The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

213. Unf*ck Your Workouts Q&A: Cardio, Workout Splits, Burnout and More

• Kristy Castillo

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I’m excited to do another fun Q&A, all about the PHYSICAL side of fitness! 


We’re talking lifting, cardio, muscle growth, and the questions that always seem to come up when you’re trying to “do it all.” 


Maybe you’ve wondered whether your 10K steps and extra cardio are ruining your gains. Maybe you’ve thought you needed to overhaul your split (and change up your workouts every month), or you’re struggling with working out through burnout. 


If any of that sounds familiar, this one’s for YOU.


Honestly, I don’t have a “set” answer for most of these questions, because it really comes down to your goals, and the season of life you’re in. There’s no one-size-fits-all - there never is when it comes to health and fitness!


Don’t overcomplicate this stuff - consistency, recovery, and intention will ALWAYS win, friend!


Episode recap:

  • Why cardio won’t hurt your gains (but lack of rest & recovery will)
  • Why there’s no “perfect” split for muscle growth
  • How to approach your workouts if you’re struggling with burnout
  • My thoughts on changing your workouts, strength training w/cardio, and Orange Theory
  • Tracking your heart rate zone vs. calories burned during workouts
  • What to do if you’re getting 8k steps/day, but still want to increase movement & hit your goals
  • What to focus on if your goal is growing your glutes
  • Why you don’t need to do a “mini-cut” to lose 2-3 pounds


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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Unfuck Your Fitness podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode. We are going to be doing a QA today, and I'm really excited about it.

SPEAKER_01:

