216: “My Friend Looks Amazing, What Am I Doing Wrong?” | (LIVE Coaching Session)

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio episode number 216.

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 PRs. 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.

 

Amber B  0:47  

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And to kick off this episode, I want to share a little bit of a backstory as to how I came into coaching and that evolution that I had. But I think every coach, to some extent, has, I think, and I think honestly any person who is doing anything you learn and grow and get better over time, right? That's why practice and time are so important because we are constantly growing and evolving and getting better at things. 

 

Amber B  1:24  

So when I first started coaching, I started coaching back in 2016. My coaching looked very, very different from the way that it does now. And you know, a lot of that was trial and error, figuring out what worked and what didn't work. But one of the things that I learned very quickly as I started taking clients and coaching clients, was that I could give two clients completely similar structures, completely similar programs, macros, workouts, and clients would get vastly different results. And you may say, Well, of course, like you can't get the same macros to every person or the same workouts, every person, they're not gonna get the same results. Yes, you would be right. But what I am saying is that more times than not the difference in the results, clients with getting had nothing to do with the actual programming had nothing to do with the actual instruction or the information that I was given a client. Rather, it had to do with the application. It had to do with whether that client actually executed on the plan. 

 

Amber B  2:35  

And if I'm being honest, that wasn't something that I was really prepared for. In my mind, it seems like Well, of course, when you're hiring a coach, and you're paying said coach, you're probably going to do what they tell you to do. And I think a lot of people think that way. And for some people that is,  there is something that changes when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is and paying somebody and that creates an incentive to actually execute. But even so, there were plenty of people who would pay money, and still would fall off the wagon and wouldn't do the plan. They wouldn't follow through, they would say, Hey, I'm gonna do this weekend, and then they wouldn't do it. And there's and first of all, let me say that there's nothing shameful about that. If you're sitting there thinking, Oh, well, that's me. There are more of you out there than I think sometimes we even talk about it. And I think sometimes it can feel very shameful, like, “Oh, I'm the only person who struggles, I'm the only person who's paid for something and didn't follow through.” No friend, you are not the only person who's paid for something and not followed through, I would actually say I think that is more of the majority of people than the other way around. So you're in good hands, you are in good company. There's a lot of us that are out there, myself included, I for sure have paid for things and not executed on them. But I got really curious as to why that was, why I could or and why that was, and how I as a coach could help a client to overcome that because I realized if I could learn how to get a client to take action if I could learn how to help clients to integrate what they were learning into their actual actions. I can help to get clients better results. 

 

Amber B  4:16 

And so I realized that when I first got started with coaching, I thought a lot of my role and responsibility were about accountability. I thought people were essentially paying for accountability, right? That idea of like when you pay, you pay attention. And so I felt like you know people they need this accountability, they're paying for the accountability. So my job as a coach is to hold them accountable. It's to text them, you know, over the weekend it is to check in with them it is to you know, have that back and forth and make sure that they know like they're getting a plan and then they're gonna check back in with me and that extra incentive that it stimulates into some of us to when we know we have to check in with someone we make different choices. And while that can be a part of coaching, I realized very quickly that if I was just providing accountability for my clients, they weren't building that accountability for themselves. And even if that motivated them to take different actions, while they were working with me, it didn't motivate different actions down the road, and long-term results. And so I learned very quickly that I, you know, accountability wasn't the highest level that I could be coaching up. 

 

Amber B  5:26 

Until then, you know, I, I just kind of like going through the evolution of what coaching meant to me. You know, I thought, hey, maybe my role is really as a cheerleader, maybe my role is just to like, rah, rah, hype, somebody up, everyone loves a good hype girl. Right? I love a good hype girl, I love a friend who's gonna, like hype me up and talk me up and tell me how good I am. And you know, cheer for me when I do amazing things that feel really good. So I thought, well, maybe that's my role as a coach is to like, you know, provide that accountability, be that hype girl. And I realized that again, like accountability, never while that feels good in the moment, it didn't provide long-term transformation. 

 

Amber B  6:10 

One of the roles that I find that I do really well with is teaching. Something I've always really loved. I T-aid throughout college, I love teaching. And there's a lot of benefit into people, you know, especially with, like macro counting, there's like a lot of teaching and education component. But I also learned that no matter how good of a teacher I was, just because someone intellectually knew something, didn't mean that they acted on it. And so I found that you know, even with my amazing teaching skills, and my ability to help people to comprehend, you know, more complex subjects, it didn't always change their behavior. And that is, because we all know, on some level, that knowledge in and of itself, just by itself doesn't always change behavior. We all know, that we should probably be getting more sleep. And yet, do we do it? We all know that we, you know, probably should cut certain things out that we're eating or drinking doesn't mean we do it, right. So knowledge doesn't always lead to behavior changes. 

