Love Your Body Now
Love Your Body Now
Better Understand Your Weight Loss Journey For Better Outcomes
What if the secret to achieving your fitness goals lies not in the number on the scale, but in how you approach your journey? This episode is packed with practical insights designed to inspire anyone working towards body positivity and embarking on their fitness journey. We'll debunk common myths about weight loss and discuss why maintaining muscle mass are integral to health and longevity. Forget the scale and discover new ways to track your progress, like in-body scans and photos, for a more holistic view of your fitness achievements. Learn how setting fun, skill-based goals outside of weight loss or revisiting old hobbies can make your workouts more enjoyable and motivating. Remember, your worth isn't tied to your weight or size; it's about finding joy and excitement in every step of your fitness journey!
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If you've been following along to the podcast for a while now or maybe you follow the Love your Body Now Instagram page, you know that we have an apparel brand that is all about body positivity and self-love has evolved with time and I want to announce that I am now having anyone who wants to stay up to date with the apparel line and just the brand in general, any announcements that we share I have a text list that you can join. You'll also get exclusive offers with our apparel brand and you'll know when we are doing any kind of launches with different items and pre-orders. So if you want to stay in the loop with that, then you can join our text list by texting the number 844-311-3767. 311-3767 and all you have to do is text join and it'll automatically add you to our text list and you will be the first to know when we are adding new items to our apparel line or if we bring back any items that will be available for pre-order any sales. You will also get exclusive discounts for being a part of this text list and, of course, I plan to send out regular uplifting messages If you love to receive uplifting messages regarding self-love, body positivity nice little reminders, as you are on your growth journey towards loving your body, then you definitely should join, and you will also be able to send messages back to me. So if you ever have any questions or anything that resonates with you that you want to share, then we can actually text back and forth with this number. So I'm super excited to add this into the love your body now brand and I can't wait for you to be a part of this exclusive community.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Love your Body Now podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to feel confident in their body right now and redefine what health looks like for them. I'm Savannah, your host, and together we'll be having conversations about what it means to accept and love our bodies now, while simultaneously prioritizing our health journey. We'll be debunking beliefs that do not serve us and diving into misconceptions and unhealthy narratives in the fitness world, so that we can rebuild our foundation from a place of self-love from a place of self-love. Hello, welcome back to the Love your Body Now podcast. If you're a regular listener, thank you so much for always tuning in and supporting the podcast and if you're new here, hi, I'm Savannah, the host of the Love your Body Now podcast, and I'm so glad that you're here and tuning in today.
Speaker 1:I feel like I have not recorded a podcast in a really long time. Last week's episode was actually a recording from an event a virtual event that I was a part of, and so I pulled the recording from that, and so it's actually been quite a few weeks since I have recorded an episode. But today I am super excited to jump into this topic because, specifically, I have actually started personal training on the side and so I go in person. It's not online training and I really have been enjoying it. It's just something that I've been doing part-time, in the evenings, in addition to my regular job, and, yeah, I've really been loving it. I find it to be really fulfilling, just educating, and all of my clients so far are women, so it's been really fun to connect with women and be able to teach them and empower them through their fitness journey and overall. A lot of them are working towards weight loss, and so it's just really nice to and refreshing to be working with women one-on-one and really helping them with their mindset and overall perspective with their weight loss journey and just meeting them where they're at and helping them better understand their journey.
