"I don't think I'll ever sleep again!" I sobbed. 3 months of night sweats left me rung out and exhausted in every way possible: mentally, emotionally, and obviously physically. Menopause hormone therapy is first line treatment for night sweats and hot flashes, and for me it was a life saver.
How to Workout Over 40
Kim: [00:00:04] Welcome to episode 65 of the Fitness Simplified Podcast. I’m your host, Kim Schlag. On today’s episode, we’re talking how to work out. If you have been to the gym, maybe met with a trainer, maybe not, maybe done some classes and you’re of confused like, “okay, I’m at home now, I’ve got some equipment, what do I do with it?” This is the episode for you.
I speak with a woman named Stephanie, who is in situation. She is at home, in her home gym with her dumbbells and she just isn’t quite sure what to do. She knows that strength training is going to get her the results she wants. She wants to look lean, she wants to look toned, she wants to be strong, she wants to age well.
If that sounds like you, and you are like Stephanie, and you just don’t know what to do with your equipment this is the episode for you. Let’s go.
Hi, Stephanie.
Stephanie: [00:01:02] Hi! How are you?
Kim: [00:01:04] So glad we could make this meeting work.
Stephanie: [00:01:08] Absolutely. Thank you.
Kim: [00:01:10] I was attempting to dial into Zoom and it kept telling me to wait for the meeting host and I was like, “that’s me!”
Stephanie: [00:01:17] “I am the host!”
Kim: [00:01:20] And so I had to come back off and start a new meeting.
I don’t know who else they were waiting for.
Stephanie: [00:01:24] That’s technology for you these days.
Kim: [00:01:27] I know. So, look, we don’t know each other at all, so tell me some about you.
Stephanie: [00:01:33] Sure, absolutely.
Gosh, how does one define oneself? I’m a mom. I suppose that would be the place to start. My husband and I have three kids, we have two boys and a girl. And I work in hospital public relations. So, I do the writing, the social media, the graphic design, that kind of good stuff.
Kim: [00:01:54] Okay. And how old are your kids?
Stephanie: [00:01:56] Our boys are 14 and 11 and our daughter is 7.
Kim: [00:01:59] Okay. Good ages. I love 7. 7 is a good age.
Stephanie: [00:02:03] Yeah. She’s got a lot of attitude. She and our middle guy, they are the extroverts to beat the band.
Kim: [00:02:10] Ok, that doesn’t bode well for you if she’s 7 and has attitude. That usually kicks in around 13.
Stephanie: [00:02:17] Yeah. We’re lucky, our 14-year-old is a super chill teenager. So, he’s a really good entry point for us.
Kim: [00:02:23] Okay, good. That’s good. It sounds like you have some more heading up the pike that might not be so chill.
Stephanie: [00:02:28] But they’re very entertaining. So, we like that.
Kim: [00:02:31] Well, hey, there’s that.
Now, working in a business associated with the hospital right now, how are things going for you as far as COVID? Is a lot of your work, like, talking about that kind of stuff in social media or not so much?
Stephanie: [00:02:43] A whole lot of signage, a whole lot of social media. Things related to masks and hand washing and social distancing.
That kind of put a lot of our normal things on hold. A lot of our normal, non-essential procedures and things went on pause for a while. And then my husband’s a physician, as well, and so same thing, there’s just been a lot of masking and a lot of wearing of scrubs and that kind of thing.
Kim: [00:03:06] Got it. Got it. And where are you located?
Stephanie: [00:03:10] Iowa.
Kim: [00:03:11] Okay, right there in the middle. And how are you guys doing as far as COVID in Iowa?
Stephanie: [00:03:19] So we’re in one of the more populated counties, we’re not too far from Des Moines. And so, we’re not as bad as say Des Moines or the quad cities or the Omaha area, but when they were able to open maybe about 75 of the counties back up, we were one of the not reopened ones.
So, kind of in the middle. It’s certainly not nearly as bad as some areas of the country, but not completely untouched. We have some factories, we have wind turbine factories locally, and of course, factories have been hit hard. The other places we’ve seen hotspots have been retirement facilities, nursing homes.
Kim: [00:04:00] Got it. Got it.
So, Stephanie, talk to me, this is your call, we can talk about whatever you want. So, lay it on me. What is on your mind?
Stephanie: [00:04:12] So I’ve kind of ended up using quarantine to try to get healthier. I don’t know why, I guess I’m bored.
I am not a sporty person by nature at all. I was a music theater kid. I was a read all the books kid. So, anything really related to athletics has been very new to me. And the other thing, a lot of things related to nutrition has been fairly new to me because, for the vast majority of my life, I’ve been pretty blessed to have a pretty fast metabolism. And so being 41 now I want to make sure I’m staying ahead of that and instill good habits now that I’ll be happy about when I’m 51 and 61 and 71, if that makes sense.
Kim: [00:05:00] Absolutely, it does. Absolutely, it does.
So, we have a lot in common, by the way — I was a theater kid, musical theater was my jam as a kid and when I wasn’t doing that, I was reading. I would have never called myself an athlete. Though, I did lots of things because friends wanted me to. You know, played hockey and lacrosse and all that stuff.
I was never any good at it, I never defined myself as an athlete until I was in my forties. So, it is never too late to start.
So, it sounds like top of mind you are thinking, “what can I do now that I’m in my forties to be healthy as I move through the rest of my life, forties, fifties, sixties on.”
Stephanie: [00:05:41] Yes. And part of it is — and it’s probably a silly thing — but there’s the certain things that we do define ourselves by and I was always “the little one.” I’m fairly short, I’m only about 5’2″ and, you know, you start reading how you define yourself as of, “I’m a brunette and I’m talkative,” and there’s just certain things.
And my mom was that way for a long time, too, and then once menopause hit her things sort of changed and I don’t think she likes the way she feels. And so again, I thought, “maybe take a little bit of a life lesson.” Because she’s only 62, but she has arthritis fairly bad in her feet and in her hands, she’s an incredibly hard worker. She spent 30-some odd years as a registered nurse.
And so, she’s at the point, she’s like, “yeah, I feel bad.” She doesn’t like the way she feels, she doesn’t like the way she looks. So again, I’m trying to take some notes of not wanting to feel in 20 years the way she feels now. Does that make sense?
Kim: [00:06:44] Got it. So, it sounds like this is coming from a proactive place.
Are you at a spot right now where you feel unhealthy, you don’t move well, you don’t like the way you look? Or is this really looking forward so that you prevent that?
Stephanie: [00:06:56] I would say my answer to that is different now than it would been about three months ago, because I have been tracking calories since the end of January and I’ve been very consistently exercising since we went to quarantine, so about mid to later March.
I’m doing cardio four days a week, I’m doing strength training two days a week, and then I’m taking one break day. I don’t run, I’m not a runner, so what I’ve usually been doing is I do the treadmill. I put it at its maximum incline and then I walk like three miles an hour because then I find that it feels like it’s making my legs stronger, but it doesn’t make me lose my breath like crazy, which running would always do. I mean, I could run for like two minutes and I’m like, “I’m done and I’m going to barf now.”
And so, it feels sustainable to me, but it still feels challenging. So, you know, I definitely feel like my clothes fit better than they did in January, post-Christmas, post all that stuff. I’m able to pull some stuff out of the closet that I hadn’t been wearing for a while.
Again, it’s one of those things — you get to a point where you have little kids and your job’s busy and five o’clock hits and it’s “Ooh, wine sounds good.” So, again, trying to make some of those “oftentimes” habits into “sometimes” habits and the “seldom” habits like exercise into a “more often” habit.
Kim: [00:08:23] Yes. Got it. Got it. And so, has your main goal since the beginning of the year, since you started, was it weight loss? Was that specifically what you were working on with your health and fitness?
Stephanie: [00:08:38] I think that was my starting point. Partially that, partially weight loss. Partially, again, realizing that — and it’s things I’ve seen you talk about a lot where, because I would be tired, because I would be stressed, because I would be bored, it’s “Ooh, cookies.” “Ooh, wine.” And then you find yourself chasing your tail because it’s such a quick little fix that it doesn’t last for very long.
And so, trying to think of what are the things where, the oatmeal might not be as exciting as the cookies, but two hours later I’m not feeling squirrely again, I’m going to bed feeling satiated, I wake up feeling like I still feel good. I just put some Nutella in the oatmeal and all of a sudden, I’m real happy.
Kim: [00:09:27] I’ve never put Nutella in my oatmeal. Maybe I’ll try that. That sounds delicious.
Stephanie: [00:09:31] It’s kind of like eating a no-bake cookie.
Kim: [00:09:33] Oh, yum. That sounds delicious. Okay. I’ll try that. We don’t have any more Nutella in the house, I went through a big Nutella phase and then when we finished it, I did not buy more. It was too much work to keep fitting those calories in my calories. I was way over doing it.
Stephanie: [00:09:48] And that’s what I found — I didn’t touch it for months and then once I got to the point where — some of it I think is recalibrating what’s worth it. Even little things I’ve found where, and again, I really credit following you on Instagram and Susan, and so if I really want a Snickers bar, I could have a Snickers ice cream bar and it’s 70 fewer calories and it actually takes longer to eat cause it’s cold, so I get more bang for my buck, as it were, without feeling deprived.
Kim: [00:10:29] I love that. I call those nutritional compromises, looking for the things that really matter to us, figuring o
ut how we can fit them into our day so that we can enjoy how we eat. So, it’s important that you’re latching onto that. That’s fantastic.
Stephanie: [00:10:41] Yes, because I definitely find there’s some things that would never be worth it. On my best day I’m not going to enjoy a Twinkie very much and it is just not worth the calories.
Kim: [00:10:48] Yeah. I’m with you. Twinkies don’t do it for me.
Stephanie: [00:10:53] But, you know, I found even if putting in just 12 grams of Nutella into the whole bowl of oatmeal and I’ve already put in some artificial sweetener to up to the general sweetness of it and then I put in egg whites and almond milk and the different things to really boost up the protein, then it tastes really good.