 

Amber B  7:15 

And then I felt like as I progressed, you know, have these realizations, okay? My highest role is not necessarily as providing accountability, or I guess, not only providing accountability, or only being a cheerleader, only being a teacher. But then it also isn't only being an advice giver. And this is a pattern that I fell into a lot early on in my coaching was thinking that people were hiring me for my advice. Because I understood the process, I knew things, I had a deeper understanding and knowledge of things. And so people were hiring me to be able to have access to my brain, to be able to ask me questions and like, have me tell them my opinion, or have me tell them what they should do next. And I spent a lot of time here in coaching, and I think a lot of new coaches do, where we learn all this information, we learn all this stuff about nutrition and workouts, and we feel very well versed in telling clients what to do. And honestly, if I'm being really honest, it's what most people think that they want, as well, which makes this tricky, because most people think that they want to just be told what to do. Just tell me what to do. How did you want to do it, Amber, I promise. But the problem is, as much as you think that that's the case, self-sabotage rears its ugly head in, and like I said before, just because you know, something, just because someone tells you something, just because you're paying that someone doesn't actually mean that you're going to execute it. 

 

Amber B  8:41  

And so I saw this over and over again, is that when I looked at coaching as advice giving, as somebody paying me for my knowledge, it didn't provide them the long-term results that they were seeking. And that was because if I was the guru, if I was the one who had all of the knowledge, then you know, they had access to that for 6, 8, 12 weeks, but then that was taken away. You know, their coaching period of time would end at some point. And when they lacked access to the guru, they didn't know how to find the answers themselves. And I found this all the time when I was coaching, and we would be coming on the end of the 6 or 12, or whatever package that they had purchased. And I would say hey, well, you know, what questions do you have? And the person would be like, I don't know, because I don't know what questions I'm going to have in a month or three months or seven months or a year from like, I don't know what questions I'm going to have. I feel like I have all my questions answered right now, where I'm at right now and my journey, but I have zero ideas of the questions that I'm going to have in six months from now. And that always stuck with me because I was the type of coach that I didn't want my clients just to get results in the moment but I wanted to get them to get long-term results. And so as I heard people saying that I had this realization, that by telling people what to do by just giving advice, that I was actually harming my clients long term, they liked it in the moment. They liked it, that they could come to me and ask me a question, and I would tell them what to do. They liked it at the moment. But it was in the long term actually hurting them. It's kind of like how my kids, you know, your kids, like, try to trick you into doing their homework for them. My son will do this all the time, they'll say, oh, like, give me the pencil. And, you know, he's kind of like trying to coax me into like actually doing his homework for him. And in the short run, he might really like that if I sat down and did his math homework for him. In fact, he probably would like that he'd liked that a lot. But as a parent, I know that by doing that, maybe that homework assignment becomes really easy for him. But if he doesn't actually ever learn how to do it himself, in the long run, it's going to be a lot harder for him. And that's what I felt like I was doing with my clients is I was like, giving them what they wanted at the moment while sacrificing what they needed in the long run.

 

Amber B  11:07 

And so over time, and with lots of coaching myself and lots of trial and error with clients and learning a lot about the science and the art of coaching, I stumbled onto what I like to call and what I have termed transformational coaching. And transformational coaching is a little bit of all of those, I think there's some accountability in it, I think there's some surely there's some teaching, maybe even there's some advice giving. But on the core level, transformational coaching really comes from getting on the deeper level of figuring out what's keeping a client stuck, and helping them to shift it, and helping them learn how to shift it. So it's not me doing the shifting, it's helping to empower them to learn how to do the shifting themselves so that in the long run, they can be very successful on their own. 

 

Amber B  11:50 

And so with transformational coaching, one of the keys that I use a lot in my coaching is questions. Questions that are able to uncover, are able to dig deep, are able to guide, are able to help a client to be able to get better results. You may have heard me say the quote, I think it was a Tony Robbins quote, that said, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask. And a lot of times, we are asking ourselves terrible questions and then wondering why we aren't getting good results. And when we can uplevel the quality of our questions, we start to get better answers. And we start to take better action and move forward in our journey. 

