309: Best Of 2023: 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started A Weight Loss Journey

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 309.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

My goal for this podcast episode 00:46 

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host Amber Brueseke and I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you came back or if this is your first episode that you're listening to, welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. This episode is a really fun one, and one that I've been really excited to record and that is because it's a little bit of an experience and an opportunity for me to share a little bit of wisdom with you. A little bit of hey, these are the mistakes that I made and maybe if I tell you about them, you, I can prevent you from having to make the same mistakes, so that's really my goal. We're going to talk about five things that I wish that I knew before I started a weight loss journey. Now if you're just at the beginning of a weight loss journey, awesome, then obviously this this episode is going to be really powerful for you to be able to start out on you know the right foot. However, some of you are listening to this, and are like Amber, I've been on a weight loss journey for 30 years and if that's the case, this episode is still going to be really powerful for you because you may be making some very very common mistakes in the way that you're approaching your weight loss journey and you might have some aha moments as you listen to this episode of realizing some of those mistakes and why that's so beneficial is because when we realize mistakes that we're making, we can start to change them and we can start to shift them and we can start to get new results that are different from the results we've been getting in the past. So, that's my goal today is to kind of just shoot straight with you, share with you a little bit about my experience going through some, like weight loss and you know different goals that I've set over the years and different experiences that I've had trying to lose weight. Some of the things that have been have been beneficial and really some of the things that I wish somebody would have sat me down and told me as I started on this journey. So that's what I’m really going to do for you, we’re going to sit down, we're going to chat and I'm going to tell you some of the things that I wish that I had known so that you don't have to make the same mistakes that I did.  

Common struggles growing up 02:51 

So as we roll into this topic, let me start with just sharing a little bit of my experience through the years. Like let's go back many, many, many years and kind of talk about some of my experience and this is a question that I get a lot of people find me on Instagram and they you know, ask me the question, well like have you ever had to lose weight? Have you ever struggled with your weight? have you like you just look like you've been fit and thin all of your life. And so let's go back and kind of tell some of the stories of, you know, Amber years and years and years ago. Now, if you've listened to some of my podcast episode you've heard me talk that about the fact that I was raised in a home where I had a really awesome mom and and her experience and her relationship with food and her relationship with her body and her relationship with exercise we're actually very, very positive, and I know a lot of you listening to this maybe didn't have that same experience. Many of the women that I talked to, they when they look back at their time with their moms or their dads, they remember a lot of dieting. They remember a lot of like hating their body. They remember a lot of always trying to eat less or saying I can't eat that and a lot of you had that experience and that that sticks with you as you grow up of of learning how to, how to be in relationship with your body because you saw that modeled a certain way for you with your mother or your father, your caregiver, and that has shaped how you relate to your body, that has shaped how you relate to food.  

How my fitness journey started 04:15 

I had a really great experience growing up. My mom was a fitness instructor. She didn't do a whole lot of diets. There wasn't a whole lot of body shaming or body talk in our family and growing up, and generally we ate a fairly healthy diet. My mom, you know, cooked vegetables. We ate a lot of chicken. Honestly growing up, I just remember chicken like most nights of the week and you know, overall I feel like I had a pretty healthy point of view of my body, of food and of exercise. I remember very early on in my childhood, watching my mom teach fitness classes at the YMCA, so my earliest memories are when I was probably about five years old. I would go to the child care and there was a window between where I I stayed in the childcare and where my mom was teaching her class so I could look through this window and and watch my mom teaching her fitness classes. Those are some of my earliest memories and you know, as soon as I was able, you know, the YMCA had an age, I think it might have been 12 to when you could go into group fitness classes and then it was for sure 14 when you could go in the weight room and as soon as I hit those ages my mom brought me into her fitness classes and she took me into the weight room and so I really had a really awesome experience of having fitness and a healthy lifestyle model for me from a very early age. I, I feel really grateful that I was able to have that. Now again, some of you listening are like that was not my story Amber. It was not the experience that I was raised at and you know, like I wish, that everybody had that experience. But if that's you, you can't go back and change the past. Obviously you can't change your experience. You can't change like growing up, how you grow up. What you do have control over and what you can change is how you impact the next generation. So how you impact your children or your grandchildren, or your nieces and nephews or the other people who you have influence over. You can't change the past. You can't change how you were raised, but how you relate to your body. Your health and fitness can absolutely change that for someone else, and so that's something I want you to hold on to if you feel like I didn't really have a great experience growing up of someone modeling healthy behaviors for me. You can be the change in in that in that chain.  

