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Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
These 3 Mindset Shifts Helped me Lose 25 lbs (and keep it off)
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady, and today I'm going to be diving into three mindset shifts that helped me personally lose and keep off £25. And I want to preface this episode by saying not everybody has a goal of weight loss. So even if you're listening to this and you're like, um, I really don't care to lose weight, these three mindset shifts can still be extremely beneficial to you from the standpoint of just improving your health, improving your mindset around exercise and nutrition and just kind of overall improving your your health and your mindsets. So it doesn't have to be because you have a weight loss goal. But if you do have a weight loss goal, I hope that these mindset shifts will also be beneficial to you. I'm such a big believer that, um, big goals like losing weight have to start with your thoughts, your mindset, um, and then kind of funnels from there. Because if we don't start with our mindset, we don't have a strong foundation. If all we're doing is just taking action out of these kind of negative head spaces. Um, then we're going to really struggle with permanent, healthy changes. Yes, we might see results on the front end, um, for, you know, kind of like a quick fix type of deal. However, the follow through and really being able to maintain is typically lacking if we don't have a strong foundation with our mindset. So let's talk about it. This is going to be kind of a quick and dirty episode, but let's talk about these three, uh, mindset shifts that really helped me lose and keep off £25. So. Number one relating to exercise was shifting from a goal of burning calories to training to build a strong metabolism and ultimately training for my adventures. Okay, so why this was so effective when we're only striving to exercise to burn calories through things like running cardio hit where it's all about like how many calories can I burn? Versus, um, you know, building muscle and really being methodical with our workouts? Yes. You might, uh, you know, burn more calories mid workout session. However, you have to look at the the after effect. And basically what's happening is when you're only focusing on cardio or hit or classes where it's just like doing these circuits where you're never resting and you're doing lightweights from one exercise to the next. You're focusing on manually burning calories versus burning more calories at rest. This would be like working an hourly job where you're just trading your time for money versus making smart investments, and then not having to work nearly as long or hard to make way more money. Okay, so think about it like that. When you focus on strength training and building up your metabolic base, you're able to burn more calories at rest, meaning you don't have to work so hard. Meaning that your cortisol is going to be lower. Inflammation is going to be lower. You're not trading your time for calories burned constantly, so you're going to have more time to do things that fill your cup, and ultimately, you're going to just have better success at a leaner body composition versus when you're only focusing on burning calories. You might, um, you know, be skinnier, but you aren't going to have that same metabolic foundation and you're going to have less muscle mass, making it harder to stay lean long term. Um, your basal metabolic rate will be lower, and it's hard to achieve a toned look without having muscle mass. That's why it's so important to have the muscle mass and then lean out from there so that you can achieve that toned appearance that a lot of women want to have. When they say, I want to lose fat, they're thinking, I want to look toned. I want to look strong but lean, right? So that's how we achieve it. We have to focus on building the muscle and then leaning out on top of that to reveal the muscle. Also why performance goals such as for me personally, training for being a stronger hiker versus just training for body goals and to look a certain way. The reason this was so foundational for me and and transformational was because I was no longer just focusing on how I looked, but I was really focusing on what can my body do. And I started to appreciate my body and my performance more. When I was at the gym, I wasn't just looking in the mirror thinking, oh man, I wish I didn't have that patch of cellulite cellulite right there. I wish that I had smaller arms like those other girls. I wish that my belly wasn't sticking out so far. All of these things that I would just totally berate myself about on a daily basis, especially working in a fitness studio, which I was at the time. Man, I would just like see myself in the mirror all day and tear myself apart. It was so negative. And by making that, um, that shift to really focusing on what my body was capable of, I started to appreciate my body more. I started to to shift from that negative dialogue to one of positivity of, wow, look at what I'm capable of. Look at what my workouts are translating to. Look what I can do now on the trails. I'm so much stronger than I thought I was, and that overall has just created such a positive cascade of a better body image, a better relationship with exercise. I enjoy going to the gym instead of looking at myself in the mirror and wishing that I looked so different. Um, and I've gotten an amazing shape on top of it, so there's just so many benefits versus just going and and punishing yourself using exercise as a means to burn calories, to punish yourself for what you ate the night before. Um, really, that mindset and how you view yourself around exercise makes such a big difference in not only your enjoyment, but your self-talk and and how you view yourself. And then finally I was really, um, competing with myself versus comparing myself to others. I found that by going into the gym and seeing what I was capable of, and training for things that I was passionate about, and focusing on getting stronger versus getting smaller, I was making it a competition with myself of how can