 

Amber B  12:36  

And so as I had this realization, and I started being able to, you know, bring coaches on into MACROS 101 into my sphere to coach for me, I realized, Hey, I got to, I kind of codify how I teach, how I coach, the different the way that I'm getting clients results, I have to make this into something that's replicable that I can teach people how to do this. And so I, you know, first Coaching Academy started as an internal project, it started just realizing, hey, in order to continue to grow, and to continue expanding my business, I need to be able to teach other coaches how to coach the way that I do. I need to learn how to like replicate myself because I can only coach so many people at one time. And so if I can teach other people to do it the same way that I do it, then we can like multiply myself and multiply the people that we can serve. And so I, you know, learned how and started developing a curriculum and a process and a way to teach my coaches how to coach like I do. And it was really successful. And, you know, I say that, like I'm surprised but like, you know, on some level it is you don't know, hey, is this something that I just naturally do? Or is this teachable? Can I teach this to other people, there are some things that we all do that are just like come super easy to us, and you just have talent for them. They're not actually something you can teach somebody. But I learned very quickly, by doing this, that coaching is a skill. It's not just something that I was like randomly born with, it's something that's a skill that I developed. And I got really good at teaching other people how to do it. 

 

Amber B  14:13  

So then that started to formulate, in my mind this idea of well, if I can teach my internal coaches how to coach like me, what if I could teach other people how to coach and how to come from a transformational coaching level, how to to get down to the real root of what is keeping somebody stuck, not just advice giving, not just cheerleading, not just, you know, teaching people or providing accountability, but actually creating transformation from the inside out. And so that's exactly where Biceps After Babies Coaching Academy came from, was wanting to help more coaches to coach from a deeper level because I think there's a lot of coaches out there who have such good hearts. You know, that was me for a long time. It's like I had such a good heart. I just wanted to help people. And I thought that was through teaching and advice giving and accountability and, you know, cheerleading, I thought that was the way that I was gonna be able to be a good coach. And I realized that, while my heart was good, I was actually not helping my clients long-term. So I think there are a lot of coaches out there that are very similar that they want to provide, that they want to help, they want to coach, they want to create transformation from inside out because they want to create long-term results in their clients. They just don't know how. Of course, you don't know who's teaching you this. Most of the nutrition certifications are teaching you about the science of nutrition, the science of weight loss, the science of lifting the science of all these things, which is really important but it can't be the end. Because coaching is not just a science, coaching is a science and an art and it's a blend of both. And so that's when I created Biceps After Babies Coaching Academy, where I help teach coaches how to get to the bottom of things, how to deep dive, dig deep with their questions, and helping a client to discover what's really keeping them stuck, and then how to shift out of it. And that's what you're going to hear today on the podcast. 

 

Amber B  11:51 

So on the podcast, I am bringing a live coaching session that I did inside of our MACROS 101 round that's happening right now. And I had a conversation with Laura inside of MACROS 101. And I thought it would be such a good coaching conversation to bring in and put on the podcast. One because it's a really pertinent topic. It is this topic of what am I doing wrong? Doing the things. In her case, she talks a lot about buffering with food. And you know, bringing up this idea of self-sabotage and working through, you know,  why she's doing this why it's important to her. But as we dig deeper into it, you'll start to notice that things come up other than the question that she initially asked. So as we listen to this conversation, some things I want you to notice. The first thing is the initial question that Laura asked. And I want you to notice that the question that Laura asks, is not where we end up at the end of the conversation. And this is what I mean by the difference between giving advice and finding what really is going on. Because had she just asked me this question and I just spouted out what I knew about buffering and you know, the process of like moving through buffering, I just answered the direct question that she gave me, we would have never uncovered all the things that I uncovered through this coaching conversation. So that's the first thing I want you to notice where we started is not where we ended. And that's often what we'll find with really quality coaching is the question that's being asked is not actually the question, we got to figure out what the actual question where that actually is coming from. And so you'll notice that in the coaching interaction. The second thing that I want you to pay attention to, is that while I do some teaching in this conversation, pay attention to how much of the session is listening to her talk and share and asking her questions. So the amount of time that I'm spent asking her questions, rather than speaking to her and to the group at large, is a lot. It's a lot more about investigating and asking questions to get deeper. And that is because the basis of good coaching is the ability to ask really good questions.

