Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why "Listening to Your Body" Kept Her Stuck for Years (Cori Lefkowith) | Ep 452

Transcript

Why "Listening to Your Body" Kept Her Stuck for Years (Cori Lefkowith) | Ep 452 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: You've been told that tracking your food is obsessive, that if you just listen to your body and eat intuitively, you'll find balance.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: And that feels right because who wants to weigh chicken on a food scale for the rest of their life?
• 0:12
  Philip Pape: Today's guest believed all of that.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: She's a certified trainer, a former Division I athlete, a state powerlifting champion, and the founder of one of the fastest growing online coaching companies in the country.
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: And for years, she avoided macro tracking because she thought it would make her relationship with food worse.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: She tried every other approach first.
• 0:31
  Philip Pape: None of them stuck.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: When she finally gave tracking a chance, she realized that the thing she'd been avoiding was the thing that set her free.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: In this episode, she is going to explain why the advice to just be intuitive fails most people.
• 0:44
  Philip Pape: What's actually happening when he feels stuck in a cycle of starting over and a simple system you can use to break out of it for good.
• 0:52
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Waits, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today I'm excited to be challenging the idea that structure and tracking are the enemy of food freedom.
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: My guest is Corey Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, where she coaches women through sustainable nutrition and strength training.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: Her company has made the Inc.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: 5000 list in back-to-back years, and she has a brand new book called The Strong System, a science-backed toolkit to keep you on track.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: Corey spent years actively resisting macro tracking before becoming one of its biggest advocates.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: And that 180 is the foundation of what we're talking about.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: So by the end, you're going to understand why just listen to your body often backfires.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: For most people who are trying to lose fat or build muscle, what the change loop is, she has an interesting framework that is going to help you out, how to recognize when you're trapped in the change loop and how a six-step system can turn tracking from a chore into a tool that you actually want to use.
• 2:05
  Philip Pape: Corey, thanks for coming on Wits and Weights.
• 2:08
  Cori Lefkowith: Thanks for having me.
• 2:09
  Cori Lefkowith: Super excited to dive in.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: What I love about your story is that you have the open mind to have learned through your own journey of, hey, you know, in the past you would coach people on nutrition and fitness and telling them maybe you don't need to track macros.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: And there's definitely a dichotomous kind of thinking out in the fitness industry, which sometimes is its own trap, right?
• 2:29
  Philip Pape: Like the black and white thinking.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: So, you know, did you truly believe that at one point?
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: How has your thinking evolved?
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: And what did you settle on to where you are today?
• 2:38
  Cori Lefkowith: Well, the internet is amazing and also slightly embarrassing when you go back and look through its archives.
• 2:44
  Cori Lefkowith: But I did find even proof on my blog of when I wrote about how I would never track and how tracking was too restrictive and obsessive.
• 2:53
  Cori Lefkowith: And when I did that, it was after an experience of actually tracking where I'd cut out all the foods I love.
• 3:00
  Cori Lefkowith: I felt miserable, I felt hangry, low energy.
• 3:03
  Cori Lefkowith: And so I really had determined from this experience that it wasn't right for me, but I completely wrote it off.
• 3:10
  Cori Lefkowith: And I determined that if I was eating healthy foods, that had to be enough.
• 3:14
  Cori Lefkowith: But then as I started to do that and recognize my progress wasn't happening the way I wanted, I sat with myself for a second and was like, okay, well, what's going on?
• 3:23
  Cori Lefkowith: And as I began to research, I realized what gets measured gets managed.
• 3:28
  Cori Lefkowith: And I didn't really have any clue of the portions I was eating.
• 3:32
  Cori Lefkowith: And I don't know about you, you, but like peanut butter and that portion, that is not the actual serving size on the jar.
• 3:39
  Cori Lefkowith: So just gonna throw that out there.
• 3:41
  Cori Lefkowith: But I was not measuring it out and my portions were very distorted.
• 3:45
  Cori Lefkowith: And so I decided that I was just gonna log what I was currently doing.
• 3:49
  Cori Lefkowith: And through just logging without making any changes, I began to realize that tracking was just data.
• 3:55
  Cori Lefkowith: I assigned all meaning to it and determined to make a choice to cut stuff out to restrict to a point where I felt hangry.
• 4:02
  Cori Lefkowith: And I say hangry because it was hungry and angry.
• 4:05
  Cori Lefkowith: Hungry isn't just enough.
• 4:06
  Cori Lefkowith: It's the low energy too that comes with that restriction often.
• 4:09
  Cori Lefkowith: So I began to realize that tracking was just a tool and it was a tool to fuel better.
• 4:13
  Cori Lefkowith: So there was that evolution and it's amazing to find, but I think it's also not only recognizing the habits, but the mindsets behind them that allows us to find freedom in the variations or tools or tactics that really help us move forward.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: Great frame on this, right?
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Because it sounds like when you originally tracked, you connected it to restriction.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: And really there are two separate concepts happening in parallel, which can give somebody a misaligned association, right?
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: Which happens to us all the time as human beings.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: And you just said it's a tool that can be used, it's a tool that can be misused.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: And how you track is important.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: What I did like one specific thing you said is your idea of portions was distorted until you tracked.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: And I did an episode not long ago.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: You guys can find it in the feed about developing intuitive eating skills.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: And one fact I mentioned is that even the most expert, you know, nutritionists, dietitians, coaches are typically off about 20%, but even with the skill, they're off by 20%.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: Without the skill, it's 40, 60, 80, 200% off.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: You know, who knows?
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: So when we have that belief that tracking is disordered, where does that come from?
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Is it exactly like your situation, or is there something like in the evidence we know that this association has developed, even though it's not reality?
• 5:30
  Cori Lefkowith: I think it all comes back to mindsets.
• 5:31
  Cori Lefkowith: There is not a one size fits all approach to anything.
• 5:34
  Cori Lefkowith: I mean, and the more we see the nuance in things, the more we can allow ourselves to be able to use different tools and tactics at different stages of life.