I asked for your questions about workouts, building muscle specifically in that arena, not macros, not mindset, anything like that. More of just the physical part of things. And I asked on Instagram stories, and you guys asked a ton of questions, more than I can even get to on this episode. So I chose some that I feel like are really going to apply to a lot of you, hopefully, and that will be the most helpful and that I feel comfortable talking about that will be kind of in the genre of body recomp and unfucking your fitness. And so we're going to talk about those today on the podcast. I have not looked at Spotify comments in a while. So if there's any questions there, I will add those with the questions that I didn't add to today's episode that I got on Instagram stories. And I will add all of those into my content ideas. So I'll be posting different things on Instagram, probably not reels, probably more static posts, carousel posts of the actual, you know, answers to these questions. So thank you so much for asking. I love when I ask questions and really genuinely want your help with the podcast or episodes, ideas, and you deliver that is absolutely means the world to me. And that you trust me with giving you these answers to your questions. So I'm super excited. And yeah, let's dive in. I wanted to, I know we've been talking about the fall energy shift. I know we've been, we talked about nutrition and how to just make that really, really simple. My original idea was to kind of talk about workouts on this episode in the sense of kind of a fall vibe, how to create your own workouts, how to kind of maneuver your workouts into fall. And I was just feeling kind of stuck and uninspired in that arena. And then I thought, why don't I just ask you guys, my faithful friends, why don't I ask you guys what you're struggling with and what questions you have and answer those? Because I think that is, I mean, I make this show for you. These episodes are for you. So I really was excited with all of the questions that I got. So I'm gonna go ahead and dive in because there's there's quite a few of them, and I want to make sure that I can answer them in a way where I don't have to filter myself and I don't have to cut things short. So I'm gonna get through as many as I can within my own time allowance. And then the other ones I will get to on Instagram. So let's dive in. And these are in no particular order. A couple of them I did group later on, but some of them I may have missed, kind of grouping. So we'll we'll see how we how this ends up making sense. But I I think it'll be great because yeah, I mean, you guys always ask really good questions, and I I love to elaborate and give you the truth so that you can feel like we unfucked it for you. That is the goal. All right, so question will doing more cardio, and then in parentheses it says 10k steps plus sprints twice a week hurt my muscle building gains. This is interesting because this is exactly what we do in Fit Club, or we were doing in the summer. We were in the goal for I have kind of a blanket goal is 10k steps. We talked about that in an episode, but 10k steps, and then we had sprints twice a week, and I had four workouts a week for my ladies in fit club. So, with that being said, no, it will not hurt your muscle building gains. Otherwise, I wouldn't have programmed that exact scenario into Fit Club. And I'm not saying this person knows that and they're asking, but just kind of ironic because that's exactly the schedule that I have. So the 10K steps is so so what you want to think about is you can do kind of as much as you want physically. And yes, some of it will hold you back, but really what's gonna hold you back is your rest, like the rest time that you put in. If you're not resting enough, you're not gonna build muscle. And this question is specifically will it hurt my muscle building gains? You need to be eating enough, you need to be lifting heavy enough, and you need to be resting enough. Sprints, 10K steps, that's all burning some calories for you overall, but it's not going to hurt your muscle gains. In fact, sprinting will probably has been shown to and is not gonna interfere with your muscle building at all. And then 10K steps will absolutely not. So to answer that question, as long as you are eating enough and as long as you are resting enough, that will not hurt your muscle gains. Because if, you know, you can you could even walk 15,000 steps a day, as long as you're eating enough, because it's not like walking is super hard. You're not getting your heart rate up super high. It's not like it's super high impact or anything like that. So if you are lifting four days a week, that leaves three other days out of the week that you can work your sprints in so that you have four lifts, you have two sprints, that leaves one day of full out rest. Sprints, we were doing sprints inside of my app for 10 minutes, I think, tops. So you can even add those on to your workout days, and then you have three days of rest. So you're getting plenty of rest, especially with the sprints and even a short, you know, 10-minute hit workout instead of the sprints, that is completely, completely fine. That's not overworking your muscles at all. And if you're not seeing muscle gain with that split, it's probably because you're not resting enough, you're not lifting heavy enough, or you're not eating enough. Next question Is a specific split, upper, lower, push, pull, most effective for muscle building? This is a great question because I feel like there's a lot out there. I do full body workouts and I have been doing full body workouts for three years, I think, at least. Time flies. I have no sense of time anymore. But I've been doing full body workouts for a couple of years, and I love them mentally and physically. Before that, I always did. I've never been a big push-pull girl. I was more upper, lower, different combinations of that. And I liked that for what I needed it for. It just mentally, it wasn't doing it for me. And physically, I needed to change it up too. So I was really nervous to get into full body workouts, but I ended up loving it. And I had someone in the app tell me the other day, it's the first time I've ever done full body workouts, but I actually love them. So that's always great. I love full body workouts for so many