Episode 343: Remove the Obstacles to Fat Loss and Maintenance

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I am going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hey there, ladies. Welcome to today’s episode. Thanks so much for joining me and for being here. I so appreciate you clicking play and coming back time after time here. Today we’re going to talk all about removing obstacles that might be in your way for achieving the fat loss goals you want being able to maintain the health you want, all that kind of stuff. So we’re going to dive into that. It’s also if you’re listening to this right when it comes out the end of September, which means we are wrapping up the current chasing greatness workouts if you’re in the chasing greatness group, and we’re about to head into a new round of workouts. And new focuses all that good stuff for the month of October. If you have no idea what this is, you could head to healthy Catholic moms.com under work with me to find out more there. But it’s essentially a workout group where we have over 50 Women in this community. We do. It’s all pre recorded videos. So you can press plain go this month is focused on fat loss, I do a specific fat loss focus a couple times a year, September, October was the last one for 2023. So the workouts are tailored towards that. But you can absolutely personalize them to we do some live workouts together throughout the month, you have access to all recipes from any of my past programs, lots of bonuses, lots of fun stuff over there, you have access to the whole workout library from 2023. And from 2022. So even if something’s not your jam, like you try one workout, you don’t love it, or you’re not looking for fat loss, you want to focus on athletic performance instead or mobility, you could go back to a previous month and try that out. So you can happen with us for October. And there’s a free two week trial too, if you just want to, you know, take it for a test drive and see how it works for you. Now, today, I mentioned talking about removing obstacles, somebody that talks about this in depth. And I’ve talked about this book a lot of times and here is the author James clear he wrote atomic habits. sure many of you have already read it by this point. But he talked about removing obstacles in a very simple way. Nothing I read in that book was earth shattering. I just liked the way that it was written of like, Yep, this is what you have to do and laid it out. And a lot of times I think we’re always thinking we need a big new flashy plan. Or if we just have the right binder, or we have the right program even or the right workout clothes, like I’m like this and other areas. If I feel like my home is getting out of order, like I just need to order new cleaning products like that’s what will make me excited to clean is like really nice scented cleaning products or something, of course the natural ones, but all that stuff. And it’s like nope, actually, I probably need to get rid of things in my house. It’s probably more about the getting rid of than adding to adding to adding as the fun and flashy parts. So I think that’s why a lot of us go there first. But what we actually need to do a lot of the time is remove the obstacles that are in our way. So there’s very simple, like superficial obstacles that can be in our way like we get up to work out but we don’t have our clothes laid out and we can’t find a sports bra or her husband still sleeping. We don’t want to be right rummaging around, like there’s very practical things here that we can just kind of figure out in a couple of seconds. But today, I want to talk about some of the deeper obstacles that maybe you don’t even realize you have within you or you’re facing. But these have come up over the course of over a decade of training a lot of different ladies where it’s hard to identify it in ourselves sometimes, but when we hear it, we’re like, oh, yeah, that is it. And it’s easier to hear that a stranger struggles with it than we know, like, okay, we’re not alone in that. So and every single one of these, I think I have a list of six or so it’s not like one person said it. Okay, it’s on this list, because it’s something I’ve struggled with, or I’ve heard multiple times as an obstacle. So number one, a very common obstacle is trying to hold on to the idea of one thing, one program, one time of life being the end all be all. And if we can’t get back to that, then we just can’t do anything. Lots of times, I will have lady say, like, well, there was just one period where when I was at college, I was in a really good groove swimming every morning, or I was doing this college sport, and like, that’s what I know works really well. For me, I need to get back into that specific routine with those specific elements that, you know, might sound different to with different things like, Well, when I was doing really well was after baby number three, when I had a six week gym membership, and I went everyday, and my husband made time for that too. And now we just you know, all our kids are in activities, and I can’t do that. Whatever it looks like. The obstacle here is holding on to something in the past, that is what we associate with, when we looked and felt our best. And I think we can take something from that we might think like, well, maybe that style of workout really did work well for me and my body and for my mental