Real Talk with Rebel Fitness
Real Talk with Rebel Fitness is the unapologetic voice of Greenville, NC's Rebel Fitness community. A gym built on the belief that health and strength come from empowerment, not punishment. Born from a mission to challenge the toxic norms of diet and gym culture, this podcast is weekly dose of truth-telling, myth-busting, and mindset-shifting.
Real Talk with Rebel Fitness
The Weekend Sabotoge Cycle
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What's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with Rebel Fitness. We are so excited that you're here. We've had a killer start to season two. Um, some really great episodes. Today is no different. So we are going to be talking about something that comes up in the gym a lot. This is very relevant, okay? And I think it's especially relevant this time of year because we're still in like the New Year's role for things, right? Um people are coming in, they're still trying to get their New Year's resolutions going. Um, but we're now kind of like in that little middle section of like New Year's is still kind of there, but really now spring's coming. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We've had a couple warm days, right? A couple of 60s after the snow, classic North Carolina snow and then 60s in a week.
SPEAKER_01And people are feeling like, oh, spring break, is that you? Like I can see you, I can feel you. Yes. Wait, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_02I think that's spring is closer, right? Oh, is it? Yeah, I think so. Whatever the situation, whatever he did, is spring is on the foot.
SPEAKER_00What is that rodent?
SPEAKER_02That damn groundhog. Who knows?
SPEAKER_00What is that rodent doing?
SPEAKER_01Nobody knows. Um, okay, good. So early spring, I will take it. That's a that's some good news we needed right now in our lives. So good job, Phil.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, Phil.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So, but what we're gonna talk about today, you guys, is something that we see a lot in our field in general, but I feel like again, especially this time of year, as people are trying to get a little more honed into their goals. And that is the weekend spiral. Okay, so I want you to kind of picture this, and then I want you to see if this resonates at all with you. But imagine like you start off every single week, it's Monday, and like you're back on track, right? It's like the diet starts Monday mentality. And Monday, you're like honed in. You're like, I'm eating clean and I'm doing my cardio and I'm going to the gym five times, and I've got my meal prep all ready to go, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're doing all the things through the week. And then Friday, night hits, and then something psychologically changes for you.
SPEAKER_02And then laptop closed.
SPEAKER_01That part, it's the out of office. It's like the second you post that out of office, I do that almost every single week. But truly, just dissociate. It switches something in your brain. You become a different person, and and then you go into the weekend, and then Friday night it starts, and it's like, I've been so good all week, right? Like that's the thing. I deserve this. So we're gonna order pizza, we're gonna go out for drinks, we're gonna have a few too many drinks, we're gonna order, you know, margaritas that I've got a lot of sugar and whatever in them. And then we're gonna, you know, have more alcohol in our system.
SPEAKER_02So we're gonna eat more, and then we're gonna stay up later, and then we're gonna-do brunch because after you drink, you have to have something in the morning or it's just gonna be a terrible day.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And if, you know, at birthday parties are always on the weekends and cookouts during the summertime and pool parties and whatever else, right? So now, fast forward, we've done brunch probably on Sunday, right? Um, or we've done like church lunch or something like that. But now the Sunday scaries are starting to kick in. And now you're thinking, oh my God, now I I was disassociated for the last 48 hours. Now let me check back in. And now it's like, okay, now I'm freaking out because now the reality of what you did over the weekend is setting in. And now the plan has to start back again for diet starts Monday. Okay. So it's like, then you chalk it up into your head as this like, um, well, you know, I did this or whatever, but I'll get back locked in, I'll do what I need to do. And so then you get panicked, you get ready to start the whole week, restricting harder, cardioing harder, like doing all the things. And then the cycle repeats over and over and over again. Okay. So I feel like most people at some point in their life can resonate with this 100%.
SPEAKER_02It might not just even be food, right? For a lot of people, it could be alcohol or some other substance issue. It could be the type of people you're hanging out with or the groups that you find yourself around, right? It doesn't have to be a I ate well all week and then ate like shit on the weekend. It could be a I've been sober all week. I'm just gonna have one or two drinks with my girls, and then that turns into something more than you wanted it to be. 100%. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the bottom line of this pattern, you guys, this is what we want to break down to you today, is that it is restriction mindset. And so this cycle is not in any way, shape, or form a lack of discipline on your part. It is literally a physical physiological and psychological response to restriction.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes your brain and your body just need a break from the stress because restriction is inherently stressful, right? You're putting your body in at least a pseudo-sense of fight or flight because you're, well, I can't have oh no, I shouldn't do this. And it's just some sort of low-level stress that then also increases cortisol and just makes everything more difficult.