Fitness journey and struggles in college 06:34 

OK, so that was my experience. You know while I was living at home and then I went away to college and man college, college I was exposed to a whole lot of different foods that maybe my my parents like didn't keep in the house a ton. I just remember my freshman year. Having you know unlimited access to ice cream and waffles and all the food that I could eat, you know, as on campus and so you could just eat as much food as wanted and I absolutely gained the freshman 15 and and maybe even a little bit more. And I remember like coming home and I don't remember anybody like saying anything when I came home for Christmas or like for the summer. But I definitely remember being very Achilli aware that that like “freshman 15” that I had definitely fallen into that freshman 15. And so I remember when I went back to school, that there was a part of me that was like OK, you know, let's we got to take care of this. We're going to, I'd exercise the whole time that I was at school but I realized I was, like you know, my, I'm probably eating a whole lot of different foods and a whole lot more food than I, than I used to be eating, so we're going to get this off, you know we're going to, we're going to figure out a way to be able to get this off. And I haven't really been taught much about weight loss or about how to actually change my body and so I defaulted to what I think a lot of us default to is just like, well, I just need to eat healthier. I just need to eat, you know less pizza and you know, not eat ice cream and not eat like have anything with sugar in it. I just need to eat healthier and then the weight will fall off. But I got into a cycle that many of you are probably familiar with of, you know, being very rigid with myself of saying OK, it's Monday, this, this week I'm going to be good, this week I'm not going to eat any sugar, I'm only eat like clean foods. I'm not going to eat anything that's processed and I would start the week out with high hopes and do really well you know on Monday and on Tuesday and on Wednesday and on Thursday or you know, you starting to falter but like I was holding fast and firm and then we get to Friday and it seemed like something always came up. My roommates got pizza, we were going to go out. There was something that was always seemed to like throw me off and I would indulge. I'd be like, OK well I'm just gonna have one slice of pizza and then one slice of pizza would turn into 5 slices of pizza because I felt like I just like couldn't stop eating once I started eating. And then that would roll into Saturday. And while I mess up on Friday night so then I might as well eat whatever I want Saturday and that rolled into Sunday and then Monday came again and it was like recommitment all over again. 

OK this week you know last week, whatever you know, whatever happened last week I I feel really bad about last week, but this week, this week's going to be going to be different. And looking back I'm like what was going to be different and there really wasn't anything in my mind of like how it was going to be different. It was simply like I'm just going to try harder. I'm just going to work harder. I'm just going to be, have more willpower and just like commit to not having sugar this week and that and that's that'll do. That'll do it, that'll fix everything. And time and time and time and time again this happened over and over and over again. You think I would have learned but I kept just thinking that we should try harder. I just need to do better, but it would be the same cycle Monday. I would be all you know, head in, you know grit my teeth I'm going to do it this week by Friday, things have fallen apart. I would like binge over the weekend and then I would restart the new week. And this happened for longer than than I wish it had happened and I didn't see any change with my body. It was just I was always still the same. I still had the freshman 15 plus to be to that I wanted to lose and nothing was really happening with my body.

The time I weighed the heaviest and the realization 10:45 

About this time is also when I started training for my marathon and I was just talking to someone about this the other day, but I was the heaviest I've ever been, when, like when I ran my marathon training for and running my marathon, and I I find that's actually a really common occurrence with people. A lot of times people are like, oh, I'm gonna like I want to lose weight so I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going to do all this running and it's gonna help me lose weight, but for me and a lot of people that I've talked to, I was actually the heaviest that I ever weighed when I was training for my marathon, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that cardio makes you really hungry and so I was, you know, I was running a lot, but I was also eating a lot to compensate for that, and so that was, you know, it's all kind of wrapped up in this experience. And then I started having babies. And I guess I can't say that like the heaviest I've ever been is when I trained for my marathon. I guess the heaviest ever been to that point was when I trained for a marathon, but then I had babies and that completely changes your body and you have, you know, you know postpartum weight that you've gained and and having to go through that experience. And I just didn't have enough information about how to do this in a way that actually was going to be beneficial for me. It was actually going to change my body, be healthy and like be mentally in a good place to be able to do you know to change my physique. So Fast forward, multiple kids multiple gaining and trying to lose weight during this point in my life, I did start teaching fitness classes and that you know was able to help me be able to like maintain my weight and you know, not necessarily like get super super lean but be able to like kind of at least control it in some way I I see, felt like I had somewhat balanced with food I wasn't, you know super super strict. I I had some like moderation with food, but really I think the exercise was keeping things under control and that leads us into 2016. When I found macro counting and that's really when I started to really understand nutrition and specifically how food could impact my physique and the reality of like I needed to actually change things less with my nutrition than I thought in the past. And so these are some of the like during that experience. During that time period and then rolling into counting macros, being able to lose 10 pounds, get a 6 pack, being able to really finally have control over changing my physique based off of my nutrition. I learned a whole lot of things that I wish I could go back and tell you know, 19, 20-year old Amber. When I was trying to work that 15 that you know freshman 15 off and so those are things that I want to share with you today. It's kind of like I'm going back and telling myself what I wish I would have known and hopefully this will be really valuable for you to be able to make it so your fitness journey, your weight loss journey is a little bit more successful than I was at that time. 

