Latest / The Embodiment Lab / The 4 Levers To Simplify Building Muscle & Becoming A Lean Machine
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: I feel like the reason most people don't actually stick with their fitness in the first place is because it's way too complicated in your head.
- 0:07SPEAKER_00: And the reality of the situation is, yeah, it may not be easy, but it can be simple.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: And we're going to simplify it in today's episode.
- 0:15SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the embodiment lab.
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: My name is Addy.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: And today we are on my porch.
- 0:20SPEAKER_00: And I am really just a girl of it's good enough.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: I kind of tested the audio.
- 0:27SPEAKER_00: And I don't think you can hear outside noise.
- 0:31SPEAKER_00: I think my mic is pretty good.
- 0:33SPEAKER_00: We'll find out when I actually go to edit this episode.
- 0:36SPEAKER_00: But if you can hear birds, that's super fun.
- 0:39SPEAKER_00: If you can hear the 18-wheeler that is unloading something into the little restaurant down the road from my apartment, so sorry.
- 0:47SPEAKER_00: That's not necessarily the pleasant noise that we want to hear on the podcast.
- 0:50SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
- 0:52SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, I'm such a silly, silly goose when it comes to my work environment.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: I like to work from different locations.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: I, when we first moved into this apartment, was really, really into working from my desk because it was new.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: It was brand new.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: It was fun.
- 1:09SPEAKER_00: I had a cute little setup in there.
- 1:11SPEAKER_00: And then we got my dining room table a couple weeks ago.
- 1:13SPEAKER_00: And I've been working from my dining room table.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: Every now and then I'll work from the couch.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: Yesterday I worked from bed.
- 1:18SPEAKER_00: That was super fun.
- 1:19SPEAKER_00: Today we're on my porch.
- 1:21SPEAKER_00: Actually, I worked from my porch on Tuesday as well.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: I went to a coffee shop and then came home.
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: And instead of working from the chairs on my desk, not my desk, whoa, on my porch, I actually brought out a blanket and I sat on the blanket, on the porch, and I did some work.
- 1:36SPEAKER_00: I did a couple check-ins from the porch, which was super fun.
- 1:38SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if anybody else is like this, but I constantly need like a little bit of a switch up and environment, which is why I go to so many different coffee shops.
- 1:45SPEAKER_00: I've been going to a coffee shop every Friday with a friend who's in the same business mentorship as me, and that has been super fun.
- 1:52SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's a nice little uh two-minute rant on different working locations.
- 1:58SPEAKER_00: But today we are going to get into how to basically simplify your fitness journey.
- 2:05SPEAKER_00: And maybe I'm naive, maybe not.
- 2:09SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm just holding up the mirror where you really need it.
- 2:14SPEAKER_00: But I actually don't think fitness is that difficult.
- 2:20SPEAKER_00: And maybe that is so out of touch and so naive to say, but when you really simplify it down to these four levers that I'm going to go over with you today, it's pretty simple.
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not gonna say it's easy, it can have its moments where it's difficult, but it's not complex.
- 2:39SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna try and break this down and share my perspective with you on this because if we really break it down to a basic human need level, we all need movement, we all need muscle, we all need nourishment, meaning nutrition, food.
- 2:56SPEAKER_00: We all need to eat during the day, we all need sleep, we all have these basic human needs that we need to survive, to be humans, to be alive, you know?
- 3:08SPEAKER_00: But fitness and being the most optimal version of those things just takes a little bit of extra strategy, a little bit extra intention to do.
- 3:24SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna break down these levers.
- 3:26SPEAKER_00: So these four levers I'm gonna go into are strength training, nutrition, daily movement, and general health.
- 3:34SPEAKER_00: And I kind of had this image of like a bunch of light switches or like big levers, like you would see like in a movie or something.
- 3:40SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
- 3:41SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna try and put together this analogy in that's going on in my head in real time with you in this episode.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: And hopefully you can keep up with my brain.