SPEAKER_01100%. And I literally, this speaks so much to me because I lived this for decades. I mean, this was literally my MO was like going into every single week so hard and like so set. And for me, it was easier because the weeks are so much busier. And so it's like I'm working a full-time job, I've got kids. So it's up early in the morning, drinking my shake. We're just talking about like I drink my shake for breakfast, go straight into working. Now, for me, I'm a little bit different because there's a lot of disorder in here, but I'm drinking a shit ton of caffeine all day. So I don't even have to worry about most meals. Um, probably taking some fat burners in there too. So I'm really not having to worry about eating much. But eating something at some point, but I'm at work and I'm go, go, go all the time at work. I did not have a sedentary job. I was always busy, I was always traveling, I was always doing all the things and momming at the same time. So I was very, very busy until it was time to go home. Then it was like, okay, now it's dinner time. I still am busy with kids. I'm doing all the things, bathtime, nighttime, da-da-da. Go to bed, wake up and do it again. So then on the weekends, I would a hundred percent clock out. And then we're going to the birthday parties and then we're doing the, you know, at-home hangouts, and we're having the kids over to the house and all the things, and then having girls' night and going out on date night and whatever else, and feeling like, oh, I was so good. It was always that. I was so good. I barely ate like this week.
SPEAKER_03I was surprised of this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I had salads all week, guys. Like, and I hit the gym five times this week. Um, I talked about, I think on the podcast one time, uh there was a post that came up in my feed not too long ago. It was like a memory, and it was like, um, I had posted like two people told me I look skinny today.
SPEAKER_02Time for mars or something.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, so I drank, so I was like, went and bought beer and donuts and was like sitting with people eating beer and donuts. Like that was the mindset I had though.
SPEAKER_02Skinny was the that was it. That was the the past.
SPEAKER_01So it was like, so this is my reward. The weekend is my reward, is what I was living for. And so what I want to break down for you guys right now is the two different sides of this, right? So we're gonna get a little bit mental health. And I want I'm gonna read this because I want to make sure I don't miss anything. But like, what is actually happening physiologically to you when you are in this restrictive mindset? So you're restricting calories all week, you are increasing your hunger hormones, okay? And that is a big deal. That's a big freaking deal. We won't get on the science of that right now, but remember that, okay? You're decreasing um your hunger signals, so your fullness singles or signals, essentially. And so you're messing that whole thing up. You have lower energy, you have higher stress hormones, your body doesn't know that what you're doing is for weight loss. Again, your body wasn't built to diet its whole freaking life. It wasn't created biologically to diet.
SPEAKER_02It was built to hold on to weight in a survival.
SPEAKER_01Survival, 100%. That's what your body was built for, not this absolute bullshit diet culture nonsense. Um, and then your body interprets restriction as a threat. Again, that's restriction of anything. If you restrict sleep, if you restrict water, if you restrict minerals and nutrients, if you restrict food, your body is gonna take that as a threat.
SPEAKER_02If you restrict something that you shouldn't have been doing and then are getting withdrawals, that's your body fighting back. It's like, hey, I'm threatening you to give me this thing.
SPEAKER_01100% safety. If you restrict safety from your body and put yourself in a situation over and over again where you're not safe, your body is going to reject that. Your body is going to see that as a threat. Okay. So, and in this situation, you guys, when it comes to the physiological part, and this is where a lot of women, especially my age, when you're getting into perimenopause, menopause, you will eventually, you will feel the consequences of this eventually. I promise you, even if it's not right now. Because what's happening is you, the harder you micromanage this situation, the harder your body's gonna push back. And eventually your body's gonna push so hard back that you're gonna be like, oh my God, like something's really wrong. Okay. Um, then what we're talking about is like the other side of this is psychologically, right? So we're looking at good versus bad and and food labeling food based on moral value, which is a huge no-no, tomato, tomato, tomato, okay? We're talking about earning food. We're talking about saving calories. My God, the amount of times that I've done that in my life, or like save up for the for the big meal. So you starve yourself for days and whatever hours. Um, I'm not gonna eat that because I'm saving up to go to whatever um to eat my brains out. Fear of the scale, um, daily scale fluctuations um creates an emotional roller coaster. So now you're over to all or nothing thinking, what we call the fuck it, um, at the gym, where you just go from like, okay, well, I'm gonna get going on the right track on Monday, but one little tiny thing happens. Little tiny things, and fuck it. Yeah, forget it. The whole rest of the week is completely ruined. And that's typically what will happen too is people try to merge their way into the weekend. And right away Friday night, they're like, I'm gonna go out, I'm not gonna eat. How many people do we have? I swear to you, one of my favorite places in town is subdogs. Oh, yeah. And I always have somebody or a group that are like, I'm not gonna go, because I'm not gonna eat. I'm not gonna eat. And then they eat. And then because they had that restriction mindset, then I see it. You can literally see it flip. Then they have a fry off somebody's plate and order a drink, and then it's like, fuck it. Yeah, now I'm gonna go ham.
