Hey ladies, before we get into today’s episode, I want to let you know about the simple, sustainable fat loss program. This is my eight week program. Sometimes I refer to it as the eight week challenge. If you’ve been here a while you’ve been hearing about it and maybe waiting to take the leap, or maybe it has not been the right timing for you if you’re in a season of pregnancy or postpartum. And the time might be now we are kicking off April 8, I am closing enrollment April 1, and I only take 20. Ladies. So if you’ve been thinking about it before, this is the time to take the leap, it does not come back again until September. If you’re not sure what this is, it’s essentially an eight week program where it’s a group setting, I take your hand and walk you through setting up a great metabolism so that you can after the eight weeks have this awesome metabolism built that keeps burning fat for you don’t have to worry about what diet to try this that on and off bandwagons, yo yoing This is the anti yo yoing plan here. Okay, so, in the eight weeks, I set you up with workouts to do their press playing goal. So you just have the plan for all eight weeks, you have access to this forevermore. So the videos are yours to keep and keep using. If you’re not a video gal, I’ve got PDFs for you. And you can also continue whatever workout style you’re doing apart from the program, you don’t have to do the program workouts. Nutrition really is the biggest basis of the program. On the podcast, very often I’m talking about eating high protein, talking about 8020 eating, I’m talking about eating according to your macros sometimes or eating intuitively, this all comes together in the program. So here, maybe you’ve been piecemealing it listening to some of the episodes trying to do this on your own. I just take your hand truly and we start with what you are already doing. And I just refine it as we go in that eight weeks, you start just logging what you’re already eating, and then I’d eat you ah, you know what Sarah? Bullen a name from here, you got to not eat that avocado at breakfast, if you’re going to have peanut butter at lunch, because it’s putting you over in fats. So instead, you’re gonna want to, you know, or if you’re going to have guac tonight, then maybe that’s not the day that we have some kind of peanut butter on the toast, whatever, I teach you how to balance that out in ways of picking and choosing and nothing is restrictive. So you can do this forevermore, I’m equipping you with these tools, so that then when you go to a barbecue this summer, or whatever it is, you know, you can look at the table and say and not say like, oh, I shouldn’t eat that I can’t eat that, oh, that’s off limit, that’s a bad food, that’s a good food, you can be informed and look at the buffet table and say, You know what, I am going to have a burger, but I’m not going to have the bun, because I’m going to have a beer instead. So that’ll be my curb. And then I’ll fill up half my play with veggies and so on and so forth. That’s what I’m teaching you to do. And now, if you want a chance to win some of your money back, you can submit optional before and after pictures, which is a fun little addition to the program that you don’t have to do it is optional. And you know, we come out with a winner at the end. So it’s always a good time you have the support in the community of all these other women trying to do this with you. And we have a good time you have me for personalized check ins. That’s why I kept the number and hundreds of women have found and sustained more importantly, found and sustained fat loss with this program. So go grab a spot we kick off April 8, you could sign up and healthy Catholic moms.com under the work with me tab.
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 at 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’m 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, beautiful people. Welcome to today’s episode. Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms Podcast. I’m super happy that you’re here. And I’m excited to dive in to get rolling with these March episodes. Oh, my goodness, spring is common. I know our weather is all over the place, no matter where you are. But I hope you’re having a good start to March. I mean, it can’t have gone downhill yet right can only start in a good spot is my hope for you. All right, so we are just about a month out. From our next eight week challenge. This is the simple sustainable fat loss program. So I’m going to be reading to you a testimonial from previous participants. It’s been seriously, we’re almost at 1000s of ladies, but definitely high hundreds of ladies who have gone through this in the past years. And just want to open it up to you that their registration period is going to be open from now until April 1, it closes on April 1. And the program itself kicks off April 8. So here is the testimonial of the day. This is from Molly, I so appreciate what Brittany is doing for us regarding moving us in the right direction regarding health and activity. It is so tempting to try to do the quick loss schemes you see all over the internet. She’s so good at explaining the why of macros plus strength training equals fat loss that is sustainable. She’s always open to a question and very thoughtful with her responses that tailor to the individual rather than a flat response across the board. She really emphasizes that slow and steady wins the race and is really good at working with women in all phases of their lives. Thank you, Brittany. And Thank you Molly for that really kind review. All right, so today we are talking about oh, and I should probably tell you I’m sure I will in the recorded piece about the program itself. But if you want to sign up for that, that’s over at healthy Catholic moms.com under work with me and that is this simple, sustainable fat loss program. Here my little buddy Of course my little buddy Micah