, so I'm just going to do what Susan did.
Speaker 2:Agreed.
Speaker 3:That's not a good enough reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think knowing behind it too. I actually agree, I have a couple of clients right now too that either have been or are on it, and it's great, because I love when they care enough to say, hey, I'm on this, I'm going to have to get off, I still want to understand my body. Obviously it doesn't help with understanding things and you still have to put in that work, but I think that's so important. And then, yeah, also, if you're out to dinner with your friend and they don't want to do what you're doing, that's totally fine.
Speaker 2:I have people all the time that are asking me what I'm doing and then asking me what I would have a client do, and they still don't want to do it. Not care, if you don't want to do what I'm doing or do what I'm not even promoting just what I think you should be doing I don't care. But I also don't want to have a conversation with you about it, like the conversation just ends there, because I don't give a shit what you're doing. You don't give a shit what I'm doing. So we don't give a shit and I just don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2:But I think that's fine and be empowered to do whatever you want, I just think that the work I think the work smarter, not harder, mentality has to come into play Like the basics will always, always work. You still need to know why the fuck you're doing what you're doing. You still need to lift, you still need to move Like it's just. I don't care about the numbers, like the 10,000 steps and all the the perfect tracking. I don't really give a shit about you know any of that. But if you don't understand what you're doing, I have a problem with that, especially like you like eat like an adult and move like an adult, like just just be an adult. I think that that has a lot to do with it. At the end of the day, oh well, carbs make me fat?
Speaker 3:No, we don't. We know too much about science. Like Susan, spend five minutes on chat GPT and you'll understand that carbs aren't making you fat.
Speaker 2:I love chat GPT yeah.
Speaker 3:You know what I really don't like? Deadlifting because it hurts my back. Well, because your deadlift form sucks. Or I don't want to lift weights heavy because I think I'm going to get bulky. Like. These are all such dumb ideas and such dumb limiting beliefs and they are dumb like they are dumb because now we don't have an excuse.
Speaker 3:We have a readily steady flow of information. It's pretty reliable, it's not that hard to access for anybody with a fucking phone in their hand and if you just spend five minutes, anything that you're following accounts like mine and yours, we're all literally saying the same shit every single day. Like none of us are promoting supplements, none of us are promoting fads or quick fixes like all the good coaches in the space. And maybe it's because my content is curated in a way where I don't see the garbage, like I don't see the Eddie Abue or like the, you know I don't. I don't see the Gary Breckers of the world, like I don't see those people because it's just I, my my explore page is food porn and hot chicks. Like that's all I look at. Same Right Like or dogs.
Speaker 2:I love a good muscular chick and dogs Same thing.
Speaker 3:So like I don't see the grifters and the charlatans and the garbage messaging, but a lot. But your average person who logs into Instagram, who starts looking at fitness and nutrition information, they're going to see the ones with the four or five, 6 million follower accounts first. They're not going to come and see our shit.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Unless they start doing deep dives into who the best professionals are and then they're going to start seeing us by default. But that's the problem is that they're still like you know, I walked into a Pilates class yesterday for the first time.
Speaker 1:I saw that.
Speaker 3:And I had a great time, I enjoyed it. But like, I'm looking around and what did I see in there?
Speaker 1:I saw a lot of very soft bodies.
Speaker 3:I saw a lot of people that are under muscled, still pretty overweight, and they don't have a fitness problem. They have a nutritional deficiency. They have a protein deficiency. They eat too many calories, they don't train with weights, like my mother who's almost 80 years old, who I'm trying to fucking desperately get into a gym to at least start to replenish some of her lost muscle mass so she doesn't fucking wither away and die anytime soon. Like there's still so much resistance against these basic principles, and it makes both you and I want to tear our fucking hair out, because we understand how simple it can be, but we can't make a change in their lives until they're ready to accept that this is real information. So it's like how much evidence do you need to be poured on top of you every single day until you finally say, okay, you know what? All of these people were? Right, I was wrong, I could admit it. I'm going to try it. You know your way or my way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know that's the problem. Right, Like you're going to have, you're going to go out to dinner with your friends, and most of your friends don't live your lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they're going to sit there and argue with you to the teeth that like well, you don't need carbs to live, because I saw it on somebody's page and carbs are unnecessary. It's like, okay, you don't need money to live either right go, you can live on food air and water right like you don't need money to live, but you still want that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's like why are you making it hard for yourself? Why is it that you're so attracted to the sensational bullshit information? Obviously it's because it's more exciting. Like if I tell you to go sleep for eight hours a night and lift weights three times a week, it's like oh, that's's it.