SPEAKER_02Actually, I I think I am gonna eat, guys.
SPEAKER_01And then I'm gonna eat more because it's like I have the fuckets now. Instead of I went into it going, I'm gonna get a burger and fries like I always do, and that's fine, and I'm not even thinking, it's a totally different mindset when you go into it, okay? So the fuckets are a real thing.
SPEAKER_02I'll give one little like devil's advocate thing on the saving calories. If you have a very, very specific goal, or you have a very, very specific thing that's coming up, like there's like people that do mukbang content, right? Like some people eat all this food at one time for content creation. Yeah, some of those people will bank up the calories, right? Or if you're in a extreme deficit because you're doing bodybuilding or a photo shoot or you have a fight coming up, right? There are times where calorie banking, not saving calories, but calorie banking or carb banking can be a very, very precisely used tool if you're using it for something specific. Like you may save your carbs into close to the photo shoot because the carbs fill out your muscles, right? You may save the amount of carbs you're having because you know that you're going to said thing and you only get this amount of carbs per day on this plan, that's the only time that's appropriate, right? But we don't want to demonize people with very specific goals, kind of like when I was asking, you know, Courtney the specific like bodybuilding questions, right? Because there are times where counting carbs might be necessary to your specific goal on a day-to-day weight loss journey, no. But is calorie banking something that can be used by high-level athletes or maybe an influencer you see is using it for a very particular reason? Yes, that does not mean it's a tool that needs to be in your toolbox.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And again, being realistic about that, because the the amount of people Shamar's talking about, and that's like 1% of the population. And I promise the majority of you listening to this are not in that population. So like if you're saving calories, literally no reason.
SPEAKER_02If you don't know the terminology of calorie banking, you're probably not in a position to be calorie banking.
SPEAKER_00You're not, you don't you don't have that word in your bank, then you don't need to worry about it.
SPEAKER_01So um, secret eating is another one that this leads to. Okay. So the psychological response to this, again, this was one that I definitely struggled with, also. So you're eating in your car, um, you're hiding food at your house, like those types of things. Um, because again, it's become a moral thing. Food eating and being hungry and um buying certain foods and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02It becomes a moral situation. Or an identity situation. 100%. I can't be seen with a donut, with a Twinkie, with sweets in my hand. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01100%. And then the weekend identity shift, which is exactly what we're talking about when we say the second you hit that out of office and like it just switches, it switches in your head, and literally your entire identity shifts over to another type of person. Okay. Um, so at the end of the day, you guys, when you restrict, your brain becomes obsessed with the thing that you're trying to control. That's just psychology. And so that's where the psychological part of this, and then again the physiological side of this kind of come together and they create like this perfect storm of like, it's impossible to live in this space. Yes, like it really is.
SPEAKER_02The same like mental loop you get stuck in, right? Like trying to not think about something. What is it? All you do is think about it, right? So the best thing to do is say, hey, I'm having this thought, let's sit with it, it'll go away. But if you're like, no, I'm not thinking about pizza, I'm not thinking about pizza. I'm not obviously you're thinking, you're literally this over and over. But if you're like, cool, exactly. I'm thinking about pizza, but let's just do something else. And when that thought passes, it passes, right? 100%. It's the same for anything. If you're having a return back to a negative experience, you can't sit there and like, no, no, no, I'm not there. I'm not, you should be like, okay, yep. Root myself where I'm at. Yep. This is the thought I'm having, but I it will pass and I will be okay.
SPEAKER_01Yep, 100%. And on that note, you know, we're talking about like thinking about thinking about becoming obsessive about it. We're gonna take a little side quest here and we're talking about scale manipulation, okay? Because this is really important part of what we're talking about. Um, a lot of the times when you see like this restriction mindset, it will come along with a lot of weighing during the week. So it's like I'm getting on the scale every morning. If you're doing it more than that, it's even worse. Like, we would never recommend if you are getting on a scale at all, um, doing it more than like once, maybe twice a week. It is obsessive after that, it's crazy, it is not necessary. And so the scale, you guys, is something that we want you to understand. Like the amount of things that affect weight is insane, especially in women, but in anybody, the reality is you can gain seven plus pounds a day.
SPEAKER_02We're all within a very fine, like a very wide three to ten pound range, essentially. 100% based off your hydration, last time you literally took a dump, last time you ate what's in your body, how fast your gastric emptying is, if certain things make you bloat, or there's there's so many different factors.