is wrapped to me as we record this bounce and I’m the exercise ball was just so I knew mo four episodes probably for the next six months. So just assume if you hear like belching and squelching over here it is not me. All right, so today we’re talking about the best workout to get a lean toned look. Now toned is always a funny word in the fitness world, because you have the fitness magazines that are going to put it on the cover because they know everybody likes that word. Probably a very similar title to what I titled this podcast today. Get this Lean toned look by summer, get a lean toned look, look in six weeks, you know, whatever. Well, I’m not promising you a timeline here. But then you have the fitness professionals who are like toning is for printers, you’re just want to be strong, and I get what everybody means. Okay, so I know that I’m definitely not in the camp, that ladder camp that’s like Tony’s for printers, because I get it. I know I said the same thing before I really understood what Lean and toned is, is muscular, but not too muscular. But what you’re seeing as the tone. You know, quote unquote, tone here is the development of muscle. That’s a you know, we mean, if you think of like flabby arms with no shape to them. That is what we’d call flabby. Right, versus like visibly sculpted arms, right. And it’s just really a little jargon thing. So I get, you know, lean and toned seems to make sense for most of us. And it’s you know, that’s the physique we’re talking about is muscle behind it not too bulky. We always you know, like to use the word bulky to for the too much. We don’t mean tons of muscles. We don’t mean manly, we mean, like compact, and with good shape to it. All right, is what I consider lean and toned to be and again, I’m with you. That’s what I want to click to I don’t want to look bulky, I don’t want to look manly. So the truth is that, you know, it could go one way or the other. Some forms of exercise that we are doing might actually be giving us more like a skinny fat physique. Like they might be making you thin, but not toned looking. And then there could be the exercises that might over time combined with over eating might might make you look a little bulky. Okay, so and I’m acknowledging that too, because there’s also that corner of the internet or the different trainers that will say, you know, it’s very hard for women to balk, you can never walk. The truth about getting to the two bulky stage is that it can absolutely happen. But it does happen as a result of lifting very heavy and eating in a calorie surplus. You’re not going to balk unless If you are over eating, but over eating is easy to do. So if you’re also pairing that with lifting really heavy, that’s when you just have to kind of know yourself and back off. And I understand that, I get that I’ve been at the point where I’ve been like, okay, you know what, I love lifting heavy. But I am going to back off this a little bit. Because I do notice, like, my shoulders getting more like an Olympic swimmer. And that was not what I was going for. And to put your mind at ease, if you’re thinking like, oh, shoot, well, how heavy is too heavy, I’m not talking about like doing Lateral Raises with 15 pound dumbbells, I’m talking about when I was like deadlifting, 235, or overhead pressing 75 pounds on a barbell, those kinds of things. One thing, I’m not going to stay here for too long, I’m gonna get to the kind of workouts that are going to give you the physique, I want to make you wait all day here. But it’s definitely worth considering I know, I try to steer us away from the aesthetics conversation a lot to say, you know, I do think it’s best to focus more on performance, to focus more on performance goals. So instead of saying, I want to lose 10 pounds to focus on, I want to be able to run three miles in under 30 minutes, or I want to be able to push up my own bodyweight off the ground, so strong enough to do that, which means you would want to not be having excess body fat, that kind of thing. I do think performance goals are huge. But when we are considering to what we want our physique to look like, and when we’re picking the kind of workouts that we want to do, then we need to marry the two, right, because like I just mentioned, I enjoy the style of lifting heavy I enjoy those kinds of workouts, but I did not like the physique that I was getting from it. So I had to find a balance there of like, okay, I could keep this style of working out in and I could just lift lighter with the things I’m doing. Or I can just lift like this once a week. And you know, so for my own personal experience, I’ve done that before. If you’re in that camp with me really properly, I do like to lift heavy it but I don’t want to get too bulky. There’s not in a total black and white here, you can do like one day a week, and you’re not going to get huge. So I’ve gone through periods where I did that or like three days a week I lifted, what we’re going to talk about and that kind of style. And then that fourth or the fifth day, I would just do like a heavy deadlift, heavy overhead press, whatever, but you’re not going to grow a ton from doing it once a week. Okay, but my point that I was trying to bake for interrupted myself. I don’t know if any of you do that. But I really seem to have a talent on this podcast for interrupting myself, I don’t even have another person on the podcast. But you do need to consider if the type of workout you’re doing matches the aesthetic that you want. So back to that point of that, like you could be doing something that is just making you look thinner, but not toned. Or you could get or you could be doing something that’s going to make you look too bulky for again, your liking this is subjective. So an example is CrossFit athletes. Now if y’all do CrossFit listening to this, or like, oh my goodness, that’s so offensive, in my opinion. Now, I’m not saying every single CrossFit