Kim: [00:11:13] That’s fantastic. Yep. I use artificial sweetener in there. Look, it’s certainly not going to make you gain weight and from what we know now, there’s a lot we don’t know, but from what we know now, the amount of artificial sweetener you would have to eat would be more than you could possibly stomach to have it have any health implications. Like, it would have to be massive amounts based on what we know now.
Again, we might know other things in the future, but based on what we know now.
Okay, well you sound like you’re in a pretty good spot. What can I help you with today?
Stephanie: [00:11:42] So I think what I had originally reached out to you on is, you know, an area that as much as I’m not a cardio person, I’m even less of a strength training person. My husband and I have set up a little weight room in the basement, kind of lucked out getting a cable weight machine.
The physical therapy department here at the hospital ended up deciding they didn’t want it anymore, so they were willing to part with it for a song.
Kim: [00:12:08] Nice. That’s fantastic.
Stephanie: [00:12:10] It was heck getting it into the house. Those things are heavy.
Kim: [00:12:14] I bet. I bet that was hard.
Stephanie: [00:12:17] So we have that, I have some lighter dumbbells for myself ranging from 2’s up to 12’s, because again, wimpy, weak. We got a bench and so I’m just trying to feel my way along, trying to create a little routine. Right now I’m aiming for sustainability. If I can get it done two times a week, I’m calling it a victory.
Kim: [00:12:45] Got it. Got it. Okay. So, let’s talk about what we can get you moving on for really getting a good, sustainable strength training program that is going to benefit you now. It’s going to benefit how you look, it’s going to benefit you as you age, as far as your bone health. If we want to be women who can reach up and grab things out of a cupboard and stoop down to pull a weed as we get old, we have to have strong bones. We have to be able to move and strength training is what can get us that.
Stephanie: [00:13:14] And that’s actually, that’s perfect too, because yeah, as a more small Caucasian lady, I know that can be a risk factor.
Kim: [00:13:21] Absolutely. And so, it’s going to help you age better. It’s going to help you look better. The lean, tight look that people want, it’s not just fat loss — a lot of that is building muscle.
And we do that through two things: strength training and nutrition, as in, we eat plenty of protein.
So, let’s talk about this strength training piece. I love that you have equipment because a lot of people don’t right now and I’m working with a lot of people trying to use sandbags and laundry detergents, and the fact that you have equipment is fantastic. And that you’ve already started dedicating two days a week to it, I think that’s fantastic.
Ideally, as you move on, I would love to see you add one more day and do it three times a week. It’s not a must. I do have some clients who are super busy and we have them do two days a week. To get the amount of volume of working out in in those two days sometimes makes for really long workouts and so it’s often better to split them up into three days. How would you feel about adding in a third day?
Stephanie: [00:14:17] I think definitely good. Again, knowing that I have this tendency to, in the past, where it’s like I try for a little bit — part of it is I find it really dull. I find it really boring because at least in front on the treadmill, you throw on a Doctor Who, or a Gray’s Anatomy and you just go.
Kim: [00:14:33] Yeah.
Stephanie: [00:14:34] Now one thing that I found, and hopefully I’m not just tricking myself, but I feel like the backs of my legs have gotten a lot stronger from the treadmill incline. I’m not sure how much it’s done for the front of my legs, but I feel like my hamstrings and my calves have.
Kim: [00:14:52] Is that something you’re interested in? Having stronger, more toned legs?
Stephanie: [00:14:56] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have not done any strength other than the treadmill. I’ve not done any lower body strength training, really. Everything I’ve done so far has been upper body, just because I thought it’s a place to start.
Kim: [00:15:08] Absolutely. It’s a place to start.
Okay, well good news is you’ve got a lot of gains on the table here, then. I’m super excited for you to get going with some lower body moves. So, walking, even on an incline, absolutely, it can build some strength in your legs. It’s not going to give you the muscle d
efinition of strength training, so if you want to have legs that look like a fit person, strength training is going to get you that, and you can absolutely do that at home, three days per week. For sure.
So, let me talk you through a couple of important principles and we’ll kind go from there. So, strength training three days a week will work wonders for you. We’re going to have you do one lower body day, one upper body day, and one full body day.
So that’s how we’re gonna do it. Which means that you will hit each of your muscle groups twice per week, which is a pretty good spot to be. There are people who, very successfully, bodybuilders who do like a bro-split, where they only hit each muscle once per week, but again, they’re hitting a ton of sets in that one workout. I don’t have any of my clients doing that kind of stuff. They all hit their muscle groups twice per week, over the course of either three or four days.
So, we’re going to have you do three days per week. One of the things that we want you to really think about is what is going to get you the most bang for your buck? And what is going to get you the most bang for your buck is doing big compound moves for most of your workout.
I bet some of the things you’ve been doing recently, like biceps and triceps, feel really familiar to you, like biceps curls and things, and we can still have you do those things. What we’ll do with those is put them towards the end of your workout and we’ll prioritize our multi-joint moves — things like, for upper body, it would be a dumbbell chest press, it would be a pushup, it would be a dumbbell row or a cable row, frankly, any kind of rough. So, it’d be rowing, pull downs, if your machine has that. So big, multi-joint movements. Pull downs, pull ups, pushups, rows, chest presses, that’s upper body.
Lower body — squats, deadlift variations — which, I hope that doesn’t sound scary. A lot of people are like, “that sounds terrible.” it doesn’t have to be with barbell, it can be like Romanian holding dumbbells, it can be lots of different things. Deadlift variations, lunge variations, and bridge variations — which are glute bridges and hip thrusts.
The meat of your workout should be those things.
That’s step one and then other smaller things like, like triceps overhead presses and bicep curls and those things, but it’s not the meat of the workout. Where most of the benefit is going to come are those big workouts?
Does that part make sense?
Stephanie: [00:17:50] Yes. And some of that, like I said, I have not really been doing lower body stuff. Upper body, some of those I have and doing. So, we have a bench, so I’ve been doing seated overhead press, I’ve been lying flat and doing chest presses — again, 12 pounds per hand, because super weak, but I made my way up from 10, so.
Kim: [00:18:14] Perfect. Okay. That’s a good point.
Stephanie: [00:18:16] And I was very lucky that my mom had something because I topped out at 10 and you can’t buy hand weights right now, but again, during some past time when she was thinking maybe she’d try something, she had purchased something and then she was like, “I don’t use them. Here.”
Kim: [00:18:28] Yeah. I’m glad she gave you this. So that point you just made is a big one. The fact that you were like, “Oh, but it’s not much yet, but I made my way up from 10,” that is how gains are made. If you want to look fit, you want to get stronger, that is what we do. We have you constantly work to move up in weight and/or reps in a given rep range.
First thing, we get your form really down, right? So, let’s say you’re doing a chest press and it’s your first time, you have no idea what you’re doing. Your one and only goal is to make that movement feel more natural, to do it correctly. Once you’ve done that you want to up weight and up the weight and up the weight.
When you do that, it tells your body, “Hey, I need this muscle. Build me more of this stuff,” In combination with protein. It’s so key. If you from right now, if you never again upped your weight and you just kept doing 12-pound chest presses, you wouldn’t make any progress.
And a lot of people do that. They do it year after year, they do the same weight and sometimes they’ll do it at a speed where they feel their heart racing and they feel sweaty. So, they feel like, “I’m doing something here, but I don’t see any progress,” and the thing they’re missing is progression.
Stephanie: [00:19:42] Sure.
Kim: [00:19:43] Does that make sense?
Stephanie: [00:19:44] Absolutely. And what I find is, so I’ll do something with my 12 pounds, for example, with my chest press. My first set, I can get to 15, but then I can definitely tell a big drop where the second one maybe 12 and above my third one, I can eek out to 8 and that’s it. So, then I assume that means I’m probably still at the right weight, as opposed to if I can just bang out 15, 15, and 15 and still feel like I have gas in the tank.
Kim: [00:20:10] You’re heading down the right path, for sure, with that thought. Absolutely.
I’d love to see us bring your rep range down a little bit more. You can build muscle in those higher rep ranges, like 15 plus. Absolutely, you can. It can take a long time to do those kinds of reps.
Stephanie: [00:20:26] Well, like I said, I do find it boring. And so, for me, being able to decrease that time probably would be beneficial.
Kim: [00:20:33] And what this is going to hinge on is you getting some heavier dumbbells, which I will tell you in recent weeks, they are more available now. I do have clients finding dumbbells in places like Amazon, third party sellers, Craigslist, I even had two clients tell me that Dick’s has available. So, they’re out there now, whereas a month ago, it wasn’t happening. They were just gone. So, they are starting to appear now. So really start looking for some more.
You’re going to need to heavier things — 15s, 20s, 25s. And I know you’re probably looking at me
like “really? I’m going to need 25s and 30s?” You will. For the lower body stuff, very quickly. But that being said, I’m glad you had this cable machine and actually, I would love for you later when we’re off of this, send me some pictures of what you have and can talk you through what we can have you do there. We’re not going to sit here on the podcast and do that. But that’s great that you have that available, because it’s going to have some more substantial weight with it.
So, yes, the idea is that we want you to make progress, go up in weight, and some people, what that means is they just keep trying to use the 12 pounds and they do 15 reps and then the next time they do 18 reps and it gets really long and it’s more effective to say,” Hey, let’s bring those rep ranges down.”
Ideally at the beginning of your workout, I would have you working in like the 8-rep range or even lower, if you had barbells even lower. So, we’re doing chest presses for 8 reps. And what that means is when you get to rep 8, it is hard. It’s not, you just stop at 8. It’s not like, “I use my 12 pounds and I stop at 8,” it’s “when I get to 8, I could maybe do 9 with good form, but I couldn’t do 10 with good form.” And so that’s what we want to see at the beginning of the workout, is working in those lower numbers. 8s, 7s, 6s, 5s, for moves like the squat and the deadlifts and the lunges and the overhead presses and the chest presses, those kinds of things. Then as you move throughout the workout, you can bring those numbers up and maybe you’ll do things in the rep range of 10s and 12s.
And so, we get you working in all rep ranges and in every single one of those cases, we want you working to close to failure so that when you finish your set, each individual set, it should be like, “wow, that is hard. And I can do one more, but I’m not doing two more.”