SPEAKER_01So many freaking things. It's crazy. And so this idea that we're gonna obsessively weigh ourselves, especially during the week. So if you're getting on the scale every single day and you're again getting that high of like, oh, the weight's going down, the weight's going down, the weight's going down, and then that you going into the week will just reinforce a lot of the time, going the weekend, excuse me, will reinforce a lot of the time that idea of like the weekend being your reward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I did it all week. I'm good.
SPEAKER_01Like I paid my dues.
SPEAKER_02Five checks in the boxes, I can you know zone out for three.
SPEAKER_01100%. So, and like we're talking about the three, and then also going into the weekend and like gaining weight during the weekend. We talk about this all the time. You're not gonna gain fat in 24 hours, you're not gonna lose fat in 24 hours. A gain over the weekend is most of the time going to be like a glycogen store because you ate more carbs than usual, but that will go away. It that just essentially means for every carb that you eat, your body's gonna store a certain amount of water. That's it. And so it's gonna fill that up and then it's gonna eventually go away. Okay. Um, so it's gonna be water weight, it's gonna be glycogen, it's gonna be like holding on to like bloating or something, sodium, um, extra sugar, um, inflammation, anything like that, depending on what you ate, what you did, um, those types of things. Those things are not like that's not real weight gain. And so at the end of the day, that gain that you made, like that the weight that you gained during the weekend that freaks us out and creates this crazy pattern of behavior, is not even real weight. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And also what most people think of with fat loss or like you can't feel fat loss, y'all. Like when you take the waste trainer off and you've got all that sweat, and it's like that's that's not fat sweating out of you. You expel fat aerobically. You burn the fat through whatever process all the things happen, and then you expel the fat aerobically. You literally breathe out the fat cells that you have burned off and killed, and then they are put out. You you're not seeing the fat roll off and sweat drops. You're not feeling it because your abs, you don't feel fat loss. You breathe out the fat once you have done the necessary work to burn the fat. That's just how it goes.
SPEAKER_01100%. And so looking to things like that and and going back to like the scale, it just is very manipulative. And so that's another thing that we will get on people a lot about, and we're very vocal about is like that's why we hate things like no pounds challenges. Because at the end of the day, these these cycles are so dumb. These cycles, all it's doing is teaching you how to manipulate the scale. That's all it's doing. So I'm in that process that we just explained out to you from Monday until the next Monday, all you're doing, all you're doing is learning to manipulate the scale. You're learning to starve yourself and restrict and act like a crazy person throughout the entire week and damage all kinds of systems, which we talked about. Then you're gonna go into the weekend and go ham and do whatever and be free, you know, like free bird the entire weekend. And then you're gonna start the cycle over again. And all you're doing is losing, gaining, restricting, losing, gaining, restricting, and you're just starting the cycle over and over and over again. And you're getting on the scale and saying, Oh, I gained a pound over the weekend. I'm a piece of shit. Let me figure out how I can cardio more, restrict more, whatever the situation is, take more fat burners, take more pre-workout, drink more caffeine, so I'm not taking in food, and lose that pound. Right.
SPEAKER_02And if you're a numbers person, you're gonna lose a pound of fat per week if you're overall in a 3,500 calorie deficit at the time that the week is over, right? That's not I'm at a 3,500 calorie deficit Monday to Friday, and now I've lost my pound for the week, so I can do whatever. Because if you're negative 3,500 calories Monday to Friday, you're over 800 on, you know, Saturday, you're over 1200 on Sunday, whatever it is, you've turned your 3,500 calorie deficit into a 1200 calorie deficit. Or if you're going ham Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you may have turned your 3,500 calorie deficit into a 400-calorie surplus. I was gonna say into a plus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's what's happening a lot of time with people is they are so shocked. Like, I can't figure out why I keep gaining weight in little bitty increments. And usually that's what it is. So that's exactly what I want you guys to think about this. Like, this is something that we talk about a lot, and I think it's really helpful for people, is what Shamar is describing is doing what's what we call the bird's eye view. It's like stop looking at 24-hour compartments because the meals at a time people are so commonly looking at a day, right?
SPEAKER_02A meal. It's that's not the one meal you had does not make that much of a difference. Just like the one workout you do, we had this conversation a couple pods back. One workout is for your mental health way more than it's for your physical health. If I showed up to the gym once a week on Wednesday, every single week, I wouldn't change very much physically, but maybe I would just love Wednesday the most out of every day of the week because I just had more energy. I just feel better. But that one workout is for my mental health, right? One meal is for how you're gonna feel the next couple hours. It's gonna be how your body feels that next day, but it has nothing to do with down the road, this like that one meal is just one meal. It's a simple snapshot.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And to that point, it's like that's really what we want to encourage people always to do is like stop looking at it in like these little compartments of like a meal, a day, a whatever. Cause because health and fitness is not built in those little compartments.
