The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

254. You’re Doing Everything Right…So Why Don’t You Look Like You Work Out?

• Kristy Castillo

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Ever feel like you're doing all the "right" things, like tracking your food, lifting weights, and getting your steps in, but…you don’t look like you work out?


It’s one of THE most common frustrations I hear from the ladies I work with! It’s usually not because you're lazy or your body is “broken”. More often, it’s because you're working on the wrong things.


In this episode, I'm breaking down six reasons your body may not be changing the way you want it to. From under-fueling and chasing perfection, to skipping recovery and overcomplicating your routine, these are the habits I see holding women back time and time again. 


The goal isn't to do more - it’s to remove the things preventing your body from adapting and growing.


Looking like you lift doesn't happen because you work yourself into the ground. It happens when you fuel your body, train with intention, recover well, and repeat the process long enough to let your body adapt!


Episode recap:

  • Why working harder doesn't always mean working smarter
  • Why under-fueling is keeping you building muscle + recovering well
  • Focusing on repeatable habits vs. trying to be “perfect” with everything
  • Why you NEED recovery days 
  • Stop overcomplicating the basics 
  • Focus on optimizing + doing the basics first
  • Why your body adapts to what you repeatedly do


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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.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to today's episode. I have a really good episode for you guys today, and I'm super excited about it, and we're gonna dive into that soon. But I can't start today's episode without talking to you guys about my weekend. I'm recording this a few days after I attended one of my former clients, one of my former one-on-one clients. Her name is Morgan. I coached her pre-wedding, and we talked a lot about macros and mindset and all the things, as I like to say. We she had her bachelorette party, she had her shower, she had her wedding, she all of that while I was coaching her. And this was about a year ago. I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, I attended her first bodybuilding competition this weekend. We drove, my husband and I drove two and a half hours to go see her. I've never met her in real life, so it was absolutely awesome to meet you, Morgan. I know you're listening to this, but she did her first bodybuilding competition. She competed in the fit model division. She took first place in two categories and second place in another category. And I'm so proud of her. I am still kind of reeling from it. I hope to have her on the podcast and we can really dive into it. And I could also dive more into my thoughts and realizations from the weekend. And maybe I will let me know if you guys want to hear that. Maybe I will do it, even if you don't want to hear about it. Because it was actually one of the most awesome weekends. First of all, getting to meet her and her husband and watch, you know, just her compete after knowing her and talking to her almost daily and seeing her virtually on calls every two weeks. You really get to know someone in a, you know, in a in a pretty deep way through that experience and coaching her through something so vulnerable for women, through some injuries and mindsets and all of that. And she is one of the most determined, dedicated, committed people that I have ever coached. And she's just truly a gem. And being there to support her was just a no-brainer. And I absolutely loved seeing her grow through that. It was really cool to watch. But being in that room, it's unbeatable. I've been around those situations before. And yeah, the energy there is just so cool. It's one of my favorite things. One of my favorite things about people that I admire is dedication and determination and drive, you know, being committed to something, doing what the fuck you say you're gonna do, showing up for yourself. I love that. And being in a room full of people that you can just look at them and tell physically, they're so dedicated. They're so committed, they don't give a fuck what anyone thinks. They eat their chicken, they eat their rice, their broccoli. They were eating rice cakes. The guy next to me was eating a whole pack of rice cakes, a little container of almond butter. Another man we saw was eating a huge container of chicken. I mean, they do what they have to do to see the results that they want to see. And I digress, but it is just really fucking cool to see that. It's so cool to see women and men on stage building their bodies despite so many things that I hear all the time about excuses and money and taste, and I don't have time and I don't want to track and I don't want to do this, and hormones and walking and steps and blah, blah, blah. And these people are just like, I'll