• 5:40
  Cori Lefkowith: But it's recognizing that you can be obsessive without tracking.
• 5:44
  Cori Lefkowith: I know lots of people, and I've worked with lots of clients who come into tracking because they need to eat more and giving themselves that clear evidence that they can eat more, that they should eat more, that they can include foods they love, really helps them release some of the obsessive tendencies they already have because we can get very restrictive without even like having that thing that we're weighing and measuring.
• 6:03
  Cori Lefkowith: We can decide that foods have to be off limits, that they're evil, that they're bad for us, and we assign moral value.
• 6:08
  Cori Lefkowith: So obsession is a mindset, it is not inherent in a tool or tactic.
• 6:13
  Cori Lefkowith: But we do often use things in a way that then creates that association.
• 6:18
  Cori Lefkowith: And it's really key we recognize that because when I even say that tracking, and I actually believe that tracking in some form is right for everybody, that means vastly different things for people.
• 6:28
  Cori Lefkowith: It can mean just writing down what you're eating, it can be writing down emotions on how you felt with the food, but you need some form of data to give yourself that ability to step back because we are very bad at remembering things and feelings play a huge role.
• 6:41
  Cori Lefkowith: And to slightly go back to the intuitive eating thing, one of the most eye-opening things early on in my coaching career was not only my personal experience with tracking, but I had a client and she was on a weight loss journey and I was having her track macros.
• 6:53
  Cori Lefkowith: And we encountered somebody when we were out who said to her, I can't believe you track.
• 6:57
  Cori Lefkowith: Just eat intuitively, listen to your body.
• 7:00
  Cori Lefkowith: And she was like, Well, my body tells me intuitively that I want to go eat that whole pint of ice cream in the fridge when I get home from work and it's been a stressful day.
• 7:08
  Cori Lefkowith: And with that moment, you could see the other person sort of be like, Oh, because there isn't this recognition that we're each coming at food from a different upbringing or a different perspective on it.
• 7:18
  Cori Lefkowith: And some of us have trained ourselves to emotionally eat because that has solved the feelings in the moment.
• 7:25
  Cori Lefkowith: And that pattern is so ingrained that we don't even sometimes realize we're replicating it until after we've done it.
• 7:30
  Cori Lefkowith: So that tracking can help bring that awareness and recognize when we're eating out of intuition in a way that we've just trained our body to respond.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense because those signals that people just assume you have become more and more dysregulated and dysfunctional and with certain behaviors like chronic restriction, right?
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: Because you're talking about fueling and but chronic restriction, let alone eating disorders and such, which makes it even worse, where it's just completely dysregulated that connection.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: And some of it is neurological too, with the between that and your hormones, when we talk about all the types of hunger.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: So one thing you mentioned that's very powerful is that your system of tracking itself can be so flexible.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: Like when we talk about flexible eating or flexible dieting, it's not just macros, it's, you know, the way you're tracking.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: So what I'm interested before we go on is in your past, when you weren't quite on the side of full-on tracking, were there things you, in hindsight, did find successful that may not fit in the tracking window?
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: Like, are there things you still carry to you to this day that are disconnected from tracking that helped you and still help you with food, let's say?
• 8:39
  Cori Lefkowith: You know, this is a question I've never asked myself, but I would honestly say no.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:44
  Cori Lefkowith: Because I think in some way you always are tracking.
• 8:47
  Cori Lefkowith: You're keeping a log of what you've done.
• 8:49
  Cori Lefkowith: Like even if you think about the mindsets and the confidence you have, it's a log of proof that if you've stacked one way or the other.
• 8:55
  Cori Lefkowith: When you don't trust yourself to go into a program again to make changes, that's because of proof you feel you've stacked.
• 9:02
  Cori Lefkowith: So in some way, we're always tracking everything mentally, whether or not we're aware of it.
• 9:07
  Cori Lefkowith: And so I think what happened before is that I would track my food by having specific foods I deemed healthy to eat, but I was still sort of tracking what I was doing.
• 9:18
  Cori Lefkowith: It was just from the framework of having good and bad foods, which for me honestly led to more obsession and restriction and more starting over again because I would ultimately want some food that I had labeled as bad.
• 9:30
  Cori Lefkowith: For me, the the stricter macro cycling and tracking actually allowed more food freedom because I worked in those foods, saw that they could be a balance.
• 9:37
  Cori Lefkowith: And when I want to balance in a little more fun foods, I switch how I'm tracking.
• 9:42
  Cori Lefkowith: So maybe it's a more minimalist approach, only watching protein and calories, or maybe I'm taking pictures just to make sure my portions are somewhat in line and to allow myself to really understand am I feeling full or am I not feeling full?
• 9:54
  Cori Lefkowith: If I'm not feeling full, am I not feeling full because I had more processed foods that might not have, you know, really made me feel full so that the hunger cue is still there.
• 10:02
  Cori Lefkowith: You know, I would say we're always tracking whether or not we realize it.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: That's a great way to put it.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: So then can you systemize your tracking to make it work for you?
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: Is really the goal.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: You know, we all have bank accounts and there's some level of tracking going on, but some people don't think about it and they spend, spend, spend, and then before long they're like, oh no, I don't have any more money.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: I need to use a credit card.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: Others, you know, may track every single expense and use budgeting software.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: Um, and I and I spent like a weekend not long ago doing that for my business and saying, oh no, I need to cut out a bunch of expenses.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: But sometimes you need that next level.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: You need to level up the amount that you're scrutinizing and using that data.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: So what is it about logging that I guess threatens people that I would suspect is emotional about all of this?
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: I mean, you kind of alluded to it here and there, but do you see today one or two big buckets where people still resist when you say, no, this is gonna do it for you?
• 10:52
  Cori Lefkowith: I think a lot is tied to our past experiences with it, where when you have a bad experience with something, you're not gonna want to do it again.
• 10:59
  Cori Lefkowith: I also think that we have to recognize that when we say tracking, the mental pushback we get is against the form that we envision first.
• 11:06
  Cori Lefkowith: And so we don't like to make changes because we're only comfortable being uncomfortable in certain ways.