athlete I’ve seen, but in my opinion, some female athletes I’ve seen are a little bit bulky for me for my style for what I would like for myself, there traps like the upper back muscle and shoulders like I’m talking about. And then they’re usually such little body fat that like their chest looks has like their upper body is a more manly look to it, because they don’t have a lot of, you know, body fat, so they don’t have like the female curves, but they’ve got a lot of muscle. And that’s just not my style. So that is what I was noticing was when I personally was loving these CrossFit style workouts, I’d never went to a box. That’s what you know, CrossFit gyms called. I was doing a bunch of CrossFit style workout workouts on my own. So like three or four days a week, I was doing these very heavy overhead presses and like I just mentioned all the heavy deadlifts this that and I was noticing my body getting bulkier than I like it to be. So I scaled back to make my workouts match what I also wanted my physique to be alright, so how do we do that? How do we get lean toned look, what did I scale back to? It’s definitely strength training. Okay, so first and foremost, gonna say that because like I just said, If otherwise, you’re going to end up with just a skinny look that is not toned. So we need a basis a foundation of strength training, that should be the bulk of your workout plan. I always recommend no less than three times a week. 3456 days of lifting a week is great. I personally haven’t been doing six in a long time I’m usually doing when I was pregnant, was doing three days a week of full body shooting for walks the other three days. I would love optimally to do five days a week of strength. At the time of recording this I’m just getting into I’m just moving beyond my core workouts. I had a baby that for those who haven’t been here in a while. I had a baby in December, early December. And I’ve been doing my core rebuilding and everything I would tell you to do okay, which is available in the pool As part of the program, if you’re interested, I do all of those exercises. So now I’m segwaying into, quote unquote, like real exercises here. But when this comes out, I will be finishing up the last round of the eight week fat loss program with all my ladies, I thought it would be fun this year for me to actually do the program to a tee. And then see my own results from it because I asked participants to take optional optional, don’t worry, you don’t have to, before and after pictures. So that program is primarily five days of lifting. So that’s what I should be coming off of doing if everything went to plan. I’m recording this though, before the program starts, we’re like five days out from starting the January round when I’m recording this. So anyways, I would recommend as the bones of your planning, if you want to lean and toned to lift no less than three days a week, somewhere in that three to six range. And how you lift is very important, because I just mentioned that when I was doing CrossFit, so I did start seeing myself get bulky. However, if you go way too late, if you do three or four days a week of like bar workouts where you use one pound weights and you pulse a lot, you’re probably not going to see much definition comes from that. So what you want to do to pursue the Lean toned look and or to maintain it is you want to use your strength training and stay in the 10 to 12 rep range. So that means say you’re doing goblet squats, you’re holding a dumbbell and you’re squatting with it and you’re doing bicep curls. So you’re super setting those two exercises. So you’re doing them back to back and then you’re stopping. You’re gonna do 10 goblet squats go right into that superset Yes, go right into 10 bicep curls, then rest, one to two minutes, one to three minutes. Do that again two more times. So say three sets of 10, three sets of 12. You could even be doing four sets of 10, four sets of 12. But you’re gonna pretty much hang out in the 10 to 12 rep range. And then this part is very important when you’re lift and what you lift has to be just about two to three reps short of your max. So what this means is at the end of one set, not all three sets are all four sets. At the end of that very first set, when you’ve just finished your 10th goblet squat, you should only be able to do two or three more. If I was telling you to do that if I was standing with you, and you just finished your 10th. And I was like alright, Alex, get one more get two more, you should feel like you can barely almost only get those. If you feel like you could do five more or 10 more or 15 more, you are lifting to light. But if you feel like oh my gosh, I definitely can’t even get one more, that’s probably too close to your max. So you want to ride that line. And it is a fine line. Usually, in my experience, women have more in the tank that you will usually err on the side of too light and having more in the tank than we should at the end of the set. And I am speaking from my own personal experience too. Because when I worked out with my husband before, he’s also trainer, he would be like, Alright, do push ups, like chin ups or bandage chin ups to your max. And I would always stop like two or three short and that example he wanted me to go to my max and I would stop. He’s like bull, keep going, you’ve got more in the tank. I’m like, No, I don’t. And then I would go and I did. I just thought that I didn’t, I would stop. So that is the kind that’s literally in a nutshell. To get a lean toned look, you need to number one, strength train three to six times a week. Number two, your strength training sessions need to have the reps in the 10 to 12 range. So if you go lower, say you go 60 reps, that’s what we just did in February in the chasing greatness group, which is a monthly workout group. If you go lower, and you’re pushing it to almost your max, like real real close, this might be my max on this