First Mistake: Extremes prevent long term results 13:23 

 Alright, so the first thing, Extremes Prevent Long Term Results. And this is something that I wish that I would have known back in the day, and it's something that is such an aha for so many women when I start coaching them because we have been made to believe that the more extreme something is, the faster it's going to yield results, and on some level that makes logical sense, right? If, if I need to create a caloric deficit, will the larger the caloric deficit, the less calories I eat, the more exercise I do, I should get faster results, like logically, that makes sense and so we get stuck in the cycle of thinking. Well, I just need to go balls to the walls and I just need to eat 800 calories and I just need to do 2 hours of cardio at the gym and I just need to cut out all the sugar and I just need to you know, so what I tell myself, I just need to eat clean and I just need to not anything processed and we do this from the intent of wanting to produce results like, but our intent is not, it's not a bad intent, it's hey, I wanna, I wanna get there and I want to get there as fast as possible. I don't, I think relating this to like a road trip, no, none of us go on road trips and like how long can I make this take at least, at least I'm not like that. Maybe you loved road trips, but most of us are not like hey, how long can we make this road trip take? They're like what is the fastest way to get me from point A to point B and we bring that mindset with us into our weight loss journey. What's the fastest way that I can lose 20 lbs? Well, the more extreme I am, the more aggressive I am. The faster one I lose 20 pounds so that's what I'm going to do. But here's the caveat. The real question isn't how fast can I get from point A to point B, how fast can I lose the 20 lbs,  but do I want to just get to point B? Do I just want to lose the 20 lbs or do I want to lose the 20lbs and keep it off? Because the approach you need to take to lose 20 pounds is very different than the approach you need to take to lose 20 pounds and keep it off.  

Enjoy the process to be able to sustain long term 15:32 

In fact, I was just talking to a woman in my DM's today and she was saying that she did OPTAVIA and she lost 40lbs. But then she regained the 40lbs and then more. And so yeah, you know it's it's one thing to lose 20 pounds, but losing 20lbs and keeping it off, that's not the, there's not the same thing. It's not the same destination. And so this obsession that we have with getting to the destination fast is really misguided, because you don't just want to lose 20lbs or 40lbs or 50lbs or 100lbs. Most of us when we set that goal, what we're really saying is I want to lose 40 pounds and I want to keep it off and then we're trying to go the route of how can we lose it as fast as possible, which is actually counterintuitive with what we really need to be doing, which is to be able to lose it in a way that we can keep it off and those are completely different processes. So that's a really good question to ask yourself. Do I want to do I just want to see that number on the scale? Do I just want to see 140 on the scale and then not really care what happens after that? If so, cool, extremes, do it, starve yourself. Don't actually starve yourself, but like extremes may get you there, but if you're like actually I don't just want to lose the 20lbs, I don't want to just hit one for you on the scale. I want to hit one for on the scale and be able to maintain it, my friend that requires a very different approach. And it requires approach that you can maintain for much longer than you can maintain anything super extreme, so that's that's the issue with extremes is they're they are in the name extreme. They are something that we can't do forever, it's something maybe you can do for a short while a little bit of time. But if you can't do it long term, it's never going to be able to to, you're never gonna be able to maintain it. And that's a really, really important point. So one of the questions that I love to have my clients self reflect on and these are some questions that you can be asking yourself about your journey as well is, am I enjoying this process? Do, is this fun? Am I having fun with this process? If the answer is no, then the follow up question should be, how can I make this more fun? Because the more fun it is, the more you actually enjoy the process, one, the longer you will stick with it and two, the more likely you are to be able to sustain it long term. And if you want to be able to not only lose weight, but to lose weight and keep it off, then you want to be able to sustain it long term. 

Now let me be really clear. I am not saying that every single point of your journey has to be fun. There, there are going to be hard points, you know any type of change requires you to do new things and new things are always like there's a challenge associated with new things. So I'm not saying that every single point of the process has to be super fun and like kicks and giggles. But, remembering that the hard points have a purpose behind them. When, when we know that there's a purpose behind something's hard, that's hard we are able to deal with that much more. So the more fun that you can make this process, the less you have to rely on willpower and the more you're able to deal with the tough times that do come up because there there will be tough times like I'm not saying that this whole process is just gonna be super easy. That's silly to think that, but if most of it is fun and you're you've created it in a way that is enjoyable for you, then when you do get to those tough points you have more of a of a reserve to be able to make it through. So I feel like a lot of people approach weight loss with what is the most, what is the most that I can give this process? What is the most extreme thing that I can you know, maybe suck up and do? And then that's that's where they go. Instead, what I would rather, you do and what's going to be so much more successful for you in the long term is to think what am I currently doing now? Because that's easy. Whatever you're doing now is is likely easy for you, it's habitual. What am I doing now and how could I tweak it just a little bit to move in the direction that I want to go?  