- 3:50SPEAKER_00: She's kind of a little bit of a crazy, crazy place up there, but we're gonna go into it together.
- 3:55SPEAKER_00: So, strength training is lever number one.
- 3:58SPEAKER_00: This can look a couple different ways, depending on your schedule and your life, your skill level, your, you know, wherever you are in your journey.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: And I just wanna preface this just before we jump into this.
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: I have a really big pet peeve when, and maybe this offends you, and if it does, let it.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
- 4:20SPEAKER_00: This is my opinion, this is my view, but wow, I'm just gonna be harsh today.
- 4:24SPEAKER_00: All right, Addy, here we go.
- 4:25SPEAKER_00: Buckle up.
- 4:26SPEAKER_00: If you are in a season where shit is absolutely hitting the fan and you let strength training go completely, I don't, respectfully, I don't get it.
- 4:41SPEAKER_00: I've been in multiple seasons.
- 4:43SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, my brain is bouncing over the place.
- 4:45SPEAKER_00: Buckle up, here we go.
- 4:46SPEAKER_00: I have gotten a couple comments where people will be like, yeah, well, easy for you to say.
- 4:50SPEAKER_00: You're an influencer.
- 4:51SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, first of all, not an influencer, not an influencer.
- 4:55SPEAKER_00: I'm a coach, very different thing.
- 4:57SPEAKER_00: I don't live an influencer lifestyle where all I have to do is make content and work with brands and do all these things.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: Not saying that an influencer lives an easy life, but I'm not an influencer.
- 5:05SPEAKER_00: I'm a coach.
- 5:06SPEAKER_00: I work with human beings on a regular basis.
- 5:09SPEAKER_00: I work, I hold myself to a very high standard of working eight, nine, 10 hours a day.
- 5:16SPEAKER_00: I get up with my alarm before the sun comes up.
- 5:18SPEAKER_00: I do my things, I check my boxes, of course.
- 5:21SPEAKER_00: Now, will I admit that I have a little bit more of a flexible lifestyle nowadays?
- 5:27SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
- 5:28SPEAKER_00: I'm not like in an office building from eight to five every single day.
- 5:32SPEAKER_00: I completely acknowledge that.
- 5:34SPEAKER_00: I completely understand that.
- 5:35SPEAKER_00: However, I have been in busy seasons of my life in the past, for sure, 100%.
- 5:41SPEAKER_00: I worked three jobs at one point.
- 5:42SPEAKER_00: I had to be at work at gosh, 6 a.m., 5.
- 5:47SPEAKER_00: Actually, I think it was like 5 a.m.
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: I had to be at work.
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: I remember like waking up at 4 a.m.
- 5:50SPEAKER_00: to go to work at HM to do like a whole um store move where we like redid the mannequins and the layout and the design of each like section in the store.
- 6:02SPEAKER_00: So like I've lived busy lives before.
- 6:05SPEAKER_00: Definitely understand that.
- 6:07SPEAKER_00: I'm actually a little bit of a nerd with like working around a busy schedule and trying to plug in different workouts.
- 6:13SPEAKER_00: I truly believe that if your priorities are in the right place and if you are willing and determined that you can make anything work.
- 6:22SPEAKER_00: So when people have a crisis that comes up and the gym is the first thing that goes out the window, I'm like, what are you talking about?
- 6:28SPEAKER_00: Because I, in any season of my life, literally could not imagine.
- 6:33SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this yesterday.
- 6:35SPEAKER_00: I could not imagine the gym being like, yep, I guess I just won't do that for a couple months.
- 6:39SPEAKER_00: Like, I actually genuinely could not picture my life without the gym.
- 6:45SPEAKER_00: It keeps me sane, it keeps me grounded.
- 6:48SPEAKER_00: And even if my life is as busy as it possibly could be, the gym will still be there.