Speaker 2:And it might take two years for you to see. Wow, that's really attractive.
Speaker 3:But it's like how long did it take you to become a good mom? How long did it take you to be in a good relationship? How long did it take you to get good at work? How long did it take you to get your first promotion? Like none of this shit happened in 12 weeks no-transcript.
Speaker 2:We both. It's fine, you can do it. But if you've never lifted weights, you know and gone to a gym and whatever, and you think you're going to get bulky from it, but you've never done it, how the fuck do you know? It's like you can't say when people are saying I think I'm going to get bulky and I under, I don't know if I understand, I get what they're saying. Like you think you know.
Speaker 2:You see, back in the day, all of my 44 years back in the day, it was like you see men lifting heavy weights, bodybuilding. That was my mindset of like, oh, if I lift heavy, that's what these men do. They're going to become, I'm going to become big. A simple Google search at that point in time would tell me I'm not going to be, I don't have the, I can't. So it's like, yeah, you're watching all these things, people saying you don't need carbs, you don't need. But do they have the body you want? Do they have the lifestyle? Have you researched it on your own or are you just listening to this person with 100,000 fault, 100 million, whatever the fuck it is saying you don't need? When does the accountability come in? Again, I'm all big on accountability, apparently Of when you're going to research it yourself and find someone who's actually saying things, actually living.
Speaker 2:I have married, busy home, kids, business, pretty nice body. I'm telling you the things that I'm doing, I'm showing you. I know it's not sexy to always say those things, but like, when is it going to click? They're like these shiny things just don't fucking, and I'm, it's fine, like I'm not going to like push it on people again if you're not ready, cool. But I'm just not interested in having a soft body. I want to be, I want to look good, I want to feel good, I want to age. Well, I'm in perimenopause now. What a fucking disaster that is that wreaked havoc on me.
Speaker 2:Are you on HRT or no, honestly? But yeah, I mean again. That was another thing, though, that I was like I still never stopped doing. I felt like shit, I don't know what's happening to my body. I'm gaining fat, I'm losing muscle, I'm doing the same thing. I had to pivot a lot of areas, but I'm like I'm still doing it. It's still not like oh men, perimenopause there goes my life there goes my body like it's.
Speaker 2:It was another learning opportunity for me and, you know, a growing opportunity to say, well, I've, I've been there, done that, I can understand it now. But yeah, perimenopause, damn, that's a and I'm sure menopause is going to be a mess. But you know, you can have all the odds stacked against you, but still you have to do your own research and like, if it's not working, fucking, change something. And if you don't want to change something, don't come to me. That's kind of how I feel at this point.
Speaker 3:Well, I think a lot of times people ask for advice but then they don't want to listen because context takes a long time to explain. You know, I always like I have a lot of people that DM me and will ask me, especially like yesterday when I put up a question box. I'll have a lot of people asked me questions about the question box answers that I give. And a woman yesterday from Ireland, of all places, asked me like what does it mean to go back to normal after a dieting phase? And I said there's a lot of context I would need to explain. I don't feel like typing it to you, just call me.
Speaker 3:And I was on the way to like to walk my dogs to the boardwalk and she called me while I was in the car and I spent 42 minutes with her on the phone and she's like first of all, I couldn't believe that you asked me to call you because nobody's ever offered me that, especially for free. I'm like well, I don't want to text you deep levels of understanding of science because you're not going to fucking get it and I don't want to type that much. So I'm just going to explain to you and that's exactly how I am I don't want to type this.