Speaker 1:And I figured you know, while I'm doing this one-on-one, while I'm seeing this with the clients that I'm working with, why not talk about it on the podcast and share with you? If you are on a weight loss journey or if you're just on a fitness journey or just focusing on loving your body and helping your body image, then this would be a perfect topic to go over. And I personally have been working on some more specific fitness goals and I've kind of shared on our Instagram page, which, if you're not following our Instagram page it's at weareloveyourbody now I totally recommend giving us a follow on there. But I have been sharing on that page, and my personal page as well, a little bit more about my fitness journey lately, which has looked a lot different than what it has in the past few years, and what I mean by that is I actually have been setting more specific goals when it comes to my overall fitness. For a few weeks, I was focusing on muscle gain and getting stronger, specifically, and I've gone back to the basics of my nutrition, where I have been paying a little bit more attention to my macros and how much I'm actually consuming and what I'm actually consuming every single day and you may have heard me talk about on the podcast if you are in the process of healing your relationship with exercise or nutrition, or your body, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:I have talked about calorie counting. I've talked about different approaches to exercise where you're not super focused on an overall goal, where it has to do with metrics or it has to do with numbers or anything like that. I have talked about how you can approach it in a different way than maybe you have before in order to focus on healing your relationship with it and using it more as basically a positive impact in your life, rather than focusing, being hyper focused on it and it kind of having a negative impact on your overall mental health. I think we've all been there before where we set these goals, whether it's weight loss or you're trying to get stronger in the gym and hit a certain amount to lift, which for me, a powerlifting background that was always a huge thing for me.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can honestly have a negative effect on us if we allow it to have this overall, almost like it holds some kind of value, of our own worth and if we're not careful, then that's when things can start to turn negative and not really have a positive impact in our life when we're too hyper-focused on it and we allow it to hold this some kind of value mark on our own worth and who we are as an individual. So a lot of the times, we do need to switch our approach. We need to tweak our perspective on these things in order to heal and not allow it to dictate, I guess, like how we view our own worth. And I share all of that, because I personally had to do this for myself and it took me, oh, about three to four years up until this point where I actually was really craving more specific challenges and new ways to refocus on my health journey and just like work towards something again, because I was exercising in a way that was just like I did what I felt like the day of, or, you know, I was really like just allowing my body to do what it felt like. And same with nutrition it was just more of what do I feel like eating today?
Speaker 1:That type of mentality, which is not a bad mentality to have, but when you are working towards a very specific goal, it does require you to dial it back a little bit more and refocus on some things, adding in a little bit more structure and discipline, and for the first time in my life, I feel confident doing that and not in a place where I feel like I'm going to spiral out of control if I don't hit a goal or if I'm not showing up perfectly every single day. It doesn't feel like this huge pressure anymore, like it used to, and that's where I really know and have the confidence in myself that, okay, I really do feel like I did the work to heal my relationship with these things. I can now reintroduce them into my routine and see how it goes and see where it takes me. So I share all of that because we all are in different stages of our weight loss journey, of our fitness journey, of our nutrition journey, our body image journey, and it's important to meet yourself where you are at and allow yourself to do the healing that needs to happen, if you do need to do some healing with yourself so that you can have a positive outcome experience with these things.
Speaker 1:And I want to dive more into if you are specifically on a weight loss journey or if you've been thinking about it or if you ever have been on a weight loss journey and you've always struggled with it. I want to talk about the things that matter the most when you are focusing on weight loss, because I think that, at least from what I have learned from clients that I've worked with in the past before, there are some things that we could be better educated on, we could better understand, in order to set us up for better success with this whole process. So the first thing that I want to point out is that, typically, if you are on a weight loss journey, or if someone is on a weight loss journey, that is implying that they are wanting to specifically lose fat loss, there is a difference in, like, the types of weight that you can lose, and we know that you can lose fat, but you also can lose muscle, depending on your approach and how you do things. And the biggest thing that I always emphasize is you do not want to lose muscle mass, and as far as, like, looking bulky or anything like that, muscle mass is going to be the thing that allows you to look toned.
Speaker 1:I hear a lot of women saying they want to look toned or they want to be lean. Muscle mass is the thing that gives this appearance. So, when you are on a weight loss journey and I've seen this before where women avoid certain exercises because they don't want to look too quote-unquote bulky. They don't want to put on a lot of muscle. Well, you're never going to accidentally put on a lot of muscle. It doesn't work that way, especially for women. There is there has to be a lot of intention behind actually putting on muscle, where the the mass of your muscles actually increasing. But we all naturally have some muscle on our bodies and as you lose fat, when you're on your weight loss journey, that's when you start to get that toned and lean look because you're able to see the muscle definition and you don't have to be bulky or have like huge muscles to look lean and tone.