 

Amber B  18:27 

In this coaching conversation, we talk about buffering, we talk about self-sabotage, we talk about developing and realizing what your big why is. We talked about comparison, we talk about training for different body types. And we talk about this idea of feeling insecure in your body in the way that you see your body versus the way that other people see your body. So I am so excited for you to be able to listen to this coaching session with Laura. 

 

Amber B  18:59 

If you are interested in learning more about transformational coaching, and specifically how we start to learn, how to ask better questions, how as a coach, you can dive deeper and stay, you know move from that surface leve,l advice giving and cheerleading and move to a deeper transformational level of coaching, I have a free class that I will be hosting on May 31. It's called Make Money and Change Lives: Become a Transformational Coach. And you can register for this class at bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach. And so if you're interested if you're already a coach, or if there's a part of you that would like to become a coach, and you want to learn more about the transformational coaching style and start to learn the skill of transformational coaching. Then I invite you to come to our class on May 31. That's bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach. Now without further ado, let's hop into that live coaching session with Laura.

 

Laura  19:57  

Hi Laura.  What's up? 

 

Amber B  19:59  

How are you? 

 

Laura  20:00  

I'm good. 

 

Amber B  20:02  

How can I help?

 

Laura  20:04  

All right, I hope I can articulate this. I'm kind of nervous about my question. But, and I really resonated a lot with what Nicole said, the very first person. So a lot of that was kind of on the same lines. But I feel like I have not really gotten to the bottom of my why. And there was somebody on another coaching call that you said, you had need to have integrity with yourself and I resonated with that but I still feel like I'm not getting to the bottom of my why. I have not, I'm trying to be better about my counting and keeping my records. But I started macro counting in January, and I've been in a cut. But I do a lot of buffering at night, and just self-sabotage. So I resonated with, I think it was I can't remember it was a podcast or a call, where one of the coaches were saying, you know, get to the bottom of what is it making you feel any better. And it's not, it's not making me feel any better. So I feel like if I got to the heart of my why, then I could maybe stop the self-sabotage but maybe I need deep counseling, I don't know. 

 

Amber B  21:27  

Okay, so this is such a good thing because I find this thought a lot. And I haven't been able to suss out if it's because it's the way I'm teaching it or if it's just the way that our brains start to work when we're searching for a solution. Figuring out your “why” is a vitally important piece. It is not the silver bullet for self-sabotage. Okay, it is one tool that we can utilize to help but sometimes I find people placing such incredible importance on the why as if it's like, once I discover the why all of my buffering, all of my self-sabotage, all of my weekend troubles are just there, it's going to be healed, because I'm gonna have this beautiful line, it's just gonna solve everything. And that's very, very rarely the case. And so I think I want it for any of us who have felt that way of like, oh, obviously, my why is not big enough, because I'm still self-sabotaging, of releasing yourself a little bit from that, and realizing that it's just a tool. It's a valuable tool, but it's not the tool. It works in conjunction with other things that we're doing to help you kind of get to the root of that self-sabotage. 

 

Amber B  22:39

So yes, we can totally work on helping you to feel like you have a solid “why: and that you're really confident with that. And you're like, it makes you feel something in your body, we can totally do that. But even if we get there, I just want you to give yourself some grace of recognizing, even if we get there, it doesn't mean everything's going to be you're going to make every choice you're ever going to make is always going to be in alignment with set goals. I wish it was that easy. But it's not that easy. So, I would like to work on what you think would be most valuable to you. We can work on getting to the bottom of your why or we can address the buffering, which you think would be more valuable to you?

 

Laura  23:26  

1. b) the buffering because I felt like that I feel like if I could stop doing that, because then I would have the bigger or what I would have what I wanted, you know, and maybe that's a lie I'm telling myself, I don't know.

 

Amber B  23:46  

What do you want? You said I will have what I want, what do you want? 

 

Laura  23:49  

Well, I feel very vain saying this. I've always been a fit, healthy person. But I so resonated with the last podcast you did about being fit and tone. I do a lot of working out but I feel like I should look completely different. And so it's like, am I working out smarter or am I just spinning my wheels? I enjoy working out, I enjoy exercising, I love just even walking. Okay, I have to say this even though I've listened to the podcast about my body will never look like somebody else's. But a very good friend of mine joined a gym and started doing macro counting and she looks amazing. And so I feel like she's doing everything right and I'm not and so it's like what am I doing wrong? So yeah, anyway,  that's good.