Speaker 3:What it resulted in was her coming to the conclusion that she doesn't need to reverse diet, she doesn't need to do anything that she's heard about on Instagram. I'm like how do you feel right now? She's like good. I'm like have you kept the weight off that you've lost? Yes, do you have balance in your life? Yes, what's the one thing you haven't really focused on yet? I'm like she's like muscle building. I'm like cool, that's it. There's your answer. Spend the next year without even thinking about a fat loss phase or whatever, and just build as much muscle as humanly possible. Yeah, he's like really, that's all I need to do. I'm like that's it. That's the only thing you're missing. Like you, you figured out the four meals a day thing. You're cooking your own food.
Speaker 3:You're only going out twice, a week tops, like you don't need anything special, you just need to fucking build as much muscle as and never stop trying. Yeah, that you know that's. The other thing is people think like they're gonna get to this like proverbial end place where, like there's the end of the rainbow and once I get to this place I'll start living and feeling some type of way, when anybody that's spent long enough on this journey understands that it's not the actual destination that you're going to learn at. You're going to learn fucking it up every step of the way. Like I'm 41, I started lifting weights at 15 and I did it. I don't want to say wrong, but I was very impatient for the first 10 years, but I was also learning in the trenches, like most people don't do today. I had to go for the first 10 years, but I was also learning in the trenches, like most people don't do today. I had to go to the gym and I had to ask people for advice. Like I had to walk up and talk to human beings who were fucking scary as shit Cause I was working out at a gym where there was like dudes in their forties and fifties who were wearing Carhartt jeans and boots at the end of a workday doing fucking bench pressing and squatting, and that's who I asked yeah
Speaker 3:why? Because they were the ones who I wanted to look like. So I'm like, bro, like how do you look like that? And then they took me under their wing and they taught me the little that they knew, because they were not science-based and evidence-based, they just fucking did the shit. And now it's like we have this like evidence-based community where if it's not in a pub miracle, it doesn doesn't work and you shouldn't do it. And then we have like the functional health side of stuff, which is like let's do a fucking woo, woo, you know fucking crystals on it and hope for the best while setting your tape and rubbing your feet in the grass, like there's, there's a reasonable middle that nobody wants to talk about again because it's not sexy, because it does take a long time and it is kind of mundane and boring. But everything in your life on average is mundane and boring anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Being a parent isn't fucking fun. Being married isn't always fun. Having a business isn't always fun. But, like people, expect their meals to be exciting and their workouts to be exciting. I was just thinking that yeah, If you're trying to derive pleasure from these things like what, how awful is your life. Yeah, Do you not have any fucking hobbies, any interests? Do you not want to travel? Do you not want to see how the rest of the world works?
Speaker 2:Do you not want to like go out and hike, like what, what else? Find the excitement somewhere else would be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I've just never understood that Like well. I need my meals to taste like restaurant. Okay cool, so just pour sugar and fat on top of them and hope for the best. That's what the restaurant does.
Speaker 2:Agreed. Yeah, and that's um. I heard you talking on a podcast where I don't even know which one I was just listening to, but you talked about how people don't like to eat the same food all the time, but then they go out to a restaurant and order the same Same thing, I have never that.
Speaker 3:Same coffee. So fucking true. Every day, every day.
Speaker 2:But for some reason it's like I don't want to eat and I get it, like I don't actually get it. I always say I get it but I don't get it. But I hear it. I hear it enough that I think I get it. I do not shit. I eat the same thing every day for I love it that way, cause I don't want to think about it like, oh, it's this time I'm hungry, I'm going to go eat this. I don't, I doesn't look good. People always like do it what I eat in a day. Oh, it's great, yeah, or I wouldn't. I wouldn't eat it for sure. Well, I told you I ate four bowls of cereal. Yesterday it was life cereal.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. This is a workout I'm doing. I want to go, I want to do it and I want to come back and I want to do work. I want to like do something fun with my kids. Like I don't want that to be the most exciting part of my life and I think that's something that's a little little mindset there or maybe it's just excuses to like I need my food to be exciting. But when you said, like when you go to the same, when you go to a restaurant, I get the same thing pretty much, so it's not the excitement.