I be my best self? How can I get stronger? How can I improve week to week in the gym versus I'm not as skinny as that girl over there, or I just need to burn more calories so that I can look like this person that I've seen on Instagram again, that that inner voice, that dialogue changed for me and that was amazing and totally transformational. I can't even express, like how much that's changed my life and my relationship with exercise. And now I'm focusing on doing this for life so that I can always feel my best versus just doing it to reach a certain weight, right, and then not really knowing what to do from there. So those kind of shifts around exercise made such a big difference for me. Number two was thinking that I always had to do more, and then shifting that to minimal effective dose with my habits. So what do I mean by minimal effective dose? This means that you're. Really focusing on making the most of your efforts and doing the less is more approach, but being intentional with what you're doing versus just throwing a million things at the wall and trying to see what sticks. So really, truly following an intentional training plan that will help me progress versus just doing a bunch of random high intensity classes, YouTube workouts, cardio workouts, etc. and burning myself out in the process of that without really getting the results. Like, why are we doing this to ourselves? If we're not intentional and we're just kind of like haphazardly doing all this stuff and then reaching a point of burnout without getting the results, that is really sucky. And that's not fun for anybody. So kind of an example of this is like spending all day working under your car trying to fix something, but you have zero knowledge, so you never actually fix it. You're just like putting in this work and not actually getting the results. That's kind of how it feels when we're just doing all of these things and burning ourselves out without getting the results. So focusing on minimal effective dose and doing the the most effective things, really making the most of my time and efforts without having to do something every single second of every single day without having to fixate on like, oh my gosh, I have to go do an hour on the elliptical today because I got to work towards my goal, right. So making sure you have a strategic plan and maybe working with a coach. Like what? Like what we do within Mountain Metabolic coaching to make sure that your efforts are going to translate to results, instead of just doing all of these things and hoping that you get where you want to be, but really, you're just adding so much stress, inflammation and exhaustion to your plate. And number three. Um, as far as nutrition goes, moving from food rules and really being in this all or nothing cycle to focusing on 90% healthy, 10% unhealthy year round. So what I mean by that is I was in these patterns of, um, dieting hard for a certain amount of time or during the week I'd be like, I'm going to only eat clean. I'm going to be so perfect with my nutrition. I'm going to say no to all these things. I was super restrictive. But then by like Friday, Saturday, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so hungry. I'm exhausted. I just want to like let loose. And then I would binge on the weekends. And then I was always feeling like I was starting from scratch on Mondays, and then I would put more food rolls on myself, and then I would do a whole 30, and then I would do another extreme diet where I was cutting out sugar. Um, and I was constantly inflicting these rules on myself because I didn't feel like I had enough self-control. And really, the rules were the issue. Um, so I really needed to get to a place where I just could. Allow myself to have creamer and sugar in my coffee every morning without thinking that was going to derail my goals. But then eating and drinking everything in moderation, right? It's all about what you're doing most of the time, and finding that moderation so that your body finds its happy medium and its place where you're just eating kind of at maintenance and you're not struggling to constantly gain and lose weight. Um, so first, this kind of has to start with awareness around what your baselines look like. You're not going to immediately jump into successful intuitive eating. I will say that tracking for a while is really, really helpful with this because if you think that you're eating like 16, 1700 calories, but in reality you're eating 2600 calories because you aren't ever keeping track, and you're really underestimating how much you're having of these certain things throughout the day. Um, then that's going to really keep you stuck because you're going to think, oh my gosh, why am I not losing weight? I'm eating hardly anything, or I'm eating so healthy. But you're not taking into account, um, how much serving size wise you're getting of these different things that are actually really high calorie throughout each day. Or your portion sizes are just out of whack. So it's important to, um, really gain that awareness around food. And then you can start to move towards intuitive eating and then get to that place where you're eating healthy about 90% of the time. And that works really well for me because I never feel like I have to tell myself no when things come up, because most of the time I'm in a really solid habit of just getting nutrient dense foods. I have my go to breakfast, lunches and dinners, and I've gotten so accustomed to eating that way that it doesn't feel sacrificial. It doesn't feel restrictive. I'm just focusing on getting really good, nutrient dense, healthy foods to feel my best. And then when I want to say yes to ice cream with my kids, when I want to say yes to going out and having some wine with my girlfriends, those things I can say yes to without feeling guilty or without going overboard because I'm not telling myself, no, no, no you can't. Which leads to this like restrict and binge cycle, right? So that mindset shift is absolutely huge. Um, once you have that kind of intuitive eating down, it's really helpful to have 3 to 5 staples for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in