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How Long Will It Take To See Results? · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I am thankful that you are here.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Second episode of the new year.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but the new year is throwing me some curveballs left and right.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: But that is life.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Life throws us curveballs, and so what do we do about it?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We manage our expectations.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about that a lot, because part of this episode is going to be about managing our expectations, and I wanted to express that.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I too, am a human being and sometimes totally like fail to manage my expectations.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: This last week, I thought we were going to be back in a routine, and boy was I wrong, and it's just a reflection.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I was reflecting on the fact that, while intellectually you can understand a concept, I work on this with clients all the time.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Then, in reality, sometimes you fall prey to those exact same things, because that's human nature.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I wanted to share is to maybe hope for the best, maybe struggle to see the potential roadblocks ahead of you, and that's what you hire a coach for.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: A coach is going to help you anticipate a lot of those roadblocks that they've seen with people and then help you get around it or help you work through those roadblocks.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: So I found that interesting that myself I had one of those moments this week where I thought we were getting back into routine.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: We weren't, and I had to collect myself for sure.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so today's episode is going to be about managing expectations, because the topic is all about when will I see results?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: This is a common question, either a common question that you verbalize or one that you are almost afraid to ask when am I going to get to the finish line?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: When am I going to see what I want to see?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And so maybe in this, you might be able to exchange see with feel or experience.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: When will I see results?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: When will I feel results, when will I experience these results?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But the point being, when will I get the fruits of the labor and I think there are a lot of different answers and I think if you go searching on certain corners of the internet, people will tell you any answer you want and what I'm going to start with.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: As an experienced trainer, as an experienced nutrition coach, as an experienced person working with lots of different people, I do not know when you will see results.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I do not know.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I can tell you some expected timelines based on what you're willing to take on and based on your adherence.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I say this without judgment.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I say this without any kind of any kind of put on belief about what I think you should do.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It is simply to say that I think I can take, typically for people.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: What I can take is how many workouts per week, how long you'll be doing them.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Take the diet into consideration and I don't mean necessarily a restrictive diet, I mean what you are eating.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Take into consideration how the rest of your you manage your stress, all of these things, and I can give you kind of a ballpark.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: But the human body is something that I think we love to say, that we can predict down to the absolute moment and we can't, especially anecdotally.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: As a trainer, I can't tell you right now exactly when you'll see these results, because it's gonna really vary for people because there are a lot of factors, and so I think that if you are someone who is really interested in putting in the work, really interested in sustainability and going at a pace that works best for you to incorporate this in your life, you might feel like you can't ask when you're gonna see this change.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And I want you to know that you can.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I want you to know that that frustration of like okay, I'm good with this taking a long time, but like also, when is it gonna happen, is a totally legitimate experience to feel, and I can give you sort of some ideas and some inputs almost that can help you determine whether or not you want to use them and facilitate faster change, or determine whether or not you want to go at whatever pace feels more manageable, realizing that it might take longer.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So I thought what I'd do today is just kind of go through the kinds of goals and then the factors that make things move faster or slower, so that you can make a better decision for yourself whether or not you wanna take on more onto your plate to speed results and then around when you can start to see results based on these different kinds of, these additional layers of but the best thing I can think of right now to describe it as inputs.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: You know, what are you, what are you doing to create change.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: These are the kinds of inputs.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So when will I see results, regardless of specific goal?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about three different kinds of goals, but first I want to talk about, for all goals.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: What is going to matter are the number of training sessions or the number of workouts you can get in in a week, the quality of those.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: So going beyond the number, is are you going to the gym and checking a box or are you progressively improving, progressively forcing adaptation in a safe and effective way?
