Cori 0:00

Hey guys , this is Cori from Redefining Strength . Welcome to the Fitness Hacks podcast . This is a show where I share all my free work on the nutrition tips . I'm not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything . All I ask in return is , if you're enjoying the podcast , to leave a review or leave a five-star rating or , even better , share it with someone you think it might help . This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know . So let's jump right in .

Cori 0:27

1 . Stop trying to build a lifestyle . So hear me out . When we approach working towards a weight loss goal or a muscle building goal , we think I have to create sustainable habits that become a lifestyle , and while that is partly true , I think we've gone too far down this road of trying to make everything feel sustainable , right to start , feel like a lifestyle right to start . And it's simply not going to , because to reach a goal , we don't have to reach a new set point we've never been at . We're going to have to do things we've never done and they're not going to feel natural , normal , because what feels sustainable , what feels like a lifestyle , is what we've always done , what we want to fall back into naturally , even unconsciously . So I think this attitude of I have to create this lifestyle holds us back from implementing hard changes at times , and I was trying to think of a way of describing it , because that doesn't mean go do a cleanse , go do a fad diet , go do a diet with a label , something that is completely unsustainable , with no relation to your true lifestyle or what you honestly want to live like after you reach your goal . But I think it has to be this balance of realizing that what you do to reach a goal is not what you will do to maintain it .

Cori 1:38

So , in trying to think about this , I was trying to think about a great description of this , and it's like you get to design a house from scratch . You're going to build that foundation , you're going to build that structure of that house and you want that to be perfect and set in place . That is learning about macros . That is learning about progressions . It is things that are unchanging . It is the fundamentals of working out and nutrition that you need to understand because you want that solid foundation . Because so often we don't learn those things , we go into a fad diet and we've thrown up this haphazard house and it's why it falls down . But once you build that house , once you understand macros , once you understand the basics of working out , you have your program design . You know that you have to repeat workouts .

Cori 2:14

Once you have some of those fundamental habits and routines and like understandings in place of what it takes to reach a goal or what it takes to adjust your lifestyle , or even that self-awareness of where you're at and what you might need to change , then you can start to decorate the house right . When it's built , you can decorate it and as you decide . You know the f the f fashions go this way . You can change the decorations as you make more money and want to add in some extra elegant stuff or stuff becomes old . You can change out all the inner workings . So if you go through menopause , maybe the dressings in the house are chaff to change , right . But we can shift as our lifestyle , needs and goals evolve . But we want it to be the decorations in the house , the wallpaper or lack of wallpaper , painting the furniture , all those different things that we're shifting , because it's a lot easier to change those things out over time than it is to rebuild a shaky foundation and we risk everything collapsing in .

Cori 3:01

So we want to think about building a lifestyle as can I understand the fundamentals of things ? Can I understand okay , everything I'm doing has to come back to the protein , carbs and fat I'm consuming . I can adjust the types of food . I could decide to go paleo , I could decide to go vegan , but ultimately the macros matter most in terms of the results . So I can change the types of food I'm including . I can choose to cut out bread if I think that's going to help me get better results , but I have to understand the macro breakdowns that cutting out that bread is really going to create . We want to understand the fundamentals . When we understand the macros and what we need as we reach our goal to now maintain our results , we can shift our macro breakdowns to then gain muscle . We can shift our macro breakdowns to then be able to perform in an endurance sport . When we haven't done an endurance sport , we can shift our macros . We're changing the exact implementation of those macros , but macros are the foundation , they are the structure of the house . The other things are the decoration , exactly what ratios we use .

Cori 3:52

So , as you're looking to make a change , as you're looking to achieve a fat loss goal and maybe even reach a level of leanness you've never achieved before . Stop thinking it's going to feel sustainable . Stop thinking that thing that you're going to be doing is a lifestyle , because it honestly isn't going to feel that way . A lot of the changes you might look back on and be like , oh , that wasn't so bad , or I wish I'd done it sooner , and a lot of the fundamentals you're putting into place again , the macro breakdowns or the workout progressions that are clearly designed , will carry you through to maintaining . But how you're implementing those things will shift your lifestyle .

Cori 4:22

Your diet , your workout should be constantly evolving and if you think about it , we do get this attitude a lot more with diet of . This should be a lifestyle , it should feel sustainable . I have to have this balance right . Cutting out foods to reach a goal is not sustainable , but understanding why maybe I chose to eliminate those foods for a period could be sustainable . But we do this a lot more with diet , where we think it should be a lifestyle , or we go to extreme restriction , versus with workouts . We kind of have accepted oh , I'm going to do this program . Okay , now I'm going to shift to this program when I want to reach a new goal , we have to take that same approach . But I want you to get out of this mindset that it's going to feel like a lifestyle , especially to start , and that what you're doing right now will become the thing you do forever , because it's only the underlying principles , it's only that foundation of the house that we don't want to change . We want to be able to decorate it anyway we'd like , as the wind even strikes us , as we want to work towards another goal . So hopefully that analogy helped and I hope that as you're working towards your goals , things have felt hard , if they felt unsustainable , if they felt different . Good , it probably means you're on the right track to achieve a new result , because what you do to achieve your goal is not what you will do to maintain it , and the more we can focus on that , the more we can create the principles that build a lifestyle while making the changes and the hard changes that we actually need right now to move forward .

Cori 5:28

Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hacks podcast . Again , this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips . I'm never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything . All I ask in return is , if you're enjoying the podcast , to leave a rating review or share it with somebody you think it might help . This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know .