do it anyway. And I love that. So, anyway, it was such a cool weekend. I'm so proud of you, Morgan. It was so great to see you. I know I will see you again at another show if you keep competing because I love it. And it was so, so great. And hopefully I'll have her on the podcast. But today we are going to be talking about why, if you are doing everything right, why don't you look like you lift? This is something that I hear all the time when I get questions in my DMs, or if I ask a question box on my stories, or just in comments, or literally everywhere, I'm doing everything right, Christy. I'm tracking, I'm eating the right things, I'm lifting five to six days a week. I'm hitting my steps, I'm doing my cardio, I'm doing all the things right. But I don't even look like I work out. And so I am going to give you six reasons why. And because I want to talk to you about this because, you know, most women that I work with are not lazy and you're actually working really hard. You are lifting and you are tracking and you are walking and you are trying to eat healthy and you are trying really, really hard. And a lot of you are putting in so much effort. And so I understand that you think you're doing everything right, but you're not. And so we are going to talk about that in this episode. I want you to go into this episode very open-minded because if you have been doing all the things right and you're not seeing results, someone just said this to me a couple of days ago, and they're like, and you, as you say, then you're not doing all the things right. Someone told me that they heard me say that and they felt really called out. It's true. It's not that your body's broken, it's not that you break science and the science doesn't apply to you, and you are some kind of species that really shouldn't exist. And, you know, you are just feeding the system somehow, and none of this is going to work for you ever. It's just because you're not doing all the things right. You might be doing all the things, but you're not doing them all right. So I want to talk about it because there's just a couple of different, there's more than this, but these are the ones I want to talk about because they are the ones that once I dive into this with someone, these are the reasons why typically your body isn't changing. What it comes down to is that you don't always have to work harder, you have to work smarter, you have to do the things correctly. If you want your body to change, you have to give your reason or your body a reason to adapt to its training. And you have to give it reasons to adapt in a good way, right? And if you don't give it long enough to adapt to what you're doing, then that's not going to work either. So it's about removing the things that are keeping your body from adapting and doing more of the things that will cause your body to adapt. So, number one reason is you're underfueling your body. This is so common. This was me. This was probably every single client that I've ever worked with at one point or another. You're tracking. A lot of ladies come to me and they're like, I'm tracking my food, I'm tracking everything. Awesome. And that's great. Tracking is good. I do say to track your calories. That is something that you need to do. But are you hitting your calorie target? Are you trusting your calorie target? Have you been doing it long enough to see results from that? Or are you eating below your calories every day? If someone, if your target is 1600 calories and you're hitting your protein, you're hitting, you know, close to carbs and fats, but you're just staying under. I hear a lot of clients say that I'm just under my carbs, or I like to stay under my carbs and fats, but I'll hit my protein. Well, then you're not hitting your macros. Maybe you're tracking them, sure, but you're not hitting them, right? So you need to not eat below your calories every single day. I don't know why we do that. We get a calorie goal, macro goal, and then we stay under it. That's not the point. The point is to hit your macros, hit your calories, track that and make sure that that counts. Do you have a fear of eating more? Usually, if you're undereating every single day and eating under your calories every day, then it's because you have a fear of eating more. You think that that's not going to work. You think that if you eat more, you'll get fat. I've heard that so many times in the last few weeks. I'm only eating this amount and I'm working and doing all the things right, but I'm scared if I eat more, I'll get fat. Not just I'll gain fat, I'll get fat. So I know that that is a very common thought. And if you're always thinking that less less food is better, right? If I give you a calorie goal and again, you're trying to undereat it or just sneak past kind of the system all the time of like, well, she gave me 1600, but I'm only going to eat 1400. I gave you 1600. You need to eat 1600. Okay. So you're not being sneaky. You're not overriding the system. You're not doing a good thing by under-eating and not eating