Speaker 3:I don't like I people I graduated high school with perfect example. They just fell into this like white ticket, fence, America vision and they never left it, Like I'm one of the only people that left my hometown.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:Most of my best friends are still literally like living within a five mile radius of where we all grew up. They've never traveled outside the country. They, you know, they had sex with the same person forever. Um, and I lived a weird life, like I did a bunch of drugs and I fucked a bunch of different people and I had a bunch of different jobs and I saw the world and I and I got out and I've had to learn a lot of lessons from a lot of hard mistakes that I've made, that have almost killed me, that have bankrupted me, that have done all sorts of crazy shit. But most people don't have a lift experience. They're just like. I graduated college, I married the guy that I was talking to for a while. We had kids. We didn't really talk about whether we wanted them or not, they just showed up yeah, it was what we're supposed to do I worked at this job that I wasn't really happy with, and twice a year we go on vacation.
Speaker 3:That sucks because the kids make it awful and yeah, that's it. Of course you need your food to be exciting I was gonna say that makes sense yeah. You have nothing else going on.
Speaker 3:Unless the new episode of Mobland comes out and you get to swoon over Tom Hardy for an hour like you've got no other excitement in your life. Yeah, I don't blame you. Like you don't have any conversations with your husband about what you guys are going to do in the bedroom. That's fun next weekend. You guys don't go anywhere as a couple. You treat your fucking children like they're like they're invalids that you have to take care of all day long, as opposed to empowering them by bringing them to the gym with you or doing activities with them outside. Like so many parents don't even parent anymore.
Speaker 3:That's why I give my podcast partner, jimmy, so much credit. Like the guy spends all his time with his son and his son's a fucking well adjusted kid. He's 12 years old and the way he speaks you would think he was an adult. Like he's emotionally intelligent. He makes his own decisions. He cooks his own food. He tells his dad when his practices are. Like he's got shit figured out. He doesn't spend all his fucking time on a phone or in front of a screen because his father spends time with him. What a novel concept that is. That a novel concept that is.
Speaker 2:That takes a lot of time to be a parent, yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know what I mean. Like, but instead of you coming home from work and plopping yourself on the couch and then just waiting for things to change that's the problem. Like, what excites you? What? What is a yes, what is a no? Where do you? Where do you see your life in the next five years? What type of relationship are you cultivating with your partner? Are you even partners, or are you just fucking roommates in the same house? Yeah, nobody does this type of self-evaluation. And then they wake up at 50 and then they have this midlife crisis, like, oh my God, I'm going to be dead in 25, 30 years and I haven't done shit with my life. No, you haven't. Like, having kids is not an achievement.
Speaker 3:No, no, it's not Now, no, no, now. Being a good parent is an achievement. It is. Yes, keeping your kids lessons about life is an achievement. Like that's an active parent is like that's where you get the gold star yeah just showing up to work or just having a kid isn't an achievement.
Speaker 3:That's baseline minimum adult behavior that you should be decent at. Yeah, when you go above and beyond and you become a good parent, you become a good employee and you do get raises and you do have passions in life, that's when you get rewarded, Just like you know, tracking food doesn't give you fat loss results.
Speaker 3:Tracking food, consistently gathering data and using that data to change your behavior that gives you fat loss results. So it's like people have all this fucked up and I don't know how many times. You and I are going to have to say it until we're blue in the face and until they're sick of hearing it. But that's our purpose, because if you and I stop saying what we're saying, it's going to give them permission to go elsewhere and to look for dumb shit. That doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to fix absolutely nothing, You're right. I ask a lot of ladies like, well, the rest day issue, this is, and I will say like we only need to be lifting four or five days, three to five depending on the person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, five if you're lucky.