SPEAKER_02Like one really hard workout doesn't undo three bad days. One really good day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's built in the compound, it's built in the patterns, it's built in the habits. And so that's essentially what we want you guys to do. If you're really struggling with this. If this is resonating with you and you're really struggling with like this week in and week out, and you're like, oh my God, they're describing me perfectly. And wow, I didn't even know that was disordered. I just thought that was life. It's not. We want you to start by zooming out.
SPEAKER_02Or maybe it has been, but that's not what life always has to be.
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent. And I'm telling you on the other side of it, because I've lived that on the other side of it, it's amazing. It's way better over here. Okay. We have more milk and cookies. So come over to this.
SPEAKER_03More subsworlds.
SPEAKER_01Um, way more. Way more. And you can't live without those. So um, but we want you guys to look at it from like a bird's eye view, okay? So instead of asking, was today perfect? We want you to ask, what does my week look like? What do my months look like? What does my overall stress look like? And what is my average behavior? Like, think about those questions and how fast that adjusts your mindset from what you probably were thinking was just, how do I lose weight? How do I lose weight? How do I lose weight? That's not working. That is keeping you on this crazy cycle. So, what we want you to do is we want you to step back and we want you to look at it from that perspective. Was today, we're not asking if today was perfect. We're asking, what does your week look like? Right? Are you being intentional about it? Are you going into it and saying, okay, this is gonna be a crazy week? It would be really helpful if I meal prepped dinners this week because it's gonna be really, really hard for me to stay on track with that. It would be really helpful for me to go ahead and figure out child care so that I can make sure I get to the gym no matter what this week. Um, you can even zoom out by the month and you can be like, okay, this month is gonna be insane. As a mom, I have to do that. When it comes to December and May, those two months, and if you're a mom, you're automatically feeling like triggered by me saying those two months because they are the most precious but horrifying months at the same time. And it is a an act of God if I can get one second to myself to be able to like keep a schedule, not be drowning in chaos, not be feeling like I'm dropping balls every single place because I can't keep up. So I have to go into those months, very, very intentional, about what I'm gonna make sure that I carve out for myself, what I'm gonna make sure you know that I'm focusing on, how I'm not I'm gonna give myself grace in those months.
SPEAKER_02Yes, is what I'm being non-negotiable about. A hundred percent. Because sometimes you have to be non-negotiable. 100%. That's a Kobe thing. You know, like sometimes you have to make non-negotiable deals with yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02Those are hard.
SPEAKER_01That a hundred percent. That was a word that I did like one of my years was non-negotiable. And I still have a picture of myself. I wrote it in like the one of those chalk markers, those um mirror markers on across my mirror one year, and I left it up there for the entire time. And that word spoke so much to me. Non-negotiable is. Um, yeah, and then I moved into another season where it did not speak to me. I was like, get the shit off my mirror. But like again, it's seasonal. It's like what speaks to you at the time, what works for you at the time. And that is definitely one that it's like as moms, you know, I'm speaking to you moms right now, we do have to do that. We have to say, and and it feels hard at first, but once you do it, then it's like, oh, why wasn't I doing this before? Why wasn't I getting the babysitter? And it can feel self-doing what I need to. Yes.
SPEAKER_02You realize very quickly how everybody around you is taken care of better when you are. 100%. Let she who does all the watering be watered every once in a while.
SPEAKER_01Oh my God. The way that be the super mom thing is worn as such a badge of honor, and and take that badge off. Yeah, we don't need that badge. That badge is crazy. It is the most martyry, crazy thing. And I used to get so high off people being like, you are just like super mom. And I'd be like, oh my God. No, absolutely not. It is not like that's not a badge of honor to be run into the ground and feel like you have to be doing everything. I think it's really a tricky word. And I think it is very much weaponized behind the scenes. It's like, oh, let's call them super moms and then they'll do it all. And then they'll think they're, you know, like, absolutely not. Like, I don't, I would rather not be super mom and you do your share, and we'll all be fine. We'll all just be regular. I can just be mom. Okay. So um, anyway, let me not get off on that. Okay, so what we want you guys to think about on this is metabolism responds to patterns, not punishment. Okay. So again, it's the habits, it's the compounding, it's the consistency. Your metabolism, your health, your wellness, your mental health, like physical health, all of those things is always going to respond to patterns, okay? And habits, it is not going to respond to you punishing yourself over and over again.
