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In this episode, we go over the things that people typically spin their wheels on and see little to no progress towards their goals with. We are sold so many "quick-fix solutions" or "healthy add-ins" that we lose sight of the basics and what will actually move the needle forward. So let's dive into the things that WILL keep you progressing toward your goals so you can re-focus your energy!
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
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!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In 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 discuss 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. 1s Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for hiking podcast. Today we are going to be going over one thing that may be keeping you stuck when it comes to your health and fitness journey. Um, after working with hundreds of women one on one, I've been a trainer for ten years now, which is so crazy. Kind of makes me feel a little bit old. Um, and this is something that I've noticed coming up a lot, um, just over the years with my clients as far as something that kind of just keeps people stuck, spinning their wheels, not seeing the progress that they want to see despite feeling like they're doing a lot of things. Um, and so I wanted to get into this and say that this is for anybody who maybe says something like, oh, these things just don't work for me. What works for everybody else doesn't work for me or nothing I try works. Um, if you find yourself saying these things, then this episode is definitely for you. And I'm excited to get into what this one thing is. Um, so let's get into it. The number one mistake I see in, um, in health and fitness that just keeps people stuck is majoring in the minors before mastering the basics. So what does this really mean? Ultimately, there's so many people that put energy into the wrong things, and then they feel exhausted because they're truly doing a lot of things. You know, they're they're putting effort into things, but unfortunately they're majoring in the minors. They're kind of putting effort into these minute things that maybe, um, you know, some random influencers are promoting different products, different fad diets, different fad workouts, things that naturally thin people who have no accreditation to their names as far as fitness or health are promoting, um, because it's worked well for them or they're just sponsored by these brands, right? So it's easy to get sucked into some of these minor things that don't really move the needle when it comes to minimizing negative symptoms in our health. Seeing body recomposition and seeing fat loss. Just seeing our fitness improve overall. Um, and unfortunately, there's just so much of that out there, like social media can be such a great resource, but it can also really, um, dilute the truth as far as what is going to help us in our health. And it just makes things so complicated. And unfortunately, I do remember being in college and literally ordering like diet pills because I didn't know any better. I thought, oh, that must be what will help me lose a few pounds. And before I had my education, before I learned so much. That's kind of what I defaulted to. And I think that's what so many of us default to. So I want to get into what these minor things look like. So if you're obsessed over things like supplements, cold, plunging, intense fasting, time frames, fad diets. Asleep. Mocktails, taking collagen, meal timing, cutting out sugar. Bad workouts, eating low carb flat tummy teas, green you know, powders or gut healing quote unquote powders that some influencer recommends or juicing. If you're relying on these things to make the biggest difference in your health or get you results as far as fitness, then you're definitely going to feel stuck and spin your wheels for years. These things are not it. They are not really going to make that much of a difference if we don't have some foundational pieces in place. So what I want to talk about, instead of just saying the things that aren't super helpful, I want to talk about the foundation that we all need in order to see lasting results, to maintain a lean physique long term, to feel healthy long term, to feel our best both mentally and emotionally. These are kind of the things that are going to make the biggest difference and move the needle way more than anything else that I just mentioned. Okay, so what I want you to do is think about committing yourself to these things for 30 days before you say a sentence like, oh, these things just don't work for me. I've tried it. It doesn't work. There's a reason that these are foundational and that anybody who's seen lasting fat loss, lasting physique change maintains a lean physique year round. These are the things that they are doing. Okay, I promise you. So let's get into what you need to do for the next 30 days. If you want to kind of cut that myth out of your mind that these things just don't work for you, that nothing works for you, try these things for 30 days and then we'll see how you feel. Okay, so the first one is to actually keep track of your steps for 30 days and see what your averages actually look like. Um, are you moving during the day