• 11:12
  Cori Lefkowith: And generally the changes we're resisting are discomfort in a different way.
• 11:16
  Cori Lefkowith: And we do see that data as judgment because we instantly place judgment on ourselves.
• 11:23
  Cori Lefkowith: We know we are not doing the things we feel we should, and so therefore we see it as a negative.
• 11:27
  Cori Lefkowith: So I always like to start people with just tracking what they're currently doing.
• 11:32
  Cori Lefkowith: Hey, you're not trying to make changes, you're not trying to judge, you're just seeing what you're doing.
• 11:36
  Cori Lefkowith: Because maybe they're the changes you think you need to make, you don't actually need to make.
• 11:40
  Cori Lefkowith: Maybe you need to eat more, not less.
• 11:42
  Cori Lefkowith: And that is honestly the biggest relief because you start to separate out the emotions from like the tool a little bit.
• 11:50
  Cori Lefkowith: But we so often just go into something wanting to make changes and trying to make these sweeping overhauls that it's not the tracking, it's the overhauls that are really getting us, but it gets the association anyway.
• 12:00
  Cori Lefkowith: So I would say the mental hang up really does come back to the discomfort of something new and outside what we've always done.
• 12:06
  Cori Lefkowith: Because we push ourselves into pain.
• 12:09
  Cori Lefkowith: It's just pain we're okay with.
• 12:10
  Cori Lefkowith: And then it's recognizing, like, hey, how can I do this in a way that doesn't get that mental pushback to start?
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: So the form we envision using most is usually what comes to our head, is what you said, which sometimes makes us repel against this idea until you realize, no, there are multiple ways to do it, and let's do it and take a baby step of letting it show us what's happening, what's reality, what's your baseline, rather than going to the next step.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: And that's super, super revealing.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: I totally agree.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: So you talk about something called the change loop, which is a cycle of you try something new, they get some results, but then they hit a wall or a plateau, uh, then they quit, right?
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: Or switch to another program or the next shiny object.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: And I'm assuming you went through this yourself many times in your past.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: Tell us about that change loop, how you recognize it, like why it's important to understand that pattern, so then we can do something about it.
• 13:01
  Cori Lefkowith: I did the starting over Monday for far too long.
• 13:05
  Cori Lefkowith: And I think a lot of people can sympathize with that.
• 13:08
  Cori Lefkowith: But then I recognize I am never starting over.
• 13:12
  Cori Lefkowith: You are stuck with everything you have done prior.
• 13:15
  Cori Lefkowith: And that sounds really negative, and I don't mean it to be, because you're also stuck in a positive way with the lessons you've learned if you really reflect on everything that's happened.
• 13:23
  Cori Lefkowith: But that's why when someone will ask me, like, how long is it between X photo and X photo in this transformation?
• 13:28
  Cori Lefkowith: I'm like, my entire life.
• 13:30
  Cori Lefkowith: And so when I started to really recognize this pattern of constantly starting over, I recognize the emotions that went with it.
• 13:38
  Cori Lefkowith: We get really excited for a new program because we've hit this point of like the pain of change, like just is worth anything, right?
• 13:46
  Cori Lefkowith: To us, right?
• 13:47
  Cori Lefkowith: Because the pain of staying stuck just stinks so bad.
• 13:50
  Cori Lefkowith: We are not liking where we are.
• 13:52
  Cori Lefkowith: So we get really excited with a program promise, something that says it's like new, exciting, whatever else.
• 13:57
  Cori Lefkowith: And so we go all in.
• 13:58
  Cori Lefkowith: But in going all in, we never reflected on who and what we are, what habits have sabotaged us in the past, any of our realistic lifestyle, right?
• 14:07
  Cori Lefkowith: We just go for this ideal we see.
• 14:09
  Cori Lefkowith: Hey, this woman looks lean.
• 14:10
  Cori Lefkowith: I'm gonna do that program.
• 14:12
  Cori Lefkowith: That's right for me.
• 14:12
  Cori Lefkowith: We get super excited by it, do all the habits, and we hit like that habit overload where you start to be like, okay, I'm doing all these things, you know, I can do two-a-da workouts, I can cut out the dessert I love, I don't have to have the wine.
• 14:23
  Cori Lefkowith: And then, you know, like at the end of the week, you weigh in, you're like, okay, I lost some weight.
• 14:28
  Cori Lefkowith: I think I can do this.
• 14:30
  Cori Lefkowith: And then another week goes by and maybe the scale doesn't go down or even goes up, and you're like, what the heck am I doing?
• 14:35
  Cori Lefkowith: Why am I doing this?
• 14:36
  Cori Lefkowith: Right.
• 14:36
  Cori Lefkowith: And so that's where we hit the habit overload leading to emotional sabotage, where I also call this the flat tire rule, uh, where it doesn't feel worth it.
• 14:45
  Cori Lefkowith: It's Friday night.
• 14:46
  Cori Lefkowith: You're like, forget everything.
• 14:48
  Cori Lefkowith: You go pour the glass of wine, and then you pull out the box of cookies, and one cookie becomes like 10, especially if you're me or the pint of ice cream.
• 14:55
  Cori Lefkowith: I prefer ice cream.
• 14:56
  Cori Lefkowith: But it just is this whole downward spiral.
• 14:59
  Cori Lefkowith: And it's basically what I call the flat tire rule because you get a flat tire, right?
• 15:03
  Cori Lefkowith: You don't get the results you want.
• 15:04
  Cori Lefkowith: Maybe you even do have the wine, but instead of stopping there, you pull over to the side of the road.
• 15:08
  Cori Lefkowith: Instead of fixing the flat, you slash the other three tires, maybe even light the car on fire and walk away.
• 15:12
  Cori Lefkowith: But you spiral a lot more than you need to.
• 15:14
  Cori Lefkowith: And then there's the guilt.
• 15:16
  Cori Lefkowith: This is part of that emotional sabotage because so often, if we just stop at the event instead of making ourselves feel guilty, we wouldn't fall off and quit for multiple more weeks.