what your calorie goal, what your allotted calorie goal is, because your body needs fuel. I talk about this all the time, to build muscle, to recover, to perform. You can't ask your body to build muscle if you are consistently just asking it to survive. If you are only giving your body enough calories to get through the day, and then you're wondering why I'm exhausted. I go to the gym and I lift, but I can't lift heavy. My muscles aren't growing. It's because you're not eating enough. You're shortchanging the system. You're shortchanging yourself. And so, number one is you're underfueling your body. You are doing yourself a disservice by not eating enough. Again, some of you are wearing this around like a badge of honor. Like, this is my target. I'm not gonna hit that. I'm gonna eat under my calorie amount. I'm gonna eat under my carbs. That's not good. That is one of the reasons why you don't look like you work out. And I know that, obviously, I know that for many reasons, but I know that physically for myself because I was working my ass off doing beach body and I was underfueled and my body didn't change because of something else we're gonna talk about, lack of rest days, but also because of lack of food. I was not eating enough. And sometimes the beach body target would be a certain amount, and I would think, well, I saw better results on this lower number, trying to be skinny, and so I'm gonna go ahead and stick with that lower number. And that was not doing myself any favors. So undereating is keeping you from looking like you work out. People that look like they work out eat a lot of food. Okay. So stop trying to be as little as possible and start eating enough to support the body you're trying to build. If you want to look like you lift, you've got to fucking eat food. Number two is you are chasing perfect instead of repeatable. So remember this in everything that you're doing. If you're trying to do all the things right, remember that all those things, you're trying to do them all perfectly instead of just making them repeatable to be consistent. You're trying to hit your macros perfectly, you're trying to make perfect meals, you're trying to be on Pinterest all the time and get a lot of variety in your meals, you're trying to be organic or eat clean or find the best option. And you're thinking that you ruined the day if one thing goes off plan. Your body doesn't adapt to perfect days. Your body doesn't give a shit if you're perfect, especially in one area. It adapts to the repeated stress that you put on it, right? Whether that be the stress of, I shouldn't say, I guess I shouldn't say it adapts to the stress that you put on it. I meant that more in terms of workouts. It adapts to the breaking down of muscles because of the stress that you put on it. It adapts to the routine and starts that trust that you build with eating enough. So it adapts to what you give it and you need to make sure that you're giving it, you know, the right amount of things. So I would rather see you hit your workouts 99% of the time, hit your macros 99% of the time rather than hitting them 100% perfectly for five days or for one week, because that's not going to get you very far, right? Your body rewards that consistency. It does not reward perfection. So when you are trying to be perfect, when you are trying to make your routine look like somebody else's, when you are trying to hit perfect workout plan, perfect routine, perfect night routine, perfect morning routine, perfect supplement routine, perfect fucking everything, you can't do it. And then that becomes something else that you tried and failed. You have to do something that you can repeat. I recommend starting small. Start with a couple of supplements, start with three to four lifts per week, or follow something like my Fit Club programming, where it's just you show up and do what's there, try to hit your macros 99% of the time, even 90% of the time, actually try to hit them. Chase repeatable. And I think you will find that that's much more sustainable because you will be able to see these are habits that I can do day after day, week after week, month after month, and your body will start to change. If you do everything perfectly for one week, your body won't change. Not ever. So let's stop thinking about perfection. That mindset is really, it's really gonna fuck you over. And to be blunt about it, we need to grow up and realize that perfection is not a thing. You can't be perfect. We shouldn't even try to be perfect. We should try to be consistent. I'm 45 years old. Like if I'm still telling myself, trying to be perfect, trying to be a perfect mom, trying to be a perfect wife, trying to be a perfect coach, I'm gonna fail at that every single time. Like if eventually I had to say consistent is good. This is good enough. I'm doing my very best. I have to make this repeatable. I have to be this kind of mom, this kind of wife, this kind of coach. This is what I want to be, right? You have to figure out what you need to do and who you need to show up