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: That's going to make a difference.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: How much movement you get in general in life is also going to be a factor.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Your overall diet, whatever that might look like, is going to be another input.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Your diet, then your adherence to whatever changes around your diet you're making and I say whatever changes, because you might be working to decrease body fat, you might be working to increase muscle mass, so you could be eating more, eating less, eating differently, but your adherence to the plan is going to make a big difference.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I hate almost even saying the word adherence because it puts a lot of onus on a person to stick to a plan, but that is what it requires.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Now, where the magic happens is whether a coach can create, or help you collaborate to create a plan that is both going to be effective but also one that you are going to be able to stick with, and so, in my opinion, your adherence to whatever plan is being created is also the responsibility of your coach, but that is another conversation for another day.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Additionally, inputs Management of your life, stress, management of your sleep, management of your restorative body practices.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: We can't train to a level that's going to create adaptation, meaning change in our body, if we are always fatigued, if we are always sore, if we are injured.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So those things play a role into the speed of our results.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Now, with all those dials, if you imagined like a mixing board, I'm thinking OK, I'm looking at Justin Tiberlake, of course, because he's in the office and thinking of where people make music and how you can turn one dial up or turn it down.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Go with me here on this metaphor you can turn the bass up and you can see that I have never recorded music.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But thinking about that, you can turn the dial up on your dietary changes and see faster results.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: You can turn the dial up on your training changes and see faster results.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: But if you didn't at the same time turn your dial up on those restorative body practices, you might be injured and it's affecting all of them.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: So we can play around with how much we're willing to put in, and that is going to determine how fast things happen.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Now, with different kinds of goals, there's also just going to be limitations to what we can achieve in a given time.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: So the three most common goals that I work with my clients on are quality of life improvement, so feeling better, feeling stronger, feeling in less pain, feeling like you can do the activities of daily life with greater enjoyment, with less stress.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: All of that.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Those changes we can see pretty quickly with a limited amount of intense resistance training and intense is not even the right word.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Intentional is kind of what I mean With intentional resistance training.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: We can start to see results very quickly in that sphere.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Now it also depends on where your starting point was.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So if you were in a ton of pain, maybe we have farther to go.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Again, we're thinking about all of the ways in which who the individual person is can impact the speed of results and that is why I can't hand you a definitive end date for many things, depending on what you're asking for in terms of the results.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So quality of life, that can really begin to improve pretty quickly.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: We can start to see changes with strength goals.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: That's the second one that I see a lot with my clients With strength goals.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: These are going to take longer.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Now, with any of these goals we talk in training terms about newbie gains, an N-E-W-B-I-E.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: You are a new person to exercise.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: You will see more dramatically dramatic improvement, fast improvement, as a new person to exercise than someone who has been doing it a lot.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Many of these are contributed to the neurological adaptation that is happening and the neuromuscular adaptation that is happening in those initial weeks of exercise.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Also, if you are starting by being able to load your body with a small weight, you will see greater increases because the amount that you are able to increase that weight over time is going to be quicker than someone who is at the upper end of their strength capacity to start.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: It is going to take longer to move that dial just a little bit because they are already at 85%.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: If you are existing and really working in a sort of 40 to 50% capacity, you have got more room to move, in the same way that if someone has a goal with a large amount of per se weight loss or fat loss, they may see results faster than someone who is only trying to manipulate the very edge of what is possible for them.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: That is another way in which these things can take a different amount of time.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: With strength goals, oftentimes it is going to go slower.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe in the beginning.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: If you are starting, it is going to move quickly, but as you start to get stronger, each step along the way might take a little bit longer.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Additionally, we can really only achieve one thing at a time, particularly when it comes with strength.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of people will see improvements in strength in one area and then not in another.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: That is because you have had to dedicate enough time and enough focus training to a given movement that it has left you neglecting something else.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: That is okay.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: It just means that you are going to have cycles in which one thing gets stronger and one thing does not.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe some secondary supporting movements get stronger because you trained something that has a similar pattern.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Per se, you see improvement there, but there are going to be places where, if you are dedicating enough time and focus training to one given movement to get stronger, other places are going to suffer.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Is it necessarily the right word?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: But take a back seat might be a more appropriate description.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Then the last goal that I think of for people are physique changes, so that could be overall weight loss, overall weight gain, body fat loss, lean muscle gain.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Those changes, more so than the first two categories, are going to be highly dependent on both the training and the nutrition.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: There are aspects of both quality of life and strength goals where nutrition is going to play a big part, but more so in this sort of physique category.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: So if you are working very hard in the training aspect but you have yet to dedicate the kind of specific or aren't See, you know I catch myself in these words because dedicate you may choose to dedicate or not.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Whatever it may be you haven't manipulated the nutrition aspect enough or with great enough deficit or surplus that you are going to see fast results.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: You're probably still seeing results, but you're not seeing them fast enough.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Same way, maybe you have focused more on the nutrition and you have not done the training.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: You may see results from the nutrition, but if you want to see them faster, you have to combine the nutrition and the training aspect.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: In any of these scenarios, you have the autonomy to choose how much you want to manipulate any of these variables.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: That's the amazing thing.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: But it is going to take more time if you manipulate them less or do less of them.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: It is going to go faster if you can do more of them.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Sustainability is always a question to ask yourself and I think it's important to know that.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: There are moments where you may not want to choose a sustainable route.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I kind of preach that sustainability nature, but there are circumstances where you may not want to do it sustainably.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Just realize that when you don't do it sustainably, you either have to transition into a sustainable method at some point because you will not be able to continue, or you will see a reversal of those results you got because you can't maintain that.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: With any of these goals.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: It's your choice.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk about time frame.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Realistically, again, I mentioned those newbie gains.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: For a lot of people who are just starting, six weeks is a moment where they're going to see or feel changes.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: They are going to see or experience changes about their body.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be huge?