Protein and macro counting 19:47 

So here's a great example. I get in my DM's and comments all the time about people who are complaining that they are supposed to be eating 170 grams of protein, and they're like I don't even know how to eat 170 grams of protein. And when I asked them, hey did you track your normal intake? Do you know, you know before you started counting macros, do you know how many, how much protein you were eating? Usually they say no, they didn't ever, ever do that step, which is like a huge red flag to me as a coach. I always want my clients and I teach everybody to track your normal intake first before you set your macros. If you've downloaded my setting macros guide, which is at bicepsafterbabies.com/setmymacros, that's the first thing that I tell you to do is track your normal intake. So either they tell me no I've never track the normal intake, or they'll say something about like yeah, I tracked my normal intake and I was eating about 60 grams of protein. And then I will ask them, why did you think that you could go from 60 grams of protein to 160 grams of protein and that that wasn't going to be hard or not a problem. And so this is where I really encourage people just to scale back and first, figure out what are you already doing because eating 60 grams of protein is probably not hard for you, that's what you normally do. So if we want to scale that up, maybe we could push ourselves and say, OK, I've been eating 60 grams of protein, that's been really easy. I'm going to push it a little bit and I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on eating 85 grams of protein, awesome. Do you think you're going to be more successful with eating 85 grams of protein and don't you think that it's going to be easier and that you're going to be able to feel successful and get some like movement in the right direction that's going to build some momentum for you. Then if you're going to try and eat 160 grams of protein completely, overhaul your lifestyle, eat all these foods you're not used to probably beat yourself up because it's going to be really hard to make all those changes and then kind of just throw your hands up in the air and be like well I guess I can't eat 160 grams of protein, so I'm going to go back to what I was doing before that's what often happens. So instead look at what you're currently doing and add a little bit to that. OK, I'm eating 60 grams of protein. I'm gonna focus on eating 85 grams of protein now. A lot of times people's brains start screaming to be like, well, you're not going to be successful, you're not gonna get as much results as if you eat 160g of protein. And I want you to tell that voice in your head to shut up, because it's not true. You are actually going to get more results. Eating 85 grams of protein consistently than you are trying to eat 160 grams of protein being unsuccessful, beating yourself up and then throwing your hands up in the air and saying I just can't even do this and quitting. And that is what happens so often with people. And macro counting is, it's too complicated. It's too hard. They've set the bar way too high and then they just throw their hands there and they say macro counting isn't for me. I can't do this. Instead, let's scale it back and look at what you can do like instead of going extreme, what is movement in the right direction? Instead of saying I'm gonna go to bed at 9:00 PM and you've been going to bed at 11:30. Can we move that up 15 minutes? Those types of changes are what we are going to want in order to see long term sustainable results. So thing number one. I wish I knew is that extremes actually prevent long term results. 

Second Mistake: Fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing 23:07 

 Number 2. This one's a big one. I wish that I would have known, that Fat Loss And Weight Loss Are Not The Same Thing. I, back in the day I had my scale and that was all I looked at and so I would step on the scale and if it was up I was depressed, I was disappointed I wasn't making progress and if the scale was down, I was happy. I was going in the right direction and I was losing fat in my mind. That's what I thought and that's how so many of us view the scale. We view it as a one-to-one relationship with whether or not we're going in the right direction, right? I step on the scale, I lost a pound, in our minds it's like I've lost a pound of fat and then we step on the scale and it's up a pound and now in our minds I've gained a pound of fat. But in reality, your skill doesn't measure fat loss or fat gain. It measures weight loss and weight gain and your body, the weight of your body is from much more than just fat. You think about it, you have skin., you have muscles, you have hair and nails and organ tissue, and you have water. You have blood volume. You have fat, you have the food that you ate that you're continuing to digest. You have your poop like you have all of these things and all of that together makes up your body weight. And so of course your weight is going to fluctuate up and down. And that it doesn't necessarily mean it's in relationship to how much fat you have on your body.  