Stephanie: [00:22:48] Yeah, and mean, sometimes I surprise myself because sometimes I do go to failure. It’s like, the previous set I made it to 12 and all of a sudden on 9 I’m like, “Nope. Stuck. It ain’t going anywhere.”
Kim: [00:23:00] And it’s good that you’re pushing yourself that hard. It’s really good. Now look, I don’t want to tell somebody like, “hey, you should put a bar on your back and start going to failure on your squats” your first couple of times. Like, you shouldn’t be shooting to fail all the time. There are certain things it’s not going to hurt you to fail a dumbbell chest press now and again, it’s not going to hurt you to fail at biceps curls, right? If you fail, you literally just don’t lift up.
But we really want you working close to failure. It’s key. And the thing is, that is going to change — and this is one of the things I want to tell you, because I know you’re like, “this is of boring to me.” One of the things that can make this interesting is you make this be like a contest between them and you. So, write down the weights you lift every week. “I’m doing X moves and for my chest presses, I use 12 pounds and I did 15 reps, the one set, and I did 10, and then I did 8.” So, you know what that is. And the next week, when that workout comes around again, your goal is to beat it. And that’s how your body changes and it also keeps it way more interesting.
Stephanie: [00:24:03] Yeah. And I did find– because one of my problems was, again, comparing it to a treadmill where you can just set it and forget it. Like, “okay, I’m doing 30 minutes,” and then you go until it stops and kicks you off. My problem before with strength training was always like, “okay, what do I do next? I don’t really want to do anything next. I’m walking away now.” So, since March, what I’ve at least been doing, we have a mirror in the exercise room, it’s on wheels, so I can move it around to try to watch that form. And I use a dry erase marker and so then I mark out, “these are the eight things I’m going to do, and those are what I do for the next four weeks.”
And so, then I just check them off as I go, to at least give myself some structure. So, I know, “okay, I’m halfway there. I have one more to go,” as opposed to quitting because, again, bored.
Kim: [00:24:45] Yeah, that’s a really important point — to have structure. It is really demotivating to get down in your gym and be ready to work out, especially if you’re not really feeling it that day, if you’re tired or whatever, you don’t even really love it, and to just of make it up as you go. So yeah, I’m glad you have some structure and that is definitely something I would recommend to you and to everybody listening: have a plan that you are following and work that plan.
And your plan should, as you said, that you were doing it for the month. And I wouldn’t have you do the same workout every day of that month, but like I said, a lower body day, an upper body day, a full body day, every lower body day for four to six weeks, have it be the same and you work to get stronger every single time. You nail your form and you work to get stronger.
Okay? Same thing with your upper body day. Do that same workout for four to six weeks in a row on upper body day, work to get stronger. And then again, the same for your full body day. It keeps it really interesting because you can really have the sense of competition with yourself and getting better.
And here’s the most interesting thing: results. Results are frigging interesting. Like, when you start seeing like, “Oh my gosh, look at the backs of my legs. Look at the front of my legs. Look, I see a bicep!” Like, that is motivating and interesting. And you will see that if you train in this way.
Stephanie: [00:25:58] And kind the stretch goal I have for myself — like, it would be almost like wizardry, if I could ever do a pull up. And since we have the cable machine that would, and now the cable machine has a neutral grip, which is actually, I think, what had very first prompted me to send you a message because I can barely dead hang for more than 20 seconds before it hurts my hands enough that I have to let go.
Kim: [00:26:36] Okay, 20 seconds for a dead hang is great. That’s fantastic. That’s a good start.
All right. So, this is exciting and I love that you have this kind of goal because a performance goal can also be really motivating, right? Because you want to get down there and be like, “Oh my gosh, this is what he’s last week. Can I do that?” So, we can absolutely talk about how to get you a pull up. For sure.
I have a whole YouTube video on this that I’ll make sure I send you so you have this permanently. So, what you just said, dead hangs, that’s a really good place to start. Another good place to start, outside of actually training for pull-ups, is to just work
on general strength of your back. So, doing all kinds of variations of rows is going to help you strengthen your back. So, we’ll do those things along with dedicated pull up training.
So, the way I start people with pull-up training, dead hangs is a good one. Another really good thing is to buy — and these are available right now — is chin up assistance bands.
They’re long, they’re not like the little glute ones that you put over your knees, they’re very long.
Stephanie: [00:27:30] And I think I saw it when you did your home gym tour.
Kim: [00:27:33] Yes, they’re in there. And so, they come very thick and then they go down and you will likely find that, out of the gate, you will need the really thick one. You’ll tie it up and over the handle, it will dangle down into a loop, you’ll put your feet into it and it is lifting your body, which means you’re not lifting as much weight — just if you picked up a 2 pound dumbbell versus a 10 pound dumbbell, you’re lifting less — when this band is on your body, you’re lifting less of your body weight up.
And so, what we would have you do is practice doing 5-8 reps with the thickest band, which is a green one from the company I use. It’s a big thick band. I’ll have you practice 5-8 reps, take a two-minute rest. Do that three times. Do that a couple of times a week — I’d say twice a week on your upper body day your full body day — first thing out of the gate.
So, if somebody has a performance goal like that in mind, I put it first in their workout, when you’re really fresh. So put that first and then you move on with the rest of your workout. Work on that.
After a month with doing that, we can have you add some other things in. Another good one to add in is what’s called a slow eccentric. So, what it would be is you’d get a stool, something that you could climb on to get up into the top position of the pull up, and then you would just lower your body down as slowly as possible under control. And so that’s the whole move. You don’t pull yourself up, you just lower down.
Stephanie: [00:28:58] And that’s what I’ve been trying to do to also work on a pushup. Because I can’t do a proper pushup either.
Kim: [00:29:03] And you’ve been doing the lowering part.
Stephanie: [00:29:05] Yes. And even now when I’m doing it on my bench — I’m doing it at an inclined, because again, weak, but I can do–
Kim: [00:29:13] I’m gonna call that right here. You stop calling yourself weak right now.
That’s like the fourth time you did it and I’m not going to let it slide anymore.
Stephanie: [00:29:19] I have room for gains.
Kim: [00:29:21] You have room for gains. And here’s the thing: you’re not weak, you have some strength in you now and you’re going to get stronger, right? You’re lifting 12-pound dumbbells and so you’re 12 pounds strong. In a few weeks you’re going to be 15 pounds strong, 20 pounds strong. Right now, you’re dead hang 20 seconds strong, a few months down the road you’re going to be, “I got my first pull up” strong.
Stephanie: [00:29:42] Yeah, it’s funny. My brother — he’s about nine years younger than I am. And he’s about twice as big as I am. He’s six feet tall. He’s probably usually around 190 pounds and he weight lifts and stuff. And so, he almost can’t wrap his brain around what it’s like to be me because he’s like, “but there’s nothing to lift, you can just do it, right?” And I’m like, “no!”
Kim: [00:30:02] But I will tell you –, can you tell me how much you weigh?
Stephanie: [00:30:05] About a hundred.
Kim: [00:30:06] Okay. Yeah. So, you’re a hundred pounds. You said 5’2″?
Stephanie: [00:30:10] Yep.
Kim: [00:30:10] I will tell you, he’s not right as in “Hey, why can’t you do it?” But he is right in that if you’re lighter, it is easier. I work with people and when they first start with me, if their goal is weight loss, they’re struggling to do pull ups, even as they’re beginning to practice, as they get stronger, it helps, but what also helps is losing weight. There’s less of them to lift.
So, you’re fairly light, so that is going to work in your favor. That is fantastic that you’re light. The other thing is we just have to train those muscles. As you train, you will, without a doubt, you will, without a doubt, be able to do this.
So that’s what we’re going to have you do. We’ll have you do those assistant pull-ups, after a month with that we’ll have you add in the slow eccentric pushups. So, do those coming down and would do about 5 of those. So, slow down, as slow as you can go for the first rep, come back up, do it again, do that five times. Take a two-minute break, do it again, do that three total times. So, three sets of five of those.
Another really good thing that we could add in is what’s called cluster sets. And you’ll use your assist and you’ll see over time, your assist is going to get less and less.
At first you might need the big, thick band and another band. Eventually you’ll be able to start taking bands off and then you won’t need the thick one anymore and you’ll use the medium one. And you’ll notice that happening. And then what we’re going to have you do is do cluster sets. So maybe the first time we would have you do 2x2x2, and here’s what that would look like:
You’ll do 2 reps with your band on, you’ll wait 10 seconds — so, literally, you’ll time it or count it out — 10 seconds, you’ll do another 2 reps, you’ll wait 10 seconds, you’ll do another 2 reps.
So, what you’ll find is, in a very short period of time, you just di
d six where you couldn’t do six before.
Does that make sense?
Stephanie: [00:31:50] Absolutely.
Kim: [00:31:50] So, you do your clusters so that they end up being more volume than what you can usually get with the same assistance. And so those are really fantastic. Those are my really go-to “how to get your first pull up.” And I have this whole program on my YouTube video about how to get your first pull up. I want you to watch that.
The idea is that we’re going to do this systematically. We’re going to prioritize it in your program and you’re going to keep at it and you’re going to see progress and that’s going to be motivating and it’s going to be fricking exciting when you get your first pullup.
Stephanie: [00:32:21] Do you find, like I said, for me, it’s like right there on my hands where it would go white so quickly, even with, I have weightlifting gloves that I use.
Does that just get better with time? It felt like that discomfort gave way before my forearms did.
Kim: [00:32:38] Yeah. And your grip will get stronger and we can talk in a second about some exercises to help your grip. I will tell you, you will likely have better luck without the gloves. The gloves tend to bunch up and it actually is harder to hold on.
If you’re super concerned about never having any callouses on your hand, then yeah, wear the gloves. If it doesn’t bother you to get some calluses on your hand, don’t wear them because you’ll likely find that you’re better able to grip without them.
That’s what I would say about that. And then for grip strength, it’s a big part of pull-ups. Working on deadlifts as part of your training program is going to help with that because you’ll be holding heavy weight and just letting it hang from your hand. Pretty much any exercise where you’re holding a heavier weight and letting it hang, that’s going to help you with your grip. Farmer carries, which is literally picking up a heavy dumbbell and walking around.