reasons. But no, essentially, there's not a single split that is universally most effective for building muscle. What matters the most is kind of what I just talked about with the other question is progressive overload, consistently adding weights or reps or volume over time. You want to have adequate recovery. You want to show up consistently and you want to be giving that max effort and you want to be eating enough. Like the answer straight up is no. There's not a specific split that is most effective for building muscle. What I would say is the most effective split is one you can actually stick to. So if you're doing a split right now that you don't like, that you have a hard time showing up for, that's making you super sore, so you don't feel like you're recovering, that you just hate. So you skip the gym and you're not doing some of the workouts per week, right? If you have a five-day split and you're only going to the gym three days a week, that's not working. So you need a split that you can stick with. And a lot of clients come to me for one-on-one, or we start doing Fit Club and they, especially right now, we've only been doing, we've been doing four workouts per week. And there's other ones, there's other workouts inside of Fit Club that you can add on. There's sprints, there's hit, there is an extra core mobility day. There's a ton of other workouts, there's core, there's all kinds of things. So if someone is in a five-day split, you do my four full bodies, you add on whatever extra that you want. And then, you know, that's totally up to you. But what I have scheduled is four full bodies, and then, you know, you can kind of add on from there. But essentially, what you want to be doing is making sure that you're hitting those muscle groups every single week. So if what you can stick to is three days a week, then does it make sense to do upper, lower, upper? No, because you're hitting your upper twice and your lower body once. So if you're if you can only work out consistently three days a week, but that's what you can actually stick to, then you probably want to be doing full body. So it just, I think starting with that, you know, what is going to be most effective is a program that you can stick to, finding out how many days you can work out and then work arranging your workouts within that schedule. But there is no, I mean, there is something to be said for the the way that workouts are programmed inside of a workout, but no, there's no single split that is better. So if you hear a coach or a trainer, a friend, someone online saying the only way to build muscle is to do a push-pull split that is 100% bullshit. Not true. All right, next question. I like this one because it's it has to do with the mental piece, but I'm gonna kind of pull it together to wrap it into the physical piece. And I know I said no emotional, mental macro stuff in here, but I thought this was a good one because a lot of us deal with it. So this question is how to manage staying consistent with ADHD that sometimes lead to burnout. So, how do how do we stay consistent when we are feeling completely burnt out? So I responded, that was the question. I responded and asked for a little bit more information, a little bit more context because that is that's very just basic. I mean, I understand the question, but I really wanted some more context to be able to answer this specific question. So she replied and said, the issue is complete physical burnout. My mind wants to do the things, but my body is screaming no more. It's to the point where any and all free time, I just want to sleep and rest. Emotional and mentor mental labor is using up all the energy I used to have to want to get up early and work out or work out when I get home. How does someone override the burnout? And then she said, I'm also sure the lack of exercise is making the exhaustion burnout worse. So I'm in a vicious cycle. 100%. So I think this is important because it's like, how do we get off our ass and work out? We want to work out when our bodies are saying, no, I'm tired, I'm burnt out, I'm done. I think, first of all, recognizing that whether it's the ADHD that's causing some issues, you know, and she had said also that she's getting diagnosed. So she's kind of in the middle of figuring out that information, whether it's that ADHD or something else that's causing that, you know, it can be anxiety, depression, something causing that cycle, or whether it's burnout, because that's very emotional and mentally taxing as well, you have to address the burnout. So if we're just talking about burnout in the sense of I am completely burnt out to where I just want to sleep and I do not want to get up and I don't want to do the things like I used to have energy to get up early and work out or do it when I get home. If you're just tired sometimes, that's one thing. If you are like, I used to be able to do this and I am like so done, my body is just screaming that it is done, then you have to address that burnout first. And that's why I want to talk about this because I think that mental peace is so important. If you're gonna unfuck your fitness, you have to start with that mental peace. You cannot push through burnout. The way that you become burnt out is because you pushed through so many times when your body was saying, stop, that's enough. I'm hurting, I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, right? All of those times you were like, I got this, I got this, let's show up, let's do it anyway. You know, you're pushing your body aside to where all of a sudden you don't have that choice anymore and your body is just like completely shutting down. That's burnout. And I've been there, and what you have to do is slow down. So you will need to address the burnout first. You will need to incorporate some deep breathing. You will need to incorporate, I love gua shaw and skincare for that because while I'm doing my goua sha, I'm massaging my neck or my face and just deep breathing and spending some time on myself. So addressing the burnout by cutting back on your workouts, I know that sounds counterintuitive because you're like, I want to work out, I have physical goals. You literally can't. You just said you can't. Physically exhausted, burnt out, you cannot move. You are so tired. You need to let your body rest. And the reason that