as and how you can repeat that. I'm just kind of sick of the perfection mindset. Like, I understand if we're younger, but ladies, gentlemen, let's stop. Okay. Number three is you're never giving your body time to adapt. This shit takes a while, okay? This shit is not optional. This shit is not really easy. This shit is simple and it does take longer than you're going to want it to. I had a question in my stories this week, and it was basically something about how to take the emotions out of this process, because I I think it was a woman who wrote this in. She was feeling like she should be further by now, right? She should be making more progress. And I totally understand that. I totally understand that. But your body, depending on your starting place, your body is gonna take its time. Your body doesn't care that you have a goal, that you have a finish line, that you have a certain timeline. It doesn't care. So we need to get rid of that and we need to just realize that however long it takes your body to adapt, it is what it is. We need to focus on the habits. We need to lift, we need to do some cardio, we need to do some steps, and we need to repeat that every single day. Okay. Remember, you stimulate muscle in the gym. You build muscle afterwards. So when you are in the gym, you need to lift heavy, you need to be working your muscles. The idea is lifting heavy, making my muscles work really, really hard, challenging them so that they break down and they grow stronger. Outside of the gym, you do a little bit of cardio, you hit your steps, you're moving, you're grooving, you're not sitting around on your ass, you're eating pretty healthy, you're hitting your macros so that you can build that muscle and refuel. We are not every single day in the gym. We're not every single day building biceps because when are they gonna recover? If you're in the gym three hours a day, when are you gonna eat? When are you gonna get your steps in? When are you gonna read a book? When are you gonna cook dinner? When are you gonna be there for your family? When are you gonna chill the fuck out? Right. We have to just do things in little doses because honestly, that's the best way to do it. Today, actually, in my lower body workout, I did hip thrusts, I did lying hamstring curls, and I did glute kickbacks on the cable machine. That was my lower body day. Glutes, hamstrings. It's all I needed to do. I did four sets, I did as many reps as possible with the amount of weight that I had on the on the bar, on the cable machine. That was all I did. That was enough to stimulate the muscle groups that I needed to stimulate today. Now, in my beach body days, that's not how it went for me at all. What I did was I pushed play. I was sweating, I was jumping around like a maniac. I was lifting five, maybe 10 pound weights. I wanted to sweat. I wanted to be exhausted and out of breath and have my hands on my knees gasping for air. And I wanted to check my Apple Watch after to see how many calories I burned, even though I had no fucking idea what that meant, because I didn't know how many calories I was eating. So why does it matter how many calories I'm burning? None of it made any sense. But that's exactly the problem is that a lot of you are jumping around, checking your calories burned, you know, doing the cardio, doing the steps, doing everything that I'm telling you, but you're doing all of it every single day. And you're not really thinking about breaking down the muscles and challenging the muscles. You're thinking about sweat, exhaustion, calorie burn. That shit doesn't matter. Okay. So that was a little tangent that I didn't really plan on going on. But lifting, cardio, steps, macros, repeat. Lifting, cardio, steps, macros, repeat. Not every single day, but those are the things that are mandatory. You don't lift every single day. You don't have to do cardio every single day. I do think steps are really great every single day, and you do need to hit your macros every single day. But again, that's the repeatable process, right? For me, currently, Monday, Tuesdays, I'm trying to lift Monday, Tuesdays. If I get behind, so what I would like to do is lift Monday, Tuesday, have Wednesday off, lift Thursday, Friday, and take my weekends off, just because right now weekend, it's summer, weekends are busy. Hasn't really worked. But if I say Monday, Tuesday, rest day, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, lift, rest days on the weekends, if I get a day behind, it's fine. If I do Tuesday, Wednesday, lift, Thursday, rest day, Friday, Saturday, lift, Sunday rest day, right? I still have enough time. But I'm not lifting more than four days a week right now. Probably not ever for a very, very long time, at least, because I need recovery days. When is my muscle going to grow if I'm working out six to seven days a week? It's not. So we have to recover. Recovery isn't really taking time off, it's part of the plan. You have to break down your muscle in the gym, and then you have to spend time recovering that muscle so