So, just holding onto one and walking for 30 to 60 seconds, holding onto that, actually works your core. At the same time, you’re working your grip. So, I really like those for grip strength, as well.
You will train your grip. So, I know it feels really hard right now — everything about pull-ups feels hard — you’ll get better. And pull ups will help your grip, like practicing those assisted ones.
Stephanie: [00:33:57] So a question that I have for you — I was talking a little bit earlier about my mom and how she has issues with arthritis, particularly in her hands and her feet. And so that always kind of niggles in the back of my head when I want to start doing strength things or lunges, or whatever, it’s “well, you better not wear those joints out.” You see what I’m saying?
Kim: [00:34:18] Yeah. I have to tell you; I have not read anything — and I could be totally wrong and I will look into this — I’m going to tell you to start off with: I have never researched a connection between arthritis and strength training. I have not. I will tell you our joints get stronger as we put heavier loads on them.
So, I would assume that it would actually have a positive benefit, not a negative one. When we’re strength training, we’re not just strength training our muscles, we’re training our bones and our ligaments and our tendons and our joints. They all get stronger over time.
Stephanie: [00:34:52] Oh, fantastic. Yeah, because that’s of my big thing, too, is without always knowing what I’m doing, I don’t want to give myself an injury, because I’m like, my husband tries really hard to exercise as well, but he has a tendency to hurt himself.
He was getting ready a couple years ago for a hiking trip he was going to go on — and he has a little bit of a low bone density himself. So, he’d been doing some jumping and he’d been doing lunges, and he gave himself a good case at jumper’s knee. And he’s been dealing with that tendon pain now for two years.
So now he feels like he can’t do the elliptical and he can’t do incline and he can’t do squats. And he feels like he’s just blocked off a whole bunch of things that now he feels he can’t do to be strong or healthy.
Kim: [00:35:35] It is super frustrating to get injured. I’ve been there, lots of people have been there. When I have gotten injured, I will tell you my main rule is I don’t stop. I work around it. I don’t ever work through pain, I do not have my clients work through pain, but I have every single one of them work around pain. And the main goal is we try not to get them injured.
I will tell you more people that I know than not usually injure themselves not lifting. I personally have not injured myself a whole ton lifting, I have injured myself trying to shove a heavy bench, like, in my gym. I herniated a disc many years ago because I just didn’t even think, I just shoved it in a very awkward way and it was way too heavy to be shoved. And so, I hurt myself doing that.
I’ve hurt myself doing all kinds of things, but strength training will help you, in the long run, to not be injured way more than it’s going to endanger you to get injured if you train intelligently.
And what that means is: we have rest days, we don’t train every day. We have you master form first, right? And I will show you, I’ll send you some links, I have full training videos for a full six-week workout.
So, you can follow that, it has videos that says “here’s how your form should look.” So, you nail your form and then you work the weight up as soon as know your form is good, but we always prioritize form first. We get our rest days in and those things really help to make you not get injured.
Stephanie: [00:37:12] Fantastic.
Kim: [00:37:13] Not that I’m promising you in injury free life because sometimes things happen.
Stephanie: [00:37:17] Sure. Oh, absolutely. No, I just can’t say enough, what a resource your Instagram and everything has been. All the bite sized tidbits, but then I’ve been able to incorporate, incorporate, incorporate. I mean, things like what you just said, work around injury, not through an injury, it’s like, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” but I’d never thought of it that way before. And so, it’s just such a great resource.
Kim: [00:37:38] Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. So, look, this is what we’re going to do to make sure that you’re set up. So, I think you’re getting a really good grasp on what makes a good training from our conversation here today, right?
So, we know we’re going to train multiple times a week, we’re going to train the same muscle groups over those weeks, we’re going to work on getting stronger at basic moves over time, really progressing is important. That’s the basics of what you need to know to start working out.
So, what we’re going to do is I’m going to make sure I send you the links to my pull up video on YouTube so that you know for sure how to do that. And I’m going to send you the link to the training program that I have on there. It shows you the exercises and at the end, there’s a place you can screenshot the workout, so you can have the workout itself in hand so you know exactly what to do and you do it for six weeks, just like we just described.
Stephanie: [00:38:24] Perfect.
Kim: [00:38:26] Anything else we can chat about before we go?
Stephanie: [00:38:29] Gosh, I mean, you the other thing I would say, I definitely have benefited from the different nutrition videos that you’ve done. I had never tried canned chicken before your “what I eat in the day.” I’ve eaten canned tuna forever, but I was like, “this is quite reasonable,” and so just some of those ways to get protein, because I’ve been tracking calories and I’ve been tracking protein, which again, I think one of your videos had recommended — not necessarily getting too bogged down with some of the other things.
Kim: [00:38:58] Absolutely. Tracking carbs and fats is just extra math. If you keep your calories in line and you keep your protein in line, they can be wherever and so why track them?
Stephanie: [00:39:08] I would say probably the naughtiest I am, I’m still not super good at the 80/20 split. Even if I’m staying within my calories, I’m still probably spending a little too much of it on the sweets. I liked them ever so. And like I said, I’ve been able to spend most of my life just being able to eat, but my mom said the same thing. She said “I could eat an entire cake at once if I want and it did not matter.” And she said, “and then later it mattered.”
Kim: [00:39:32] And then eventually it mattered.
And we always know in the back of our mind that it’s probably not super healthy to have more of our calories be from cake than vegetables, right? We know that intuitively, but when we can get away with it and it doesn’t affect how we look, sometimes we let that stuff slide.
So, it’s good. That’s definitely going to help your health that you work on that. And here’s the thing. If you’re not at 80/20 right now, that’s okay. Let’s say you’re at 60/40, start trying to edge that dial, you know? And so, you’re at 60/40, and then you’re at like 65/35, and you just keep working it until you work your way up to comfortably being at 80/20.
It doesn’t have to happen today. It doesn’t have to happen this month. It can happen over the next year or so that you just really make a dedicated effort to eat more fruits, more vegetables, more lean protein, still having cake, but less incidences of cake. And I have to tell you, you’re talking to a person who I didn’t eat vegetables until I was 43.
You can do this. Like I, not even out of a sense of, I need to eat vegetables. Like, I had Belgian endive as part of my breakfast this morning because now I love it. Like, I ate Belgian endive with my cottage cheese because it’s delicious. And that took me until I was like 48 to do.
Stephanie: [00:40:50] And I would say that’s probably one of the bigger mindset shifts I’ve had since I’ve been tracking calories since mid-January. And I think back then, I was just like, “my pants are of tight. I’m probably drinking wine more often than I should. I just need to go crazy for a month and get back to normal and that I can do whatever I want again.” And it’s a little more of the, “no, this just of needs to be a new, deciding when I’m at maintenance and then what maintenance looks like for life.”
Kim: [00:41:23] Absolutely. And building the habits to make maintenance be maintainable. And that means, sure, have wine, but have wine in an amount that allows for maintenance and not weight gain. And so that’s a habit change, like, “all right, what am I going to do if I want wine, if I’m bored, if whatever.” Some people use it because they want to unwind and some people use it because it’s a fun thing to do. So, looking for other strategies, “okay, if I want to unwind, what am I going to do instead of wine?” “If I’m feeling like I’m bored and ‘oh, I’m just going to sit and enjoy my bottle of wine,’ what could I do that doesn’t involve wine.” So, looking for those kinds of strategies to make maintenance maintainable.
Stephanie: [00:42:03] And I would say again, that’s what I’ve been so appreciative of the resources you’ve offered. Because I feel like there’s the fitness part of it, there’s the nutrition part of it, then there’s the lifestyle part of it.
Because it is true. I think I was just listening to one of your podcasts where somebody was just eating out of boredom and it’s like, yeah, because sometimes you just want to feel different. I’m cold, I’m tired, I’m irritated. This feels different.
Kim: [00:42:24] Yeah. You’re totally spot on there. We want to make ourselves feel different, feel better, and the easiest, lowest hanging fruit is usually “what can I eat?” And it’s harder to be like, “oh, why do I feel so blah today? What can I do to not feel so blah today?” Or whatever the things are, right? You’re spot on. And doing that emotional work is way harder than being like, “hmmm. Cupcake.”
Stephanie: [00:42:48] And I’m very fortunate, you know, I have an amazing husband, my kids are awesome, my folks actually just live next door, they’re a great resource for us, but still life just throws its stresses at you.
Kim: [00:42:59] Absolutely! You can have the most perfect life ever, but you know what? Kids are still kids. I love my kids, I think they’re great kids, they friggin’ annoying me sometimes. Jobs are like, I love my job. This is like the ideal job for me. It is my dream job. It friggin’ stresses me out sometimes. That’s how life is. Even if everything is great, it’s still life.
Stephanie: [00:43:20] Right. And that’s the other thing, too, is I feel like, again, my goal at the beginning was just, “I want the number on the scale to be smaller.”
But while that’s still a goal, I’m trying to come up with some of those other gains as well. You know, sleeping better. So, again, you can eat a bunch of cookies at 8 and then go to bed at 10:30 and you’re hungry again and then that wasn’t that satisfying, so just, I don’t know.
Oh, things like cardiovascular, that kind of thing. Just knowing that, again, when I’m 60, when I’m 70, I want to be around for my adult kids. I want to be around for their kids. And so, what are the things I can do? I think one of the videos I just saw posted was about being skinny, fat. And so, I think I’ve probably been pretty guilty of that over the years.
Kim: [00:44:19] Yeah, a lot of people are. And so, working on your strength training is going to help you to not be skinny fat. It’s going to change your body composition. You will have more muscle, less fat, and it will be very, not only appealing visually, but it will be healthy.
So, one thing I want to follow up on — did you say you were around a hundred? So how do you feel about — because one of the things you said you still would kinda like to see that number go down — in your mind, what would be the number you’d want to see?
Stephanie: [00:44:48] It’s one of the things I want to be realistic and healthy and not of get too stuck in my head. I think I probably spent high school and college being, you know, 97, 98 pounds. And again, that’s that kind of who I identified as. And some things change and they’re never going back. I had big babies. My smallest baby was 8lbs 11oz, my biggest baby was 9lbs 7oz.