Speaker 1:And I want to point out that it is super important that when you are doing a weight loss journey, that you are still weight training and eating enough protein because you want to maintain the muscle that you already have as you are losing fat. Because a lot of the times what can happen is when you are losing weight, you are not only losing fat but you are also losing muscle, which is not good for your overall health, because we naturally will lose muscle mass as we age and that is the thing that basically determines our overall longevity. So you may wonder well, how do I have a weight loss journey where I am really making sure that I'm only losing fat and I'm at least maintaining my muscle, if you're not trying to gain muscle? Well, the way that you do this is you continue to strength train as you are working out, doing your workouts like that, and also prioritizing protein in your diet, and there obviously are ways that you can even get more specific with these things, but those are the main factors when you are focusing on fat loss is making sure that you are still eating lean protein and the type of protein that basically is sourced by animals is what is what allows our muscles to maintain and grow, and so just pointing that out, grow, and so just pointing that out. I also notice a lot of women who eat protein, or they think they're eating protein, where they'll say, oh, I'm getting my source of protein from peanut butter or like beans, which those foods do have protein, but it's a different type of protein. It's not basically what we call a complete protein. So making sure, if you do have questions about that or you do want to learn more about the different types of proteins, which ones you should be eating every single day, to make sure that you're giving your body what it needs to function properly and maintain what it is already at, then make sure you do further research on that specifically Now.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I want to point out is, if you are on this journey of wanting to lose fat and maintain muscle, then it is important that you find other ways, besides a regular scale to measure your progress, and what would be ideal is if you do have access to a gym that has what we call like an in-body scan. I don't know if every gym has this. I know the gym that I go to, which is Anytime Fitness. They have one that you can use anytime. There are other gyms that have them, and you might have to speak with a personal trainer at the gym in order to use it, but it is important if you are it, but it is important if you are doing like regular weigh-ins that if you are only doing it on a regular scale, this does not tell you whether or not you are losing fat or muscle.
Speaker 1:So I like to emphasize that just because you are losing weight does not mean it's necessarily a good thing for your health, and that is why we shouldn't just use the scale as the only way to measure what's going on, because, on the flip side of that, you potentially could be not losing any weight and the scale isn't moving. And then what happens is, a lot of the times women get really frustrated and they think that nothing's working. But sometimes what is happening is they are losing fat and they're also putting on more muscle, not to the point where it's like super noticeable or bulky looking, but it's because they're getting stronger and muscle weighs more than fat. And so when you're just looking at the scale and you see that the number has not moved, or maybe it only moved by one pound, that can feel very frustrating. But that's why I like to point out if you're going to regular weigh yourself and have access to an in-body scan, where it's going to break down your fat percentage, your fat mass, and it's also going to break down your muscle mass percentage, so that's going to tell you whether or not you are losing fat and you're putting on muscle, and that's why the scale hasn't moved, or if you have dropped weight, it's going to give you a better idea. Did I maintain my muscle and I'm just losing fat, so that I'm still maintaining my longevity and I'm still prioritizing muscle mass.
Speaker 1:So if you have access to an in-body scan and you want to regularly check those things and I say by regularly, I would not recommend more than once a week, or you can do twice a week or once a month if you are someone who likes to look at those things. But, as a reminder, try not to have a super emotional attachment to that, because the weight will always fluctuate and, like I said, it's not the only way to measure your progress in how you're doing so in body scan, if you can. The other way that you can, I guess, like measure progress is you can have photos, you can take note of how your clothes are fitting and you can also do measurements. I would do some research on where to do the measurements, because you can do measurements around your arms, you can do measurements around your waist and your hips, but there is a specific way to do it. So you just want to make sure that you know that you're doing it consistently when you are taking those measurements.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I really wanted to make the point of saying that when you see weight loss on the scale. It's not always a good thing, but diet culture has trained us to believe that weight loss seeing the scale go down, is the only thing that matters and that should matter, and that's just not true. But I understand for a lot of women. It is an emotional thing for us, it's very triggering for us and it was very triggering for me for a really long women. It is an emotional thing for us, it's very triggering for us and it was very triggering for me for a really long time, to the point where I didn't even use the scale for four years and finally I felt comfortable being able to get on the scale couple of months ago and did not have any kind of emotional reaction, whether it was positive or negative, which was a very proud moment for me, because it means that my weight no longer at least, I don't feel internally that the weight no longer determines my worth, and it goes both ways. Sometimes we feel like you get to a certain weight and we finally feel worthy, we finally feel enough, like we're beautiful, like we've got it all together. That is just as negatively impactful as feeling like the scale being too high and feeling like we're not enough and feeling like we need to constantly lose more weight. They both give us clues to how we feel about ourselves internally and how we view our own worth when it comes to our physical appearance and when it comes to our weight.