For example, If you take a diuretic and you're going to pee out a whole bunch of water, I promise you the scale will go down when you're on that diuretic. It doesn't mean that you lost any fat. In fact, all you've lost is water. Same thing with I see this a lot with women who are training and lifting weights for the first time and they start freaking out because the scale starts going up and they immediately equate that weight gain with fat gain. But in reality, they're gaining muscle, so yeah, the scale is going to go up, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's fat, fat and weight are not the same thing and the problem is, is that your scale cannot measure how much fat you have on your body. All it can measure is your weight. Now, that doesn't mean we just toss out the scale. It doesn't mean that it doesn't have some helpful information, it does, it's just incomplete information, and so if you're on a fat loss journey and the only way you are measuring your progress is by the scale. You are looking at an incomplete data point. You're looking at a data point and asking it to tell you information it cannot tell you. It cannot tell you if you've gained fat or lost fat. There's not a one-to-one relationship with fat loss.  

The scale cannot tell you what you want it to tell you 26:00 

So what does that mean? It means that we need to incorporate other data points so that we can get a clearer picture of what's going on. It's not that we toss out the scale. It's not that we don't pay attention to it, it's just incomplete. It needs other data points surrounding it so that we can figure out. OK, this scale has gone down, or the scale has gone up that tells me my weight has changed. It doesn't tell me what I lost or gained and when we can put other data points alongside of it, we get a much clearer picture about what's going on and whether we're losing fat, whether we're losing muscle, whether we're gaining fat, whether gaining muscle, whether it's water weight. And so those other data points help to give us a fuller, clearer picture. And that is why I have all of my clients not only take their scale measurement, their weight, but also all of their actual measurements. So a waist measurement, a chest measurement, an arm measurement, and leg measurement, a hip measurement, and those measurements alongside with your scale weight, alongside with your progress pictures and alongside some of the more like non scale things that happen. You know you feel leaner, your rings fit better, your shirts fit better. All of those data points put together give us a much clearer picture of what's going on with your body. So when the scales down, we can use that as one data point, but we need to corroborate it with all the other data points to figure out. OK, my weight is down. Am I losing fat? Am I losing water? Am I losing muscle? When we look at the data points as a whole, we can figure that out. If there's one thing that you take away from this podcast, please let it be that the scale cannot tell you what you want it to tell you. It cannot tell you if you've lost fat and gain fat, so please, if you are on a fat loss journey, use the scale as a single data point, but please, please, please be taking progress pictures, be taking measurements and that's going to give you a much clearer picture of what's going on because fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing, and I know that you say that you want to lose weight. I know that's what everybody says, I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight. What you really mean is you want to lose fat because I don't think anybody's going around being like I want to lose weight. So I'm just gonna like chop off my arm. That'll do it, or I want to lose weight so I'm just going to again take a diuretic, and like pee all out this water and then I'll be great. No, what you really mean is you want to lose fat and the scale cannot tell you that on its own.  

Third Mistake: The more you can approach the process, like a scientist, the more successful you'll be 28:29 

OK thing #3 that I wish that I knew before I started weight loss journey and that is, that The More That You Can Approach This Process, like a scientist, The More Successful You're Going To Be. Now I think most of us know that we make the best rational decisions when we are calm, when we are not emotional and when we are using our thinking brain. And most of us know that when we get into emotions and when we are heightened like a heightened emotional setting or you know, feeling those heightened emotions, we don't make the best, most logical decisions, right? I'm going to make a better decision when I'm calm and I'm thinking than if I am angry and in the moment we all know that to be the case and the problem is with weight loss for a lot of women, weight loss is a very emotional experience. It's it, there's a lot and and there's a lot tied to that number. This is a lot of work that I do in MACROS 101 with clients is to help them figure out you know all the emotions and all the meanings and all of the beliefs that they have wrapped up around this number. But for what you know, for many reasons, for many women, weight loss is very emotional. And we've tied our worth to the scale. We've tied our worth to how much we weigh. And so when it's up, that can feel really crushing and really defeating and really frustrating and discouraging, and that emotional state is not the best state to make decisions from. But it's where many of us make those decisions from we step on the scale, we feel all this flood of emotions and we make a decision about our day, right? The scales up, oh, I'm such a loser. I'm never going to be successful. I might as well just eat whatever I want today or you know like we make those decisions like in the moment with all that emotion and it's never going to be the best decision. It's never going to be the most logical, rational decision, and so the less emotional we can make this process, the more scientific we can make this process, the better choices you're going to be able to make along the way, and the better results you're going to be able to get.  