Kim: [00:45:23] Oh, that’s a big baby.
Stephanie: [00:45:25] So mean, I could wear bikini. I would have a bikini body if I chose to wear a bikini, but my stomach looks like I fell asleep on an afghan. It looks like a shattered windshield.
Kim: [00:45:39] That’s a funny way to put it.
Stephanie: [00:45:42] But it’s like, “eh, nothing I can do about that.” But I could look really cool in a tank top, to my eyeballs.
And I think also part of it is just wiggle room. Feeling like, okay, if I got to whatever that magical number is — and I don’t even exactly know what that magical is — but then it’s like, okay, well then if I had a week where I’m carrying around extra water weight or we went on vacation or something, but then I don’t come back and be like, “well I just ruined three months of everything.”
Kim: [00:46:12] What if I told you that you could have those arms and that tank top that you really liked, and you could be busting out pull ups and you could be fitting in your clothes better than ever, still enjoying your wine and all that, but you would never go under a hundred pounds?
Stephanie: [00:46:28] I think I just knew that I wouldn’t go down a slippery slope of, like — and again, I feel like I’m vilifying my mom, which I’m not, my mother is amazing — I just feel like she doesn’t feel good and so I kind of have her a little bit as my cautionary tale, as it were. Because she is an incredibly hard worker, she takes care of her elderly father, she takes care of my three kids, she takes care of my two nephews, she’s a neat freak so she can’t stop cleaning house, she mows all of our property, I mean, she goes, goes, goes. She says she has two speeds: go and stop. So, she goes all day until she’s exhausted and then she’s down. So, she says at nighttime, she wants to have her beer. And she’s going to have her beer and she’s gonna have her beer every single night, her two. But she has those two every night forever. And you’re not going to talk her out of it.
And she bakes, she’s an amazing baker, but she has never met buttercream or sugar she did not like. She’s actually probably the worst sabotage that I have because I’ll come home from work and then there’s this huge thing of homemade brownies. So maybe that’s part of it too, is feeling like I can get to a number where then I’ve come home and she’s left out a whole bunch of brownies and it’s “you know what? I can indulge. Today I can indulge. My mom made homemade brownies and that’s going to be okay. And then tomorrow I can get back to normal again.”
Kim: [00:47:53] Yeah. So, it sounds to me like you’re looking for, to get low enough so that you can eat what you want with having this buffer range so that you’re not constantly ramping up how much you weigh, how much you weigh.
Stephanie: [00:48:02] Yes. And like I said, I don’t intend to just be like, “oh cool. All I’m going to eat is potato chips and candy bars.” No, I think the last few months have taught me that having that basis of spinach and chicken and cottage cheese, and Greek yogurt, that’s a really good place to be. And that’s sustainable, but just still being able to have that fun zone.
Kim: [00:48:23] I will say this: I think you could still be in that place and never have that scale go under a hundred. Realistically speaking, as you start to strength train and build muscle and your body composition changes, you will likely find that you like the way your body looks even though it is not at 97 pounds.
So, as you switch your body composition it would be something I want you to start having this idea about surrounding your head, that getting under a hundred pounds isn’t necessarily t
he goal that’s going to get you the outcome you want. If you want to have those toned arms in a tank top, get your pull up and be able to eat some brownies as they show up even though most of your food is going to be those other things, you can get and all of that, and be 102, 103, like you do not need to be at 97 and I’m going to venture to guess you won’t be if you do the things I’m telling you. And I want you to start having that bounce around in your head and saying like, “how will I feel about that? Can I get out of my head that I define myself as the 20-some year old who’s 97 pounds?”
Stephanie: [00:49:25] And I find that interesting, because I wonder how many, particularly women, I don’t know how guys think about things, but how many of us– it’s like, I had a friend of mine once post on Facebook, who, she said, “I wish I was as fat now, as I thought I was in high school.”
Or how many, it’s like the, “if I was only what I weighed in high school,” or “if I was only what I weighed the day I got married,” or “if I was only what I weighed before I had kids.” And it’s just an interesting mindset.
Kim: [00:50:02] Loads of people are there. I was there for a really long on time.
We’re so there because we’re so used to defining success at weight loss by that one number on the scale. That’s what is success for us. That number being smaller equals we’re heading in the right direction. And it’s true, like, when I was in high school, I was perpetually a person who was trying to lose weight as a teenager.
I was 119 pounds; I didn’t need to lose weight. What would have done me a world of good is building some muscle. I wish I could go back and be like “here, lift this weight up, Kim, you will like what you look like better.” And then in my twenties, I just wanted to be under 125. That was my goal. When I went to get married, my husband was very small. His goal was to reach 125 going up. And my goal was reached 125 coming down.
And then I eventually struggled with obesity, but my goal was always to get back to under 125, under 120. I will tell you now — I don’t even know I weigh — the last time I weighed myself, it was sometime during quarantine, and I was 137. I look better now than I ever have. I’ve gotten to the point where, I’ve been doing this for years, so part of my weight is literally bone. Like, I have more bone. I’ve been lifting hundreds of pounds as a powerlifter for years now.
I look better now at the weight I am, probably 137-ish, than I ever looked at 125. Like, world’s better.
Stephanie: [00:51:20] And there was a time I remember you did a post that was really cool. And it was like three pictures side to side, and it was of like, “this is where I was at this age. And then here’s where I was.” And, I don’t remember, you were in a really cute shirt and you were like, “I really, I liked how I looked. I hated how I felt.” You said, I think, calories were really low. And so how you find that livable area.
Kim: [00:51:39] Yeah. And so that was where I got to the leanest I’d ever been as an adult. And I was 119. I got down to 117 once for a weigh-in, for a powerlifting meet, but that was just for a day or two, but I was 119. I was miserable when it came to my lifestyle. Like, I couldn’t eat the things I enjoyed, when I did it was very much a “cheat day” mentality and it would come and I would think about it, I couldn’t wait for it to come, I couldn’t wait for that day, and I would eat all the things, I would usually still feel guilty, even though it was my plan, and then I’d have to get right back to eating extremely low calories. We’re talking zero calorie dressing, plain chicken, lettuce, like, how appealing does that sound? That sounds terrible. That sounds terrible.
And like potatoes that were literally just made out of broccoli and avocado mash, it was literally just avocado. My food was so limited and going out to eat meant that I didn’t eat those things. I couldn’t eat anything my family ate. I literally, in my mind, couldn’t do that.
It was no way to live. It was no way to live.
Stephanie: [00:52:45] What were the circumstances at the time that led you down that path?
Kim: [00:52:55] So, I had been obese, got fit through tracking my calories and lifting weights fell in love, with weightlifting.
The way I entered the fitness industry was by following bodybuilders. This is what I thought fit people were. In my mind, a fit person was a bodybuilder. A lot of bodybuilders are super unhealthy. A lot of bodybuilders have eating disorders. A lot of bodybuilders have a terrible relationship with food.
What they can achieve physically is incredible. I thought I wanted to be a bodybuilder. My goal was, at that time, to enter a bodybuilding competition. Like, I was going to do a bikini show. My very next step was going to be to hire a coach to help me get there. It’s the kind of thing, like, I got lean enough on my own, I hire the coach, we pick a show 12 weeks out and I get even leaner. The goal would have been to get even leaner. And in that moment, I just had a moment of realizing, “I have worked so hard to get healthy.”
This was a lot of work. I was really overweight. I had revamped my entire life and it just occurred to me, like, what I’m about to do is going to take me the opposite direction. This is not healthy. Like, I am going the opposite direction from health. What I’ve been looking for was to get healthy and now I’m really making a U-turn and heading back to unhealthy in a different way. And right around the same time is when I read an article about powerlifting and I had never heard of powerlifting.
I’m like, “what is powerlifting?” Because I loved the gym, but I only knew bodybuilders. And so, I started watching these women and I’m like, “they’re lifting heavy weight. I want to lift heavy weight. I like that.” And when I stopped focusing on getting smaller, getting smaller, getting smaller, and started focusing on getting stronger, that’s what caused me to come out of that.
Stephanie: [00:54:33] Gotcha. Gotcha. And like I said, that’s why having measurable goals– I think that’s also probably why we get stuck on a scale. It’s so easy to measure.
Kim: [00:54:42] Yes, absolutely. And so, here’s the thing I would say, what I would want you to do if you’re going to really be looking for physique progress, what I would suggest you do is t
ake measurements with a tape measure.
Measure your chest, measure your waist at the smallest part, measure your waist at your belly button, measure your hips by going across your butt at the biggest part, measure one thigh — I just do the right side, just because it’s easy to remember — at the widest part, and measure your right biceps with your biceps loose, not flexed.
Do that once a month and keep an eye on those measurements. Also take progress pictures. Full body, in a bikini or bathing suit bottom and top. So, bikini or underwear and a sports bra. You want to see as much as possible, same lighting every month, front, back, both sides. Keep an eye on that.
Put some clothes on, pick a pair of pants or something, notice how it fits. Every month, put those back on. Using that conglomerate of information — and you can use the scale if you want. There’s a lot of people that I expect the scale to move, too, I don’t expect the scale to move a lot with you — use all of that data together to see how you’re progressing.
Stephanie: [00:55:56] Sure. Absolutely.
Kim: [00:55:58] And that’s going to give you a better picture. That, in conjunction with you specifically, like, how is your strength improving? You’re going to see really big gains in the gym. And all of that together hopefully will be motivating enough for you to be like, “I am making amazing progress.”
Stephanie: [00:56:12] And that’s why, like I said, as arbitrary as the pull up thing is, again, it seems very measurable because it’s yes or no.
Kim: [00:56:22] I either did it or I did not do it.
Stephanie: [00:56:24] Right. As opposed to, again, like I said, I don’t have a goal of being a runner. It doesn’t sound very interesting to me and so I’m not going to be somebody who is like, “oh man, now I got an eight-minute mile. Now maybe next time I can get a 7:52.” That’s not going to be it.
