Four Things You Need To Do More Of To Reach Your Fitness Goals

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Hello , hello , welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body . Thank you for being here . I'm Betsy , if you didn't know . You never know who's just starting listening to the podcast .

So I'm Betsy , and the little intro tells you I've been a personal trainer now for 14 years . A certified personal trainer . I'm a certified nutrition coach .

I have a lot of other certifications behind my name , but I really value my time and my experience and the things that I have picked up on the way from training my clients , as well as my own experience working out myself , so I share that with you . Own experience working out myself so I share that with you .

Today , we are going to be talking about four things you need to be doing more of to reach your goals to reach your strength goals , your physique goals , your body change goals , whether that's building muscle or losing fat .

We're going to be talking about those today , but I typically like to talk in the beginning just a little bit , give you updates , or at least I'm trying to , a little bit more . Get to know me , I guess , and this whole last week I did not put any podcasts out .

We're at the end of the school year , and the end of the school year for my two kids was just kind of hectic . We got home from our vacation , my husband and I were on a trip , I was doing some work stuff , and then we had a vacation for ourselves .

So it was just like , oh my gosh , we had a lot going on , and the exciting thing for me is that summer is going to mean a little bit more work time actually , which seems kind of backwards , but the kids are in different scenarios than school hours and so I have later pickups , so I get a little bit more time .

And so I am determined to stick to our regular podcasting schedule for the summer , because the summer sort of allows that timeline for me . Again , with anything you know , life happens and that's what you got to have perspective with with your workouts as well , but ?

But I often talk to my clients about this idea that , like phase of life or you know , time in your life is going to dictate your ability to dedicate certain amount of time , energy and effort into your goal . And for me , summer allows me to get a little bit more accomplished .

So I actually have some of my own fitness , strength , physique goals for the summer that I'm going to hit a little harder , and then I have some work stuff that I can hit a little harder , knowing that when the school year starts around , I'm going to have to shift things . But that's the same thing for you .

You may experience that as well , or you might experience the opposite . So just being sort of being able to accurately estimate what it is that you'll be able to do can be helpful for you because it can help you set realistic expectations .

It is that you'll be able to do can be helpful for you because it can help you set realistic expectations and it can help you keep in mind that each segment of our lives has an expiration date to it and something will change at some point . Other than that , my allergies are so bad right now and where I am in Florida , in North Central Florida .

It's like allergy season is all year long because everything is blooming at some point , so I think that's part of it . But I'm sitting here going like , oh , I sound a little bit more like I have a cold , but I'm just constantly sort of battling these allergies and I've yet to find like an over-the-counter remedy that I like the best . But we're working on it .

We're working on it , okay . So I thought I'd get into this topic today the four things you need to be doing more of to reach your goals , and let me tell you where it's inspired from , because that is my favorite part of the story .

So I run a 12-week fitness and nutrition program called Built Bodies , designed to help women build their strongest , fittest physique .

We focus on muscle building , full body muscle building , improving strength and working on nutrition to improve our quality of life , to improve our ability to build and maintain muscle and the ability to lose body fat so that you can feel the strongest and most confident in your body you ever have . I am absolutely loving running this program . Not at all surprising .

We just have like wins after wins after wins . So it's a 12-week program . Weekly I email the group about their specific wins and we share them on our weekly coaching call because , in addition to receiving their training program through the True Coach app and their nutrition support , we also have a weekly coaching call and we talk about different topics .

Sometimes it's nutrition , sometimes it's recovery , and it's based on sort of the principles that I line up as the building building blocks for building your strongest , fittest body . So in this last week's , we're on week . We're just starting week nine when this episode comes out , but we're in week eight .

So I send an email tell me about , you know , the previous week , but I wanted to give a little bit more of a specific prompt . So I said I want you to think for me about the things that you know you have done more of since you started this program .

Sometimes it's hard to identify our wins , sometimes it's a little tricky when we're in the daily activities , the activities of daily living , to recognize the changes in our patterns as we go along . So I said what are you doing more of ? And the responses were incredible . One , everyone responded .

Two , which is , if you've run a kind of group program , you know how sort of spectacular that is to have 100% response rate .