• 15:25
  Cori Lefkowith: But that's what we do.
• 15:26
  Cori Lefkowith: And then we end up getting to a point where we are so not happy with the situation, but we're also so not trusting ourself that all we can do is hope that the next thing will be the thing.
• 15:35
  Cori Lefkowith: And so that's where we repeat the pattern.
• 15:37
  Cori Lefkowith: And the only way to break it is to ultimately like sit with ourselves and say, why does this keep happening?
• 15:44
  Cori Lefkowith: Is it the same point?
• 15:45
  Cori Lefkowith: Is it how I'm doing the habits?
• 15:47
  Cori Lefkowith: But it's that self-awareness we need to build because there is no perfect plan.
• 15:51
  Cori Lefkowith: And the more we keep trying to go on a plan or fall off a plan and see it that way versus seeing ourselves as a plan, the more we just keep ourselves stuck.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So I have two follow-ups to some things you just said.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: So on habit overload, and you kind of alluded to the fact that if you're trying to do a lot of things and then you make a little progress, but then you stop making progress, it kind of correlates with those speed bumps.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: So do you have like a framework of, hey, literally one habit at a time for a certain amount of time before you go to the next, like a stacking framework that you suggest to people?
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: Or is it a little more individualized?
• 16:27
  Cori Lefkowith: Well, the more individualized, always the better.
• 16:29
  Cori Lefkowith: But I think what the thing comes back to is that self-assessment of effort and outcome.
• 16:34
  Cori Lefkowith: I like to think of it as the habit budget.
• 16:37
  Cori Lefkowith: And it was funny that you brought up money before because I do think of it as like, what are you putting into yourself to invest that gives you more energy, less stress, more ability to do more things?
• 16:48
  Cori Lefkowith: And then what is taking out from your self-control?
• 16:51
  Cori Lefkowith: And this is a lot of different things.
• 16:53
  Cori Lefkowith: And I don't think it's one set time of like 21 days, 45 days, whatever it is.
• 16:58
  Cori Lefkowith: I think it's more when that budget gets out of balance that we start to see that real pushback or habit overload.
• 17:05
  Cori Lefkowith: So if you're making changes in January, where maybe the holiday wake-in has you, you're feeling a little blah, you know, it's not a time where you're traveling, you're like, okay, I have an ideal time, like work's not busy, whatever else.
• 17:16
  Cori Lefkowith: So you can make changes based on that time.
• 17:19
  Cori Lefkowith: Maybe it is working out six days a week, maybe it is truly tracking macros intensively.
• 17:23
  Cori Lefkowith: And you start those habits and you have enough in your savings to really budget for them.
• 17:27
  Cori Lefkowith: But then you see the summer come, or for some people, it might be all the way to the holidays, or some it might be, you know, their birthday, like just in February, whatever it is, we have that time where all of a sudden stress or lifestyle shifts.
• 17:40
  Cori Lefkowith: And maybe we're not putting as much into savings, we're not doing as much for ourselves in terms of like the self-care, or maybe work stressors increase or family life changes.
• 17:48
  Cori Lefkowith: And all of a sudden, the habits that felt within budget no longer do, even though they didn't change.
• 17:54
  Cori Lefkowith: The effort didn't really change, but the feeling of effort did.
• 17:58
  Cori Lefkowith: And we have to recognize when that shifts, because when that shifts, if we don't evolve those habits or see what else we can adjust in our outside life, that's where we end up saying, forget everything, I'm done.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: Yeah, that's resilience, at least, at least in my opinion, that's what came to me was that ability to stretch the rubber band and let it come back rather than break when time gets hard.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: You know, planning for the worst case, let's say you could either run in such a way where you're always behind paycheck to paycheck, which maybe we think about that as the budget you just mentioned, or also even our calories, let's be honest, where you're kind of always on fumes and or you can like focus on muscle and focus on fuel and like pay yourself first.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: Again, thinking in money terms, like take out the profit and the owner's pay first, which is like taking care of yourself and then seeing what's left.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: So when we talk about fuel and adding things in and building muscle and all that, I know that's like in your bailiwick, right?
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: Where does that sit in all of this, even from day one?
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: Like as you're starting to do an audit with someone or habit assessment, how are these conversations going, Corey, with regards to building muscle?
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: Because there's so many fears and like myths around that, especially for women, for example.
• 19:05
  Cori Lefkowith: Most of us do come into wanting to make healthy lifestyle changes because we want to lose weight.
• 19:10
  Cori Lefkowith: I know for me, like out of college, I did want to perform a certain way.
• 19:14
  Cori Lefkowith: I was into like lifting and building muscle, but a big journey into macros was because I had decided, you know, I want to see body recomp.
• 19:21
  Cori Lefkowith: I want to lose fat, I want to get lean.
• 19:23
  Cori Lefkowith: And in that process, I recognized that if I actually wanted to stay lean, not only did I have to recognize there were more phases to fat loss than just the constant cutting, but I recognized that muscle was everything.
• 19:35
  Cori Lefkowith: And if we start with a focus on muscle, everything else is gonna happen because you're gonna see improvements in your health, which is gonna make your body more efficient, which is gonna lead to fat loss.
• 19:44
  Cori Lefkowith: And while it's not sexy to think about it in that way, the reason you feel like things work, but nothing has actually worked long term is because you're approaching it as fat loss first over building muscle first.
• 19:54
  Cori Lefkowith: And those practices have often made us lose muscle in the process and trying to weigh less, but they've also adapted our metabolism.
• 20:02
  Cori Lefkowith: And if you think about your metabolism as like all the lights on your house being on to start, and then with your dieting practices, maybe with age, some have dimmed, some have been turned off.
• 20:12
  Cori Lefkowith: You can go turn them back on.
• 20:14
  Cori Lefkowith: But it means giving your house the energy so that it can do that.
• 20:18
  Cori Lefkowith: And so you have to fuel to build that lean muscle.