Speaker 1:Now, the last thing that I want to mention, when it comes to your weight loss journey, is having other outside goals that have absolutely nothing to do with your weight or your physical appearance. I think that this is one of the most important things that you can do for yourself is when you can really kind of like take off that focus, take away that focus from the weight loss, from the fat loss, from the muscle gains, and make it about something that is seriously just like a fun, challenging way for you to show up. And the thing that I can share personally from my own journey right now is, although I am starting to pay more attention to my nutrition, I have been tracking more frequently. I have added back in structure to my workouts. I have been checking my weight not very often, but like once a month with an in-body scan. The other thing that I have done is I took some before pictures, but I haven't. I don't know like I really didn't pay too close attention to that. I could have taken some measurements, but I didn't, just because I'm lazy. Maybe I should take some while I'm still in the beginning stages.
Speaker 1:But the thing that is really exciting for me right now with my journey, and what really motivates me to continue focusing on these things, is the goals that I have set with my new fitness era. I guess you could say I have completely dove into a new type of training that I have never really done before. I've always done traditional strength training. When it comes to my exercise routine, I've tried new things. I've done Pilates, I've done barre. I have done different things to you know, try them out but traditional strength training has always been my go-to. And recently I have started really going all in on calisthenics, which is basically bodyweight training. There's a lot of different skills that you can work towards when it comes to calisthenics training. So I have specifically been working on handstand training and a couple of other skills like my pull-ups. I have been working towards a goal to get 10 pull-ups, which right now I'm like right at seven, and then another skill called an L-sit. So these are all things that have nothing to do with fat loss and weight loss or anything like that they are literally just skills that I'm working towards, that I find so fun to like.
Speaker 1:I look forward to doing my workouts because I get to see where my progress is, and this is like the difference that it can make in your training and just your overall fitness journey when you have things that excite you and make it fun and take your focus away from physical appearance and I'm not going to say that it's perfect all the time. There's not going to be days where you don't think about your physical appearance or where you don't worry about your weight loss. In a perfect world, I wish that I could say that that is something we all overcome, but with what has been ingrained in us for so long, it's not just something we can turn off, but it is something that we can manage. It's something that we can learn to shift our mindset on and focus on other things that are exciting. So anything that you can do to make your fitness journey exciting and, again, take away your focus from your weight and your physical appearance those both go hand in hand. So not just saying, oh well, I'm going to focus on how my clothes fit, that still is tied to a physical change.
Speaker 1:So if you are someone who maybe you used to enjoy CrossFit when you were younger, but now you no longer can do CrossFit maybe you struggle to just climb a flight of stairs then I would think about maybe some exercises that you used to do when you CrossFit whether it was like hang clean or maybe it was squatting or I don't even know like pull ups. Whatever you used to enjoy when you were Crossfitting, or maybe just like being able to get back into crossfit, is something that you can set a goal towards and you can break it down even more so that it doesn't feel so daunting and so far away. You can break it down into. Well, I used to do this type of exercise, so I want to focus on trying to get back to that, and that'll be one step closer to introducing CrossFit back into my life. So meet yourself where you're at and think about the things that you enjoy. Or maybe you make fitness fun again by trying out a whole new, different routine whether it's Pilates or yoga, and testing out new skills with those, because they all come with different challenges. If we haven't done them before and we're new to them, they all come with new challenges, new skills that we can learn and make fitness fun again.
Speaker 1:If you're someone who enjoys leisure activities like golf or tennis or maybe you used to and you want to get back into it like golf or tennis, or maybe you used to and you want to get back into it that is another thing that you can focus your attention on to make it more enjoyable. Make it not about your weight and your physical appearance. So I hope that these tips helped and if you are on a weight loss journey, just know that I am rooting for you and I know that you can do it and you are capable of anything that you set your mind to. And also, your weight has nothing to do with your worth. I just want to leave you with that reminder that it is perfectly okay to want to lose weight and get healthier, but I want to remind you that your worth has nothing to do with your size, has nothing to do with your weight and that, no matter what transition you go through or transformation that you go through, your worth will never change. So I hope you have a great day and a great week and I will talk to you next time. Day and a great week and I will talk to you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. You have no idea how grateful I am to have you as one of the Love your Body Now listeners. If you are loving this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed and left a review. This helps me get the message out to more women just like you who are also committed to their journey. And if you love this episode, please be sure to share it with someone who you know needs to hear today's message. Together, we can help more women recognize their self-worth and build their confidence from a much deeper place, just like you're doing right now. Let's help change the world, one woman at a time. All right, talk to you soon, friend.