And then , in addition , there were tons of through lines and the through lines confirm to me that what I'm doing is I'm communicating clearly what we need to be doing to reach our goals , because you are clearly doing more of it than you were doing before , but also that the things that I believe and that I have taught these women to adopt , they are adopting

and it is more than they've done before . And those are such huge wins . And I picked these four out of there because , I mean , honestly , there was like one or two sort of offshoots depending on the responses , but these were the four most common and they were the four I wanted to hear too .

You know , you are effectively teaching and coaching and communicating when the response that you're looking for is what comes back to you , because that's what everybody's doing . So these are the four things that the women in my group were doing . That is what I would tell any woman .

I would tell men as well , to do this to change their physique , to build their strength , to build a lifelong healthy nutrition and fitness habit . And you can listen to my previous episodes to kind of understand the complexity of that and the sort of richness and nuance that what it really means to have a lifelong habit like that .

But I'm going to talk about these four things . So , number one , number one these women are lifting more weight than they have before . I know , I know , I know and I know it's going to be the thing I have to talk about for the rest of my life . So I'm prepared

. I'm prepared to stand up on that stage and say it over and over again you will not build quote-unquote manly muscles or , quote-unquote , get bulky , by lifting heavier weights . In fact , heavier weights help us build strength . They help us build muscle , and that built muscle is what is going to change and transform our physique .

That toned , sort of athletic look or that kind of idea of what it is that you might want to look like , is created by lifting heavier weights . There's also tons of health benefits from lifting heavier weights and you can do it , and you can do it safely and you can do it effectively , and that is what creates the change .

The biggest hump is getting over that idea that it is going to magically make you bulky or make you a power lifter . I think we have this picture of what lifting heavy weights is in our mind , or the strong man competition . That's not what happens when we lift heavier weights .

Heavy is all relative right , but what I'm talking about is if you can do 25 to 30 reps of something we need to increase the weight . Most of the women in my group are doing rep ranges somewhere in the 8 to 12 , and they are getting fatigued at those last reps . How do we do that ?

We lift heavier weight and their minds are blown by one that they can do it and how they're seeing results from it .

But I understand that feeling and I'm going to link an episode that I have a few episodes ago where I talked about like what do you do if you start lifting heavy and you don't like the muscle distribution or you feel like you're looking bulky ? I'll link that episode because I want to validate that fear .

It's what's talked about and everybody's body shifts and changes differently , but I will link that episode so you can hear it . But lifting heavier weights is the answer , and one of the responses I got from the women was that they feel like they've lost that fear .

They've lost that fear of getting bulky because they can see and feel the changes that are happening because of the heavier weights . So if you want to reach your fitness and physique goals , you have got to lift more protein .

More protein that is so , so important , and I've explained this in other episodes , but I'm going to explain it again because we can never hear things enough sometimes . You know what I mean , and it took me a long time to learn it too , because I would preach it to people , but I wasn't doing a great job of weaving that into my own behavior .

So more protein is going to allow us to build more muscle and maintain that muscle as we try to lose body fat . The way that we change our physique is to build muscle and lose fat . Those are the two things that we can do , and we do them at different increments , incremental amounts , so that we create the shape that we want to do .

If it's physique oriented , there are lots of other goals we can have and there are lots of really valuable goals .

So I don't want to negate that you can do other things in the gym , but if you're trying to change the way your body looks , these are the two things we do , and if we want to be able to do that , we have got to have enough protein about 0.75 to one gram per pound of body weight . That's a lot if you're not used to it .

So what that looks like oftentimes is more protein post-workout , sometimes aiming for 30 to 40 grams per meal and 15 to 20 grams at snacks . That protein is going to help build the muscle , help maintain the muscle and allow you to train at an intensity that is going to create the kind of change you want .

And as you reduce your calories to lose body fat or you move more to lose body fat because we have to burn more calories or eat less calories to lose body fat that protein is going to help us feel satiated , it's going to help us feel fuller and it is going to help us train hard when we are depleted so that we can move the needle in that way .

Now I'm not advocating for an extreme caloric deficit at all . I'm just saying that even when you reduce those calories a little bit , keeping the protein high is going to be very , very important . Those calories a little bit , keeping the protein high is going to be very , very important .

And the thing that I've heard from the women who have said I've eaten more protein I know I've eaten more protein . They have more energy for their workouts , they are feeling stronger after their workouts , their recovery is better and they are feeling like fuller from food . They're feeling like they can eat more food .