or are you just working out and then becoming very sedentary? Um, a lot of people are way more sedentary than they think. We're spending way more time sitting down at work, sitting in our car, sitting on our couch, sitting while we eat. And we're not really incorporating play and and walking and activity into our daily lives. So this is a concept called non exercise activity thermogenesis. The acronym for this that you might have seen is neat. And our neat actually makes up for a lot of our total daily energy expenditure. As far as the calories. Actually a lot more than you're going to burn just in an hour of a workout, because that the neat potential is the rest of our day. There's so much more time where we can be up and moving. You can pace back and forth, you can fidget, you can take the stairs, you can go for a little walks, you can go for one long walk. You can start doing activities and hobbies that require you to move your body. Even just walking around a store is going to help increase your daily need. So the more that we can increase our need, the biggest difference that's going to make as far as just our total daily energy expenditure, um, a lot more than our workout, actually. We're not burning as much in our workout as what we think. Um, so focusing on how many steps are you actually getting in a day and then setting a target that's a few thousand above that. So maybe right now you're only getting like 2 to 3000 steps a day. Unfortunately, that's actually pretty standard. Um, at least in America, where we don't have a lot of opportunities to walk, like we don't have a walking culture the same way that other some other countries do. Um, and so if your average is 2 to 3000 steps a day, then maybe you're setting a target for 5000 instead of jumping to 10,000. That would feel so daunting and most likely very unrealistic. And then you can slowly increase from there instead of just jumping right to ten K steps. Um, if you're already getting ten K steps a day, awesome. Then maybe you just bump it up to like 11 K and just challenge yourself a little bit. In that way. And if you're like, oh, well, I don't have a way to track my steps, I definitely recommend investing in a pedometer or something on your wrist that you can track your steps. Think about all of the ways that you spend money, you know, like without even thinking about it. Um, with online shopping or eating out or alcohol or coffee and just a lot some of that money to invest in a watch, I know that there are always going to be excuses, but if this matters to you, it's definitely important to put your money where your mouth is. Invest in a way to keep track of this, to bring some awareness to how much you're actually moving on a day to day basis. And most phones actually do have a step tracker in the health app. I know my iPhone does, so that's always an option too. I did that for many years before I was able to invest in a watch, and um, obviously you have to keep it on you. It's not going to be as accurate as a watch, but it's a good way to kind of gauge gauge averages of what your daily step count looks like. Okay. Number two, it's actually keep an accurate count of food intake for 30 days and not missing any days. Be so consistent and so accurate with this instead of just eyeballing, guessing or tracking Monday through Thursday and then just letting whatever happened happen on the weekends, we can't say that something doesn't work for us when we're only consistent with it 50 to 70% of the time. Okay. And unfortunately, a lot of people say, well, a calorie deficit just doesn't work for me. I'm eating, you know, really healthy or I'm eating like 1500 calories a day and I'm not losing weight, when in reality, maybe they're eating 1500 calories a day for like a few days, and then they stop tracking on the days where they're eating way more than that because they don't even want to know, or they don't want to bother because they're eating out a bunch. Um, and it's not accurate. They're not actually eating that amount long enough to see a change. Okay. So we have to be honest with ourselves. Am I tracking accurately? Am I tracking consistently? And, you know, and then kind of go from there because those two components is often what we're missing when we say that something isn't working for us, especially tracking. And I'm not necessarily saying that you need to track for the rest of your life. I certainly do not track anymore, but I do think it's a very helpful tool for a season to bring awareness, because we often overestimate, um, our activity, and we underestimate our intake by up to 50% of what we're eating. That means you could be actually eating double the calories of what you think, because you're just not actually looking at it. So having some of that baseline knowledge from tracking, even if it's just for a month of your life, is going to benefit you for the rest of your life, because you'll have awareness around the reality of the calorie intake and things that you're eating on a consistent basis. So I definitely recommend this. This is something that we have our clients do. Um, you know, unless there's a big history of disordered eating or someone's already tracked and has like a bad history with it, we definitely recommend bringing some awareness to your food intake, especially if you want to either lose or gain weight. It's going to be so hard to do this from just eyeballing and just guessing, especially initially. If you don't have that prior knowledge of what intake looks like in the foods that you're eating. Um, you know, our food quality matters so much for how we're feeling, our overall health, making sure we're getting micronutrients and not just eating junk food all the time. But food quantity is ultimately going to be what dictates our body size. And if we're trying to lose or gain weight, we have to be aware of the quantity. 