- 6:54SPEAKER_00: Even if it's like five o'clock in the morning, 10 o'clock at night, right smack in the middle of the day, in like a 30-minute little little window, it's it's gonna happen.
- 7:02SPEAKER_00: Long spiel aside, strength training can look different for different people.
- 7:07SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in the gym twice per week, amazing.
- 7:10SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in the gym three times per week, amazing.
- 7:13SPEAKER_00: Most of my clients are in the gym three to four times a week.
- 7:16SPEAKER_00: I am in the gym five times a week.
- 7:18SPEAKER_00: That sometimes, like last year when I was feeling a little bit burnt out of the gym, I backed it down to four days a week.
- 7:26SPEAKER_00: But strength training is one of the levers that you can pull to create progress.
- 7:32SPEAKER_00: Strength training is one of those things that, like, you're basically a shape shifter of your body.
- 7:36SPEAKER_00: You can literally do a squat and be like, I'm gonna put muscle in my ass and on my quads, and you do a squat and bam, there you go.
- 7:43SPEAKER_00: You can be like, I'm gonna do a shoulder press and like grow your shoulders.
- 7:46SPEAKER_00: It's actually super cool that you can literally shape shift your body using strength training.
- 7:51SPEAKER_00: That and the fact that when you are strength training, your workouts don't need to be super long.
- 7:55SPEAKER_00: So they can be super efficient and effective in a short period of time.
- 7:59SPEAKER_00: You can get the most bang for your buck, strength training, and you can easily turn up the the lever, turn up the dial by increasing intensity, increasing weight, increasing reps, all of these things, or you can dial it down depending on your season of life.
- 8:15SPEAKER_00: I had another thought in there, and I don't know where she went, but that is strength training.
- 8:20SPEAKER_00: Oh, also that's where it went.
- 8:23SPEAKER_00: Muscle is metabolism, right?
- 8:26SPEAKER_00: And the more efficient that you can get your metabolism, the better your body is going to run.
- 8:31SPEAKER_00: And muscle is highly, highly, highly metabolically expensive tissue, which means that it burns a lot more to sustain, which means that you're born, you're whoa, English is hard, which means that you're burning more calories at rest, simply existing with more muscle on your body.
- 8:48SPEAKER_00: So the more that you can strength train and add muscle to your body, the better you're doing for your body, and the less time that you really have to spend in the gym.
- 8:56SPEAKER_00: And that's not to say that you need to like that's the thing that you do right off the bat.
- 9:02SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes you do have to spend a couple years building up a nice foundation of muscle, and then you can kind of pull back and just maintain and coast and live your life, and and that's that.
- 9:11SPEAKER_00: But that's the lever with strength training.
- 9:14SPEAKER_00: You can pull that lever, get a little bit more squeeze out of it, or you can back off the lever and just coast and maintain.
- 9:23SPEAKER_00: And that's one lever of fitness that we can pull.
- 9:27SPEAKER_00: The second lever is nutrition at a basic level.
- 9:32SPEAKER_00: All of us human beings need to eat.
- 9:35SPEAKER_00: And if we can set ourselves up properly, meaning we have food in the fridge, we grocery shop on the same day every single week, so that we are constantly restocked, we have a plan for what we're going to eat every single day.
- 9:50SPEAKER_00: We make sure that we are getting in enough food.
- 9:53SPEAKER_00: It's spaced out throughout the day in a way that makes sense with your schedule, makes sense with your calories, makes sense with your energy levels, all the things.
- 10:01SPEAKER_00: Then we can pull the lever on our nutrition.
- 10:05SPEAKER_00: Nutrition is also super cool because this is where we can come in and we can add things like protein to help with muscle.
- 10:11SPEAKER_00: We can add things like fiber to help with our digestion.
- 10:14SPEAKER_00: We can make sure that we're eating the right amount of calories for our body to help with our metabolism, help with our energy, also help us build muscle.