health, you know, but how can I hold on to elements of that, but what we need to do them to take it a step further and say, How can I do this? In my current season of life? It does absolutely no good. I’ve had so many different seasons of life with working out where I’ve been working out just at a gym, not at a gym at all, a mix of both, I had a period after my first baby, where once he was sleeping through the night, I would go to the gym, like four in the morning, three times a week, so that I could husband left super early for work. So I could still be back before he left. But I could get there was that important to me to get that workout in by myself. Now, almost four kids deep, I am pregnant with their fourth, I don’t see that happening anytime soon that I value getting to a physical gym, so much higher than I value seven to nine hours of sleep, because I just don’t anymore. Like there’s different things that I value higher. So if I clung to I was in such a good shape when I just did this. So I’ve got to me like that, that’s not going to be helpful if we can’t emulate that. We’re just going to fall short of it and feel frustrated. So let go of what that season was like, acknowledge that it was a season it was great. But how can you make a really good plan for yourself and program and routine for yourself in the season you’re in. And like I said, it might include having some elements there. If there’s a specific workout style you did, like maybe when I was doing full body workouts a couple times a week, my body responded a lot better to that than when I’m doing a bodybuilding split, like upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body, so maybe I’ll get back to full body workouts, you know, it could look like that. But take into account what you’re actually dealing with. Stop kind of romanticizing what you once could do. Obstacle number two, is blaming other people, slash playing the victim. Think this is really big. And it’s hard to admit, because our first instinct is to place the blame on other people like well, I would eat healthfully if it wasn’t for grocery costs, and I would work out if it wasn’t for my kids activities, or I would work out if my baby wasn’t waking up so much at night, all these things. So yes, there’s reality. There are real facts that are not excuses. Like it’s a fact, if your baby’s waking up five times a night, that’s a fact that’s not an excuse. But what can you do, then in light of the circumstances, that is the difference between a person who rises to the occasion who perseveres or the person that just shuts down and takes the first fact and makes an excuse. You know?
Just think about the kind of person you want to be honestly and I think this takes a lot of being honest with ourselves and it’s uncomfortable. But what’s helpful for me is to think somebody in my position is still pulling this off. There is somebody whose husband leaves super early for work and works long hours, who is still getting this done. There’s somebody I have, you know, I will have four kids. There’s somebody with seven kids It’s who’s in the exact same situation as me, who is homeschooling, who is running a business from home, but who has seven kids, and they’re working out four times a week like, that is not to me a negative comparison that inspires me that it can be done. And to figure out how I’m going to do it, we need to be problem solvers. Not like these. Victim, take the first excuse. And we can find people to commiserate with absolutely, we always can call Yeah, I know, I used to work out too before I had my second because now everybody’s up so early. And I just, I don’t do that anymore. Like, don’t feel bad about it. That’s, you know, very prevalent in a lot of mom conversations, and mom’s circles and stuff. And I like to look beyond that. I’m like, No, but what’s somebody else doing? Who has similar circumstances? Or just has tough circumstances and is finding a way to make your work it really, at the end of the day, you’re not any fitter? You’re not any more comfortable with your body weight? How do you lose things by just blaming other people for the way that they are? Even if, like the circumstances are real, find a way to make it work within the circumstances. I did an episode not too long ago, called you’re in control of more than you think you are. And I think that really applies here is like, there’s a lot that we can point the finger at. And know that it’s not an ideal situation. And in a perfect world where you have childcare and a personal trainer five days a week, and all these things like, Well, yeah, I could be fit to. Okay, that’s not most of us. So how can you be healthy in your actual circumstances. And that is what’s going to make you actually healthier, happier, fitter. Not just sitting in your excuses, like, again, you can find them, but that’s not going to make any healthier at the end of the day. All right, next up is a very, very common obstacle of a seeming lack of time. Now I put seaming in there, because I don’t think the lack of time is usually really a true obstacle. I think it’s very relative. It’s very subjective, to what, first of all that we actually think workout duration needs to be. And then secondly, like how we fill up and use our time and what we’re giving priority to. I know, and I’ve worked with people who really are spread so thin, that it is like very hard to even