 

Amber B  24:48  

That's good. Is it possible to do everything right and to get different results than somebody else? 

 

Laura  25:00  

Do everything right and have different results? Yes, I would say yes. 

 

Amber B  25:05  

Okay, cool. So maybe it's not a fact matter of you doing this wrong.

 

Laura  25:10  

Okay

 

Amber B  25:11  

It's maybe not a matter of you doing it wrong at all. It could be that you're both doing it right and you're simply getting different results. Okay, and we can look at the results that you're getting and we can make tweaks and we can, I'm going to work with you on that. But when we come from a place of like, I'm doing this wrong. How does that make you feel? 

 

Laura  25:33  

Bad. Yeah, it makes me feel like I'm not good enough. Yeah. 

 

Amber B  25:40  

Right. Yeah. And so then when we make decisions from that place, what kind of decisions do you make from the place of “I'm not good enough, this isn't working,” like what kind of decisions happen from that?

 

Laura  25:45  

Poor, poor decisions. Shame-filled decisions.

 

Amber B  25:47  

Poor decisions? Exactly. And what happens from the place of recognizing maybe I'm not doing this wrong, maybe I'm doing it just as right as she is, and we're just getting simply different results. Now, what do you present to? 

 

Laura  26:09  

I see like a step out of the hole to where I am.

 

Amber B  26:13  

Right? Yeah. And so then we can make new decisions from that place, and you can already see that you're going to make better decisions moving forward than in that place of shame. Okay. So that sort of thing and for what it's worth, that is absolutely true. Two people can do the same thing and get vastly different results, two people can do the right things and get vastly different results. Like that's how bodies work. And it's why comparison can be so damaging, and so dangerous. And I know, we all know, we're not supposed to compare, and we all do compare, right? Like, it's one of those things that just like we all know, we shouldn't do, but we do it anyway. And it helps to just be mindful of it like you can't compare an apple to an orange like they are different. But apples never gonna look like the orange, the orange is never gonna look like the apple. No matter how great of a tree the apple is on. Like, you can't change an apple to an orange. Okay, so we're gonna work and I'm not saying drop all your goals Laura, you're never gonna get there, like that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying when we can come from a place of like, less shame and less guilt. You're going to get so much further in your journey. Okay, you said that you want it to look completely different. Those were the words you used, can you eliminate completely different to me, what does that mean? 

 

Laura  27:29  

Well, okay, I said completely different. I'm not sure if I technically mean. 

 

Amber B  27:36  

It's okay but you there's a meaning behind that like what does that actually mean? 

 

Laura  27:46  

I think to seem so vain but I think when somebody looks at me I want to look like I exercise or look like I look fit. And this I guess because this friend of mine again I seem very vain saying all this had this huge transformation. I feel like for me to be fit and healthy I need to have a huge transformation. And I'm tall and exercise all the time and then so I think for me to have that huge transformation, I'm gonna have to completely I don't know what I'm gonna have to do but I don't really think it's something that it's achievable. I think I have this goal that's probably not really going to happen. 

 

Amber B  28:34  

Yeah. Okay, there's a couple of things that I want to hit on. The first one, you've said it a couple of times that it's vain. It's vain according to who?

 

Laura  28:55  

Yeah, well I mean, I do want to look good and healthy and fit so I guess I just don't want to seem like completely superficial and that's my only goal in life maybe I guess maybe to me, maybe it's realized to be that is a Yeah, superficial goal to me. I don't know. 

 

Amber B  29:15  

But isn't it a superficial goal to you?

 

Laura  29:19  

No, because it means more than that. It's looking fit but it's having energy and it is having a you know, it's like I hate that buzzword but mind, body, spirit. It's more than that. It's who you are on the inside and all of that shines through in who you are. So it is more than just looking fit and killing yourself exercising.

 

Amber B  29:45  

Is the desire if you just wanted to look fit, is that vain? 

 

Laura  29:53  

Maybe so, according to that, but actually not because I think being fit and eating healthy is a very kind thing to do yourself and for yourself. So it's more than that. It's a kind thing to do to yourself, I think I should say that. 