- 10:22SPEAKER_00: All of these things.
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: In Embody You, I use the macro matrix system that is basically a system that sets you up with tips to make my fitness pal super incredibly easy and simple.
- 10:35SPEAKER_00: Literally stupid simple to where, like it takes me 30 seconds to log my food every single day because all of my food is saved as individual meals.
- 10:45SPEAKER_00: So all I have to do is open the app, click a check mark, and breakfast is logged.
- 10:50SPEAKER_00: Click lunch, click the meal for lunch, check mark, lunch is logged.
- 10:53SPEAKER_00: And I do that for every single meal.
- 10:55SPEAKER_00: And I have a lot of meals in there saved.
- 10:57SPEAKER_00: And so if I eat a different thing, I just type in that meal and bam, there you go.
- 11:01SPEAKER_00: And so I can easily operate on this very replicable.
- 11:06SPEAKER_00: I made up a word.
- 11:08SPEAKER_00: Replicable, we'll go with that system that I use on repeat.
- 11:13SPEAKER_00: It's automatic every single day.
- 11:14SPEAKER_00: So I make sure I'm actually hitting the marks without having to take extra brain power, extra energy, and just extra overwhelm while I'm busy running around doing all the tasks that I have to do every single day.
- 11:25SPEAKER_00: The macro matrix system also helps you figure out how to get in enough food throughout the day with the calories that you have allotted, and it helps you bank up basically different meal ideas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that you have easy go-tos.
- 11:45SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people they get bored eating the same things every single day.
- 11:50SPEAKER_00: I personally eat the same things every single day.
- 11:52SPEAKER_00: Um, I have one meal that's dinner that's different every day, just to give me a little bit of variety.
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: But like the basic bones of my day are the same so that I don't have to think so damn hard about how I'm gonna hit my calories, how I'm gonna hit my protein, how am I gonna hit my fiber, how am I gonna do all these things.
- 12:07SPEAKER_00: I just show up and I eat the same things every single day.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: But with the macro matrix system, I have it set up to where you're able to come up with like three different breakfast ideas that you can rotate between that help you hit your macros, three different lunch ideas that you can rotate between, all of these things, et cetera, et cetera.
- 12:25SPEAKER_00: So you have a bank of easy go-to meals that help you hit your macros and your calories.
- 12:31SPEAKER_00: If you want this guide to the macro matrix system that I have, just message me on Instagram.
- 12:38SPEAKER_00: I think it's just matrix M-A-T-R-I-X, and I will send you that guide if you want that.
- 12:46SPEAKER_00: But that makes nutrition super incredibly easy because I understand nutrition can be one of those things that's completely overwhelming.
- 12:53SPEAKER_00: It's really hard.
- 12:54SPEAKER_00: It can be, but if you make it so stupid simple and you make it something that you just show up on autopilot and you do on a daily basis, then it's really easy and it's really simple to just follow.
- 13:07SPEAKER_00: And then that paired with strength training, and you're just telling your body where that food needs to go.
- 13:11SPEAKER_00: And next thing you know, you're packing on muscle, you're increasing your metabolism, you're a lean machine, your body's just functioning exactly the way that it was meant to function in the first place.
- 13:20SPEAKER_00: So the second lever that we can pull and adjust is your nutrition.
- 13:25SPEAKER_00: And that just depends on how honed in you wanna be, how automatic you want the system to be, and how much food you're consuming.
- 13:32SPEAKER_00: The lever can get pulled in different directions, whether you're wanting to build a significant amount of muscle, we pull it in the surplus direction.
- 13:38SPEAKER_00: You want to maintain, great.
- 13:40SPEAKER_00: We just maintain.
- 13:41SPEAKER_00: We want to lose a little bit of body fat, we pull the lever in the deficit direction.
- 13:45SPEAKER_00: We can just adjust it that way.
- 13:47SPEAKER_00: The third lever that we can pull is daily movement.