find that 20 minute window. So even if you’ve pared down your workouts, like for all my workout programs, it’s 25 to 35 minutes, pregnancy, postpartum chasing greatness group, a week program, thrill 25 to 35 minutes. And you can get so much done in that time. And then sometimes, they’re shorter, I’ve have workouts on there that are 14 minutes or something. And there’s workouts that I’ve done personally that like without doing the video, it scales off, sometimes shaves off some time as well, because I’m not explaining things and explaining the forum. So I’ve done some of my hardest workouts have been 10 minutes long, and that’s totally fine. And that can be totally effective. So firstly, does not always matter the duration that we need to work out. But then secondly, like I said, I’ve had people say 20 minutes is a good average duration, it’s a little bit on like, the shorter side will even say 25 minutes, because that’s my norm in that window for my programs and things. And I have had ladies where it’s like, yes, they could share their schedule with me, and I have a hard time finding 25 minutes for them. Here’s the however, and the comma, and we still are in control, usually more than we think we are. So why are we that busy? Are there other changes we can make that allow us more time in our day? Are we running errands that we can delegate are we going even like, if you’re that busy of a person, maybe you’re working outside the home, and you have kids with a bunch of activities at night, but you’re still trying to find time to run a restaurant, grocery shop, maybe you’ve got outsource something, maybe you get groceries delivered then or maybe, you know, you cap each kid to one activity or whatever. And I know it’s still like you could have seven kids and every kid has one activity and you’re running around like crazy. So I get that sometimes the hours are just super hard to come by. Usually, here’s the big asterik. And the caveat. For most of us, we can still find 25 minutes three times a week, you know, get rid of the idea that has to be daily. That has to be six times a week or that it has to be an hour and realize that even 10 minutes three times a week or 10 minutes five times a week is better than no minutes. So another real look here. Is that your screen time? You know there’s some things I get it because I think I just don’t care about what people think as much. I mean, I do obviously in some ways, but like say in the public workout arena. I was listening to podcasts one time and I was laughing because it was by this lady whose father was well known as an athlete. I don’t remember what he was or what he did. But she’s like, Oh yeah, my dad was I was like stretching on the sidelines at my games or something. And I was laughing about that thinking like, yeah, that doesn’t usually really bother me. I remember when, before I was a mom, when Ben and I, my husband, were dating, and we’re engaged, it was like a month before our wedding. And he was doing a big bike race, and I went to, like, go to different checkpoints to see him. But in looking at my day, I’m like, Okay, we’re gonna be leaving super early, this race is gonna be all day. Afterward, he’s gonna want to celebrate and stuff and probably crash, like, so I’m not really going to have time to get my workout in. But I wanted to get a workout in today. So I just did a little mini workouts at various points when I was waiting for him to like for him to pass me and the race. So obviously, you get there, with little time to spare knowing the person is gonna come up. So I remember just finding little parks and doing just little circuits at different ones. And, yes, other people around sometimes, and I just did not care about that. But think about to the times, like maybe you’re waiting for your kid, I’ve had clients who do a really good job of this, who are dropping off a child that an extracurricular, and then have taken notice of like, oh, there’s actually a gym right around the corner, I could go do a quick 20 minute workout and then pick them up, you know, get creative about the time allowance you do have, maybe you work during the day, but you have an hour or half hour lunch break. When I was working at Tim Hortons, my first job at 16, I would take a walking lunch break, like I would just walk for 25 minutes, and I’d come back and eat with the last five minutes, or something like that. So that, you know, I could get out and get some steps in in the middle of a long day. So it can definitely be done. Look at your schedule, work it out, stop blaming lack of time, again, three times a week, 10 minutes, you can do that. All right. Next up school is lack of knowledge. And that was very real and intimidating. When you don’t feel you know enough about working out. If you’ve been listening to this podcast awhile, you probably have a good concept of some of the basics. If not, and if you’re newer, I do encourage you to go back on through especially so a lot of my earlier stuff, it’s probably slightly painful to listen to no idea. Oh, I talked about things back then. But I explained a lot about different kinds of pull exercises, different kind of push exercises, what that means how to structure your workouts. So you can definitely grow in knowledge, if that’s something that you’re kind of insecure about is your lack of knowledge. But also with everything available to us right now.