1s Okay. Number three is eating vegetables and fruit for at least 2 to 3 servings a day. Obviously, more is going to be better, but a lot of times it can be easy to not even reach 2 to 3 servings a day and not even think about it. We just did a challenge with some of the fit for hiking ladies in January, and one of our daily action items was getting at least 2 to 3 servings a day of vegetables. And I man, that was challenging for me. I realized there are days when I don't eat any vegetables if I don't really actively, consciously make an effort. And I think that that can happen to a lot of us, especially on busy days. We just don't even think about it. So really being aware that we're getting at least a serving of veggies or fruit at every single meal, and that can be, you know, about this size. So if you're just trying to eyeball portions, look at your fist and make sure you're getting at least that amount of fruit or veggies three times a day, okay? Eat your veggies definitely makes difference. Supplements are going to be helpful if you want to supplement what you're already doing. They're supplementary to the foundation that you already have of health. There shouldn't replace getting whole foods, fruits, and veggies in your day to day life. They should just be a way to maybe increase your micronutrient intake, um, on top of what you're already doing. But we definitely don't want to let pills and powders take the place of these whole foods. Okay, number four is sleeping at least seven hours a night and also working on good sleep quality. We don't want to just look at the quantity here of the time that we're in our bed. If our food or if our sleep quality is crap, then we're not going to really feel that like refresh to the next day, right? So we want to focus on, um, the habits that are going to really make a difference as far as setting us up for a good night of sleep. So maybe that's a brain dump journal minimizing screens like read or journal instead of looking at your phone and scrolling for the hour before bed. Um, actually getting to bed at a decent time so that you can set yourself up for seven hours of sleep sleeping in a cold and dark room without as much sound as possible or distractions. Um, and also, just like wearing yourself out during the day, moving around, going to bed, tired, eating healthy food and all of these things definitely do make a big difference for our sleep at all. All of these healthy habits definitely like connect together and and affect one another. So we want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success when it comes to sleep quality as well. You can take all of the like sleepy mocktail type of drinks before bed, but if you're not also looking at like your stress management, minimizing light exposure and screen exposure before bed, um, and things like that, then you're not probably going to sleep that great. 1s Um, number five is doing a weight bearing activity at least 2 to 3 times a week. In addition to daily walks. So this is crazy. The average adult loses up to 3% of muscle mass every year. If we're not actively counteracting that loss through weightlifting, especially as we get older, this speeds up. Um, and that's really crazy because maintaining our muscle mass is absolutely essential to healthy aging, maintaining a healthy metabolism as we age, bone density, ability to do activities that we want to do, um, just stay mobile and active, to keep a lean physique and just to be strong in general. And so many people are like, oh, as I've gotten older, my metabolism just slows down. Well, what's really happening is you're you're probably not nearly as active as you used to be. Think about when you're a kid. You're running around, your Neet is through the roof. You're always moving. You're always fidgeting, you're always on your feet. Um, and also your muscle mass is is lowering. As you get older and less, you are lifting weights to counteract that. And the more muscle you have on your frame, the higher your basal metabolic rate will be. So keeping muscle is huge. We want to use our training sessions to either maintain or gain as much muscle as humanly possible to set ourselves up for success as we go into our older years. That is my main goal with my workouts. Now I want to age like a boss. I want to keep a healthy metabolism, keep a lean physique, stay functional, stay active, stay mobile. And I want to make sure I'm not losing muscle mass as I get older. So that's my goal with my workouts. I'm not trying to burn as many calories as humanly possible. I know that that is a futile way to look at my workouts. It's not actually going to do anything helpful for me. Um, I want to stay strong. I want to make sure I am able to, uh, keep as