- 13:52SPEAKER_00: So this is just going to help with your heart health.
- 13:55SPEAKER_00: It's gonna help with just burn a couple extra calories.
- 13:58SPEAKER_00: It's just gonna help you just move your body a little bit, and that is steps.
- 14:02SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think, like as we discussed in a previous episode about steps, I don't know if it was the last one or if it was two ago, but I don't think that steps are urgent to burn calories because at the end of the day, they don't burn a whole lot of calories, but they help you with just getting in a little bit extra movement.
- 14:19SPEAKER_00: Because if you, let's say, are trying to eat a certain amount of food, that's technically your maintenance, but it feels like a lot of food because you don't have an appetite worked up to that, increasing your daily movement, adding some different activities, taking the long way, you know, doing all this, you're increasing your movement, you're increasing your calories burned a little bit, and then that in turn increases your appetite, which then helps you to eat more food, which then helps you to strength train, which helps you to get stronger.
- 14:49SPEAKER_00: You see how these things are super connected.
- 14:52SPEAKER_00: It's like if we have stagnant energy from working a sedentary job, and then we get off work and we go home and we sit on the couch, right?
- 15:00SPEAKER_00: We have all this stagnant energy that's not actually going anywhere, and it kind of just it's stagnant, right?
- 15:07SPEAKER_00: It's not helping you.
- 15:08SPEAKER_00: Whereas if we create uh energy with this energy, like we have this built-up energy that if we were to move, even if we feel like we don't have the energy, simply moving helps to stir up that energy in our body that helps to drive that new energy to be created.
- 15:28SPEAKER_00: If we let that energy just sit, then yes, it's no wonder we feel tired and sluggish and exhausted.
- 15:33SPEAKER_00: But if we uh use the energy, it's like potential energy.
- 15:38SPEAKER_00: We use the potential energy, but if we actually move, it converts to kinetic energy.
- 15:42SPEAKER_00: And that kinetic energy is contagious and it helps us to have more energy.
- 15:46SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
- 15:47SPEAKER_00: You ever notice that like if you sleep for way too long and you're like super tired, it's because you slept and now you have all this potential energy just sitting there and it's stagnant and it's harder to move.
- 16:00SPEAKER_00: It's like if we we lean into not having energy, then it's no wonder we don't have energy.
- 16:05SPEAKER_00: But if we uh move, even though we feel like we don't have energy, we can build up that energy.
- 16:11SPEAKER_00: It's all about capacity.
- 16:13SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this is landing.
- 16:14SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this is making sense.
- 16:16SPEAKER_00: But there is the third lever because we can obviously increase this, decrease this by increasing the amount of steps, movement, literally, just like like honestly, I work from home and I still like get in a decent amount of steps because I'm like constantly moving around.
- 16:30SPEAKER_00: I gotta like get up, go to the bathroom.
- 16:32SPEAKER_00: I'm like making food, I'm going downstairs, checking the mail.
- 16:37SPEAKER_00: I'm up and moving, doing laundry and dishes, and like I'm constantly on the move.
- 16:42SPEAKER_00: I can't sit still for longer than like 30 minutes to an hour.
- 16:46SPEAKER_00: So move around, be aware of what your day-to-day movement actually looks like outside the gym.
- 16:54SPEAKER_00: The fourth and final lever is general health.
- 16:58SPEAKER_00: So this is going to include things like your mindset, your sleep, your water, your recovery, all of these things.
- 17:05SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these get very neglected, which then feed into affecting other levers.
- 17:14SPEAKER_00: So your mindset can feed into how you view yourself, and how you view yourself feeds into how you show up, and how you show up feeds into how your body feels and how it looks, which then continues to feed maybe a potentially negative mindset.
- 17:29SPEAKER_00: And you see how the cycle just goes on and on and on, and it can be a downward spiral versus being aware of the stories that we're telling ourselves and painting them more in a positive light.