That allows us to get like quote, like as close as you can get to live coaching, like recorded coaching, you just turn on a YouTube video when someone’s telling you how to do most exercises or lots of fitness people have apps, so you can just follow along in the app like that’s why the way my programs are, I’m doing everything with you. And I’m explaining form as I go so that you won’t get injured so that you are going to do things that are effective and not waste your time. So I don’t think there’s much else to go on here with this obstacle except that it’s intimidating. And like, physically, it’s intimidating to walk into a gym and to use the equipment that you might not be familiar with. If that’s a concern. And you’re getting the wheels turning thinking, Oh, I could go to a gym in between one of my kids extracurriculars. You can always ask for a tour, pay for one session with a personal trainer and say, Hey, I just want you to show me a bunch of different machines and how to set them up. And what to do. I worked as a personal trainer for a long time in commercial gyms. And I would do that for people like, Hey, let me just take you around. If I had a minute between classes, I do that too. Just like let me show you what’s going on because it is intimidating to get on new equipment, and you do want to be safe. Okay, two more. next obstacle is fear of failure. This is big. And I think this comes up in general in health and fitness. But even more specifically, with nutrition. I think a lot of us have tried lots of different plans and programs, ways of eating, that we don’t even want to say we’re trying something new to our family or to our spouse because we have not been successful before. And that is difficult. That’s really vulnerable and very personal to like put yourself out there. I totally get that. And I think so many of us do. Actually I put out before my eight week challenges, I put out a questionnaire. One of the questions I do ask is What do you think are some obstacles to your success? This one probably comes up the most is I think lack of time and fear of failure if people are being really honest, usually comes up the most frequently. And I do mention the spouse part in particular because I hear that a lot is like I just don’t even want to tell my husband I’m starting something again. He’s watched me try so many different things. Or, you know, he’s been so supportive, but you know, even I’m giving up on me and that kind of stuff. And that’s really it. sad to hear and really, my heart goes out. Truly, I’m like, this isn’t the least if you know me person and I’ve worked with anyone out like, I’m being 100% honest here, there’s no patronizing or anything like that, where it that’s terrible to feel that way like that you are embarrassed to even try something because you’re afraid of failing at it. But that we can’t let that hold us back from moving forward. I feel this way in a bunch of different areas like, that’s like me going to confession and confessing, confessing, confessing a lack of patience, like, every single time I go, because that’s pretty much as much as I have to confess it like, Oh, yes. And then I acted out in anger or an you know, lack of patience and a lack of patience with my children, with my spouse, with everyone around me, because I’m just not a patient person. And it’s hard to get back on that horse. And try again next time. But there are some things that are just going to be more difficult for us and to us and with our temperaments and with like, we all have our own battles. So if yours happens to be with emotional eating, or with consistency in a workout plan or a nutrition plan, it I just encourage you to keep moving forward and not throw in the towel. Now, I will also say, I think that what you’re trying to adhere to does make a really big difference. The way I teach if you’ve been here for a while 8020 lifestyle 80% whole clean foods 20% treats, it’s a lot more livable and sustainable than doing something that’s super strict and stringent. If you’re on a plan, that’s like 1200 calories, don’t eat ice cream, don’t eat any dairy, don’t eat any gluten, then as soon as you make an error, or you feel like you’ve failed, and then you go really off the rails. Part of the reason you might feel like you’re failing or are failing of you know, quote, unquote failing a program is because it’s just not a program that’s really easy to stick to or easy to make fit your lifestyle. If you’re trying to intermittent fast, but you have a hoppin social calendar, and you need to eat meals, sometimes later at night or early in the morning. That’s just it’s not on you that you’re failing something it’s on the program. So, yes, tooting my own horn for the programs I offer, specifically the eight week beginner challenge that we’re going through right now, this is the last one or 2023. I’ll run it again in January. But that’s where I set you up for the foundation of okay, this is very livable and sustainable. Every person who’s gone there, no one has ever come out of it saying that was too strict or too difficult. There have been other times where people you know, it’s not been a good season for them. And they’ve said, like, I just couldn’t, you know, really adapt to anything new right now. And then they’ve come back and try to do the later time and it was a better fit. But no one has said, wow, that’s way too strict, or that’s not livable, very much. So