311: How To “Start Over” In Your Fitness Journey

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 311.

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.

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber, and this is the first episode of 2024 and I can hardly believe that it is a new year. I took a break for the month of December. You may have noticed and we brought back a bunch of our most popular episodes from 2023 and we played them in December. But I'm back and I'm ready to record some new podcast episodes. We have some amazing guests lined up this year for 2024. I have some awesome topics in mind to be able to talk to you guys about and I'm just excited for the year.  

My goal for this episode 01:25 

In the past, at the beginning of the year, I have done a goals episode where I really kind of pull back the curtain and share some of my goals that I'm setting for the new year with the podcast listeners. I'm not doing that this year for a variety of reasons, but I do want to share one of my goals with you because it relates directly to the podcast. And that is my goal to try and bring some people onto the podcast that maybe are a little bit bigger names in the industry that have maybe a little bit bigger following, have done some bigger things in the industry to be able to share their experience and their knowledge and their wisdom with you here on the podcast.  

So this happened, it's been kind of something I've been thinking about is, hey, we're getting to the point where, you know, when you start a podcast, you have to build some momentum. You have to build some strict cred, if you will that you know, showing that people want to listen to your podcast because people who have more going on in their life, they want to make it worth it if they're gonna come to the podcast, they want to make sure, like lots of people are going to hear it. And so, you know, we took some time to build some strict cred with the podcast. We now have close to 5 million downloads. And we've really shown, hey, people are listening to this podcast. And so I feel like it's time to go start pitching to some bigger names, to some bigger people in the industry and say, hey, we have, we have this group of listeners who love to hear your expertise and this, this actually started. I went to a business conference in the beginning of December. And at this business conference, one of the first things that we did was, you know, talk about some hairy scary goals. And this question of like, if you had all the confidence in the world and you couldn't fail, what would you do in your business? And the thing that came to mind for me was hey, I would go and ask some people who I'm a little afraid to ask to be on the podcast, if they would be willing to be on the podcast. So then of course, at this business conference, the next step was, OK, cool. Now in the next 3 days go do that, go do that thing that was really scary or that's on your list and so I said OK, I'm going to pitch to you know, somebody that I've been wanting to have on the podcast. And you know the worst thing they could say is no. So, I reached out to Heidi Powell, who will be coming on the podcast, spoiler alert, in a couple of weeks. And I asked if she'd be on the podcast, and she graciously accepted and I was like, why was I so nervous about that? It would just kind of blew my mind that it was like, yeah, I would love to come on the podcast. So, that set me up for OK, 2024 is going to be the year that I'm going to shoot my shot. I'm going to see who we can get on the podcast and see who I can bring you to provide really awesome content and really awesome value here in this space.  

Disclaimer 04:11 

Now to make it really clear, just because I don't want anybody like twisting this up. I don't think the amount of value that you can provide is equivalent to the number of followers that you have or the size of the platform that you have. I'm not saying that we have some awesome like podcast interviews on the podcast with people who have like less than 1000 people following them. Value is not equivalent to size of platform. However, I know that there are other people that you follow in the industry and that maybe have are part of this, you know, have a bigger platform and I would love to collaborate with some of those people so that you, we can bring them on the podcast. You can hear them here on this podcast as well and be able to share their message and their wisdom. So just want to make sure we're not getting our, you know, panties and a bunch of thinking that I think that platform equals the value you have to offer the world that let's not get that complicated. 

Fitness Restart: New Year Insights 05:05 

Okay. But for today's topic, as I was thinking about, hey, it's the new year. What are people going to need and or want to hear about? This topic came to mind and it's been one that I've had people ask me all the time, especially when I get on coaching calls inside of MACROS 101 or inside of our coaching community. It often happens where people get started. They have some progress and then for whatever reason, they fall off the wagon and so then I get this question of, Amber, how do I restart? How do I get back on track? How do I start over in my fitness journey? And I coach on this a lot, so I thought it would be a fantastic conversation to be able to bring to the podcast. And I really have 3 thoughts when it comes to starting over in your fitness journey, and again we're recording this and releasing at the beginning of January because many of you may be sitting in this position, the holidays happened, who knows what happened over the holidays. Maybe you had real good intentions going to the holidays. Maybe you were excellent. Maybe you followed through with your vision or maybe not. And maybe you're sitting here saying, OK, it's a new year, we're passed the holidays. It's time to buckle down. It's time to execute on the goals that I have set for myself, and so you may be asking yourself this question: How do I start over?  

