So, How Much Do You Lift?

Recently and not surprisingly, I have been receiving a lot of questions regarding my diet and my workouts. People asking “What do you eat?” or “So, how much do you lift”.

It’s not as cut and dried of an answer as you would think. First off, every person is different – their body type, height, weight, gender, overall body chemistry and believe it or not, psychological state comes into play.  I do about a variation of about 50 exercises throughout the week so answering the question of how much do I lift would be answered with “it depends.” I will say without hesitation, diet is 80% of this. I don’t care how much you’re working out, you cannot outtrain a bad diet.

I’m prefacing this by saying, I am not a trainer, I am not a dietician, nutritionist, etc. I have been experimenting with what works for ME for over 20 years. And as much as I know my body, there are still some days where it confuses the hell out of me. It is a constant moving target. I don’t talk a lot about my workouts or my diet, because I’m sensitive to the fact that I believe different things work for different people. I’ve bore witness to several conversations where a well-meaning person is going on and on about how “you should do this…” and “you should do that” and “drink this shake” and “keto is the only way” typically a week into their regime.

 While not an expert by any stretch, I consider myself to be very knowledgeable on the topic of diet and exercise. I don’t insert my thoughts (unless asked) during these conversations, other than to say, “I think that’s great you found what works for you”. When I am asked, I speak about it from a perspective of what works for me and my journey of experimentation.

Now, diet during competition training versus maintenance diet are two completely different things. Thankfully, I like broccoli, chicken and rice. If I had the choice and wasn’t training, I’d probably (read: I would) lean towards pizza. Someone asked what I try to achieve in “off season” – “do you try bulking? etc etc” – My answer to this was and is: “I try to enjoy my life.”   

A friend recently reached out and asked for some guidance because she was struggling with losing weight. I know few people who are a stranger to this struggle.

While I do think different things work for different people, I do think there are a few common things to take into consideration when evaluating obstacles you’re facing and I figured I’d share from my own experiences.

1. Stress. Stress is a bitch. One of the stress hormones is cortisol. Heightened stress leads to heightened levels of cortisol. Not kept in check, heightened levels of cortisol can lead to weight gain. Meditation, deep breathing, walking, reading, relaxing, exercising and NOT putting so much damn pressure on yourself helps relieve stress. 

2. Are you eating enough? A lot of people think they have to drastically cut calories in order to lose weight. The simple equation is you want to burn more calories than you’re consuming. This is true. However, your body being as magical as it is, whenever you go too low with calories your body is signaled. With that, your metabolism slows because it thinks it’s in starvation mode and needs to hold on to energy stores – i.e. fat. I know several people (myself included), when I started feeding my body the right foods and frankly, more of them, I was astounded at the effects.

3. Track calories and/or macronutrients (sometimes referred to as “macros”) – First off, what is a macro? On a high level, it’s your protein, fat, and carbohydrate count. Depending on your goals, each person’s ratio of calories consist of these three components. A gram of protein has 4 calories, a gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories and a gram of fat has 9 calories. While I know this is exhausting and obnoxious, oftentimes, people are eating significantly more than they realize. Start tracking this and reading nutrition labels and you’re in for a world of education.

4. Psychological state – this goes a little hand in hand with stress. I would argue the majority of us have participated in emotional eating. This is where I start touting loving yourself. I won’t go too much into detail on this one, other than to say, when you start being kinder to yourself, that’s a whole new level. Speaking to your body with love versus hatred makes more of a difference than you realize #heebyjeeby.

5. Too much cardio? This one was a game changer for me. When I first sat with a trainer almost 10 years ago, I was doing about an hour or more of running a day. She told me to cut drastically back and keep my cardio under 30 minutes with my heart rate around 140. I almost fell off my chair. I was already lifting, but I was shocked to find out as soon as I cut back on cardio my body transformed. The simple thought process behind this is when you go overboard on your cardio, you start to tap into your muscle stores. You don’t want to burn muscle, as muscle is instrumental in burning calories. A pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat. 

A note about cardio – cardio is short for cardiovascular. The definition of cardiovascular exercise is any vigorous activity that increases heart rate and respiration and raises oxygen and blood flow throughout the body while using large muscle groups of the body repetitively and rhythmically. 

You CAN get a cardio workout from lifting weights and not spend hours on a treadmill. If you’re lifting enough and frequently enough, your heart rate WILL go up. That IS cardio. 

I’ll end this post with saying, there are no shortcuts. You can lose a lot of weight in a short period of time doing a multitude of things – no doubt. 
But for most, the goal is long term maintenance. If you can drink shakes for the rest of your life and be happy – have at it. I know I can’t. If you can do keto and not eat carbs for the rest of your life, good on ya! I know for me, I’d be miserable.

 My biggest piece of advice is to find what works for YOU. Sit down with someone who is certified and/or licensed and has a proven track record of helping people achieve their goals. The path to diet and training for a marathon looks a lot different than path of diet and training for a fitness competition. They’re going to know much more about helping you achieve your goals than Betty down the street selling shakes or Bob who has been doing keto for three months.