Speaker 2:Five's an iffy, but okay, we'll say three to four. But they're like, well, I love to work out seven days a week or I can't take a rest day. When I explain you need rest, we don't need to get into all that. But I've been over that a million times on the podcast. But when I say that and I'm like you can go do something else that you love on those days, like what am I supposed to do if I don't go to the gym? Kind of being sarcastic, and I'm like, well, your obsession with the gym is not, that's not okay, but what else do you like to do? And they genuinely don't know, like that's a problem and I've to therapy yes, I fixed it, but that's what people don't want to do. And I'm like I don't know what I like to do. I mean outside of my kids and doing normal day. And I love to work, I love my job, I love doing things with my kids and I, you know you think like that's your purpose. But if I was like, if somebody would ask me what do you want to do? What do you like to do? What are your hobbies? Working Like I didn't, I did not know what I enjoyed doing and I had to figure that out. So I understand it.
Speaker 2:But it's that action of going to therapy, talking to someone literally just voicing that Like I don't know who I am. Right now it's a rough stage of my life. Well, we've all fucking, we all fucking have that rough stage, but you still have to figure like, who were you before this shit happened? Who, what did you like to do as a teenager? Go fucking try something. People are always like go try pickleball, which I won't do, and I I'm not going to do that. But that's one of the things are, you know, it's just like go do something and figure out who you are outside of, and then you won't have to look at these shiny objects and kind of be geared toward when you.
Speaker 2:Now, when I see something, it's just like health and fitness. When I figured out what worked for me. When I see a shiny object, I'm not bothered. Yes, I do not straight line blinders on. It's the same thing. Now, if I'm like, if somebody asked me if I wanted to go play pickleball, no, I don't, I would rather go run. Like I just know what I like and I'm very confident in that and I hope that other people, the women that I coach take the time to do that and yeah, it takes time. But who are you without that? Just kind of following people along? But you're right, that's a huge issue If you are looking for happiness through your food and your workouts. I'm so sorry, like I. Just it's not the best and that's why you go out to eat a couple of times a week.
Speaker 3:Like right, Like absolutely have the impromptu breakfast out and get the pancakes with your kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Get a fucking babysitter and go out to dinner once and once a week or once a month, with your husband and get dressed up to the nines and feel sexy about yourself.
Speaker 1:You know like go do this. You know like go do this vacation. Can't suck that part out of your life.
Speaker 3:You know, like go do this vacation at the nice hotel for the night and reconnect and rebond with your partner. Like so many people just don't do this kind of shit. And then they wonder why they're seeking all this dopamine from all these useless places and it's like you're again working with mostly women over 30, that's all I see constantly day in and day out.
Speaker 3:It's unmet, misunderstood expectations or poor communication or no communication or, you know, never asking for help or trying to grind and white knuckle their way through every single scenario in their life, never taking any time for themselves whatsoever. It's like, guys, you're doing your family a disservice and you're doing yourself. You're damaging yourself in the long run, but it's only you that's going to be able to make that choice Like yes, it's good for us to say it because hopefully it makes them want to change something, or at least they'll change their perspective. But until they ultimately want to make that decision for themselves, you and I can't do anything about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed. I think that community, the communities that I build inside of different apps, is so nice for women to come together and say like, oh, this isn't normal, I don't have to feel like this. I can speak up and say, or it's okay to want different things, or yeah, but I'm glad you. It's all of those things you kept saying, like this or this or this, it's like this and this. It's like all of those things that you said for me at one point in time that I struggled with. For sure, it's totally normal, totally normal.
Speaker 3:I had a woman yesterday like admit to me out loud that she's like I don't think I'm a good mother and I don't really like being one, and I'm like that's okay. Yeah, that's okay, like you did what everybody else did, which was chase this dream of having the house and having the kids. Like a lot of people, when they step into that role they're faking it and they never make it and it's because they never. Actually that's not part of their identity. They don't want to be parents, but they got thrust into this world by happenstance and societal normality. So it's like okay, but like unfortunately, you can't give them back now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're yours.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Like, at that point, it's like well, what you need to do, then, is you need to align yourself with other women who feel the same way that you do, cause there's a lot.