I don't say just push through it is because if you are burnt out, you're not resting enough, you're not eating enough, right? You are just completely burnt out. If you work out through that, what is your body supposed to do with that? If your body is already so stressed, too stressed, too stressed that you cause burnout, and then you go put your body through a workout, which is more stress on your body, that is going to make it worse. And so you have to just step back and say, okay, my goal right now, yes, you do have physical goals, of course, we all do, but that can't be your main goal. Your main goal has to be to take a step back and get through burnout and chill out and become more in tune with your body. Your, your, your goal has to change from why can I not work out? I want to do these workouts, you know, but I'm burnout. It has to change to how can I heal my body? How can I slow down? How can I honor my body through maybe some stretching, yoga, Pilates, rest, right? You have to address that part of it. So I think it's the question was how to stay consistent with workouts with ADHD that sometimes leads to burnout. You don't. You have to address the ADHD. And if you find out from your doctor that that's something that needs to be managed, please, you have my permission to take medication, manage that, because all the other things will kind of come on top of it. But I think just taking that pressure off of yourself to to be consistent with working out and consistent, consistent with working out can be like maybe right now you do one or two workouts a week. And then the other days you do some yoga, Pilates, stretching, right? Cut down, like your consistent doesn't have to be five days a week. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just figure out what your body needs right now. So I hope that was very helpful. Now I want to move into a couple of questions that are kind of have a similar answer. So the first question is, how often should you change your workouts? And is it just the order of the workouts or otherwise? And then a next question was when should you do strength training before cardio or after cardio? And then how many strength cardio sessions per week? And then which is better, a circuit or completing the sets of each exercise? And the last question in this grouping was thought my thoughts on orange theory or other fitness places where the workouts are preset. The reason I grouped all of these together, and I'll go through them one by one, is because the answer is not universal. The answer is this depends on your goals. How often you should change your workouts depends on your goals. How often you should do strength training depends on your goals. When you should do strength training, I believe you should always do strength training before, because if you do your cardio, you're going to be more taxed, more tired. You're not going to be able to lift as heavy, which will affect your strength training. So I believe you should do your strength training first, then do your cardio for that reason. The next question, which is better, a circuit or completing the sets of each exercise, that depends on your goal. And then my thoughts on orange theory and other fitness places, that depends on your goal. So a lot of these questions are I think that's the problem with you know fitness influencers and coaches and trainers, and I guess all the information out there right now is it makes you think, or for some reason, you think that changing up the order of your workouts when you do the strength training, whether a circuit or sets, uh supersets, or just even, you know, one movement, finishing all the squats before you move on. And then Orange Theory, fitness places, boot camps, things like that. For some reason, you think that there's a one answer for that. That I would say you should work out, change your workouts this many weeks. You should do strength training this many weeks, you should do a circuit 100% absolutely all the time. Oh, and you, and I hate orange theory. Like it, it seems like that's kind of what you're wanting me to say or you're wanting someone to say. And I I wish, I kind of wish that there was some truth to that, that it was just like this is the best way, period, and I could be done saying, and then that's just my stance on it. But unfortunately, that's not true. Almost every single thing in fitness, besides macros and you know, energy input, but like as far as training, every single thing, pretty much, pretty much, okay, there are exceptions, depends on the person and your goals. So unless you are listening to someone like me who's gonna say this all depends on your goals, then what you're getting is false information. Because if someone is saying orange theory workouts are complete shit, that's not true. And if someone's saying orange theory workouts are the best way to get the body you want, that's also not true. So these questions are very much, I'm I'm looking at all of them thinking, well, that depends on your goals. So let me break them down just a little bit. How often should you change your workouts? And is it just the order or otherwise? How often you should change your workouts is depending on your goals. Inside a fit club, I change them every four weeks. That doesn't mean that it's a completely different workout. We're always doing squats, we're always doing hip thrusts, we're always doing lunges, we're always doing bicep curls, we're always right, we're always doing certain movements, but I rearrange them, I change them up a little bit. And I do that honestly, mostly because people get bored. And I Fit Club is created to keep you intrigued, to keep you motivated and excited. And part of that is we're getting new workouts next week. Let's see what's going on. Let's see what Christy created for us. But I do that in a way where the goal is also achieved of you will gain muscle and you will change your body composition. I personally, right now, I'm on week seven or eight of the same workouts. You don't have to change your workouts. If your workouts are hitting every muscle group in a way that will get you to your goal, you don't have to change your workouts until you get to that goal. I probably am not changing my workouts until January because I'm one, lazy. I don't want to think about new workouts. Yes, I have Fit Club workouts, but