SPEAKER_02And that is over intensity. Yeah. Yes. The same exact thing. You can go hard, hard, balls to the wall every Monday, but somebody else that's going pretty hard, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, beats you every time, right? So the tortoise and the hair.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Every single time. It's so funny how we used to like laugh at that story. And now that we're older, it's like, man, that shit was so deep.
SPEAKER_02That tortoise was fast as hell, man.
SPEAKER_01Like, it's so crazy. Anyway, um, so now we want to move into like what actually works, right? Okay, so you've got the background on it. What actually works in this is instead of thinking, how little can I eat, we want you to think about how well you can fuel your body. And we always talk about this. And I did I say this earlier, um, like what fueling actually means. Like, we want you to actually think about that. Well, that's right. In the previous one, we were talking about the Big Mac.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, like, if a Big Mac sounds good to you, it's not a Big Mac's not inherently bad. It's food. It's dense food. It's something that's gonna give you energy, it's gonna give you calories, gonna make you full. It's got protein, carbs, all the things in it. Um, but is it going to fuel you for what you're trying to do?
SPEAKER_02Because that's like the whole thing with gas, is like the percentage, ethanol, whatever, right? So for you, maybe you just needed a higher percentage protein. Like you put in fuel, but the fuel was too high percentage fat, too high percentage this, and not high percentage enough of the main chemical that you needed to run optimally.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And we want you also to, like we talked about earlier, if unless you're in that 1% that Shamar was talking about, we want you to get rid of the saving calories for food and alcohol mindset. Okay. Because again, if it hasn't worked for you, if you're on this cycle, if we're speaking to you right now, you got to get rid of that. Because that's the first part of this is you keeping that mindset is gonna keep you stuck in the cycle. Okay. We don't want you skipping meals. We want you to eat protein at every meal. We want you to eat fiber at every meal. We want you to eat consistently and regularly throughout the days. Blood sugar spiking is such a real thing. And again, this is something that I learned the hard way because in my most disordered times, I was drinking caffeine and taking fat burners all the time. So my blood sugar levels were just absolute trash. My body had no idea how to tell me. Am I hungry? Am I not? We don't know. Don't bother telling this girl anything because all she's gonna do is shove another fat burner down our throat so that she doesn't feel it. So feel the hunger cues when you feel it, they call it like soft hunger. When you start feeling the soft hunger, make a plan to eat. Um, a lot of people will say, like, I gotta set alarms in my phones to remember to eat. That's fine. Um, but if you're ignoring your hunger cues or you're drinking caffeine in order to mass those hunger cues, or you're taking a fat burner or something like that, I promise you it's detriment, very detrimental to your metabolism. So listen to that, eat consistently, eat regularly throughout the days, okay? Um, and then we want you to decide intentionally, be an intentional human being. Like when you, like we said, when you go into subs, like how many drinks you're gonna have? Or what's your intention for sub dogs?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You could even say, hey, this is my one night, right? I'm just not really gonna think about it. And then I'm right back to work tomorrow, right? And maybe right now back right back to work is not 100% three salads tomorrow. It's just tomorrow I'm not doing subdogs, right? Tomorrow I'm back to eggs and cottage cheese, something good for lunch, and then me and my husband normally go out for dinner on Saturdays, and that's still fine. I just have to make a calorie-conscious choice tomorrow because I'm choosing today as my cheatier day. I'm not having a cheat day, a cheat meal, but I'm saying my intention today is to drink, have fun, be merry with my friends because I feel like I would be missing out on something if I didn't take this opportunity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you can still be intentional about that. You can still say, like, I'm getting ready to go in the subs and have a great time. That's how I go into it. But I'm still very intentional about that.
SPEAKER_02That doesn't mean you're taking every shot at the bar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like I'm not gonna drink 17 drinks and eat, you know, like I'm still gonna be intentional about it.
SPEAKER_02And I think, again, the other part of this is I think where that comes in, though, right, is the fact that you give yourself that freedom, right? The the intentionality you're talking about right there to someone who's stuck in the cycle we're talking about sounds impossible. Absolutely. How do you go to sub dogs and be intentional? That's all shitty bar food. What do you mean intentional as sub dogs, right? But that's just what she's saying, right? You could go in and have the burger and tots and not get cheese or what it bacon cheese fries, right? You cannot have all the beers, all the drinks. If you say, hey, I want to have a burger and two subsworlds, and that's way more than you normally have, and you have a great time and you catch a buzz, why did you have to do any more, right? I think it's so much right back into the all or nothing mindset, right? If you're drinking, we're drinking, yeah, right? But why can't you have fun off two drinks, three drinks? Absolutely. Catching a buzz? Why do you have to be belligerent or almost blacked out to enjoy drinking? Yeah. You know, is it be is that where the noise turns off, right? Because does drinking make you feel worse until it makes you feel nothing?