all the testimonials, point, the direction of this is actually not bad at all to apply. So that’s a big piece here. Consider that when you are free to feeling think about things you tried before. Before I got to what I use myself and teach now, like I said, this 8020 perspective, and there’s a couple other nuanced things wrapped up in it, that I break down and make simple but like tracking macros and clean eating, I tried a million things. I tried Weight Watchers for a while I was I did the Special K Diet. I did SlimFast shakes. I bought the Kim Kardashian diet pills like I was in it. South Beach Diet bars, I was one for a minute. I definitely bought some like Lean Cuisine, frozen meals, like I did a juice fast like there were a lot of trial and error things. And through all that it was like why is nothing working? Why do I keep feeling things? Why am I not losing weight, it was more of the programs than you know, my capability of adhering to them. They’re not meant to adhere to long term. So consider that consider working with somebody who approaches things in a more sustainable way. And I just encourage you again to keep moving forward with that know that we all have things that we’re gonna keep coming up against and have to keep battling against we are called to be faithful not successful. St. Teresa of Calcutta tells us and I think that can apply here where
it’s we’re supposed to still be in the fight. We’re not supposed to just throw our hands up and be like, Well, I’m just an impatient person. We’re still supposed to try again and again and again. Every single day. All right. Lastly, a very common obstacle is rebelling against yourself. This one might be interesting in mind you think of it you might be like, That’s not me at all. I don’t do this. I worked with a lot of clients and I am this way to where I kind of want to like stick it to the man. And I’ve had clients who I’ve called this out with men like I think you You just kind of don’t want to do that because I told you to do that. And then they’ll kind of laugh and realize, like, wow, yeah, that’s true. If I’m like, okay, just track for me for three days, so I can see what you’ve eaten. And then they just don’t know like, where are your food logs and like, I just didn’t, you know, have time or whatever I’m like, I think it’s more like you didn’t want to do it because I asked you to do it. Sometimes it’s very real. Gretchen Rubens and author who talks about different temperaments. And like what we it’s different than personalities and stuff, it’s well, we are motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, all the stuff. And there’s the rebel personality, I definitely think that’s me. When I was training for my 50 mile race, I asked my husband, I asked him also my due to help me come up with a training plan, because he had done altroz And I had not. And then whatever he wrote down for that week, I would do something different. Like he’d be like, okay, but like, you should probably take this one at an easier pace and go like nine miles. And I’d come back and do a faster pace than I normally did and did like nine and a half miles, you literally never do what I tell you to do here. So and that was rebelling, it’s an outside thing. But we do that with ourselves to like, Okay, I want to just funny that even though I’ve told myself, I’m going to stick to this eating plan, I’m just gonna eat that anyway. And we think we’re kind of sticking it to somebody, when really, we’re just gonna come out on the losing end. So I think how to combat this is to try to look at things more in a positive light, to bring in positive influences, like reading books, or listening to podcasts, which talk about nutrition and exercise and the positives that does for our body. What we’re gonna gain from it, and focus on those like, Yes, I’m gonna eat these blueberries, because these are antioxidants. These are so good for me. I have this avocado because this is really healthy fat for my brain, like, I’m feeling so good. I’m doing something great for my body. Rather than being like, well, forget you, Brittany, I do want a peanut butter cup, and I’m gonna eat a peanut butter cup, even though we’re supposed to be on a diet, you know, we do that it sounds ridiculous. But we do that to ourselves. So I do think that’s a good way to try to hurdle that obstacle is bring in more positive things, try to look at what we want to be having, what we want to be doing, versus I can’t be sedentary, oh, I should go for a walk like, No, I get to move my body. So I’m gonna get this workout in, and a more positive approach to it. All right, I hope that’s helpful. I know this is a little bit of a different episode today that I think I usually put out but hopefully, it resonated with you ladies. I mentioned you can head over to healthy calf and moms.com If you want to try out the chasing greatness groups as we kick off October here in a couple days. And all my other programs are available there as well. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything. My email is Brittany at healthy Catholic moms.com. All right, next episode. I know this is going to apply to some of you and not others. But we’re going to chat about breastfeeding and fat loss. All right. If not, maybe you can share it with a friend. So that’s next time. All right, have a great rest of your day. I’ll talk to them

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