it can build. Recovery is actually a lot of work for your body. You need to be eating the same calories that day. You need to be moving, you need to be up and around moving. You know, it's not just like, oh, it's a complete rest day. I'm just sitting on my ass all day doing nothing. No, you can still move, do a little Pilates, yoga, clean your house, whatever you got to do. But you have to rest and you have to give your body time to adapt. So rest is important and do this for months, months and months and months. Don't think a four-week program is gonna get you there. Don't think a six-week program is gonna get you there. Okay. You need rest days. Don't try to lift five, six, seven days a week. Try to lift three to four days a week. Get your steps, get your food, do your groceries, do your meal prep. There's so many other things in this journey that you can be doing. Do that for one month, do that for two months, do that for four months, do that for six months. Then you will start to see this is a process that I can keep up with. My body's adapting to it. I'm giving it time. I'm pushing hard. I'm also recovering, and I'm giving it enough time. If you see people with the body that you want who have muscles, it took months, if not years, to build the body that they have. And it also takes a lot of work to maintain it. Okay. So just give it some time. None of this is gonna happen quickly. Not, and I shouldn't say none of this, because you can lose fat quickly, you can lose weight quickly. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about why do you not look like you lift? Because you're trying to do it too quickly, you're not resting enough, you're not lifting heavy enough, and you're not waiting long enough for the results. You're like, I've been doing this for four weeks. Congratulations. I've been doing it for 18 years. I don't care that you've been doing it for four weeks, quite frankly. That's not really impressive. Like, I get I get the mentality of kind of where you are, but like, let's be real, this is gonna take a long time. Okay. So, so buckle in. Your other option is to quit and just. Stay the same. And we're not going to do that here. Number four, you're spending all your energy on the wrong decisions. Instead of lifting progressively and eating protein and sleeping, you're worried about recipes and seed oils and meal timing and perfect ingredients and complicated tracking, figuring out the right apps and the right supplements and the right time. And should I drink my protein within the 30-minute window or the hour window? Who cares? I don't worry about at all when I eat something or when I take a supplement. I take all my supplements in the morning first thing when I wake up because that's when I remember to take them. I eat all my meals depending on when I'm hungry and I have them kind of blocked out, like this needs to be consumed by 10 a.m. This needs to be consumed by noon. This needs to be consumed by three. And then I have dinner and then I have meninating creamy ice cream by 9:30. It doesn't matter. Okay, that just results in decision fatigue, overwhelm, and quitting. So simple routines get repeated. And like I just was talking about, we need things that you can repeat. Also, repeated routines cause adaptation, which is what we want. So if your body gets used to, okay, supplements in the morning, this is how I'm gonna feel. I'm gonna feel good after I take my EAAs, I'm gonna feel energetic after I take my pre-workout. So I will eat my rice cakes and I'll go work out. After that, I'll feel rejuvenated because I have that endorphin rush. I'm feeling good, but I also got my steps in and a run and a lift, possibly. So I'm also tired. So I'm gonna go do a couple things around the house, get washed up, eat my lunch, start my work day. I have my routine down pretty well. But you also have to remember that's my life, right? I could go on through my day, but it doesn't really matter. That's my life. You have to create something that works for you. When will you remember to take your supplements? Meal timing, I wouldn't say matters. Seed oils, who the fuck cares? Too much caffeine, yes, that's a thing, but also it's not gonna really stop you from seeing results. There are so many things out in social media right now that even if you are not watching, maybe your friends are, maybe your parents are, maybe your kids are, you know, you're just kind of hearing through the grapevine. It doesn't matter. Okay. Pick some supplements, pick a good brand. I really like Promix, I really like Keon, and I really like clean ingredients. Those are probably my top three companies for supplements. Purchase all your supplements from one of those three brands and move on. Don't ever think about another supplement brand as long as you live. Okay. Get into Fit Club, open my app and see what workouts you have to do for the week. Plan them in and then don't ever think about it again. When it's time to do that, you open the app and you do it. For your macros, figure out what you're gonna have for