• 20:21
  Cori Lefkowith: And in the process of building that lean muscle and all the processes regulating back because they've potentially downregulated in order to survive off the calories you're consuming and the training that you're doing, you'll see yourself actually building that muscle and losing fat and seeing the recomp happen.
• 20:35
  Cori Lefkowith: Of course, it's not a fun process and often takes far longer than we want.
• 20:39
  Cori Lefkowith: And it's really challenging, especially mentally, because you often at first see the reverse of what you want to have happen actually happen.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you see maybe a little bit of extra weight gain, you carry a little more fluid, you maybe even gain a little bit of fat.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: And you're right, this kind of messaging is everywhere because it's important because it leads to the other question I was going to ask you, which is about these what you're measuring from the beginning.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: Because we mentioned nutrition, okay, that makes sense, but you also mentioned weight, which involves the scale.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: And, you know, we know that the scale can be helpful, but definitely it out of context can be very dangerous in the wrong hands in terms of how it's interpreted.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: So given muscle and fuel and no longer restricting and having a flexible diet, and all these are important, what are the basic things that people should be measuring and not paying attention to as well, at least early on?
• 21:30
  Cori Lefkowith: It really does depend on your goal, because if your goal is gaining muscle, I'm probably gonna tell someone to just chuck the scale out or put it in the in their closet for a little bit just because you can't really watch it.
• 21:39
  Cori Lefkowith: Because often you will even be building muscle before you lose fat.
• 21:43
  Cori Lefkowith: And yes, your glycogen stores are gonna be full because your body thinks it's in a calorie surplus as it adapts.
• 21:47
  Cori Lefkowith: But we measure a lot what we like to call NSVs or non scale victories.
• 21:53
  Cori Lefkowith: And so we have reflection sheets not only on are you doing the habit consistently?
• 21:56
  Cori Lefkowith: Because I think a lot of times we don't notice our own inconsistencies.
• 21:59
  Cori Lefkowith: And then we get really frustrated, we're putting in a lot of effort for things not to snowball.
• 22:04
  Cori Lefkowith: But we want to measure progress in other ways because that's really the signals often before we reach our goal that things are working.
• 22:10
  Cori Lefkowith: So is your sleep improving?
• 22:11
  Cori Lefkowith: As you're increasing calories, are your nails growing?
• 22:14
  Cori Lefkowith: Is your hair growing?
• 22:15
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you fidgeting more?
• 22:16
  Cori Lefkowith: We want to make note of all the different ways that we can see those habits paying off to know that we're on the right track because we see a lot of those signals well before our ultimate goal.
• 22:26
  Cori Lefkowith: And then I do think body measurements, progress pictures can be very helpful to track progress.
• 22:30
  Cori Lefkowith: But the more ways you measure success, the more ways you give yourself to be successful.
• 22:35
  Cori Lefkowith: So you got to measure progress outside of your ultimate goal.
• 22:38
  Cori Lefkowith: And I even think setting complementary targets is really important.
• 22:41
  Cori Lefkowith: So if you're going after weight loss, you want to think about a performance goal in the gym.
• 22:45
  Cori Lefkowith: You want to think a habit consistency goal.
• 22:47
  Cori Lefkowith: You want to think about outside challenges that you know will keep you in the habits that ultimately pay off with if you're going after the scale change, the scale change.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: That's great.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: And you just said complementary metrics.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: So again, digging in one more layer, does that mean that the suite of metrics can change quite a bit from person to person?
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Not even one person from goal to goal, but literally like this person may need to have these three things on their list at most of the time, even for the rest of their lives.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: And this person over here is these three other things.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: I'm curious, like how that comes up.
• 23:21
  Cori Lefkowith: Oh, it definitely does.
• 23:22
  Cori Lefkowith: Like each season of our life is going to be different.
• 23:24
  Cori Lefkowith: And if you're trying to work towards a muscle-building goal, you're going to have to work, like let go of some of the habits that you did to lose fat.
• 23:30
  Cori Lefkowith: And so you have to track then progress in different ways.
• 23:33
  Cori Lefkowith: But it really depends.
• 23:34
  Cori Lefkowith: Like I always start with clients with getting an accurate assessment of where they are.
• 23:38
  Cori Lefkowith: What aren't you happy with in your life right now?
• 23:39
  Cori Lefkowith: What have you struggled to do in the past?
• 23:41
  Cori Lefkowith: What do you feel like has sabotaged you in programs?
• 23:43
  Cori Lefkowith: Like, where would you like to see improvements in your life outside of the weight that you want to lose?
• 23:48
  Cori Lefkowith: And when we do that, we can often find little things that I like to call sort of pulling on the thread that unravels everything, where we know things that will be signals that things aren't paying off the way we want or habits have started to slide.
• 24:00
  Cori Lefkowith: So if a client comes in saying, My sleep is just horrible, as we're making changes, if we start to notice their sleep is bad again, we'll yes, look at outside stressors, but say, Hey, have things changed in how you're doing your meal timing?
• 24:13
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you starting to try to do too much in your workouts?
• 24:16
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you adding more somewhere?
• 24:17
  Cori Lefkowith: But we'll find the little ways of measuring progress that are key to them and how they want to feel in everyday life and use those as those checkpoints throughout.
• 24:26
  Cori Lefkowith: Because we don't do well with forever.
• 24:29
  Cori Lefkowith: We we need some sort of end date in our head.
• 24:32
  Cori Lefkowith: And so by even saying, hey, I'm gonna check in with myself every few weeks on these other things and do a more deep dive reflection, we give ourselves that point at which we're assessing our lifestyle to make tweaks because it's fun to adjust.
• 24:44
  Cori Lefkowith: We should always be growing.
• 24:46
  Cori Lefkowith: And creating a lifestyle doesn't mean you're doing one thing.
• 24:48
  Cori Lefkowith: So I do like to set those things forever because I think we all need those little boundaries or buffers.