 

Amber B  30:11  

Okay. So I think there's no right or wrong answer to this, I just think when we have these thoughts, and the fact that you said that word a couple of times, it means there's something there, right? There's something there about this idea of vanity, and it's very, very common where there we place judgment around our goals. And this is an okay goal for me to have, and this is not an okay pool for me to have. And people have told you in your life that like, that's a vain thing to want, that's not a vain thing. It's okay to want to have more energy, but it's not okay to want to have deltoids, it's okay to like, you know, want to drop your A1C, but it's not okay to get a six pack, right? There's been people have told you that like this isn't okay, this is an appropriate goal for you to have. And this is not an appropriate goal for you to have. And there's sounds like there's been some internalization about that. And that can create some judgment of ourselves around the goals that we set. And if, on some deep level, you believe that your goal is vain, do you think you will ever achieve it?

 

Laura  31:09  

No.

 

Amber B  31:10  

No, because we make choices based on the desired identity we want to hold. So if you believe that it is vain, and I'm talking about subconsciously, if you subconsciously believe that it is vain to have a six pack, the choices you make, you will not make choices that align with that identity, because you don't want to be that identity, you don't want to be vain. So then you will sabotage yourself from achieving that because it does not fit the desired identity that you want to achieve. Does that make sense? So it's why it's so important to get to the root of what do I actually think about my goals? Because if on some level, they don't sit with you, and there's some judgment about you will self-sabotage you, you won't be able to reach them. Okay? 

 

Laura  32:04  

Okay. 

 

Amber B  32:06  

So that's one thing. I'm curious because what I wrote down, what you said, is that you want to look like you exercise. I'm curious, for the people who are here in the chat. Put a 1 in the comments if you think Laura looks like she exercises. For those of you who are on the replay, and you can't see the chat, the chat has not flooded and once. What does that tell you? 

 

Laura  32:42  

Maybe I look healthy and fit. 

 

Amber B  32:46  

So that question that I asked, you have like, it's been according to who? We could ask the same question here. It looks you look like your exercise according to who? Right? Because if it's according to other people, you're done. Who is it? Who is it according to? 

 

Laura  33:10  

Because it should be me that maybe I do more comparison than I think and so maybe it's according to what I do. So many other people are thinking, maybe?

 

Amber B  33:24  

How do you know what other people are thinking?

 

Laura  33:28  

That's a good question. I guess I don't. 

 

Amber B  33:31  

You don't. You just made up some like thoughts. Like, right, like, and that's one of the reasons that I asked everybody who was on here is because if I had asked you do you feel like people think you look like you're actually my guess is you would have said no, but you could read the thoughts of everybody who's on this call who was like, Yeah like she actually exercise right. Like you couldn't read their thoughts. You know, they were thinking,

 

Laura  33:56  

Right. 

 

Amber B  33:59  

We do that all the time where we tell ourselves that we can read minds that we know what someone else is thinking. When in reality, we can't. What's coming up for you? You're thinking I can tell. 

 

Laura  34:20  

I was just thinking I needed to make another soundtrack in my  head and what I'm saying to myself. 

 

Amber B  34:26  

What does that soundtrack sound like right now?

 

Laura  34:37  

Maybe that I am enough, you know. 

 

Amber B  34:43  

How does it feel to say that? 

 

Laura  34:44  

It feels kind of- 

 

Amber B  34:57  

It's also true. 

 

Laura  35:04 

Thank you so much for doing this.

 

Amber B  35:07  

Oh, we're not done. We still have more stuff. But you're starting to see. We do this a lot, right? It's like help me with my why, help me with the buffering. And where all of this is coming from is this stuff like what we're doing here? Okay? Because when we can uncover this stuff that has always been there just kind of been hidden been a simmering pot, we can kind of start to let it go, open it up, investigate it and move forward and things can start to shift and change. You're in a cut right now? Right. That's what you said. 

 

Laura  35:54  

Yeah, but I haven't been sticking with it. 

 

Amber B  35:57  

Yeah, yeah. Have you ever intentionally at a maintenance?

 

Laura  36:07  

Okay, I'm gonna be really honest. I've never really tracked like, I've always kind of, I think I've always been at maintenance. And so, like, I wanted to do the macros and count because I wanted to look better, and I wanted to be more fit, and I wanted to lose some fat. 

 

Amber B  36:28  

Okay. So, here's my recommendation. 

 

Laura  36:30  

I felt like, I've always been in maintenance. But yeah.  