And I measure my calories on the treadmill, but even that’s just a general idea of how much was able to stick to it today. And I do find it, it’s interesting, it’s like on a day that maybe it was a day, the night before, it’s like we did go out to a restaurant and I did, I was like, “you know what? Special occasion I’m going to track the calories, but they’re big calories. I’m going to mark them down and I’m gonna enjoy it.” Man, that next day I have a lot more oomph on the treadmill than I did the day before when it was egg, whites and spinach.
Kim: [00:57:08] It’s amazing what fueling our bodies can do to make us perform better. And for women who have lived permanently on super low calories, once you get some calories in your body, it’s just shocking. Like, “wow, I have energy in the gym. I’m not so lethargic in life, generally. I sleep better,” because we’re just so used to really restrictive calories.
Stephanie: [00:57:30] And that’s the other thing, too, that you’ve said recently that I’m really trying to take to heart is not how low do you need to go lose any weight? It’s what’s the most you can eat and still see that. And then those charts have been very helpful, too.
I mean, right now, if I’m shaving off maybe a quarter of a pound a week, I’m like, that’s fine. That’s fine. Even if I steady out, because I’m happy with that. Because, you know, like the first month, five pounds went away because water weight and just random whatever. And knowing that I am adding in strength things to hopefully means that where I’m losing is fat and then where it’s balancing out is muscle.
Kim: [00:58:11] Yeah. Yeah. That’s an exciting process to see, right? That’s body recomposition, as you lose fat and you build muscle. That’s what we’re going to look for here for you.
So, let’s kind come up with exactly the next action steps for you. How do you feel about in the next couple of days doing pictures and measurements and trying on some clothing?
Stephanie: [00:58:31] That’s very doable.
Kim: [00:58:32] Ok. Do that and set that up somewhere so you can see it. And then I’m going to send you the pull up video, the pushup video, and the training plan video all from YouTube.
Guys listening, I will put those in the show notes. I don’t know that there’ll be clickable, but you can see them and look at them. And you can look there and we’ll have you get going on that strength training plan.
Stephanie: [00:59:01] Awesome. Thank you again, not only for your time today, but just all the work that you do to put all those materials out. Because those have just been, like I said, they’ve just been very absorbable and very practical and in a way that’s not just “drink a magic tea and three weeks later…”
Kim: [00:59:14] Yeah. That stuff is nonsense. So many people are out there saying that stuff and we want to believe it. And I used to believe that stuff because, first of all, wow, they can make the marketing sound so believable. Like, surely these people aren’t all making this up. Yeah, they are.
And then the last thing is, send me a video of your equipment at home. Like you can take some stills at all different angles or just like literally walk around and take a video and send it to me via email so I can see what you’ve got there.
Stephanie: [00:59:42] Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, I was kind of fan-girling. I was like, it’s like a celebrity. It’s crazy.
Kim: [00:59:50] Whenever people say that, I’m just like, “really?!?”
But I get it because I’m the same way. I’m the exact same way with people who I’ve gotten to be friendly with on Instagram, who were people who I look up to in the fitness industry. And then eventually I get them on here for a conversation. I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m talking to you.” And they’re like, “I’m not a celebrity. I’m literally a trainer.”
Stephanie: [01:00:09] No, but it was just so cool because it’s like I was trying to mess with some settings on the cable machine and the other day, and while I was working on it, I was like, “I need some entertainment, oooo she has a new video!” So, I was listening to your meal prep video while I’m like trying to get the settings right. Because, like I said, I need to be entertained when I’m in the weight room.
Kim: [01:00:28] I just filmed one this morning. My next YouTube video is going to be all about how to squat, literally from, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” all the way through lots of variations, all the way to a barbell, and there’s going to be a squat in there for everybody and it tells you exactly what to do.
So hopefully that’ll come out next week.
Stephanie: [01:00:42] Awesome! Well just thank you for all you do. It’s really appreciated and it makes a difference.
Kim: [01:00:47] You’re very welcome! Thank you so much for coming on.
Stephanie: [01:00:49] Thank you!
Kim: [01:00:51] Alright, bye!
Thanks so much for being here and listening in to the Fitness Simplified podcast today. I hope you found it educational, motivational, inspirational, all the kinds of -ational.
If you enjoyed it, if you found value in it, it would mean so much to me if you would go ahead and leave a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to this on. It really does help to get this podcast to other people.
Thanks so much.
I speak with a woman named Stephanie, who is in situation. She is at home, in her home gym with her dumbbells and she just isn’t quite sure what to do. She knows that strength training is going to get her the results she wants. She wants to look lean, she wants to look toned, she wants to be strong, she wants to age well.
If that sounds like you, and you are like Stephanie, and you just don’t know what to do with your equipment this is the episode for you. Let’s go.
Hi, Stephanie.
Stephanie: [00:01:02] Hi! How are you?
Kim: [00:01:04] So glad we could make this meeting work.
Stephanie: [00:01:08] Absolutely. Thank you.
Kim: [00:01:10] I was attempting to dial into Zoom and it kept telling me to wait for the meeting host and I was like, “that’s me!”
Stephanie: [00:01:17] “I am the host!”
Kim: [00:01:20] And so I had to come back off and start a new meeting.
I don’t know who else they were waiting for.
Stephanie: [00:01:24] That’s technology for you these days.
Kim: [00:01:27] I know. So, look, we don’t know each other at all, so tell me some about you.
Stephanie: [00:01:33] Sure, absolutely.
Gosh, how does one define oneself? I’m a mom. I suppose that would be the place to start. My husband and I have three kids, we have two boys and a girl. And I work in hospital public relations. So, I do the writing, the social media, the graphic design, that kind of good stuff.
Kim: [00:01:54] Okay. And how old are your kids?
Stephanie: [00:01:56] Our boys are 14 and 11 and our daughter is 7.
Kim: [00:01:59] Okay. Good ages. I love 7. 7 is a good age.
Stephanie: [00:02:03] Yeah. She’s got a lot of attitude. She and our middle guy, they are the extroverts to beat the band.
Kim: [00:02:10] Ok, that doesn’t bode well for you if she’s 7 and has attitude. That usually kicks in around 13.
Stephanie: [00:02:17] Yeah. We’re lucky, our 14-year-old is a super chill teenager. So, he’s a really good entry point for us.
Kim: [00:02:23] Okay, good. That’s good. It sounds like you have some more heading up the pike that might not be so chill.
Stephanie: [00:02:28] But they’re very entertaining. So, we like that.
Kim: [00:02:31] Well, hey, there’s that.
Now, working in a business associated with the hospital right now, how are things going for you as far as COVID? Is a lot of your work, like, talking about that kind of stuff in social media or not so much?
Stephanie: [00:02:43] A whole lot of signage, a whole lot of social media. Things related to masks and hand washing and social distancing.
That kind of put a lot of our normal things on hold. A lot of our normal, non-essential procedures and things went on pause for a while. And then my husband’s a physician, as well, and so same thing, there’s just been a lot of masking and a lot of wearing of scrubs and that kind of thing.
Kim: [00:03:06] Got it. Got it. And where are you located?
Stephanie: [00:03:10] Iowa.
Kim: [00:03:11] Okay, right there in the middle. And how are you guys doing as far as COVID in Iowa?
Stephanie: [00:03:19] So we’re in one of the more populated counties, we’re not too far from Des Moines. And so, we’re not as bad as say Des Moines or the quad cities or the Omaha area, but when they were able to open maybe about 75 of the counties back up, we were one of the not reopened ones.
So, kind of in the middle. It’s certainly not nearly as bad as some areas of the country, but not completely untouched. We have some factories, we have wind turbine factories locally, and of course, factories have been hit hard. The other places we’ve seen hotspots have been retirement facilities, nursing homes.
Kim: [00:04:00] Got it. Got it.
So, Stephanie, talk to me, this is your call, we can talk about whatever you want. So, lay it on me. What is on your mind?
Stephanie: [00:04:12] So I’ve kind of ended up using quarantine to try to get healthier. I don’t know why, I guess I’m bored.
I am not a sporty person by nature at all. I was a music theater kid. I was a read all the books kid. So, anything really related to athletics has been very new to me. And the other thing, a lot of things related to nutrition has been fairly new to me because, for the vast majority of my life, I’ve been pretty blessed to have a pretty fast metabolism. And so being 41 now I want to make sure I’m staying ahead of that and instill good habits now that I’ll be happy about when I’m 51 and 61 and 71, if that makes sense.
Kim: [00:05:00] Absolutely, it does. Absolutely, it does.
So, we have a lot in common, by the way — I was a theater kid, musical theater was my jam as a kid and when I wasn’t doing that, I was reading. I would have never called myself an athlete. Though, I did lots of things because friends wanted me to. You know, played hockey and lacrosse and all that stuff.
I was never any good at it, I never defined myself as an athlete until I was in my forties. So, it is never too late to start.
So, it sounds like top of mind you are thinking, “what can I do now that I’m in my forties to be healthy as I move through the rest of my life, forties, fifties, sixties on.”
Stephanie: [00:05:41] Yes. And part of it is — and it’s probably a silly thing — but there’s the certain things that we do define ourselves by and I was always “the little one.” I’m fairly short, I’m only about 5’2″ and, you know, you start reading how you define yourself as of, “I’m a brunette and I’m talkative,” and there’s just certain things.
And my mom was that way for a long time, too, and then once menopause hit her things sort of changed and I don’t think she likes the way she feels. And so again, I thought, “maybe take a little bit of a life lesson.” Because she’s only 62, but she has arthritis fairly bad in her feet and in her hands, she’s an incredibly hard worker. She spent 30-some odd years as a registered nurse.
And so, she’s at the point, she’s like, “yeah, I feel bad.” She doesn’t like the way she feels, she doesn’t like the way she looks. So again, I’m trying to take some notes of not wanting to feel in 20 years the way she feels now. Does that make sense?
Kim: [00:06:44] Got it. So, it sounds like this is coming from a proactive place.
Are you at a spot right now where you feel unhealthy, you don’t move well, you don’t like the way you look? Or is this really looking forward so that you prevent that?