much lean mass on my frame as I possibly can. So trying to do at least 2 to 3 times a week of some strength training. And if you have no idea where to start, definitely check the show notes for the link to our, uh, coaching program. We put together customized programs with the equipment you have based on your schedule, based on your goals, based on all of your unique considerations, to make sure that you know what the heck to do when you show up to your home gym or a regular gym. 2s Um, okay. Number. What are we at? Number six is to eat at least 100g of protein a day. This number is going to vary based on your body size. Male, female. You know, if you're a smaller female, you're probably not going to have the same protein needs as a like six foot five male. But we want to make sure at least we're getting 100g of protein a day. And unfortunately, most women especially have no idea how little protein they're getting. I've had clients try protein, um, as they start the program with us, and they are like getting 40g a day or something really low. And unfortunately this is pretty common. So bringing some awareness, just like the calorie intake, just like the step intake, we need to see what we're doing right now as far as protein intake and then try to build up from there. I know it can feel daunting if you're going from 40g to 100g. Again, this is where working with the coach is really helpful to get some ideas of how to make this happen, but in general, you always want to get at least 20 to 25g of protein at each meal, and then add in some high protein snacks to reach that place. Um, all right, number seven. Stress management. How you support your nervous system to minimize stress is going to trickle into so many other areas of your health, such as hormone balance, appetite control, sleep quality, inflammation, gut health and digestion, and overall mental and emotional well-being. So the more that we can do things like going outside, just being in the sun, being in the fresh air, being active outside, socializing with people who make us laugh, talking to people like really, truly engaging in good conversations that fill your cup. Serving others, doing something outside of yourself, scrolling less, minimizing screen time and doing more face to face. Interacting. Doing things that make you feel alive. Things that spike your adrenaline and things that make you just excited about life and taking some nice deep breaths throughout the day. These things are all going to be so helpful to bring you out of a fight or flight nervous system states and get you into a place where you can rest and digest properly, and not be constantly on edge. High cortisol mode. Um, this is going to be huge for your health doing things that make you feel like a happy, joyful person. It sounds so silly, but stress management is absolutely huge for your health. And then our last one is alcohol reduction. So if you're someone who eats clean all week and then on the weekends, you're just like going out a ton, partying a ton, maybe over drinking. Um, this is definitely going to leave you in a place where you're spinning your wheels and struggling to see physique change. Not only are you getting a ton of excess calories with the drinks, but also it's going to lower your inhibitions as far as what you're eating. It's going to definitely affect your sleep quality that night. You will drastically lower your amount of REM cycles. Even just one drink can lower your REM cycles by quite a bit. Uh, making your sleep quality go down. And then the next day you're probably going to not be moving that much. You're probably going to be super sluggish. And so if this is a big pattern in your life and you find yourself drinking like upwards of, you know, 5 to 10 drinks every single weekend, um, I'm sorry to say, but that is definitely not going to align with feeling your best. And you can take all the supplements in the world and take grains, powders and, you know, cut carbs Monday through Friday. But if your alcohol intake is is really high on the weekends, it's not going to do that much for you. Okay, so we have to look at this from a realistic standpoint. Um, you know, if 2 to 3 days out of your week are crazy high calories because of going out and drinking a ton and four days a week are quote unquote good, and you're super restrictive and you're just kind of perpetuating this vicious cycle, and you're going to spin your wheels. And I don't say this from a place of judgment. I love to have a few glasses of wine a week, but my alcohol intake has definitely like. Cut back quite a bit over the years. In my early 20s, I went out a bit more and, you know, had some fun with that. But I definitely noticed that my face was so much puffier. I was holding on to a lot of weight, and I definitely think that alcohol played a role in that. And I feel so much better now that I have a much lower amount of total alcohol each week, um, than I did when I was drinking more heavily on the weekends. 