Now this can be hard because nobody teaches you how to understand your body. Nobody teaches you how to look at data like a scientist. If you go to school for biochemistry or for some other you know, Science degree. One of the things that you're going to learn, we did this in nursing school, we actually had a research class where we were taught how to look at research, how to look at data points, how to analyze them, right you go. We took statistics to be able to figure out. OK, you have this data set, but how do we like actually look at these numbers and analyze them and figure out what the numbers are trying to tell us. That's, that is, that's a way that a scientist looks at at data is figuring out these numbers are trying to communicate something. I need to be able to interpret them as the scientist. That's the process you learn as a scientist, how to get data points and interpret them and figure out what the heck they're trying to tell you. Nobody teaches you how to do that with your body. Nobody teaches you how to collect data. Nobody teaches you once you have that data, how to make interpretations about what those data points are telling you, and that is why you need to learn to think like a scientist and to be like a scientist during this process. Because when you understand how to gather data, when you understand how to interpret that data, and then when you understand what changes and tweaks to make based off of that data, you can make very great decisions moving forward that are going to move you towards your goal. And that's what I do inside of MACROS 101, is I help women go from this Dieter emotional mindset when it comes to food and their bodies and help them move to the macro scientist’s position where you're able to analyze data, you're able to put your rational thinking cap on. Because when you can do that, you're going to be so much more successful in making good decisions. 

So many women aren't successful in their journey, not because they're doing the wrong things initially, but because they're making wrong decisions at those pivot points at that fork in the road, they're making the wrong decisions, and often it is because they're looking at the wrong data, which we go back to #2, they're looking at that scale, that's all they're looking at. They're looking at inaccurate data, incomplete data. And they're making emotional decisions based off of incomplete data. What things gonna happen if you're making an emotional decision off of incomplete data you are not going to make a very good decision and that is what happens so often for women in their journey. They're making emotional decisions off of incomplete data, and they wonder why they're not getting results. And so when you can really start to approach this process like a scientist, you can learn to read data. You can learn to analyze it. You can learn to figure out what it's trying to tell you. Figure what your body is trying to tell you. Then you can make adjustments based off of that feedback from your body, game over. That's when everything starts to change and that's what I do inside of MACROS 101 is I teach you how to become a macro scientist, cause nobody teaches you these things. Even if you hire a coach, they don't teach you these things they just do it for you. So then after you're done coaching, you don't, you still don't know how to do it because they they did it for you. I don't, I don't go that way. I want you to be able to understand how to become a macro scientist so that you can take that with you wherever you go, that you can learn to read your body that you can learn to make adjustments. If that sounds like something that's interesting to you, you can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist and the wait list is always the first to know when we open doors, they get first dibs. So if you're interested in becoming a macro scientist and learning how to read your body and to figure out what you need in order to be successful, MACROS 101 is for you. Go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist.  

Fourth Mistake: Weight loss is not going to fix you 34:34 

All right #4 , and this is a big one. Weight loss or fat loss, neither of those are going to “fix you”. And I think this is a core belief that a lot of us maybe haven't explored, but that we hold, that if I could just lose this weight, it's going to fix everything. If I can just lose this weight, I'm going to be more confident. If I can just lose this weight, then I'm going to be more lovable and people are going to like me more. If I could just lose this weight, then I would be happy. If I could just lose this weight then I would get the promotion that I'm seeking, and I've seen it myself. And I've seen it over and over and over and over again with my clients. Weight loss is not the solution to any of those things. It's so easy to set it as, as the goal and as the the solution that's going to fix everything, it's going to fix my not liking myself, is going to fix my confidence. It's going to fix my job. It's going to fix my relationships. It's going to fix all of these things and just kind of see it as like the pancia. But I promise you it's not gonna fix any of those things because your weight is not what is, is causing those problems and it's really easy to fall in and be like, yes, it is Amber because I was so much happier. I was so much more confident when I was a size 4. I was so much you know I was, I was just I had a better relationship when I you know, weighed 150lbs. It's so easy to tell ourselves that and and you may have had experiences where that you know that was the case in the past and it's really easy to mix causation with, correlation and this is another like sciencey term that you probably have learned back maybe back in high school. This idea that we see correlation between two things and it's really easily to attribute causation to it. But in reality, just because two things are correlated, just because two things go up at the same time doesn't mean that one thing caused the other one to go up. So causation and correlation are not the same thing, and that is what a lot of us have done with things like weight and confidence.  

Well, when I was size 4, I was more confident and now I'm less confident, and so it must mean that my size dictates my confidence. But that really starts to fall down when you realize that there are people who are heavier than you, that are more confident and there are people that are lighter than you that are more confident, and so it really, confidence does not is not a one-to-one relationship again, with your weight, there's so much more that goes into confidence. And just because you were more confident at a certain body size doesn't mean that that body size causes confidence. I can tell you some of the least confident women I've ever met are women that you would go into the the gym and you would say if I said whose goals, whose body is goals you would point to women. I've coached many of those women and they are not all of them like let's not make. I'm not making blanket statements but it just it continues to shock and surprise me. The women who you would look at and think Oh my gosh, they have to be so confident because their body is just like amazing, that they are some of the least confident women. And and then there are women in larger bodies who are completely confident and so just this is, it's just an example, but many of us tell ourselves these stories of I will be fixed when I lose the weight. And understanding that that isn't the solution that weight loss isn't gonna actually fix any of those things can be really empowering because you don't have to wait for weight loss to happen. Some of us are waiting to say I'll be happy when I lose the weight. And if you continue to hold on to that, then you can never be happy until you lose the weight. And it's like, how long is it going to take you to do that, and then that's where we get really antsy. And we get really impatient. Because like I can't be happy until I'm 140lbs and so then I gotta get to 140lbs as fast as possible. And that leads us to extremes, which is what I talked about #1 and then when it's not sustainable and then we feel even worse about ourselves because maybe we hit the the number but that we never maintained it, and it's just all a big cycle.  