 

Amber B  36:33  

And that's great. However, there is a lot of value in being an intentional maintenance that you know how many calories you're eating. That's great, I'm happy that you haven't been constantly like in a deficit for your entire life. But it's very different in like, eating as much as possible while maintaining weight and knowing how much that is and being able to spend that time intentionally doing that. The reason I say that is because one of the things that we often label as self-sabotage, binging or, like you said, buffering with food, emotional eating, and stress, eating struggling over the weekends. Sometimes there can be a root cause of that self-sabotage that is deep, and that we can work through with coaching. Sometimes it's just that you're not eating enough. And so we sit here, we're like, oh, let's go through this coaching and at the end of the day, it's like, no, no, you just need to eat some more, you wouldn't have this buffering problem if you were eating more food, you wouldn't have this binging problem if we increase the number of calories. So I totally got like wanting to go through a cut, I think what would be very beneficial for you would be to start a reverse right now and see how high we can get your calories while maintaining. And then once you've identified that going into an appropriate cut, is what I think is going to happen, how many calories you're at right now? 

 

Laura  38:07  

Around 2000. 

 

Amber B  38:09  

Okay, so that's, is that your goal? Or is that how many you're eating? 

 

Laura  38:11  

No, my goal is 1600. 

 

Amber B  38:13  

Great. Okay, this is my point. Okay. So the goal is 1600, but we're really getting around 2000. My guess is that we could get that even higher, I don't know 2400. Like, I wouldn't be surprised. And 25 I don't know, I don't know how high we could get you. And you could maintain where you're at right now. And then once we have that established, now you can create an appropriate deficit. 2000 might be a deficit for you. Right, once we figure out oh, your maintenance, your highest maintenance is 2600. Well, now your friend, you're cutting that 2200. You're eating 200 calories intentionally more than you are accidentally consuming now. Does that make sense? So I think there's gonna be a lot of value for us in seeing that top peak and then taking an appropriate deficit from there, rather than trying to eat 1600 calories and failing because my opinion, and we'll see how you respond to this. But my opinion is that you're, it's probably just because you're not eating enough. And so that's creating the buffering. And guess what, like, the buffering might go away as you start eating more food and you start fueling your body and not creating that restriction.

 

Laura  39:31  

Okay, yeah. 

 

Amber B  38:33 

Okay, so that would be my recommendation, start to reverse. Let's get your calories up. Let's see how high we can get you while maintaining. And then if you want to, sure, we can create a deficit from there. What are you doing with your workouts right now? 

 

Laura  39:53  

I do a mega reformer Pilates, three or four days a week, around a couple of days a week. I do some weight training, two or three days a week. It's weights in my home, but I'm trying to progress. And then I walk every day, at least a mile. So I get in like over 10,000 steps every day. 

 

Amber B  40:20  

Okay, okay. I can tell just by looking at you that you're an ectomorph. Okay, do you know anything about what that means? 

 

Laura  40:31  

I have looked it up. But yeah…  

 

Amber B  40:34  

Okay, Episode 45. I talk about it about the different body types. Did you listen, have you listened to the free class that I've been promoting this week? That's going to be a really good thing for you to listen to. 

 

Laura  40:46  

I've listened to three-fourths of it. 

 

Amber B  40:48  

Okay. So I talk a little bit about body types in that class as well. But my guess is that you're an ectomorph. I have zero information about your friend. But a lot of times what happens is like ectomorphs compare themselves to like mesomorphs, or endomorphs. And then they wonder why they like don't look the same. And it's like, you have completely different bodies, and you have completely different needs in terms of cardio and weights, and food, actually, as well. And so understanding that a little bit more about yourself is might shed a lot of light into why you feel like you're working so hard and not actually seeing much of a change. Because as an ectomorph, you typically need a lot less cardio, a lot more food and a lot more lifting, in order to stimulate the body to create change. And so if you're doing a lot of cardio, that's working against building muscle, if you're not eating food that's working against building muscle. And so you can be going through the motions, you can be doing all the things but if you're doing all the wrong things, it's like you're but I said this week on the podcast, your body doesn't build muscle just for funsies. Like it builds muscle in response to a stimulus. And so you guys can do the exact same workouts, if you're an ectomorph and she's a mesomorph, or she's an endomorph get vastly different results with your body, simply because your body types respond differently to cardio and respond differently to the food, it responds differently to weight training. And so I think just helping yourself to understand that a little bit more can help you to maybe connect some light bulbs of like, Oh, maybe it's not that I need to do more, or that I need to work out harder, it's that I need to make sure I'm training for my body type. And for you that may be pulling on cardio, and it may mean focusing more on progressive overload. And eating more like we already have you doing? 