1s All right, so that right there is your foundation. Okay. Those seven items are going to be gold if you want to have lifelong sustained results as far as health, fitness, weight loss, staying lean, maintaining a healthy physique. So you don't even need to worry about things like added cardio, meal timing, cutting sugar supplements, etc. until you have this foundation nailed on a monthly basis. I cannot stress this enough. None of that other stuff is going to do anything unless you are on point with these seven items. Trying to focus on the minor things without doing the basic basics is kind of like trying to fill a tire that has holes slashed all through it, like it's just not going to do anything for you. Okay? The problem tends to be, though, that doing these big hitter items on a daily basis is a bit more mundane. It's not as sexy, and it's harder to do consistently than just like taking a pill or relying on juicing or relying on a like quick fix type of approach. Right? Um, the mindset shifts. Require practice. They require time and consistency, and it's not done in a 4 to 8 week time frame. So this foundation for lifelong health, you really have to look at it as something that doesn't have an expiration date. There's no start finish, there's no being off or on the bandwagon. There's just consistent effort time after time, day after day, knowing that you're not going to show up perfectly, but you're going to show up anyways. And it's also worth mentioning that, you know, doing something long term. There's going to be times when you're able to, like, really hit it hard. You're in a season of your life where you have the time, you have the energy, you have the means to do this, and you can like, really go all in. Maybe that's the time where you take some time to, um, track your steps and your calories and your protein to see where you're at and make some changes, and do this for a short term effort. And then once you have that knowledge, you can go from there. And that will kind of sustain you through the seasons where you're not able to do those things. You don't have the energy to work out five times a week. You don't have the energy to track. Maybe you're in a really stressful season, maybe you're a new mom, maybe you're going through a divorce. Maybe you're going through a big life change, and you just don't have the capacity to show up in that way. Then you refer back to those basics, and you do as many of them as you can to the capacity at which you can. It's not going to look perfect all the time. You're not going to probably nail all seven every single day. I know that I don't, but I've also gone through many seasons of life since making these switches. And just going back to those basics and doing what I can, depending on what capacity I have at the time, has allowed me to lose £25, keep it off, have a really healthy pregnancy, lose the weight again after my baby, and maintain a healthy physique that I'm happy with postpartum that I don't have to put tons of crazy effort in. I'm not doing any of the, you know, carb cutting, sugar cutting, fad diets, crazy workouts. I'm doing those foundational things that I just talked about, and I'm nailing them as much as I can. And every single other person that has maintained weight loss really well, and they have some good muscle on their frame and they're healthy and vibrant, I promise you, those are the things that they're doing. They're not just taking grains powders and hoping that it accounts for everything else. They're not just doing those small minute things. They're nailing these basics day after day. So if you ever do see someone promoting like, oh, that's one thing, completely got rid of my stomach pouch or minimized all my bloating, unfollow them and run the other direction. Because the things that truly make a difference for our health are these big, long lasting habits, not something that you purchase on Amazon. Okay, so I hope that this has been helpful to kind of clear the air on some of these things. That can be very confusing. And I know that while it's broken down and it looks simple, it's not necessarily easy to implement. And this is where Mountain metabolic coaching comes in. It's really hard to create behavior change on our own, even as coaches, like even coaches need coaches. As people, we need accountability. We need support. We need someone to talk through this stuff with us. And that's exactly what we do with our coaching service. We meet you where you are. We make a customized plan to you that actually fits your life, your schedule, your needs, your goals, and we walk with you every step of the way to get you where you want to go. So if that is something that sounds appealing, if you feel a bit overwhelmed at the thought of doing all of this on your own, definitely check the show notes for that application link. We would love to chat with you about the program. Um, and I hope that this has been a really helpful episode. If you got something out of it, send me a DM, let me know. I'd love to hear from you guys as to what you are taking away from these episodes. What's the most helpful for you? And also if you love the show, if you could leave a review, a rating and a review that is so helpful to kind of get the word out. Um, this podcast is definitely a labor of love, and I really appreciate if you show some of that love back if you're appreciating the information on here. All right, you guys, thanks for being with me today. I will see you in the next episode. 1s Thanks for tuning in to 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 ponytail on a trail comm. Happy and healthy trails.