SPEAKER_01And I was just gonna say, and that's exactly, and that comes into my second point, which is like, again, we want you to be intentional about this. So decide what matters. So when I'm going into a situation, especially when it comes to alcohol, we talked about this before, but a lot of drinking is fake freedom. So it's like, what am I drinking out of right now? What am I drinking to get into that's still not really it? Because again, drinking creates a very short-term effect. So are you chasing that effect for the short term and for what? But also going into it intentionally like what matters? So, like as I'm walking into a restaurant of any kind and I'm like, I'm going to eat whatever, then it's like, what matters to you? If I'm gonna drink tonight, what actually matters to me? For me, in this point in my life, the way I'm gonna feel tomorrow matters. Yeah. I don't want to have extra depression and anxiety symptoms. I don't want to have a hard time getting out of bed. I don't want to have um deal with like the hangover and like feel my body requesting extra calories, calories of me all day long, extra rest, all the things. Like I don't want my liver struggling all day long. So that matters to me. So that is gonna affect the way that I treat my body during that meal. And again, this is with anything. This is not just necessarily, you know, with food, but because we're talking about that cycle right now, that's what we want you to think about is like act according to what matters and then what doesn't. Right. What doesn't matter? So if you can walk into again a meal and be like, I'm getting ready to go ham, I'm gonna drink into whatever and take shots and eat all the food and da-da-da. On this side, it's like what matters, on this side, what doesn't. And if you're able to say, you know, in this brain processing moment, like, okay, Carissa, if you do that, you're telling people that your goal to do this or your intention to do this doesn't matter anymore. And if I can say you're right, then okay. Then you've made an adult decision and you're being intentional. But I think that's something that a lot of times people don't want to be intentional. It's just a lot easier against same things therapy. You don't want to look in the mirror, you don't want to actually think too long about it. It's like, what am I actually doing when I'm eating past the point of being full to the point of feeling sick and then feeling like I've got to, you know, purge or, you know, not skip another meal or whatever the situation is. What's actually happening? What am I saying to myself when I do that? What am I saying matters? What am I saying doesn't matter? I think it's just as important.
SPEAKER_02What am I saying to myself or what am I quieting? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. So, and we want you to eat normally during the day. We want you to hydrate, we want you to sleep, we want you to move your body, and we want you to regulate your nervous system. I don't think we talk enough about how important it is to regulate your nervous system. I've been having this conversation with a lot of people lately because a lot of people don't realize how much infrared helps with nervous system um regulation. And again, Google it on your own because we don't have time to talk about right now. But like your nervous system is dysregulated a lot. I promise you, whether you realize it or not. It's a short fuse, it's flipping out on somebody. It's, you know, you and I talk about this a lot, the um uh procrastination. Yeah. And like I will get so dysregulated by social media and different things like that, politics. And then I was once focused, like I was so focused. And then all of a sudden, something or a per certain person texts me or something like that. And it just dysregulates everything. I no longer can think straight. I I was like, wait, my to-do list, I was killing it. Now I can't quite get a grasp on anything that I needed to do. I can't put brain cells together. Um, nervous system dysregulation goes across the board and is happening, is happening constantly. And if you're not aware of it and you're just letting that happen, then that can create a lot of havoc.
SPEAKER_02And so one way to check in is just like dropping your shoulders, right? A lot of people walk around and don't realize that they've got their shoulders. They're driving, you know, like this is like, hey, if you can just drive and go Yes. Yep, that'll reset your nervous system just like that. The shake plate does a really good job. Shaking is incredible too.
SPEAKER_01It releases it a couple quick box breaths.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Do the breathe in, hold it, like a slow breath in, hold it, breathe it out for even longer, hold it, do that a couple times. You will not even like a lot of times it'll be like, I had no idea. Like, take your tongue off the roof of your mouth. If you're listening to this, unclench your jaw. Yeah. Queens. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So like the body just needs to get rid of excess energy. It just needs to expel whatever tension that it didn't need. This is the same thing that happens with animals, right? If you've ever watched Animal Planet and you see a gazelle escape a lion, right? What does it do once it like walks away? It shakes vigorously. It like it sticks its leg out and shakes, it shakes its whole head around, and that's just it trying to think, hey, we're no longer in fight or flight. Yeah. Because what's the opposite of fight or flight? Rest and digest. Because if you're not in fight or flight mode, you're in rest and digest mode, which is it's animalistic, right? But we still struggle with this thing.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, and moderation, you guys, requires nourishment, not deprivation. So at the end of the day, you are not going to be able to live the balanced life in moderation. People always treat like in moderation, in moderation. What the what does that mean? Yeah. The hell does moderation mean? Like nobody, it's like the 80-20 or the 90-10 or the whatever. Moderation is like being well. And at the end of the day, you can't be well when you are depriving yourself. Like your body will not function in that. Okay. Another um way that you can do this is remove the scale. Um, focus on strength, energy, mood, sleep, performance. Again, if you are not the type of person you can completely get rid of it, then at least give it up for like Lent. Yeah. Okay. Give it up. Jesus wants you to do that. Okay. So give it up for Lent, give it up for a certain amount of time, cut it down. Um, take yourself out of needing to do that. Find a place like ours that doesn't in body. Um, finding out how to calculate like muscle mass and body fat, visceral fat type situation is a lot healthier and a lot better numbers to look at than the scale all the time.