• 24:53
  Cori Lefkowith: Otherwise, we get those 1% deviations that just completely pull us off course.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: So the tension here that I feel, and I've seen this in my own clients, is the ones that then start adopting this mindset and doing the tracking and learning from it.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: And then they get all the wins and they start to progress.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: And then six months or year down, they've they've really made a big improvement.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: And now they hit this other wall that I've noticed, right?
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: Which is a little bit of a new tracking fatigue wall where you're almost like bored because things are going well and you're tracking the same things over and over again and you're looking for a little bit of something different.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: So it's almost like this longer-term tracking fatigue.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: Have you seen that phenomenon?
• 25:29
  Cori Lefkowith: Yeah, and that's where you want to almost proactively assess and address that.
• 25:33
  Cori Lefkowith: So like I know it during the holidays, I get tracking fatigue in the way that I do it in January.
• 25:39
  Cori Lefkowith: I will not do it.
• 25:39
  Cori Lefkowith: And so I started to recognize, like, hey, I can't force the same habits.
• 25:43
  Cori Lefkowith: So proactively now going into the holidays, I come up with a different game plan.
• 25:47
  Cori Lefkowith: So when a client starts to say, like, oh, this doesn't feel worth it, or well, I deserve just one, you know, like this is just like a bite, lick a nibble, it doesn't matter, right?
• 25:57
  Cori Lefkowith: And you start to see that excuse creep like creep in, you got to recognize that is self-sabotage starting to happen.
• 26:04
  Cori Lefkowith: And so at this point, while we struggle to do less, it is a time to do less to ultimately move forward more consistently.
• 26:12
  Cori Lefkowith: So as you feel that sort of pain pushback, that fatigue with the habits you're doing, uh a desire to do something new, do something new.
• 26:21
  Cori Lefkowith: Just do it with strategy and intention.
• 26:23
  Cori Lefkowith: Because if you're controlling it in that way, you're not going to end up doing something that's going to derail you, right?
• 26:29
  Cori Lefkowith: If tracking full macrocycles like protein, carbs, and fats is feeling like too much, why not just track protein?
• 26:35
  Cori Lefkowith: Or why not say, hey, I'm feeling fatigued with my meals and this full tracking because there's other things I want.
• 26:41
  Cori Lefkowith: How can I work this in?
• 26:42
  Cori Lefkowith: Like I love to say, like, how can I get away with more stuff, right?
• 26:46
  Cori Lefkowith: Can I work out a little bit less because right now I just don't feel energized to go six days a week and get away with that, so to speak?
• 26:51
  Cori Lefkowith: Can I include more foods that I love?
• 26:53
  Cori Lefkowith: Can I go out to eat more?
• 26:54
  Cori Lefkowith: Or can I adjust the way I'm doing some of the habits that really match what I need now?
• 26:58
  Cori Lefkowith: But proactively like evolving and adapting the habits is so key because we do get bored and that's why we search for something new.
• 27:07
  Cori Lefkowith: We just want to make sure that that doesn't make us jump ship on something that's working.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: When I hear someone say, hey, I'm going on a trip in a month, what do I do?
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: I'm like, yes, like you're that's step one is saying, like, I need to have a structure or plan.
• 27:18
  Philip Pape: Even if the plan is I'm not gonna track, but I'm gonna have certain guidelines or thoughts or whatever around the trip so that I enjoy it.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: I also thought of the idea that, you know, you can always exchange within that budget you talked about if working out six days a week and you're like, well, I'm gonna go down to three, I can get some more sleep now on those other days, right?
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: So there's always these wonderful trade-offs that you can get.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: So that kind of addresses the, I guess, a little bit of a fatigue, which is probably more of a novelty and a seasonal thing that humans deal with all the time, right?
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: And just kind of keeping it different.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: What about when you're actually trying to then nail in on a root cause or a bottleneck for someone?
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: But you also said you don't want to try to do everything at once.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: So, how do you narrow that down?
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: What is a good system to do that when you have all this data coming in?
• 28:03
  Cori Lefkowith: Data can overwhelm us.
• 28:04
  Cori Lefkowith: And I say that as I have like a tracker on my wrist, but you have to understand what the data is telling you and you have to come back to who and what you are.
• 28:13
  Cori Lefkowith: So, with all the different habits, with all the different metrics, you have to then say, what does my lifestyle actually look like right now?
• 28:20
  Cori Lefkowith: And the reason I come back to that is because what feels doable for you right now.
• 28:25
  Cori Lefkowith: And that's where we sort of started.
• 28:26
  Cori Lefkowith: And when you get those wins stacking, all of a sudden you want to do more.
• 28:30
  Cori Lefkowith: And it's going back to even the the working out six days a week, because I think this is a great example of it.
• 28:35
  Cori Lefkowith: If you have six workouts on your schedule for the week and you do three, generally you kind of feel bad.
• 28:42
  Cori Lefkowith: Like you could say, well, I still did three, but generally we're like, oh, I only did three.
• 28:47
  Cori Lefkowith: Versus if you only had three workouts on your schedule for the week and you did three or four, all of a sudden you're like, I'm a rock star.
• 28:54
  Cori Lefkowith: It's the same three.
• 28:56
  Cori Lefkowith: Yes, maybe you design the workout slightly differently.
• 28:58
  Cori Lefkowith: So you optimize the three days a little bit better, but it's still the same time technically, and both would still count, but it's the momentum and mindset you create.
• 29:07
  Cori Lefkowith: So I think when we're trying to address bottlenecks, so much of it isn't just a tool or tactic that we're looking for.
• 29:13
  Cori Lefkowith: It's the mindsets and lifestyle that we need to address underlying it.
• 29:17
  Cori Lefkowith: Because a perfect plan, if something it's not something we can do consistently, it really doesn't matter versus imperfect changes done consistently are going to add up far faster.
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: For sure.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: The compounding effect.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: I mean, even a fat loss phase that that you plan out from day one, you don't know if by day two or the next week something interrupts your life or something changes.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: So always be ready to pivot and kind of squish it, expand it, go up and down.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: Like it doesn't matter.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: As long as you're in control of that, you'll be fine.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: Even if it's even day-to-day, like that, that's what I've seen.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: So thank you for for kind of validating that for people.