for me, it's like I already have them screenshotted. I'm progressive overloading. My brain is so happy being like, oh, Monday, it's well, I don't even work out on Mondays. But the full body one, my first full body workout for the week is back squats and chest press and RDLs and bicep curls and lateral raises. Like I know exactly what I'm doing in full body one, full body two. I just need to go out there and do it. And by now, eight weeks into it, I know exactly what to lift, I know what it feels like, I know what's coming next, so I can get set up for the next exercise. It's easy and I'm really liking the way that it that my body is changing. But if your goal is different, then you could change your workouts whenever you want. But the goal, if the goal is muscle building, you want to keep doing the same movements so you can get better at those movements and your form will be better and your muscle mass will grow because you are lifting more weight, right? So how often you quote unquote should change your workouts depends on your goals. You don't have to change your workouts hardly ever. But if you get bored easily, keep the same movements and just mix them up a little bit. Maybe do single leg RDLs instead of regular, right? Maybe do alternating lunges instead of all the right leg and all the left leg. Just you can do things like that to mix it up. The next question, how or when should you do strength training? Like I said, I believe that should be done before your cardio. How many strength cardio sessions per week? That totally depends on your goal. Okay. If you only have time for three, a lot of this needs to be, again, how can you be consistent at it? Do you have three days that you can set aside for weightlifting? Cool. Then figure out your workout movements and your goals and put them into those three workouts. Can you do four? Cool. Can you do five and you love to do five and that feels really, really good? Then do five. And they can all be strength training. It just depends, right? There's no one size fits all. Which is better, a circuit or completing the sets of each exercise. This depends. If you're, and this kind of goes into the orange theory and those kinds of boot camps, they're typically circuit-based. Depends on your goal. If you go into an orange theory or a fitness place and you say, okay, if I do orange theory classes, am I going to build muscle? Am I going to body recomp or am I going to lose fat? Like, what is the goal of orange theory? My goal for Fit Club ladies members is body recomp. We're building muscle seasonally. We rotate through the seasons, like I've talked about on the show. That's the goal for that. It's probably not the goal for orange theory. You're doing a different workout every day. It's usually circuit-based where you're doing, I don't know, I've never been to one, but you're doing right a couple different workouts and then you're doing them again and then you're doing them, or a couple different exercises, and then you're doing them again and again. There's not many rest periods. So circuits are usually right, you're doing squats and you're maybe resting 30 seconds, or maybe you're just walking to the next station and then you're doing the next exercise. You're gonna be able, you're gonna have to lift lighter because it's usually about like you do it for 30 seconds or a minute, right? It's not about reps, it's not about progressive overload. So it depends. It's I I think those classes are fine if that is your goal. I have a lot of clients who start doing those classes. Like they start with me and they're already doing those classes and they love it. And I'm like, cool, keep going to orange theory two times a week. We'll add in your strength training. But when they come to me and say, I'm not progressing fast enough, I don't see my muscle mass growing as fast as I want it to, it's because you're doing orange theory. It's because you're not progressive overloading four times a week. You're doing orange theory circuits twice a week, and then you're doing my progressive overloads twice a week. It just depends on the goal. So, as far as doing a circuit or completing the sets, for muscle building, for body recomp, you have to be progressive overloading. And that means you're not going to be doing a circuit. So you want to do supersets are okay if you're doing an upper combined with a lower, if you're doing a squat and then you're doing a bicep curl, for example. Your legs are resting while you're doing your bicep curl, your arms are resting while you're doing your squats. So that's fine. But essentially you want to be completing each of the exercises, not doing a circuit if your goal is muscle building. And that's a lot of what these workout programs out here that you can purchase, that's a lot of what they are, is the circuits. And so that's why your body isn't changing as quickly or as much as you want it to. So I hope grouping those together made sense. And I am going to move along and get through a couple more here. So if you are in a cut, do you focus on a target heart rate zone or a calorie burn? I'll be honest with you, I have never tracked my heart rate zone during a workout. I've only tracked my heart rate because recently, in the last what, six months, it's been really high. And that's when I started tracking my heart rate, and my aura ring was telling me my heart was struggling and which we all know, I've been struggling with that for a year. So that's the only time I've ever tracked my heart rate. I have never purposely done. Now I've done cardio in zone two. I understand that I have done that. It's never been on purpose. So if you are in a cut, you do not have to focus on a target heart rate zone. Yes, there are times for that. Yes, there are trainings for that. Yes. If you are training for a certain, you know, race situation, then yes, heart rate zones are important. But I'm just gonna be honest with you. I have built the body I have. I have done workouts for muscle mass. I have done workouts for cutting. I have done, I have ran, I have done 5Ks, I've done a couple half marathons, and I have never one time tracked my heart rate. I don't even know how to do that on my ordering or I had an Apple Watch for a while, but I didn't wear a tracker for years. So you do not have to focus on that to lose weight, to be in a cut. You