SPEAKER_02And it gives you more information on what you actually need to work on.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. And then build a framework, okay? Like we want you to, an example of this would be like 80% consistent, consistent in eating nourishing meals, um, 20% intentional on doing your mobility stuff, three to four strength sessions, movement most days, alcohol capped intentionally. Um, and then no Monday punishment. So, like, again, being very intentional about going into a week and what does that actually look like for you? Again, I could say to Shamar, hey, be balanced, do things in moderation. His moderation is gonna look totally different than mine. We're completely different people in completely different stages of life. So, like, that would be wild for me as a trainer to say to him, hey, do be moderate. And then I'm giving examples of like what my moderation day would look like. We have totally different goals, totally different lifestyles, all the different things. So you've got to figure that out for you and be really intentional about that. Um, the last thing is call out your disordered behavior. This is something that I really had to start doing. It's hard, you guys. I'm not gonna lie, it's hard. Um, and get help if you need it, like coaching, therapy. Your week should not revolve around weighing yourself, anxiety, skipping meals, um, you know, compensating for like overeating, starving yourself, like punishing yourself, all of those things. It's all that's all disordered. And so if that's what your weeks are looking like, and then again, you're going into the weekend feeling like you have to reward yourself, the weekend cannot function as a reward for your week. It just won't work out. It'll feel okay. And it's like a funny meme to like put up on social media. But when the rubber meets the where the rubber rubber meets the road is like, that's not sustainable for us to do forever. You can't live in that punishment during the week, reward for the weekend, and then think that you're not either gonna go insane or just stay exactly where you're at.
SPEAKER_02You're also only living half of your life at that point. If you're legitimately thinking that I, you know, am doing really well for four to five days so I can, you know, do whatever for two, you're legitimately only living half the days of your life, not to account for how much you sleep, how much you work.
SPEAKER_01So you're living for the weekend. Yeah. And that's nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. We got to figure out how to get outside of that, okay? So um, I just had a little thing that said, you know, that's you guys, and again, that's control disguised as discipline. And that is not the kind of control we want everybody to have self-control, right? But that's not the control that we're looking for in this situation, okay? So we want you guys to zoom out, we want you to look at your week, we want you to look at your month, we want you to look at your habits, and we want you to stop trying to like outsmart your body, right? Like link arms with your body for God's sakes.
SPEAKER_02Give it what it wants. Stop trying to trick it into being a senior. Like it knows what it needs.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Develop a relationship with now. If you're a controlling human being and you struggle with that in other relationships, and that's what you're trying to do to yourself. I mean, that's like a little bit of a red flag that you need to, again, go talk to somebody or look into that. But um, control like self-awareness and um self-control in a lot of ways is very healthy. But in this type of situation, it's not. We want you to build a relationship with your body. We want you to zoom out, identify some of the things, start calling yourself out gently on some of these things, have some grace for yourself and reach out when you need it. Um, speaking of reaching out, feel free to do that to us anytime. Okay. Um, we are here for you guys, whether you're local or not. We are always here. You can message us on social media. Um, you can go to our website, hit our little chat button, and you can message us about anything. We are here to help with resources and pointing you guys in the right direction, coaching. Obviously, we've got the physical gym that anybody can walk into at any time. And we would love to see you here in Greenville, North Carolina. Um, but we are always here to support. I hope this was helpful for somebody. I hope that gave you some good, valuable, you know, tactical things that you guys can take. Um, and I hope it helped somebody realize that maybe they're dealing with a little bit of a cycle.
SPEAKER_02More to life than this cycle we've been stuck in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. Preach. So anyway, we appreciate you guys being here. Um, and we will see you on the next episode. Bye.
SPEAKER_03Yo, this is about to really hurt some people's feelings. If you're a little sensitive, you might as well turn it on. Are you afraid to drop the job when you were ready to drop the job?