And really, how do I start over so that I can be the most successful in the long run? Because I truly believe that most people who are starting a fitness journey are not starting it with the idea or intention that in a couple of weeks or months they're going to fall off the wagon. Most of us would like to start our fitness journey and have it be something that we're able to maintain or keep going with long term. I think that's what most of us want. We're not going into this planning to fail or planning to give up or planning to have things that happen in our life that make us fall off the wagon. We're planning to hopefully be successful long term and so if that's you and you're sitting in a space and whether it's the first of the year or whether you're listening to this months later and you're just coming back because you're like, oh gosh, I feel like I'm starting over. My hope is that this conversation and some of this, this coaching conversation that we're going to have together is going to be really valuable in helping you to start over or restart or get back on the wagon.  

First thought: No to “Starting Over” 07:25 

Okay. Like I said, I have three main thoughts about this. Number one, I actually hate the term starting over. So last year I made my husband and I took a trip out to South Dakota. So Carley has been in the business for five years. She's my Integrator. She's basically the COO of the business. And she's been with me forever, worked with me. I've told her story before. But the way that she came to work with me is she just sent me an e-mail and said, hey, Amber, I want to work for you. And I'm willing to do it for free. And that caught my attention. And so I interviewed her and it was very clear, very quickly that she was going to make a great addition to the business. And I hired her and she's been with me for years and years and years. We decided that we were going to do a couples trip with me and my husband and Carley and her husband and since I've never been to South Dakota, she lives in South Dakota, we decided to take a trip out to South Dakota and we, you know, stayed at their house for a night, I think. And then we went over to the Badlands in South Dakota, which is gorgeous. We went to Mt Rushmore and then we went over to the Badlands and did some hiking and just had a really, really great time spending time with the four of us.  

So we went on this hike and we kind of knew where we were going. We had some idea. We, like, looked at the map ahead of time, but there was a lot of like offshoots of this hike and you know, it wasn't, we weren't obviously as the story progresses, weren't tightly prepared of like which way to go. So, we got on this hike and it was great and it was beautiful and we were trying to get to this Vista and we got to this place where it there was like a split in the trail and we like sat there and we're like which way do we go? We're not quite sure. We kind of thought about, you know, we made our best guess of like which way to go? And we ended up picking towards the right and continuing to hike and hike and hike and hike, and finally, I mean maybe 30 to 45 to an hour later, finally realized I think that we are going the wrong way. I think that we're not ending up where we wanted to end up and we had hiked quite far away from the actual path that we wanted to go on. And so we, you know, did what you do. We turned around, and we backtracked along the path that we had spent a really long time walking down and made it back to where we needed to be and honestly, like this is the frustrating part. Honestly, like if we had taken the left instead of the right, it was not that like it wasn't very far, it was just around the bend so we can kind of quite see that that was where the vista was going to be and it, like, we just took a really long, long detour where it would have been very short had we gone the right way.  

Get rid of the language of starting over 10:19 

So the point of telling the story is that what we did not do is we did not go back to the beginning of the trail, right? We didn't say, Oh my gosh, we got to start over. We got to hike all the way back to the beginning of the trail and then we gotta start back. And hike all the way back out, you know, to so we can take the right turn. No. We backtracked the area that we had gone the wrong way, we got to that, where that fork was in the road and then we went the path that we wanted to go on. And so, this whole idea that, you know, I think of life as a journey, as maybe you're hiking up a mountain. And yeah, you may get off path. You may get off track. You may take a wrong turn and you may feel like ohh gosh I got so far off track, I don't know how I did this. I don't know what, how it happened. I'm really frustrated and mad at myself that it happened. And then we say to ourselves, I have to start over like even that language do you see how frustrating that is? How disempowering that is? How now you've already set yourself up for feeling like everything that you did to that point didn't really matter. And so I just really push back against this idea that you are starting over and I think language is so powerful, the language that you use with yourself, the language that you use with others is so incredibly important. And so if language is so important, we got to be careful about the language that we use. So, I personally dislike even using the language of, I'm starting over because it is discouraging. It makes you feel like you're back at square one. And to be honest, you aren't. You aren't back at square one. So my preference would be to get rid of even the language of starting over.  