Questions to ponder 38:38 

So if you're up for it, I would love to do a little, a little coaching with you just over this podcast so I have some questions for you that you can answer that can be really profound for you to dive a little bit deeper into this topic. So question number one and if you're really committed to this, you will actually pause this, this podcast as I ask these questions and actually think about them or actually write them down. It's awesome just to sit here and listen. It will be much more powerful, much more effective if you actually take the time to do and ask yourself these questions. So question #1 is, what is the outcome that you want. What's your goal? What are you working towards? Question #2 Is why do you want it? And again, if you really want, if you really want to like do the work and be successful and have this actually do something for you, I really encourage you to pause right now. Ask yourself, like why do I want it? And the follow up question that is, what do you think that it's going to give you? You wanna weigh a 150lbs, awesome. Why do you want it? What do you think that it's what, what do you think is gonna be different then? I like to ask that question like, what do you think is different there than here? Because in our mind, usually when we've set a goal, it's because we think there is going to be different than here and getting really clear on what your mind is saying will be different can be really enlightening and really helpful. Once you have figured that out and this sometimes takes a little bit of like diving like multiple questions of like why, why, why, why, so what? What do you want? Why do you want it? What's it going to give you? What's that going to give you? What's that going to give? Getting deep down to what it is actually that you are, that you're wanting and realizing because once you get there, a lot of people, it's confidence or feeling sexy or you know feeling enough, feeling whole, those often are like things that people will if they dig deep enough they'll find or underlying those those weight loss goals. Realizing that those things almost always can be achieved without weight loss. Weight loss isn't going to automatically fix your confidence or your relationship with your partner or your negative thoughts about yourself or even your health, and this is a big one guys, because a lot of times people get really held up and they're like, well, Amber I actually, I actually really need to lose 50lbs because like my health like I I need to for my health and it's really important to understand that health is found in behaviors much more than is found in your weight. OK, I'm going to say that again, health is found in behaviors not in your weight. Meaning working out is a healthy behavior regardless of how much you weigh. You can be, you can be more healthy today by working out, even if it doesn't cause weight loss today, that is a healthy behavior. And so when we, if you really do want to focus on health, focusing on healthy behaviors is something that you can do, and something that can change your health today, even without losing a single pound, and that can be a really powerful place to come from, but any you know most things that people say that they want can be achieved without the weight loss.  

Now I'm not saying you can't want weight loss. I'm not saying you shouldn't set a weight goal. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a fat loss journey. I'm not saying any of that. I actually completely support women working towards the goals that they want, but here's the key, when you work towards that goal, from a place of completeness, from a place of wholeness, that goal becomes really fun. It becomes really low pressure. And it comes from a place of desire rather than wanting. What do I mean by that? Wanting when you want something, there's an inherent a statement that I don't have something. I want something which inherently means that I don't have it. It's like it comes from a place of lack. I want something I don't have it and I want it. And that's how a lot of us are going through our our journeys of like I lack this thing, so I want to have this weight loss goal rather than what's much more empowering is coming from a place of desire. Desire is from a place of wholeness. It's a place of like I'm already enough. I'm, I can already be confident, I can already have a great relationship with my partner. I can already say kind things to myself like I am already whole and I desire that thing and now that becomes a really fun thing to work towards. Like I said, it becomes low pressure. So many of us are on a weight loss journey and we wonder why we're not successful and when you step back and you take a look out of it, you realize you've created an intense amount of pressure around the school, as if if I don't hit that goal, then I'm not enough. If I don't hit that goal, then I'm not confident. If I don't hit that goal, I'm never going to be successful. If I don't hit that goal, I’m not worthy. Those are some high stakes friend like no wonder here like shying away from them. It's like you're you're trying to like put yourself into the Super Bowl and think that you're going to perform optimally, you've set the stakes so high that it freaks your brain out. Our brain does not like high stakes. It is very scary to our brain and so what's really going to be successful is if you can come from a place of desire rather than wanting a place of low pressure, a place of curiosity of like you know would be fun is like let's let's go challenge ourselves and do this thing, let's see if we can lose 20 pounds. And it comes from a place of like I'm already enough. I'm I'm good. I'm, you know I'm an awesome person. I am. I talk to myself kindly. I'm confident and I would love to like challenge myself and lose the 20 pounds. That is a powerful place to be able to have a weight loss journey from OK, but if we have this idea that it's going to fix us, we're going to crash and burn every single time.  