last rep doesn’t mean you’re gonna get huge not if you are still not eating in a calorie surplus. So I want you to know that because some tasty green it’s it is mind blowing says me like Brittany, I don’t want to bog Why did we just do that last month, you need to be eating in a calorie surplus. And I know we talked about that in the group as well. And I talked about that all through those workout videos. But that is the what’s what’s go on there. You still need to be eating and either maintenance calories or calorie deficit, but gets a little more into the nutrition side of things. But in general, when we do fat loss focus month or lean tone months, we are focusing on the more that 10 to 12 rep range. I just want to make that caveat that you are not going to like turn into the hole from one month of lifting heavier than you normally do. And especially if you’re not eating in a calorie surplus, okay. Um, and then So step three, that was step one, do strength training three to six times a week step 210 to 12 rep range and step three is make sure that the weights are in your true just two or three reps short of your max. The weight has got to be heavy to you. This is relative Okay, your max is not the same as my max. So when I write like individualized programs for clients, sometimes I will put on their heavy to you. So meaning you need to judge it and think, Okay, that was I only had two or three reps left. Okay? Hope that make that super clear. Now the last piece of this because you might be like Brett, where does cardio fit in? That’s what I’m gonna mention here. I personally love the pairing of strength training with Li SS or lists, which is low intensity steady state cardio, the ideal combo to me for mental health for physical health. Well, I already have a caveat to this. But usually, My ideal is five days of lifting five to six days, so I could have the time to get in a six day I would because I like it. But say five or six days of lifting. And walking walking is my favorite form of low intensity steady state cardio to really good for mental clarity like I love getting outside. So good for you, you can catch up on podcasts, you can call a friend, you might be doing any of that right now you can enjoy the silence, you can pray all that stuff. And then that’s like up to you the frequency your your can’t really overdo walking unless you’re trying to hit 20 miles a day. But say you, you know went for a daily walk along with during training, that’s an awesome combo. If I could, you know, say I don’t know, 30 years down the road to just say 20. But maybe I’ll still have little kids that 20 years down the road, I have no idea. I’m saved 30 years down the road, 25 years down the road, I would love to like wake up, have the morning like journal time, prayer time, and then go for a walk is like the last part of morning time. I don’t know I haven’t really flushed this out about food and coffee and how that’ll all Fix You can’t, you know, get too long without eating. But anyways, I’m not a fan of intermittent fasting. That’s another topic for another day, I would love to kind of go for a walk, then come back to the coffee and breakfast, I guess that would all work out. And then do my lifting either at that point or like later in the day like four o’clock I used to love when I would teach full time then go lift if like 430 or five. That was a good time to me. So again, this might not be a good time to. But the combo of the strength training and the list is great. But what’s also great for those of us who don’t have that luxury, and who don’t have all that time to spend on daily walks, it’s nice to get some hit in just to get the cardio. And basically I’m going to do an episode coming up in a couple episodes here about hit versus steady state, the perk of HIIT is that you can just do it in less time. It’s high intensity intervals. So it’s basically the opposite of low intensity Steady, steady state. And most of us if you are in a busy life season right now, you might not have 3040 minutes to go for a walk, especially multiple times a week, but you might have five minutes at the end of your lifting workout to add some hit, just so that you do get you know the fat burning benefits. And you also
get, get the cardio benefits of pushing your lungs pushing your VO to max and all of that. So that’s kind of personal preference. And again, like I said, I will be delving into that more in a cardio episode coming up. But cardio depends it is up to you because I also like that’s why I said My ideal is a strength training with the list. And then I said well caveat, because then I do tend to forget when I haven’t done like an awesome spin class. And while I haven’t gone on a long run, I forget how much I love that kind of long form cardio, and how the endorphins feel after it and how much mental clarity I get from that. So I do there have been seasons where I really enjoy like a weekly spin class or a weekly long run. So play around with what feels best to you on that end. But if the bones of your program is strength training, and is three to six days of lifting, heavy to you wait that’s just short of your max two to three rep short, you’re gonna get that lean to look and then you can kind of play with the cardio piece as you enjoy it as if it’s your life as it fits your mental health needs. Because again, there’s I’ve had a lot of clients that say, you know, there’s just something about a bike ride or a run that hits different honestly then a certain trading workout sometimes like we work out our aggression and stress in the strength workouts and then we get the happy endorphins in the cardio workouts a lot of the time so All right, I hope that made sense. gave you some direction today. We are looking at Blue juicy one next episode is going to be the connection between your nutrition and your libido. So tune in for that. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you next time.