 

Laura  42:42 

Okay.

 

Amber B  42:45  

Sounds good. What questions do you still have? Anything coming up for you? 

 

Laura  42:49  

I feel like a lot of times with me less is more like less information is more like, overloading on.

 

Amber B  43:01  

Yeah, well, here's my recommendation to and this is actually I haven't said this yet. But this is my recommendation for anybody who gets a hot seat. My recommendation is for you to re-listen to this. One or two times even. And for a couple of reasons. One, when you're in the moment, there's nerves, you're like, trying to like think on the spot. And like, you can't always like take in everything that's been said. So that's reason number one. Reason number two is just the more you hear something, you're gonna pull different. Oh, I didn't even hear her say that last time. I like listen to this, you pull out like a slightly different thing. So I do recommend if you ever get a hot seat, you guys is to make sure that you re-listen to that hot seat a couple of times after the fact, go back and re-listen to the replay. Because you'll hear different things in it than you did when we were here live. 

 

Amber B  43:01 

And you're right, less is going to be more we don't need to overload you. This is not about giving you more information. This is about, okay, let's take these powerful moments and these powerful experiences and aha that you had today and start applying them, right because the application is where things start to change. So saying that what is something that you are going to apply and what you learned here moving forward? 

 

Laura  44:16  

I think I'm going to look at, like trying to hit my macros and maybe eating more in my three meals that I'm eating with the protein, so that I'm not buffering as much in the evening. 

 

Amber B  44:34  

Yes. And you're going to start at 2000 calories. 

 

Laura  44:37  

Yes, in right. And I'm going to start it. 

 

Amber B  44:39  

We're not starting at 1600. Right, same thing because you're not eating 1600 You're eating 2000. So we're starting your reverse at 2000. Now remember when we did 2100. Right? We're moving right from there. 

 

Laura  44:50  

Right. So I'm going to start at 2000 calories, and I'm going to be better about tracking it. 

 

Amber B  44:57  

Okay, and here's the thing, now with tracking it. Now let's pretend you do go over on one day. Remember what I told Nicole is like you take the average of what you actually ate, and then you add from there.

 

Laura  44:50  

Okay. 

 

Amber B  44:57  

Remember that? Okay, so if so, again, there's this tendency, and we talked about with Nicole, but it, I can see it playing out here where it's like, oh, but I like over ate one day so I had to have another week of just eating that 2000 calories. Right? Average what you actually ate and then add from there. Like the goal is to get you out of a deficit, not for you to stay in the deficit longer. Sticking up out of it. Okay, cool. 

 

Laura  45:44  

And then I'm working on my soundtrack. Yes, good that I'm enough. 

 

Amber B  45:49  

Yeah, that's gonna be a really powerful affirmation for you to work on. Saying that in the mirror out loud 10 times in the morning, and 10 times in the evening, and start to see it's gonna feel super awkward, super weird. But start to you do that, you will start to notice a difference. It will, it will seep into your subconscious, it will seep into the way that you see yourself, it will seep into the actions that you start to take. Because when we start to work from that desired identity, our actions change. Remember, I talked about the desired like the unwanted identity of being vain prevented you from doing the things that you thought would make you vain when we have the wanted identity of I am enough. And we can we make choices now from that wanted identity, you make different and new and better choices.

 

Amber B  44:57  

I like that. 

 

Amber B  44:57  

Yeah. Yep. Okay. That's really proud of you, Laura. That was good. 

 

Amber B  46:50 

I hope you paid attention to that. I think you could actually listen to that episode multiple times, and I encourage you to actually listen to it once to learn from the coaching. And then listen to it once to listen to the way that I'm coaching, right? Because you can you can be there with Laura and be learning from the coaching that I'm giving. But then it's you're gonna hear things differently when you start listening and asking yourself the question like how is Amber coaching? How is she like formulating this? What is the coaching look like from a coaching standpoint, so it's like kind of listening to the episode from a client standpoint, and then from a coach's standpoint, something to do if you, you are a coach. 

 

Amber B  46:52 

But if you are a coach, or if you're looking to become one and you're wanting to learn how to dig deep, and to not just answer the surface level questions that your clients are giving you, but actually create long term transformation in your clients. I invite you to come to our free class on May 31. It's called Make Money and Change Lives: Become a Transformational Coach. And you can register for that class at bicepsafterbabies.com/becomeacoach. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host Amber, now got out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

 

Outro

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