Second Thought: Starting over with experience 12:07 

Second thought, if you're like, OK, well, I'm. I don't. I'm still going to use the language of starting over. OK, that's fine. But I would clarify that you are starting over, but with experience and I think this is really incredibly important because: one, when we focus on starting over, it almost like, it negates everything that has happened. It's almost like that was in the past. It's happened and I'm starting over fresh. I'm going to, you know, take my path. Instead of realizing that the past has some value and we don't want to just ignore it. We don't want to just say, oh, that's in the past and now I'm just focusing on getting started again. The past has an incredible value and has incredible lessons for you to learn if you're willing to learn it. The problem that I see with a lot of people is that they aren't willing to take the time and effort and introspection to actually learn the lesson that life is presenting them. You see the way that I see it. We say something like I would like to change this or I would like to reach this goal or I would like to have this happen in my life and we put that out into the world. We put it out into the universe and I believe that as soon as we do that, life conspires to give us the things that need to happen in order to create the result that we want.  

Learn to not care what other people think 13:37 

So if we say something like, I would like to start a business and serve 1000 women this year and we set that as our goal, I believe that life conspires to help us have the experiences to be able to make that goal possible. But then what happens is we get those experiences and they're hard or they're scary or they're not what we expected and we go, what is this happening to me? What's ,what's, why is this like ,why is, am I on the wrong path? And life's like, no, no, no, like you said, you wanted to help 1000 women. In order to help 1000 women, you have to learn to not care what other people think, and so then life throws you these things to teach you that lesson, to not care what people think. And we throw our hands up being like I can't do this, like why is life throwing me these things? You have experiences, and those experiences have lessons embedded into them. And the quicker you learn those lessons my friend, the quicker you're going to make progress. So many people though get stuck in having the same lesson be presented over and over and over and over again. And they don't learn the darn lesson.  

Cool Fable 14:44 

There's a really cool fable that I like that talks about how when you know, God's trying to get your attention. First, God throws a tiny pebble and then if you don't pay attention, God throws a rock. And then if you don't pay attention, God throws a boulder. And I think so often times, especially when we feel stuck, like we're repeating the same issue and same struggle over and over and over again. It's like if we pay attention when the pebble is thrown at us, we don't have to have the boulder be thrown at us.  

Restart with Lessons, Not Limits 15:16 

Okay, so back to this, this idea that you're starting over, but with experience. The value that like., if you don't take time to learn the lesson, it's going to be represented to you. So my recommendation, if you are “starting over” is to spend at least a little bit of time in self-reflection on what lessons were present that were presented to you previously. How can you learn some of those lessons so that you do not have to repeat them? Now, this is very different and I want to make this really clear because this is an important distinction. What I am not telling you to do is to bring your past with you in a way that is limiting. So, oftentimes what I see women do is they bring their past with them and their past limits what is possible for them in the future. Example, I really, you struggled to lose weight in the past. It was really hard for me. Therefore, it will be hard for me in the future. I struggled to lift that weight in the past, therefore I won't be able to do it in the future. See how that's like bringing your past with you in a way that is limiting. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying we want to carry our past with us. What I am saying is we do need to spend enough time in the past and in self-reflection to learn the lessons that were presented to us so that we do not have to repeat them again in the future.  

Start over with experience 16:44 

So if you are “starting over”, you are starting over with experience. You're starting over with hopefully some lessons and I do a lot of work in MACROS 101 to help clients to learn these lessons faster and to be able to tease them out because sometimes it can be hard to see the lessons in your own life. I like the saying that it it's hard to read the prescription bottle from the inside and so many of us are on the inside of the prescription bottle trying to learn the lessons. And that's where mentorship and coaching can be really valuable to give you some of those perspectives. But regardless, you can do this self-reflection as well. Thinking back to when you got started previously, what tripped you up? Where was the pivot point for you? How was that decision made? What can you do to set yourself up for more success in the future? If you know that maybe that same struggle that came up last time, what if you just anticipated that was going to come up this time? How would you handle it differently? And spending some of this time in the self-reflection and planning for that same thing to happen again can set you up for success this time around.  