breakfast, lunch, dinner, staples. I shared in Fit Club this week we started a challenge, the lock the fuck in challenge with my Fit Clubbers. And I shared a little video. We were actually on our way home from the bodybuilding show and I tracked all my staple foods inside of my fitness pal in like five minutes. I just clicked on my overnight oats and I tap Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday for breakfast. And then I for my lunch, I chose my tuna packets with my hummus and my salsa and a couple tortilla chips. I have that saved as a meal. So I just click on that and then I click Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Now I did that for all my staples, my yogurt, everything that I eat every single day. My ninja creamy is saved as a recipe. I did all of that to know exactly where my macros would fall, how much more carbs, fats, and proteins I need with the other meals that I haven't tracked. On some of those days, yesterday I actually took out the tuna fish that I had logged and I had some leftover pasta with burger and pasta sauce in it. Anyway, it's really good. I had that at home already. So I wanted to eat that up. So I took out my tuna, I changed it for something else, and that's fine. Now I just needed more protein. So I added a protein shake. It's all modifiable, but that's something that I can count on. So your meals can be set, your protein can be set, your workouts can be set, what time are you getting your steps in? All of that can be done. It's so easy. Take your supplements. You don't have to worry about which supplement is absolutely perfect. What time do I take it? Just start something and do it repeatedly. Make sure it's something that you can fit into your life and that you can repeat. Okay. Simple routines get repeated, and repeated routines cause the adaptation that you're wanting your body to do. You're wanting your body to adapt and to be stronger and to look differently. And we have to keep things simple. Doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be simple. Number five, this is something else that kind of goes along with the last idea, but you're worried about optimizing instead of just executing. So when I talk about those three different supplement brands, if you need a breakdown from me, I probably should do another supplement episode soon talking about what supplements I'm taking. I probably should do a post. I'll see if I can get that done. But when you decide what supplements you're taking and you order them and that's it, right? Don't look at another supplement for two to three months after you start a supplement routine because who cares? You don't need more, probably. You probably don't need more. Start with the basics. Start lifting, start walking, and start a little bit of cardio if you want to. You don't even need to do that. Okay. So we're hitting our macros. We have supplements, we have walking and we have lifts. Not every single day with the lifts, especially, but we're doing that repeatedly. Okay. Then what you're going to start to do is get a little bit bored. People are like, well, I'm doing all the basics, but I'm getting a little bit bored. So is there a way that I can jazz it up? Is there a different way I can organize my workouts? Are there new supplements that I should take? Should I get a new walking patch? Should I get a red light and wear that red light mask while I'm working out or while I'm walking? Should I get a cold plunge? Should I get a vibration plate? Should I have a collagen mask? Should I have under-eye patches? Should I do lymphatic drainage? Should I get these shoes? I heard they're really great for X, Y, and Z. Should I do my workout first or should I do my cardio first? Should I walk first? Should I walk more in the morning? Should I walk more in the evening? Should I have a morning routine? Should I read a book? That was probably annoying for me to even say, right? That's sometimes how I feel with the questions that I get. And I love the questions and I love all of you, and I'm happy to answer that. But sometimes I'm like, I don't give a fuck about a red light mask while you're on your walking pad. If all you're going to do is undereat, work out seven days a week, be stressed out, not sleep great, take too many supplements where your body's not even digesting any of those, or it's not benefiting you. You're spending way too much money on it. None of this is gonna matter. The optimization of it doesn't matter. And I think social media, I blame social media a lot for that because we are watching people that we love and that we admire, and that's great. But you see a video that they put up talking about their perfect way to do something or the perfect glute split or the perfect superset or the perfect supplement to fix their cortisol. And all of a sudden you think you need your cortisol fixed and you fucking don't, and you don't need a perfect superset for your glutes. You need to just work your glutes two times a week and who cares, right? You need to just show up and do the basics