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're definitely going to experience something and we also have to take into account that when we're talking about seeing changes or feeling changes, this is all subjective.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: If you want to use objective measures, like measurements and things, you could do that too.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Now, when we talk about those, you can also plan to see some of those changes, those more objective measures, in those six weeks.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: If you are newer and have farther to go on your goal, you'll see them faster.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: If you have been more experienced and you haven't taken drastic changes, you are going to see them slower.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: When it comes to strength gains and physique changes, we do need to manage our expectations for longer runways to get our results, because if you are fixated on quick results, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And again and this is because I've seen a wide array of people and trained a lot of people I haven't had too many people who have been able to keep all these things going so that they can speed up their results, but I have seen some, and that happens fast.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: If you're going one step at a time, it is just going to maybe take a little bit longer.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: When it comes to strength and physique changes, we want to think in more terms of quarters or half years or years, and then we want to work on in the meantime creating smaller benchmarks.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So it is entirely reasonable for you to have a huge goal, a goal that is going to take two years.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: A goal that is going to take two years is like a through line or an ethos, and that is awesome.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I almost said the F word, okay, but my mom listens.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: It is awesome to have something that is driving you so much that you can take two to five years to accomplish that goal and that can exist as the thing you wake up thinking about or go into bed thinking about.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: But if every time, you check in with yourself about your progress and that is the thing that you're attaching your success to you might get disappointed early because you literally have two to five years to get there.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So you've got to establish smaller benchmarks along the way, and it might be worthwhile for any of those three categories quality of life, strength and performance we can call it the performance category and then the physique or body image appearance category to have benchmarks in all of them.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe one of your goals is the overarching goals, but allow yourself to, if all three of those are important to you, only choosing the ones that are important to you.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: If you allow for benchmarks in all of them, you can oscillate between what is improving at any given time, and that will help with that adherence piece, because the adherence piece relies on something that is challenging but doable, as well as provides wins along the way.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: That's why crash, fad dieting doesn't work, because you feel awful and the win almost comes too quickly or it never comes at all.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Same thing with highly restrictive things.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: You can't maintain it and does the win?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Is the win equivalent enough for you to feel successful?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: So, just as a reminder, nobody can tell you exactly when you're going to reach your goal.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: What they can help you with is strategizing around how quickly you can expect to reach that goal with the effort that you are willing to put in.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And again, I say that with a lack of judgment.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Listen, we all do not have the time to do 8 million things to our diet and have the perfect meals all the time.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Not everybody has that.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Not everybody has the opportunity to work out every day, or work out for an hour or whatever that may be.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: So I say it without judgment.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I say here are my circumstances, here is what's physically possible for me, here is what I'm willing to give it, and then that, with that information, here is when I can expect to experience the result I'm looking for.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: It is all personally dependent.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: So work on managing your expectations, work on wrapping your mind around something that feels that's going to be the big big thing, and then little wins, little goals, little benchmarks along the way, the stuff that you really want to experience change-wise, is just going to take a while.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Anybody who's selling something different is trying to make money off of you and is probably not considering how things fit into real life.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: That is my professional opinion.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: All right, that's all I have for you today If this is helpful.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: If you want to talk more about goals setting, if you want to talk about any of these three topics a little bit more, if you want to get into the weeds about what we would need to change to reach certain goals, I'm happy to do episodes on specific ones so we can talk about that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: You just throw your feedback at me or throw your ideas at me, and I'm happy to hear from you.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: If you're just listening and want to listen quietly like a fly on the wall, that's also awesome too.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: All right, you can find me on Instagram at foster, underscore strength, or you can email me, betsy, at theletterbfosterstrongcom.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Until next time, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you soon.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Bye.