• 29:51
  Philip Pape: This is not a fixed thing.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: You don't just have a plan on day one and just, you know, run with it.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: So then if you expand that out longer term to a decade, let's say, and or two decades, and now you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, right?
• 30:04
  Philip Pape: I'm sure you get the question like, my body doesn't work like it used to, my hormones are different, my recovery's not there, my joints hurt, and you know, whatever system you've put in place doesn't work either.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: And and I I say that with a caveat, because if they work with you, you already helped them put in a resilient system, right?
• 30:21
  Philip Pape: But how does like say the women and the men in their 40s and 50s listening to this handle that?
• 30:28
  Cori Lefkowith: Well, I'm of the suck it up buttercup mindset.
• 30:31
  Cori Lefkowith: And I say this not from the no pain, no gain, push-through pain type attitude, but more the give yourself agency to control what you can control.
• 30:39
  Cori Lefkowith: And I bring this up because guess what?
• 30:41
  Cori Lefkowith: As we get older, our body does change.
• 30:44
  Cori Lefkowith: We don't have the optimal hormone levels we once did.
• 30:47
  Cori Lefkowith: We aren't as efficient at a lot of processes, that's aging.
• 30:51
  Cori Lefkowith: But we also have to own that a lot of the things we did before that, when we thought we were a superhero and could just push through the pain and, you know, diet and eat whatever we wanted, created a lot of the situation we're in right now.
• 31:03
  Cori Lefkowith: And so if we created a lot of it, we can also reverse a lot of it.
• 31:06
  Cori Lefkowith: So life is constant evolution.
• 31:08
  Cori Lefkowith: And the more we own that and give ourselves back the power of choice and give ourselves the ability to really assess what we need now to move forward, the better off we're gonna be.
• 31:16
  Cori Lefkowith: So as we enter, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, I have a client who just at 79, going into her 80th year, has seen amazing recon, built muscle.
• 31:25
  Cori Lefkowith: And it was because she decided, hey, I'm gonna train in a way that fits what I need right now.
• 31:29
  Cori Lefkowith: And when we truly own what we need right now and don't think about a number of years that we've been on this planet, but more, hey, do my joints feel achy?
• 31:38
  Cori Lefkowith: How am I fueling?
• 31:39
  Cori Lefkowith: What's going on with my lifestyle?
• 31:40
  Cori Lefkowith: Then we can start to assess and adjust because there's so much from how we fuel and even our hydration, because we don't recognize how much our hydration has an impact on our joint health, but even to our training that can really help us move forward better, but it means optimizing for our body now.
• 31:57
  Philip Pape: When you think of some of the most persistent myths that people come to you with in that category of age-related body change, because I I do like the idea of like, let's not use excuses, let's have this stoic attitude toward things, like control what you can control.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: What are like the top two strategies in general for dealing with those kinds of challenges?
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: So let's pick one.
• 32:19
  Philip Pape: Let's pick perimenopause and weight loss resistance.
• 32:23
  Cori Lefkowith: So perimenopause and the hormone shifts, it does change how you need to fuel and train.
• 32:27
  Cori Lefkowith: And you're gonna see a lot more variability that you have to address.
• 32:30
  Cori Lefkowith: But again, and I don't say like the agency, the choice as like a push through pain or just willpower your way into it because you can't.
• 32:37
  Cori Lefkowith: But it's more taking ownership of what you're actually seeing going on and recognizing you always have a choice.
• 32:42
  Cori Lefkowith: And like part of that choice is the perspective you have on what you're dealing with, right?
• 32:46
  Cori Lefkowith: You can see those hormone changes as you're doomed.
• 32:49
  Cori Lefkowith: This is just too hard, you can't handle it.
• 32:51
  Cori Lefkowith: Or you can choose to see the hormone changes as okay, my body is telling me these signals.
• 32:55
  Cori Lefkowith: How can I address them to feel most fabulous?
• 32:57
  Cori Lefkowith: Because if I control what I can control, it is the cycle of if you start to adjust your nutrition, you see changes in some of that hormone balance, which then impacts your sleep positively, which then allows you to make more changes, right?
• 33:07
  Cori Lefkowith: So it's you can get caught in that cycle.
• 33:10
  Cori Lefkowith: But I would tell them, like, hey, you need to really look at what changes you're seeing.
• 33:14
  Cori Lefkowith: Has your sleep shifted?
• 33:15
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you seeing more inflammation?
• 33:17
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you not recovering as fast?
• 33:18
  Cori Lefkowith: Do your joints hurt?
• 33:19
  Cori Lefkowith: Are you having night sweats?
• 33:21
  Cori Lefkowith: Like, what's going on for you?
• 33:22
  Cori Lefkowith: And then from there, we start to look at, well, what's the smallest change we can make that addresses the most of these things?
• 33:29
  Cori Lefkowith: And really, that all starts with tracking what you're currently doing because we don't recognize how much our food is not only contributing to making some of the symptoms worse, but we're not optimizing our nutrition to make some of the symptoms better.
• 33:40
  Cori Lefkowith: And then from there, we go into the diet and workouts.
• 33:44
  Cori Lefkowith: With perimenopause, we see a rise in stress, so to speak, on your body.
• 33:48
  Cori Lefkowith: And so because your body is more stressed and your mind might even feel more stressed, especially with other lifestyle things, you can't add more stressors on top of that, no matter how positive the stressors technically are, because working out is a stressor.
• 34:01
  Cori Lefkowith: Trying to adjust your diet is gonna take some mental strain.
• 34:05
  Cori Lefkowith: So you need to really assess those things and recognize that if you're in extreme calorie deficit, that is a stress on your body.
• 34:11
  Cori Lefkowith: So, how can you reduce the stress through how you're fueling and training to match what you need?
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: I love it.
• 34:17
  Philip Pape: So there's a reframe, there's the tracking to see what your biggest ROI levers are gonna be.
• 34:22
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, you want to fuel and train to be successful.