Stephanie: [00:06:56] I would say my answer to that is different now than it would been about three months ago, because I have been tracking calories since the end of January and I’ve been very consistently exercising since we went to quarantine, so about mid to later March.
I’m doing cardio four days a week, I’m doing strength training two days a week, and then I’m taking one break day. I don’t run, I’m not a runner, so what I’ve usually been doing is I do the treadmill. I put it at its maximum incline and then I walk like three miles an hour because then I find that it feels like it’s making my legs stronger, but it doesn’t make me lose my breath like crazy, which running would always do. I mean, I could run for like two minutes and I’m like, “I’m done and I’m going to barf now.”
And so, it feels sustainable to me, but it still feels challenging. So, you know, I definitely feel like my clothes fit better than they did in January, post-Christmas, post all that stuff. I’m able to pull some stuff out of the closet that I hadn’t been wearing for a while.
Again, it’s one of those things — you get to a point where you have little kids and your job’s busy and five o’clock hits and it’s “Ooh, wine sounds good.” So, again, trying to make some of those “oftentimes” habits into “sometimes” habits and the “seldom” habits like exercise into a “more often” habit.
Kim: [00:08:23] Yes. Got it. Got it. And so, has your main goal since the beginning of the year, since you started, was it weight loss? Was that specifically what you were working on with your health and fitness?
Stephanie: [00:08:38] I think that was my starting point. Partially that, partially weight loss. Partially, again, realizing that — and it’s things I’ve seen you talk about a lot where, because I would be tired, because I would be stressed, because I would be bored, it’s “Ooh, cookies.” “Ooh, wine.” And then you find yourself chasing your tail because it’s such a quick little fix that it doesn’t last for very long.
And so, trying to think of what are the things where, the oatmeal might not be as exciting as the cookies, but two hours later I’m not feeling squirrely again, I’m going to bed feeling satiated, I wake up feeling like I still feel good. I just put some Nutella in the oatmeal and all of a sudden, I’m real happy.
Kim: [00:09:27] I’ve never put Nutella in my oatmeal. Maybe I’ll try that. That sounds delicious.
Stephanie: [00:09:31] It’s kind of like eating a no-bake cookie.
Kim: [00:09:33] Oh, yum. That sounds delicious. Okay. I’ll try that. We don’t have any more Nutella in the house, I went through a big Nutella phase and then when we finished it, I did not buy more. It was too much work to keep fitting those calories in my calories. I was way over doing it.
Stephanie: [00:09:48] And that’s what I found — I didn’t touch it for months and then once I got to the point where — some of it I think is recalibrating what’s worth it. Even little things I’ve found where, and again, I really credit following you on Instagram and Susan, and so if I really want a Snickers bar, I could have a Snickers ice cream bar and it’s 70 fewer calories and it actually takes longer to eat cause it’s cold, so I get more bang for my buck, as it were, without feeling deprived.
Kim: [00:10:29] I love that. I call those nutritional compromises, looking for the things that really matter to us, figuring o
ut how we can fit them into our day so that we can enjoy how we eat. So, it’s important that you’re latching onto that. That’s fantastic.
Stephanie: [00:10:41] Yes, because I definitely find there’s some things that would never be worth it. On my best day I’m not going to enjoy a Twinkie very much and it is just not worth the calories.
Kim: [00:10:48] Yeah. I’m with you. Twinkies don’t do it for me.
Stephanie: [00:10:53] But, you know, I found even if putting in just 12 grams of Nutella into the whole bowl of oatmeal and I’ve already put in some artificial sweetener to up to the general sweetness of it and then I put in egg whites and almond milk and the different things to really boost up the protein, then it tastes really good.
Kim: [00:11:13] That’s fantastic. Yep. I use artificial sweetener in there. Look, it’s certainly not going to make you gain weight and from what we know now, there’s a lot we don’t know, but from what we know now, the amount of artificial sweetener you would have to eat would be more than you could possibly stomach to have it have any health implications. Like, it would have to be massive amounts based on what we know now.
Again, we might know other things in the future, but based on what we know now.
Okay, well you sound like you’re in a pretty good spot. What can I help you with today?
Stephanie: [00:11:42] So I think what I had originally reached out to you on is, you know, an area that as much as I’m not a cardio person, I’m even less of a strength training person. My husband and I have set up a little weight room in the basement, kind of lucked out getting a cable weight machine.
The physical therapy department here at the hospital ended up deciding they didn’t want it anymore, so they were willing to part with it for a song.
Kim: [00:12:08] Nice. That’s fantastic.
Stephanie: [00:12:10] It was heck getting it into the house. Those things are heavy.
Kim: [00:12:14] I bet. I bet that was hard.
Stephanie: [00:12:17] So we have that, I have some lighter dumbbells for myself ranging from 2’s up to 12’s, because again, wimpy, weak. We got a bench and so I’m just trying to feel my way along, trying to create a little routine. Right now I’m aiming for sustainability. If I can get it done two times a week, I’m calling it a victory.
Kim: [00:12:45] Got it. Got it. Okay. So, let’s talk about what we can get you moving on for really getting a good, sustainable strength training program that is going to benefit you now. It’s going to benefit how you look, it’s going to benefit you as you age, as far as your bone health. If we want to be women who can reach up and grab things out of a cupboard and stoop down to pull a weed as we get old, we have to have strong bones. We have to be able to move and strength training is what can get us that.
Stephanie: [00:13:14] And that’s actually, that’s perfect too, because yeah, as a more small Caucasian lady, I know that can be a risk factor.
Kim: [00:13:21] Absolutely. And so, it’s going to help you age better. It’s going to help you look better. The lean, tight look that people want, it’s not just fat loss — a lot of that is building muscle.
And we do that through two things: strength training and nutrition, as in, we eat plenty of protein.
So, let’s talk about this strength training piece. I love that you have equipment because a lot of people don’t right now and I’m working with a lot of people trying to use sandbags and laundry detergents, and the fact that you have equipment is fantastic. And that you’ve already started dedicating two days a week to it, I think that’s fantastic.
Ideally, as you move on, I would love to see you add one more day and do it three times a week. It’s not a must. I do have some clients who are super busy and we have them do two days a week. To get the amount of volume of working out in in those two days sometimes makes for really long workouts and so it’s often better to split them up into three days. How would you feel about adding in a third day?
Stephanie: [00:14:17] I think definitely good. Again, knowing that I have this tendency to, in the past, where it’s like I try for a little bit — part of it is I find it really dull. I find it really boring because at least in front on the treadmill, you throw on a Doctor Who, or a Gray’s Anatomy and you just go.
Kim: [00:14:33] Yeah.
Stephanie: [00:14:34] Now one thing that I found, and hopefully I’m not just tricking myself, but I feel like the backs of my legs have gotten a lot stronger from the treadmill incline. I’m not sure how much it’s done for the front of my legs, but I feel like my hamstrings and my calves have.
Kim: [00:14:52] Is that something you’re interested in? Having stronger, more toned legs?
Stephanie: [00:14:56] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have not done any strength other than the treadmill. I’ve not done any lower body strength training, really. Everything I’ve done so far has been upper body, just because I thought it’s a place to start.
Kim: [00:15:08] Absolutely. It’s a place to start.
Okay, well good news is you’ve got a lot of gains on the table here, then. I’m super excited for you to get going with some lower body moves. So, walking, even on an incline, absolutely, it can build some strength in your legs. It’s not going to give you the muscle d
efinition of strength training, so if you want to have legs that look like a fit person, strength training is going to get you that, and you can absolutely do that at home, three days per week. For sure.
So, let me talk you through a couple of important principles and we’ll kind go from there. So, strength training three days a week will work wonders for you. We’re going to have you do one lower body day, one upper body day, and one full body day.
So that’s how we’re gonna do it. Which means that you will hit each of your muscle groups twice per week, which is a pretty good spot to be. There are people who, very successfully, bodybuilders who do like a bro-split, where they only hit each muscle once per week, but again, they’re hitting a ton of sets in that one workout. I don’t have any of my clients doing that kind of stuff. They all hit their muscle groups twice per week, over the course of either three or four days.
So, we’re going to have you do three days per week. One of the things that we want you to really think about is what is going to get you the most bang for your buck? And what is going to get you the most bang for your buck is doing big compound moves for most of your workout.
I bet some of the things you’ve been doing recently, like biceps and triceps, feel really familiar to you, like biceps curls and things, and we can still have you do those things. What we’ll do with those is put them towards the end of your workout and we’ll prioritize our multi-joint moves — things like, for upper body, it would be a dumbbell chest press, it would be a pushup, it would be a dumbbell row or a cable row, frankly, any kind of rough. So, it’d be rowing, pull downs, if your machine has that. So big, multi-joint movements. Pull downs, pull ups, pushups, rows, chest presses, that’s upper body.
Lower body — squats, deadlift variations — which, I hope that doesn’t sound scary. A lot of people are like, “that sounds terrible.” it doesn’t have to be with barbell, it can be like Romanian holding dumbbells, it can be lots of different things. Deadlift variations, lunge variations, and bridge variations — which are glute bridges and hip thrusts.
The meat of your workout should be those things.
That’s step one and then other smaller things like, like triceps overhead presses and bicep curls and those things, but it’s not the meat of the workout. Where most of the benefit is going to come are those big workouts?
Does that part make sense?
Stephanie: [00:17:50] Yes. And some of that, like I said, I have not really been doing lower body stuff. Upper body, some of those I have and doing. So, we have a bench, so I’ve been doing seated overhead press, I’ve been lying flat and doing chest presses — again, 12 pounds per hand, because super weak, but I made my way up from 10, so.
Kim: [00:18:14] Perfect. Okay. That’s a good point.
Stephanie: [00:18:16] And I was very lucky that my mom had something because I topped out at 10 and you can’t buy hand weights right now, but again, during some past time when she was thinking maybe she’d try something, she had purchased something and then she was like, “I don’t use them. Here.”
Kim: [00:18:28] Yeah. I’m glad she gave you this. So that point you just made is a big one. The fact that you were like, “Oh, but it’s not much yet, but I made my way up from 10,” that is how gains are made. If you want to look fit, you want to get stronger, that is what we do. We have you constantly work to move up in weight and/or reps in a given rep range.