want to focus on, you don't even really want to focus on calorie burn so much. You want to focus on your calorie intake versus your calorie output. So you definitely don't need to focus on a target heart rate zone to cut fat because I've cut fat and I've never done that before. So you don't have to, right? Versus calorie burn. You don't really have to focus on that either. If you're in a cut, you can keep your movement pretty much the same and you can just cut calories. Or you can, yes, of course, focus on your calorie burn and you'll want to burn more calories during your run or your, you know, your sprint or your rowing machine or, you know, whatever you're doing. But the heart rate zone versus calorie burn conversation, I've always just been honest and said I've never tracked my heart rate zone. So I would absolutely rather focus on a calorie burn from a workout than a heart rate zone in a cut. This is a great question as well. Getting or advice on getting steps in the day. She's up at 4:45 a.m. to work out. She has a desk job and she's a busy mom on the go. I also reached out to her and asked just for some concept, context, because, you know, advice on getting steps in the day. I didn't know if this person was only getting 3,000 steps and we needed to increase. That would be more of a dire situation where I would say, okay, we really need to figure out a time for you to go for a walk or squeeze some steps and maybe a walking pad at your desk or something. She told me she's getting 8,000 steps on average, I think she said on average per day. That's plenty. Okay. If this lady is up at 4:45 a.m. to work out, she has a desk job. She's a busy mom on the go. Pretty sure I even responded to her and said, this is a season of life where you are, you have kids. You, yes, you'll probably always have the desk job. I don't know if you're a long time anyway, but your kids are going to grow up and they're not always going to need you. They'll be able to drive someday and you will have more free time to yourself. So this is a season where this is your life. It's workout, it's desk job, it's dropping the kids off, it's squeezing in dinner and homework and laundry and all of the things. If you can only get in 8,000 steps a day and like that's a stretch, sometimes it's like, I really have to work for these, right? That's how I am with my 10. I'm like, 7,000 these days feels really easy to achieve, but I still want 10. 8,000 is good. What you can do is just say, this is my movement every day or whatever. I have this many days I work out. I go to work, I'm running the kids around. This is my step goal, is 8,000. You don't have to get 10,000. If your average is 8,000, work your calories in around that. You just might have to eat a little bit less if your calorie output is a little bit more, right? If you're walking 2,000 more steps per day, you're gonna burn that many more calories, honestly, because you don't burn a lot of calories when you're walking. But let's say you ran 10 minutes to get in 2,000 steps, that might be a little hit that might get your heart rate up a little bit, right? Not that we're focused on that, but it's, you know, a little something to kind of get you going a little bit. But, you know, that would obviously increase your calorie burden, which I love. But I specifically said to her, if you're getting in 8,000 steps a day, that is perfectly fine. You know, if you don't, if you're gaining weight or you're not losing weight, if you want to lose weight and you're at 8,000 steps and you have your workouts and everything kind of set and you have a certain amount of calories you're consuming and you want to lose weight, you either have to, yes, figure out how to get more steps in during the day. Maybe you just do a shit ton of walking on the weekends and average it out, right? You can always average your steps too. Like you said, it was 8,000 per week on average, I think she said. So she's already doing that, but get more on the weekends if you can. But either you eat less calories or you move more. And if you don't have an option, do not have time to move more, you have to eat less if your goal is weight loss. Next question can only work out three days a week, but I still want more glute-focused programming. Best split. I wanted to just drill this in one more time because we already talked about the split. There's not a best split overall, but for this particular person, wanted to work out three days a week and wants more glute-focused. So, not gonna be really a best split. The only thing I would say is if you're gonna work out three days a week, you wanna obviously hit glutes on all three of those days. So if you want more glute focused, I would do two glute movements per day. You'd want to have one exercise where your glutes are in the shortened position. So a hip thrust when your glutes are contracted and they're short, and you would want to have another movement like an RDL where the glute is being worked when it is in the lengthened position. So your glute is all stretched out. Make sure you have one exercise in the shortened position, one exercise in the lengthened position. And then other than that, on those three days, You can add some chest, you can add some shoulders, you can add, you know, however you want to do it, it does not matter as long as you have those two glute movements in each day for your glute focused, and then you add in the others, and then you progressive overload every week. The split can be totally up to you, which is the best part, if you ask me, because there's not a one way. This question is great as well. Does a two-week mini cut to drop two to three pounds make sense if you gained that over the summer? Now, I did say that I was just gonna kind of be talking about workouts, and this is more of a mini cut question, but I'm gonna tie this into workouts because my first thought was no, you don't need to do a mini cut. Two to three pounds can come off pretty quickly, okay? But if you do a two-week mini cut, let's say, because if you want to drop a couple pounds, you're gonna have to do, you're gonna have to cut your calories by 300 calories, let's say three to 500 calories per week until you drop two to three pounds, which shouldn't take that long. But are you gonna then you're gonna maybe, let's say it takes three weeks, you're in a mini