Start Small, Build Momentum 17:58 

Okay, so that's all. Well, and good Amber. Yeah, but we got our mindset, right? We're approaching this, you know, with a positive mindset, fantastic. But what do I do? That's always the question people come back to. OK, that's great, Amber. But what do I do? I got you. Here's how you get started, and of course it's going to be a question because the answer is going to be slightly different for each of you. But the question you're going to ask yourself once you've reminded yourself you're not starting over, once you've spent a little bit of time of planning ahead, learning the lessons and planning ahead for those same lessons, perhaps to be same roadblocks, perhaps to be thrown your way again. Then we ask ourselves the question, what is something light and easy that I can do today that will get me some momentum, that will build some momentum for me?  

The reason that this question is so valuable is, one, it breaks it down into something that is light and easy. Too often I see people trying to dive head first into the deep end and track everything. Take their starting weight measurements. Pre plan, pre log. Create a meal plan, meal prep for the entire month. And there's a reason that their brain doesn't get them started because that is overwhelming and it feels too big. It's too big of a chunk to bite off. So instead, if you ask yourself what's something light and easy, it should feel light and it should feel easy to be able to accomplish. Now the other key and part of this question is that it should be something that's going to move you towards your goals. So, if you've been drinking 40 ounces of water a day, that probably shouldn't be your goal, because that's not something that is. It's not a change, it's not something that you haven't been doing, and it's not something that's going to build momentum to where do you want to go. So I want you thinking of something that you haven't been doing up to this point, and is something that will signal to your brain, hey, we're making a change. Hey, we're switching things up here, but it's not so big of a change that your brain freaks out and says, oh, I'm overwhelmed, and it and it stops you.  

Third Thought: Start doing something today 20:17 

The last piece is that it has to be able to be something done today. Like, I don't want something that you're like, oh, I'm going to. I'm going to meal prep for the whole entire week. So, you know, I have to go to the grocery store. Maybe I'll go to the grocery store in a couple of days. And I have to make it like. No, no, no, no. Like I want it something that you can write on your To Do List today. And then check it off. If you're like me, you're going to get a big, huge dopamine hit from just writing something down and checking it off. I'm one of those people who oftentimes after I do something, I will then write it on my list so that I can check it off. That's how much I like checking things off, but it needs to be something that you can do today so that you can get that momentum and you can get that dopamine hit of like, yes, I've now started because honestly, we make starting such a big deal as if again all these things have to be in line for you to “start”.  

Decide, Act, Build Momentum Gradually 21:10 

My friend, you know you get started, you literally say I have now started, but that that's it. Like this moment. You can start in this moment. It really is just a decision to start. It doesn't even have to be codified in any action. But I know that our brain does like action. Our brain does like out external movement. And so I think we can say, Hey, I have decided to start, check one and something light and easy that I will, can do that will codify or prove to myself that I'm starting is today I'm going to take a 10-minute walk. It can be as simple as that. Today I'm going to pencil in all of my workouts for the week. Today I'm going to eat a vegetable with lunch and dinner. Again, this I'm giving you examples not because those are like the best examples or those, the right examples are the ones that you should use. I'm giving you examples so you can see what could be something that is light and easy that builds momentum for you. Now again, the best way that you're going to answer this question is for you to ask yourself the question and see what your brain comes up with what something light and easy I can do today that will move me forward towards my goals and build momentum. That's it. That's the question. Ask your brain, questions are beautiful because our brain is conditioned to answer questions. So, when you give the brain a question, it starts searching for an answer. And so likely once you ask yourself that question, you'll have an idea then that's what you execute on. You say I'm starting today because it's just a decision to start. And then you're following through with that thing that feels light and easy. So now you have an easy win. Right. It's like the brain loves a win. We gotta, we want an easy win and that what that does now is it builds momentum and then we can do the same thing tomorrow. What something light and easy that I can do today that will continue to build the momentum towards where I want to go and that is how we start to gradually baby step our way towards shifting your life. It happens one day at a time. It happens one decision at a time. It happens one step at a time.  

Recap 23:20 

So that's it friend, you are not starting over. And if you want to keep using the word starting over, you're at least starting over with experience and you've taken the time to learn those lessons, and then you're asking yourself the question what something light and easy I can do today that's going to create that momentum, that's going to create that that easy win for you to prove to yourself that you are doing something different, that the future is going to be different than the past. I'm so glad you're here. 2024 is going to be amazing year and I have lots of in store for Biceps After Babies Radio for you. 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.  

Outro

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