• 34:25
  Philip Pape: And look, anybody who says, Well, I'm not lifting weights, and you suggest it to them and they still say they're not lifting weights, I'm sorry.
• 34:30
  Philip Pape: You got to start lifting too as part of this process at some point, right?
• 34:34
  Cori Lefkowith: Yeah, but even that, like it's not even okay, well, why don't you want to lift?
• 34:38
  Philip Pape: Yeah, of course.
• 34:39
  Cori Lefkowith: And then how can we do strength work that maybe meets you where you are right now?
• 34:42
  Cori Lefkowith: Can that be bodyweight training?
• 34:43
  Cori Lefkowith: Can it be bands?
• 34:44
  Cori Lefkowith: Like, where is your resistance to this?
• 34:45
  Cori Lefkowith: So I want you to go research all the reasons why someone might promote this.
• 34:49
  Cori Lefkowith: And then I want you to give all the arguments you have against doing it and then really research why they're valid or why they're not valid.
• 34:55
  Cori Lefkowith: And then I want you to assess how they might be a mismatch for what you need right now.
• 35:00
  Cori Lefkowith: And through that, we then get to the point of okay, so what are you willing to do?
• 35:04
  Cori Lefkowith: And what are you willing to say is worth it for that goal, even?
• 35:08
  Philip Pape: If you could only track calories or macros, what would you track?
• 35:12
  Cori Lefkowith: Macros.
• 35:13
  Philip Pape: What's a food rule that you used to follow that you now think is nonsense?
• 35:17
  Cori Lefkowith: Carbs are bad.
• 35:18
  Philip Pape: What's the hardest habit for your clients to build?
• 35:20
  Cori Lefkowith: That's a good one.
• 35:21
  Cori Lefkowith: You know what?
• 35:22
  Cori Lefkowith: And maybe this is personal bias too, but drinking enough water.
• 35:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 35:26
  Cori Lefkowith: I would say that's the hardest habit because it's so simple seeming, but it's so important.
• 35:31
  Cori Lefkowith: And when we think we're getting enough, we're not getting enough.
• 35:33
  Cori Lefkowith: The second one I was gonna go with is protein, and increasing protein is often hard.
• 35:37
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's interesting because walking comes on the list for me too.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: But hydration is a good one.
• 35:42
  Cori Lefkowith: They're almost the things we take for granted.
• 35:44
  Philip Pape: If you if you're listening to this, it's a thing that you're not doing.
• 35:46
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 35:47
  Philip Pape: So when we think of tracking apps, how long before someone should maybe try not using an app?
• 35:54
  Philip Pape: And I'm talking about apps specifically, not necessarily tracking in general, but most of the time people are using apps.
• 35:59
  Cori Lefkowith: I say, why go in with the mentality that you're ever gonna stop using it?
• 36:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, good one, good one.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: And then um, let's say you are coaching yourself when you were 25.
• 36:08
  Cori Lefkowith: Do less.
• 36:09
  Philip Pape: Can you elaborate?
• 36:10
  Cori Lefkowith: Yeah, so I would say do less because I decided that I was gonna try and out extra my diet and I ended up injured.
• 36:16
  Cori Lefkowith: I would also say train intentionally off of that because I would push through and not be paying attention to what I felt working, which led to a lot of injuries and my now love of prehab.
• 36:25
  Cori Lefkowith: So often we waste a lot of effort trying to outwork time and it's just not gonna happen.
• 36:30
  Cori Lefkowith: And that's also what leaves us really frustrated, feeling like the effort hasn't been worth the outcome we get.
• 36:35
  Cori Lefkowith: But if we do less, we're gonna create more sustainability and consistency long term, and we're probably actually gonna see results faster.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: So to wrap it up, I often ask this question is there anything you wished I had asked?
• 36:46
  Philip Pape: And what is your answer?
• 36:48
  Cori Lefkowith: I would just add, with all of that we've talked about today, there is no right time to start.
• 36:54
  Cori Lefkowith: And when it feels really wrong to start, that's actually the right time because so often we do only try and make changes when we've deemed it the right time or the perfect time.
• 37:03
  Cori Lefkowith: And that's why we keep making changes and habit changes that don't stick.
• 37:06
  Cori Lefkowith: So I would say if now feels like the wrong time, if everything in your life is just fighting against you wanting to make changes, make one small change because if you can do minimums at the worst of times, you're gonna be able to do so much more when times are really good.
• 37:19
  Cori Lefkowith: And that's how we sort of level up so that we see progress over the weeks, the months, the years.
• 37:24
  Cori Lefkowith: It's not the best times and optimizing them.
• 37:26
  Cori Lefkowith: It's the 1% improvements at the worst of worst times.
• 37:30
  Philip Pape: There's no right time to start.
• 37:31
  Philip Pape: That's so good.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: What's the biggest excuse when is it people say they don't have enough time or this thing has come up, or like what's the biggest one they use to say it's not the right time?
• 37:41
  Cori Lefkowith: Oh, there's so many specific ones, but let's let's face it, it's always life.
• 37:45
  Cori Lefkowith: Life is always our excuse, but life is always going to be there, right?
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: So this is good stuff.
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: A lot of psychology in here, a lot of counterintuitive things that people may not have heard about why tracking could be so powerful in anything in your life.
• 37:57
  Philip Pape: Anything, guys, not just food, not just training, but everything, finances, everything else in your life, tracking be helpful.
• 38:02
  Philip Pape: Where can people look you up, Corey?
• 38:03
  Philip Pape: Where can they connect with you?
• 38:04
  Philip Pape: And we'll throw those in the show notes.
• 38:06
  Cori Lefkowith: I am Redefining Strength on every platform and redefiningstrength.com.
• 38:10
  Cori Lefkowith: So you can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz.
• 38:13
  Philip Pape: And you guys can check Corey out.
• 38:15
  Philip Pape: She's awesome.
• 38:16
  Philip Pape: And you know, it's been a pleasure talking to you today on Wits and Weights.
• 38:20
  Philip Pape: Well, thanks for having me.