Fifth Mistake: Setbacks are inevitable 45:12 

Alright, last and final one,  #5 I wish that I had known, that Setbacks Are Inevitable and what really matters is how you handle them. Now I like, I even hesitated to call these setbacks because I feel like it gives the impression that like something's wrong when they happen and friend nothing is wrong. OK, there's nothing wrong with what we like often look at and call setbacks. In fact I, I like to think of them as like switchbacks. I remember when I was a kid, we did a ton of hiking when I was a kid. My dad is really into like outdoors. We did a ton of camping growing up. Every 4th of July, we would do the same hike. In fact, we just took our kids up so I grew up in Seattle, and we did the same hike every single 4th of July. It was just like our 4th of July tradition and we, my parents moved away from Seattle when right when I got married. So in 2004, and I hadn't been up back up to Seattle since because my family didn't live there anymore and but my brother, a couple years ago graduated from YouthUp. And so the whole family went up there to celebrate his graduation and to be there for his graduation. And I I got to take my kids up there. And we actually went on this hike that I I took. I had to take my kids on this hike that we went on every 4th of July. And wouldn't you know in Seattle fashion it rained on on the hike and my kids still talk about it to this day of like what a fun hike that was for them. They just loved how it rained on the hike, you know it doesn't rain very much in Southern California, so we're not, we're not very used the rain, but anyway, this hike. So I used to go on this hike all the time with my family. We hiked a lot and and I remember during hikes when I was like little and I first understood like what a switch back was like. If you have never been on a hike and you start going on a switch back, it feels like you aren't going anywhere, right, you're going all the way to the right and then it curves and it goes all the way to the left and it curves and goes all you're like where am I going? I'm literally just like walking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. This isn't actually taking me anywhere, but you know that's actually on purpose, like a switch back is on purpose because going straight up the hill would be way, way too challenging, way too hard. And so we switch back and forth and it can feel like you're going backwards, or it can feel like you're having a set back, but in reality that's just the trail like that's the trail to go up the mountain. And it's the same thing with our journey we often will see things as “setbacks” or “I fell off the wagon”, but I wish that we would look at those more of realizing like that there's nothing wrong here like that's part of the process, the part of the process is, “falling off the wagon”, and the differences between the people who are successful and the people who aren't, it's not that the people who are successful, never fall off the wagon. That that is not what makes them successful. What makes them successful is what happens when they fall off the wagon. It's what make what happens when they have those setbacks when they you know have discouragement. That's what matters, and so the most important thing is how you deal with what you view as a set back. Women who are successful are able to reframe setbacks, get back on the horse as fast as possible and keep going. So if you're in a moment right now where you're experiencing one of those step backs or you're feeling frustrated or you're feeling discouraged, there's nothing wrong here. It really is about how how long you gonna stay in this in this feeling of discouragement. How quickly are you going to get back on track? How quickly are you going to regroup and handle what you're looking at is a set back and if you need a little bit of help Episode 105 is a fantastic listen. The title is What To Tell Yourself When You're Discouraged. So if you feel like you're in a moment where you're a little frustrated or you're a little discouraged and you need some help reframing it, need some help getting back on the again, some help getting out of that discouragement, go listen to episode 105.  

Recap 49:19 

Alright, so those are the five things that I wish that I would have known before starting a weight loss journey and I hope that it offered something to you and maybe gave you something to chew on as you embark on or continue on in your journey. So just to recap, #1 Extremes prevent long term results. #2 Fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing. #3 The more you can approach the process, like a scientist, the more successful you'll be. #4 Weight loss is not going to fix you and #5 Setbacks are inevitable, what matters is how you handle them. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and if you did, will you do me a favor and leave a rating and review wherever you're listening to this podcast. Those really help the the podcast to be able to find new listeners and people who would also benefit and and find value in the podcast so you know for free content creator like myself, one of the best things that you can do is to leave a rate and review and or share this episode with a friend. Those are the two best ways you can say thank you to putting out free content for you. And last reminder, we will be opening doors MACROS 101, so if you want to not miss that and you're curious and want to find out more about becoming a macro scientist and learning how to read the data from your body and make adjustments and figure out what's going to be most effective and enjoyable for you and the, the results that you want to see with your body. I highly recommend MACROS 101. You can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist to get on the wait list for when we open doors. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

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