- 17:39SPEAKER_00: We can spiral up because then that feeds into how we view ourselves, feeds into how we show up, feeds into how we feel about ourselves mentally, physically, all the things, and then we spiral up.
- 17:50SPEAKER_00: We want to spiral up, we don't want to spiral down.
- 17:53SPEAKER_00: Sleep.
- 17:54SPEAKER_00: Sleep affects everything.
- 17:55SPEAKER_00: Sleep is where a lot of our recovery takes place, our brain um rejuvenation takes place, it's where our digestion takes place, it's where all of our systems in our body kind of reset and recalibrate is overnight.
- 18:08SPEAKER_00: And if our sleep is shortened or disrupted, broken up, it's just not effective, then it it bleeds into every other area of your life.
- 18:16SPEAKER_00: You wake up, you feel groggy, and then it just like spirals into more and more and more.
- 18:20SPEAKER_00: And we don't want that, obviously.
- 18:22SPEAKER_00: Water is another really big one.
- 18:24SPEAKER_00: Water is really good for helping you to feel energized, feel hydrated, obviously, take care of your cells of your body, your muscles, your fibers, your all of the things, and keeps you hydrated, keeps your digestion moving.
- 18:36SPEAKER_00: It just feeds into everything.
- 18:37SPEAKER_00: And so if we are dehydrated, that also plays into your appetite and your hunger and how you're able to show up in the gym and you know, your sweat and your all of the all these things.
- 18:46SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure that we're hydrated.
- 18:48SPEAKER_00: Recovery, making sure that we're taking the time to rest and stretch and do things that are good for our body, walk, move around, even just taking time to be a couch potato for a couple hours on a Sunday, you know, recovery is super important.
- 19:05SPEAKER_00: And so general health is a lever that we can absolutely pull that will pour into other levers.
- 19:11SPEAKER_00: So these levers, they all cross over into each other.
- 19:13SPEAKER_00: And so it can form kind of a complex web.
- 19:16SPEAKER_00: But if you really break it down into it's simple four levers that we can pull at any point in time to get a little bit more squeeze out of the effort that we're putting in, that is how we make it so simple.
- 19:28SPEAKER_00: And we can dial it up, we can dial it down, we can do all kinds of different things with these levers.
- 19:34SPEAKER_00: So if you really focus on a baseline level, when you look at your fitness, all you have to do, and it may feel difficult at the beginning at first, but the more you practice it, the more it becomes ingrained in your everyday life, your routines, your habits, the easier and more automatic it feels.
- 19:50SPEAKER_00: So you don't have to think so damn hard.
- 19:53SPEAKER_00: But the four levers are strength training.
- 19:56SPEAKER_00: Pick your cadence, three days, two days, four days, whatever realistically fits with your schedule.
- 20:02SPEAKER_00: And you can dial it up and you can dial it down.
- 20:05SPEAKER_00: Nutrition, making sure that you're eating enough protein, fiber, calories, all of the things, consistent meal timing, balanced meals, whole foods, all of the things.
- 20:15SPEAKER_00: Daily movement, steps, cardio, maybe it's different activities, pickleball, maybe I don't know, whatever fun activities that you do throughout the day, but just keeping your daily movement up, creating energy with the energy that is stored in your body, using that energy that's stored in your body because it's there, and then general health, taking care of your body at a baseline level with your sleep, your mindset, your water, your recovery, your habits, all of these things.
- 20:43SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that made some sense.
- 20:46SPEAKER_00: I feel like sometimes my brain can just be all over the place.
- 20:49SPEAKER_00: So I hope that that was easy to follow.
- 20:52SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about anything, definitely reach out on Instagram and send me a message over there.
- 20:58SPEAKER_00: But that is it for today's episode on simplifying your fitness with the four lovers.
- 21:04SPEAKER_00: And I will chat with you in the next one.
- 21:06SPEAKER_00: Bye.