first, but you're not happy there and you're not seeing the results fast enough, everything that I've already talked about in this episode. So you keep trying different things and adding on, and it's exhausting. Then you have a new superset to try, you have new supplements to try. They don't taste great together. So now you have to take them four times a day. You have to cold plunge, red light therapy on your walking pad with your perfect shoes, maybe some new socks, because you heard those are great for, I don't know, blood flow or something. You have your hormone routine, you have your nighttime routine, you have right all of this stuff that you're trying to do, and you're like, I'm exhausted. Yeah, exactly. So let's keep it very, very basic. Okay. Sometimes you're doing all the right things, but you're not. And that's a perfect example of that. Okay. So what it comes down to is this, and this is the kind of the sixth thing that I want to talk about is the adaptation. You are asking your body to adapt to things, basically chaos. You are asking your body to adapt to stress and constant change and stress and perfection, and never feeling good enough, and never having the right amount of fuel, and never trying hard enough in the gym because you're scared that you will grow too much muscle and look manly, which newsflash, you could never okay. It's never gonna happen where you wake up one day and you look manly. Growing muscle is fucking hard, and you're not gonna do it on accident. But that's what it comes down to is you are adapting. You're adapting. Your body has adapted to what you've been doing, and it's adapted by looking how it looks. So how you look right now is a result of everything that you've been doing. And even if you think that everything that you've been doing is right, and you say that, right? Everything I've been doing everything right, you're not. And the reason that I say that is because it's true. So if your body has adapted to what you are giving it, these are a couple examples that I thought of, just two. If you're under-eating and you think that's great, right? You think that's a cheat code, you think you've outworked the system. What you are doing is asking your body to adapt to survival, like I mentioned earlier. You have your body in survival mode, and your body has adapted to that. So it's not gonna grow muscle, it's you're not gonna look toned, you're not gonna feel energetic, you're not gonna sleep well, your hormones are going to suck, you are going to be bloated, your digestion is going to fail. I've been there. So if you are undereating, you've adapted to survival mode. If you're constantly dieting, you've adapted to conserve energy. So now that we've, you know, I talk about body recomp a lot. And if this is the first episode of you listening to me, welcome. So glad you are here. Go back and listen to a lot of the other episodes from this year, especially. We've been talking about body recomp. When you are adapted to survival and your body is adapted to conserve its energy because you're only giving your body 1200 calories and you're like, I'm so good. This is so cool. I don't hit my macros every day. I'm tracking and I'm under, I'm under. This is so good. Your body's like, cool, we have to conserve energy. Now we're tired all the time. Now your digestion sucks. Now your hormones are trashed. That is what you've adapted to. So look at how you feel right now and think this is gonna be harsh. Think this. This is all my fault. And I say that because I talked about the food noise episode where I had to look at myself and say the same thing. This is all your fault. You are now in this place where you constantly think about food. You're obsessed with it in a negative way. And this is all, this is all my fault. I say that because I mean, I kind of laugh because it's not my fault, right? I was taught that through Beach Body, I was taught that through friends, I was taught that through whatever social media are at the time or TV and Weight Watchers and ads for all the things. I was, I was taught that. But I did that to myself. And I think taking radical accountability for those things is really helpful. So if you look at yourself and you say, this is my fault, ouch, kind of sucks. This is a result of the things that I've been doing that I'm also unwilling to change because you've adapted mentally to what you've been doing. The routine that you have right now is repeatable. You start a diet, you hate it, it's hard, you quit. You start a diet, you hate it, it's hard, you quit. You've adapted to that. That is what is repeatable for you now. And so we have to change that to doing all the other things that I talked about. So when we're talking about body recomposition, when we're talking about looking like you worked out. So I'll circle back here to the beginning of the episode of what I was talking about in this episode. If you want to look like you work out, and trust me, I get it because you're putting in so much work. The things that you're doing are taking up so much