When you start looking at how to put together meals , you feel fuller , you feel like you're getting more food and that's a really like a psychological shift for a lot of women who have thought their whole lives need to be about reducing , reducing , restricting , restricting . More protein is actually going to be the answer . So that was two .

We have more weight , more protein . Number three is more consistently . That is one of the best things to hear from these women in the group . They are more consistently working out Now . Is every workout perfect ? Is every workout easy to get done ? Is every workout exactly as written ?

Maybe not , but they have now figured out a way to more consistently fit it into their schedule , and part of that is having the workouts prepared for you takes out some of that stress , but they're figuring out how to fit it into their life . They're seeing it as a priority .

We've talked about the ways to add things in in a way that complements your life rather than adding a lot of stress .

If they can't fit something in the exact way that it's written or with that equipment , we have solutions for that and they are able to , on the fly , figure out a way to still get movement in because they feel empowered to do that and they feel and appreciate what it means to have that habit in their lives .

Again , consistency and frequency are not necessarily the same thing .

Consistency is about that expectation and that pattern of this is something that I get in as much as I can and looks similar week to week , and more consistency is going to be a bigger dial mover than you doing one really hard workout and not figuring out a way to get it in for the rest of the month .

Five 10-minute bouts of exercise weekly is going to be so impactful . Now we have four programmed workouts a week . Most women are getting all four in because they're designed so that you can do them any day of the week and kind of fit them around your life . Consistency is the thing that is going to move the needle . Okay , so that was the first three needle .

Okay , so that was the first three More weight , more protein , more consistency . And the last one I'm going to take a little license with this , because they were talking about it , but not in the same terms More celebration . I don't believe that many of the women I've worked with in any context have been encouraged to celebrate the process wins over time .

We are always yearning for an outcome . We are yearning for a result that is far down the line , and if we wait to celebrate until we reach that finish line , we are going to be disappointed because it takes a long time to get there .

It takes a long , long time to get there , but we have to celebrate the wins as they come over time , and we have to know what things to look for . We need to know what things to celebrate . Along the way , I've had women in the group who couldn't fit the workout in , but I took a walk on the track at lunchtime .

I knew I was going to a party tonight . I really wanted to eat this food , but I made sure I got my protein in earlier in the day . I know that I need to focus on my recovery , and so I've been getting more sleep than I had been before .

I know that I want to change the way I'm eating , so I'm going to do a little bit more meal planning , and I was successful with it this week . And then they're celebrating it when it happens , and that's my job as a coach too . If you're looking for a coach , you need a coach who's going to celebrate many times along the way .

That whole tough love thing . I mean , I have moments of tough love , but the love is the bigger part there and the celebration piece is going to be the piece that is integral for maintaining that consistency , maintaining that momentum , because momentum is so big in our ability to kind of continue to chip away at the goals .

Because if you're trying to create a sustainable habit , we are not going to see magic results when we dip our bodies in water . I'm picturing those little washcloths that start out as a tiny cube and then you put them in the water and they expand . We're not talking about that speed of result , we're talking about a long commitment .

So celebrating the little wins as we go is the way we're going to ensure that we have the energy , excitement , follow through to keep going . So those are the four things you need to be doing more of . You need to be lifting more weight , you need to be eating more protein , you need to be more consistent and then you need to celebrate more along the way .

Okay , those are actionable , you can do those If you want to talk through how that might apply to you and how you want to facilitate that . I am always happy to talk . You can email me , betsy , at BeFosterStrongcom , or you can talk to me on Instagram at Foster underscore strength . I've been talking a lot about Built Bodies . This is a 12-week program .

We're in week nine . We end at the end of June , but we will start another round of Built Bodies at the start of September . Yeah , I'll probably be talking about it before then . The start of September is when we'll start that next 12-week group

. If this feels like something that you might be interested in , I want you to get on the waitlist the waitlist . There is no obligation to purchase , but what I will do is be communicating with the waitlist early about dates . Then the deal with the waitlist is they get the best deal .

Because if you are willing to hop on this list and say I think I am committed to this now and you can commit , you're going to get a deal . So that's what I offer to the waitlist ahead of the open launch .

So if you're interested , the link is going to be in the show notes here and you can get on the interest wait list for next time and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have . All right , until next time I want you to go . I want you to build your strongest body and I'll talk to you later . Bye .