Speaker 3:You guys can have this open dialogue so you don't feel like an asshole and you don't feel like you're this weird person where it's like you don't. You don't think other women feel the same way that you do. You don't think other women wish that they were, you know, not stay at home, moms, and you wish that they were right, Like fucking living the life that they've always wanted but they never got because they didn't pursue that dream and they just got stuck in this rut, Like it's okay to tell other people that.
Speaker 1:And like.
Speaker 3:I have a Facebook community of 242 people that are all my current or previous clients and I told her I'm like, don't tell me that Take that exact text message you just sent and paste it into the Facebook group and watch how much support you get from other women and then watch how immediately it changes your headspace and allows you to feel better about the way that you feel right now, because right now you're down on yourself, because you have this level of guilt when in reality, you don't deserve to feel guilty.
Speaker 2:No, no, agreed. I think that that community piece is really important because, yeah, I was surrounded by moms who love being and I love being a mom Like it's really fun. I love parts of it, but there are parts of it like this this part fucking sucks and I'm fucking tired and they're little assholes, you know, but you can't. Who can you say that to? Like, you need normal people to say that to. But when you find your people, I think that's really important. Same thing for any other.
Speaker 2:I think that people that like your kids if you can say my kids are assholes and people are like me too, then you can say I hate other things, I hate other people, I hate other things, I hate other people, I hate my. You know what I mean. It just kind of goes from there. You have it all in common and you're like oh okay, these are my people. That's really important, instead of the curated feeds maybe you see on social media or maybe just that people are putting out even in their real lives and it's like it's okay to be a hot mess and admit it. That's totally fine.
Speaker 1:I think the authenticity.
Speaker 2:The authenticity piece that we talked about in the beginning comes back full circle, and all of that. Well, this has been super fun. Thanks for chatting with me.
Speaker 3:Of course. No, I'm happy that women have a resource like you, because you know, being a 41-year-old man, that looks the way that I do. I think sometimes my message is not always well received, especially in today's climate. But again, like because I'm authentic, because I'm not worried about what I say, I know that my people will find me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But knowing that you exist and knowing that you're living proof of what's possible, should be very, very empowering to the women that you're serving across every audience that you have. So it's nice to be able to see people doing this the right way and not only doing the work that you're doing, but also walking the walk yourself. So thank you Well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that was very sweet. Yeah, yeah, it's. Isn't it nice to just show up though on social media authentically and just say whatever you want. It's really nice. I did have someone. I told one of my friends I was having you on the show and she's like oh, that'll be so good, cause he's kind of like this big, scary looking guy, but he's not like. She follows you as well, but she's like, but he's not. So it'll be so nice to just. You know, it's one of those stereotypes that you're like oh, he's probably so mean and big and but he's super cool, so I'm excited no, not mean average, not big, but you're probably one of those guys in the gym that people are like, oh he's, you know so intimidating, but you're just not I.
Speaker 2:Those guys in the gym that people are like, oh he's, you know so intimidating, but you're just not. I like people like that, just breaking it down for us, making it all small.
Speaker 3:I have a 75-year-old woman at the gym that always talks to me now because I helped her with form one time and now she's like my best friend in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. No well, thank you for coming on. I appreciate. I love your social media. We can find you at four, number four and number two, four weeks to the beach. I'll, of course, tag you in show notes and stuff, but I'm excited, so everybody can go follow you.
Speaker 3:I'll share whatever you want me to share. Collaborate tag whatever.
Speaker 2:Perfect. I know you respond to messages within like five minutes, so that's impressive. You're right there. I love that.
Speaker 3:All right, well thanks for jumping on and I will talk to you guys next week.
Speaker 1:Thank you, christy. 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 Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.