time. It's a lot of work. And I always say that to my clients. I'm like, you are working your ass off, and you don't have much to show for it. I totally get it. I was there for years, for years it took me to figure out that it was my fault, that I had to change everything I was doing, that I had to draw a line in the sand and start lifting heavy, taking rest days. For God's sake, that was so hard for me. Best thing ever. Start doing the same workouts repeatedly for weeks, for weeks, for weeks, lifting heavy, lifting heavier than I wanted to, lifting heavier than was comfortable. It was so hard. I learned that I needed better form, right? I learned a lot through that, but it was good. I also realized I needed to eat more. I also realized I needed to stop doing so much cardio and not giving a shit how many calories I burned during a workout. I actually don't even wear a tracker. I have my aura ring, but I don't look at my calories burned at all. I look at my steps and my sleep and my cycle, and that's it, really. I have all the other information there, but on a daily basis, that's all I look at. All I really care about is my steps because everything else is just on repeat. But if you are progressively lifting, eating enough protein, recovering well, and staying consistent, your body will adapt by building muscle. And then you will look toned and you will look like you work out. Let me say that again. If you are progressively lifting, heavy, if you are eating enough protein to help with recovery and sati, I can never say that word. Satiety, satiety. I need to figure. I don't know why I can't say it. Anyway, you're feeling satiated and not very hungry. You're recovering well to help your muscles grow. Also, protein helps with that. And you're staying consistent. Your body will adapt by building muscle. It will no longer be having to conserve energy. Your body will no longer be in survival mode. You will be now looking strong, feeling good, seeing changes in the mirror on the scale in your workouts. Okay. And even if the scale doesn't move right away, you feel stronger. That's definitely a win. So I want to round this out because I can definitely preach about this for a while, because it's just so passionate in my soul, because I was here and it sucked. And I it it was hard work to get out of it, but I did, and I'm so glad that I did. And now this is what I help my clients with. And when my clients get to the other side of like, oh, I feel so good now. I have more rest days, I'm eating more food, and I feel good and I look good. It's it's what I do, it's what I live for. I can eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Like it is my passion. Okay. So if you've listened to this episode and you think, oh, I actually do some of these, or maybe all of them, good, because now you know where to put your energy and you can change it. Change it slowly, but know that body recomposition, looking like you lift, is not about finding more things to do. It's about removing the things that are getting in the way. So all of the things that you're obsessed with that you're doing repeatedly that are not good, undereating, lifting six, seven days a week, stop doing that. Stop under eating and stop lifting six, seven days a week. Lift three to four days a week. Eat enough food for your body, get your steps in, and stop thinking about being smaller. You're not going to get fat if you eat more. That's a mentality that is so outdated. Okay. People that eat enough protein, move their body, lift weights, and recover, they look like they lift. And that's exactly what you want. We just have to give your body the opportunity to grow and to adapt to something new. Your body wants to do that. Trust me. Your body wants to run like a well-oiled machine. It wants to, and it will adapt to that very, very well. But you have to give it time. So again, if you need help with this, I encourage you to go to the link in the show notes and sign up for my fit club. It's $35 a month. When you get inside, when you sign up, you will be emailed a link to join the app. Once inside the app, an automatic message will send to you and you can respond to it. And then I will respond to you, usually in there Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays at least. So I will respond to you. I'll get your macro set up for you. I'll get your workout calendar set up for you. We will talk back and forth a little bit. You have access to all the workouts. You have macro targets, you can track in the app, or you can track whatever app you love, right? We can talk about all the things. You have access to my community, and it makes it really, really simple. So if you need help, I highly encourage you to go join my fake club. But give your body the opportunity to grow and to work efficiently. Work smarter, not harder this week. Think of a few things that you can change. And I'll 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 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.

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