cut for three weeks, you lost three pounds, then what? Are you gonna reverse back out after three weeks and gain that weight back? Like, are you gonna reverse out quickly and gain that weight back? What's your plan for after? I guess is what I'm trying to say. So if you're gonna do a really quick mini cut and like starve yourself, because that's what most people think. Most people don't think, oh, I'll cut 300 to 500 calories and I'll do it really gradually. No, we're like, I'm just gonna do a cut until I get these three pounds off. Then what? It's the plan after that we don't usually have. So what I suggest is to just clean up your eating a little bit. There's no sense in rushing into a cut for three pounds. That's kind of crazy because it's just, it's not much weight at all. What I recommend instead, like I said, is just to clean up your eating. So start tracking again. And once you start tracking, you'll see what you're actually consuming and putting into your mouth. Cleaning things up goes a long way. That's the first thing I tell my clients is before we do any sort of cut or, you know, I guess like really leaning into something with a name like that, we're just gonna clean it up. Clean up your nutrition. After that, add in some more steps or add in some sprints, or add in a little more weightlifting so that you are building some muscle and you're gonna work on that instead. So I want your focus to be cleaning up your food instead of cutting out foods or cutting back on food. Just clean up your food a little bit and then add in some more movement. That will be the best way for you to approach losing two to three pounds if that's what you gained over the summer, because it's gonna be so quick and you'll feel good too. That way you're not gonna be starving yourself and then you're not gonna be having to figure out, huh? Now what do I do? Now that I cut all these foods out, now what? So we want to add in some movement so that it is balanced out. So I hope that was really helpful. I love QA's and I feel like those were just really, really simple, but also a really good reminder. A lot of those questions were a good opportunity for me to say, it depends on your goals. None of this is cut and dry. You know, even like the last question, if you want to do a mini cut to drop two to three pounds, go ahead. But what happens after that? You know, if you gained three pounds over the summer and you're like, I got to get this off quick. Okay. So you're gonna, like I said, cut a bunch of foods out. You're not gonna change your movement, you're not gonna change the quality of your foods, you're not gonna do anything like that. You're just gonna cut some foods because a mini cut usually kind of consists of that. Uh, I would rather you do it and the other hand of let's just clean things up and start to, because if you have a little extra two to three pounds is basically nothing. I gain that the day I start my period. Like, let's be real. And what I do even then is kind of clean things up, make sure I'm going for more of a walk. Maybe you take some probiotic, prebiotic drink that I take and it debloats you a little bit. Maybe you work on, you have a little bulk on you. If you have two to three pounds, I don't know if that's even a bulk, but you know, if I felt like, okay, I gained three pounds, well, I might as well kind of you can't turn fat into muscle, but I might as well use it. It's already here. So why can't I just lift a little bit heavier and kind of put that to use? So I always want to challenge you to think about other ways that you can just not be smaller and just not work harder and not think of things as when should I do strength training or how many times should I do strength training or is orange theory bad or good? I want you to think of things when you hear, you know, heart rate zone, calorie burn. If one of those works better for you, go for it. If you can only work out three days a week, perfect. Maneuver that into which body parts do you want to grow? Your glutes, make sure you're doing that every workout, right? Make sure you can find a programming that's consistent for you. It doesn't matter if it's push pull, just because your best friend loves to do push-pull workouts or they love their upper lower splits. If you hate them, then that's not gonna work for you because you're not gonna do it. That's what I found myself doing. So a lot of this was an opportunity for me to obviously answer your question, which I love doing. I fucking love answering your questions. And I love that aha moment when I'm talking to a one-on-one client and they're like, oh, I was told it had to be this way. And I'm like, well, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be that way. I've done it this way, and my clients do it this way. There's so many different ways that you can work out, that you can change your body, that you can eat. There's so many different ways. So I hope this was great in the sense that I answered your questions. I also hope that it was great in the sense that you realize nothing, there's not one split that's going to change your life. There's not a heart rate zone that's going to change your life. It's all doing things consistently and doing things that align with your specific goals. So let's remember that this fall to kind of change that mindset of if I want to build muscle, I can do that. If I want to lose fat, I can do that. If I want to work work out three days a week, I can fucking do that. If I want to work out five days a week, I can fucking do that, right? I have to manipulate my workouts or my mindset or my sleep or my food to be able to allow for that. But the physical part is only one part of it as well. So don't think that one of these things is going to change your life. It's a complete circle of the mindset, the food, the feelings, right? And the movement and the workouts. So that's what I really wanted to encompass this fall season is bringing that all together. And then we keep moving forward into our build phase or into our holiday phase and whatever we want to do with our bodies in that phase. So I hope you loved this episode. And I will talk to you next week.

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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 episode. So much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time.