your rotation to help you stay consistent without that mental fatigue, without constantly thinking, oh my gosh, I just have no idea what to eat. I'm so exhausted. I don't want to have to think about one more thing today, right? So just figure out a few. Go to figure out what the nutrition stats and might and macronutrient ratios look like for those. And then you know okay, this is a really great like 25g of protein meal and roughly 500 calories. So if I eat this for breakfast, this for lunch, this for dinner, and I rotate through those options, I'm pretty much always going to be hitting where I want to hit. As far as like my fat loss calories or my maintenance calories, whatever it is that you're shooting for at that time, then you don't have to think about it so much. It takes a little bit of work on the front end, but then you're good to go and you can kind of move on autopilot. And then playing the long game instead of taking the extremes for short stints. This is really what trips so many people up is that a lot of people are like, okay, I'm going to do 75 hard or I'm going to do hole 30, or I'm going to do these like really intense diets for like 30 days. And then what do they do? As soon as it's done, they go hard and binge and go back to all those things because they didn't actually learn how to adjust their habits or their mindset around anything. They just cut it out to eliminate the temptation. But then once they were saying, okay, now I can have this again, then they just go crazy because they never really learned moderation. And so really putting in the time and energy to learn those skills, that will translate to being able to approach these things in moderation for the rest of your life. There's always going to be girls weekends, there's always going to be bachelorette parties, there's going to be social gatherings, there's going to be family pizza nights. There's going to be, um, you know, special occasions and vacations and Christmas, um, festivities and things like that that, that can threaten to trip us up if we're not mentally prepared to go into those things and say, I don't need to eat everything in sight because I can just eat in moderation. I know how to do this. I've mastered this skill and so I'm not going to feel like I'm starting over again January 1st or at the end of my vacation, right? So putting in the time to learn the skill and playing the long game, instead of just focusing on taking extremes for short amounts of time, um, and it really helps to think about eating to benefit your health versus eating constantly to just lose weight. Yes, the food quantity does matter, so the numbers matter. But think about this your food quality aka what you're eating like the actual things that are making up your food intake on a daily basis that's going to affect your gut health, that's going to affect your hormone balance, your liver health, which also affects your basal metabolic rate. It's going to affect your skin, how you're feeling, your digestion, your blood sugar, your blood pressure, your longevity, your health markers. These things really, really matter. So just looking at the numbers, yes, you can lose weight that way. There's been studies done of people eating fast food or McDonald's for every single meal and still losing weight because they manipulated the calories properly. But are you going to feel your best doing that? Probably not for a long amount of time. So it's important to kind of find that balance. And I find it really helpful to think about, okay, if I'm getting, you know, two servings of veggies and two servings of fruit every day, that's going to really do wonders for my fiber intake, which is going to help with my gut health, which is going to help with my hormone balance and my blood sugar balance. And I'm going to feel more energetic. My hormones are going to be balanced, which is going to help minimize mood swings and some of these unpleasant effects that I've experienced in the past. So it really is important, and it does my body so good to focus on what I'm eating. And then it doesn't have to all be about the numbers. So those are just kind of some tips to go along with really trying to eat that 9010 method and kind of moving towards intuitive eating versus having all of these food rules and kind of being in this all or nothing diet cycle. Um, so I hope that these three mindset shifts will help you as well. None of these things happen overnight. So I want to preface this by saying that I It took me, you know, a good year to lose the £25. Once I started implementing these things, it did not happen overnight. And I've had to continue working at this the past few years, as I've had two babies since then. And so my weight's gone up and then it's come back down. Um, and that's why it's so important to have these things in practice that will help you not only lose the weight, but maintain the weight, because what's the point of going through all this trouble and effort to lose weight if you're not able to maintain it, if your metabolism is shot, if you don't have the habits and the mindsets in place to carry you through long term so you can keep that new maintenance body with ease, you know you don't want to have to be obsessing over this and working out two hours every single day just to maintain your new weight. So hopefully these habits will help you, um, get to the place where you want to be. If weight loss is a big goal for you, you can definitely check out our application in the show notes for Mountain Metabolic Coaching a lot of our clients are working towards weight loss and body composition goals, while also working towards their mountain goals, their bucket list hikes, things like that. So that's something that you're working towards. We'd love to chat with you about kind of what you have going on, what your goals are, and if the program will be a good fit for you. So definitely check out that link in the show notes. And if you have questions or just want to connect. You can message us at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. I would love to chat with you there. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy Trails.