First thing, we get your form really down, right? So, let’s say you’re doing a chest press and it’s your first time, you have no idea what you’re doing. Your one and only goal is to make that movement feel more natural, to do it correctly. Once you’ve done that you want to up weight and up the weight and up the weight.
When you do that, it tells your body, “Hey, I need this muscle. Build me more of this stuff,” In combination with protein. It’s so key. If you from right now, if you never again upped your weight and you just kept doing 12-pound chest presses, you wouldn’t make any progress.
And a lot of people do that. They do it year after year, they do the same weight and sometimes they’ll do it at a speed where they feel their heart racing and they feel sweaty. So, they feel like, “I’m doing something here, but I don’t see any progress,” and the thing they’re missing is progression.
Stephanie: [00:19:42] Sure.
Kim: [00:19:43] Does that make sense?
Stephanie: [00:19:44] Absolutely. And what I find is, so I’ll do something with my 12 pounds, for example, with my chest press. My first set, I can get to 15, but then I can definitely tell a big drop where the second one maybe 12 and above my third one, I can eek out to 8 and that’s it. So, then I assume that means I’m probably still at the right weight, as opposed to if I can just bang out 15, 15, and 15 and still feel like I have gas in the tank.
Kim: [00:20:10] You’re heading down the right path, for sure, with that thought. Absolutely.
I’d love to see us bring your rep range down a little bit more. You can build muscle in those higher rep ranges, like 15 plus. Absolutely, you can. It can take a long time to do those kinds of reps.
Stephanie: [00:20:26] Well, like I said, I do find it boring. And so, for me, being able to decrease that time probably would be beneficial.
Kim: [00:20:33] And what this is going to hinge on is you getting some heavier dumbbells, which I will tell you in recent weeks, they are more available now. I do have clients finding dumbbells in places like Amazon, third party sellers, Craigslist, I even had two clients tell me that Dick’s has available. So, they’re out there now, whereas a month ago, it wasn’t happening. They were just gone. So, they are starting to appear now. So really start looking for some more.
You’re going to need to heavier things — 15s, 20s, 25s. And I know you’re probably looking at me
like “really? I’m going to need 25s and 30s?” You will. For the lower body stuff, very quickly. But that being said, I’m glad you had this cable machine and actually, I would love for you later when we’re off of this, send me some pictures of what you have and can talk you through what we can have you do there. We’re not going to sit here on the podcast and do that. But that’s great that you have that available, because it’s going to have some more substantial weight with it.
So, yes, the idea is that we want you to make progress, go up in weight, and some people, what that means is they just keep trying to use the 12 pounds and they do 15 reps and then the next time they do 18 reps and it gets really long and it’s more effective to say,” Hey, let’s bring those rep ranges down.”
Ideally at the beginning of your workout, I would have you working in like the 8-rep range or even lower, if you had barbells even lower. So, we’re doing chest presses for 8 reps. And what that means is when you get to rep 8, it is hard. It’s not, you just stop at 8. It’s not like, “I use my 12 pounds and I stop at 8,” it’s “when I get to 8, I could maybe do 9 with good form, but I couldn’t do 10 with good form.” And so that’s what we want to see at the beginning of the workout, is working in those lower numbers. 8s, 7s, 6s, 5s, for moves like the squat and the deadlifts and the lunges and the overhead presses and the chest presses, those kinds of things. Then as you move throughout the workout, you can bring those numbers up and maybe you’ll do things in the rep range of 10s and 12s.
And so, we get you working in all rep ranges and in every single one of those cases, we want you working to close to failure so that when you finish your set, each individual set, it should be like, “wow, that is hard. And I can do one more, but I’m not doing two more.”
Stephanie: [00:22:48] Yeah, and mean, sometimes I surprise myself because sometimes I do go to failure. It’s like, the previous set I made it to 12 and all of a sudden on 9 I’m like, “Nope. Stuck. It ain’t going anywhere.”
Kim: [00:23:00] And it’s good that you’re pushing yourself that hard. It’s really good. Now look, I don’t want to tell somebody like, “hey, you should put a bar on your back and start going to failure on your squats” your first couple of times. Like, you shouldn’t be shooting to fail all the time. There are certain things it’s not going to hurt you to fail a dumbbell chest press now and again, it’s not going to hurt you to fail at biceps curls, right? If you fail, you literally just don’t lift up.
But we really want you working close to failure. It’s key. And the thing is, that is going to change — and this is one of the things I want to tell you, because I know you’re like, “this is of boring to me.” One of the things that can make this interesting is you make this be like a contest between them and you. So, write down the weights you lift every week. “I’m doing X moves and for my chest presses, I use 12 pounds and I did 15 reps, the one set, and I did 10, and then I did 8.” So, you know what that is. And the next week, when that workout comes around again, your goal is to beat it. And that’s how your body changes and it also keeps it way more interesting.
Stephanie: [00:24:03] Yeah. And I did find– because one of my problems was, again, comparing it to a treadmill where you can just set it and forget it. Like, “okay, I’m doing 30 minutes,” and then you go until it stops and kicks you off. My problem before with strength training was always like, “okay, what do I do next? I don’t really want to do anything next. I’m walking away now.” So, since March, what I’ve at least been doing, we have a mirror in the exercise room, it’s on wheels, so I can move it around to try to watch that form. And I use a dry erase marker and so then I mark out, “these are the eight things I’m going to do, and those are what I do for the next four weeks.”
And so, then I just check them off as I go, to at least give myself some structure. So, I know, “okay, I’m halfway there. I have one more to go,” as opposed to quitting because, again, bored.
Kim: [00:24:45] Yeah, that’s a really important point — to have structure. It is really demotivating to get down in your gym and be ready to work out, especially if you’re not really feeling it that day, if you’re tired or whatever, you don’t even really love it, and to just of make it up as you go. So yeah, I’m glad you have some structure and that is definitely something I would recommend to you and to everybody listening: have a plan that you are following and work that plan.
And your plan should, as you said, that you were doing it for the month. And I wouldn’t have you do the same workout every day of that month, but like I said, a lower body day, an upper body day, a full body day, every lower body day for four to six weeks, have it be the same and you work to get stronger every single time. You nail your form and you work to get stronger.
Okay? Same thing with your upper body day. Do that same workout for four to six weeks in a row on upper body day, work to get stronger. And then again, the same for your full body day. It keeps it really interesting because you can really have the sense of competition with yourself and getting better.
And here’s the most interesting thing: results. Results are frigging interesting. Like, when you start seeing like, “Oh my gosh, look at the backs of my legs. Look at the front of my legs. Look, I see a bicep!” Like, that is motivating and interesting. And you will see that if you train in this way.
Stephanie: [00:25:58] And kind the stretch goal I have for myself — like, it would be almost like wizardry, if I could ever do a pull up. And since we have the cable machine that would, and now the cable machine has a neutral grip, which is actually, I think, what had very first prompted me to send you a message because I can barely dead hang for more than 20 seconds before it hurts my hands enough that I have to let go.
Kim: [00:26:36] Okay, 20 seconds for a dead hang is great. That’s fantastic. That’s a good start.
All right. So, this is exciting and I love that you have this kind of goal because a performance goal can also be really motivating, right? Because you want to get down there and be like, “Oh my gosh, this is what he’s last week. Can I do that?” So, we can absolutely talk about how to get you a pull up. For sure.
I have a whole YouTube video on this that I’ll make sure I send you so you have this permanently. So, what you just said, dead hangs, that’s a really good place to start. Another good place to start, outside of actually training for pull-ups, is to just work
on general strength of your back. So, doing all kinds of variations of rows is going to help you strengthen your back. So, we’ll do those things along with dedicated pull up training.
So, the way I start people with pull-up training, dead hangs is a good one. Another really good thing is to buy — and these are available right now — is chin up assistance bands.
They’re long, they’re not like the little glute ones that you put over your knees, they’re very long.
Stephanie: [00:27:30] And I think I saw it when you did your home gym tour.
Kim: [00:27:33] Yes, they’re in there. And so, they come very thick and then they go down and you will likely find that, out of the gate, you will need the really thick one. You’ll tie it up and over the handle, it will dangle down into a loop, you’ll put your feet into it and it is lifting your body, which means you’re not lifting as much weight — just if you picked up a 2 pound dumbbell versus a 10 pound dumbbell, you’re lifting less — when this band is on your body, you’re lifting less of your body weight up.
And so, what we would have you do is practice doing 5-8 reps with the thickest band, which is a green one from the company I use. It’s a big thick band. I’ll have you practice 5-8 reps, take a two-minute rest. Do that three times. Do that a couple of times a week — I’d say twice a week on your upper body day your full body day — first thing out of the gate.
So, if somebody has a performance goal like that in mind, I put it first in their workout, when you’re really fresh. So put that first and then you move on with the rest of your workout. Work on that.
After a month with doing that, we can have you add some other things in. Another good one to add in is what’s called a slow eccentric. So, what it would be is you’d get a stool, something that you could climb on to get up into the top position of the pull up, and then you would just lower your body down as slowly as possible under control. And so that’s the whole move. You don’t pull yourself up, you just lower down.
Stephanie: [00:28:58] And that’s what I’ve been trying to do to also work on a pushup. Because I can’t do a proper pushup either.
Kim: [00:29:03] And you’ve been doing the lowering part.
Stephanie: [00:29:05] Yes. And even now when I’m doing it on my bench — I’m doing it at an inclined, because again, weak, but I can do–
Kim: [00:29:13] I’m gonna call that right here. You stop calling yourself weak right now.
That’s like the fourth time you did it and I’m not going to let it slide anymore.
Stephanie: [00:29:19] I have room for gains.
Kim: [00:29:21] You have room for gains. And here’s the thing: you’re not weak, you have some strength in you now and you’re going to get stronger, right? You’re lifting 12-pound dumbbells and so you’re 12 pounds strong. In a few weeks you’re going to be 15 pounds strong, 20 pounds strong. Right now, you’re dead hang 20 seconds strong, a few months down the road you’re going to be, “I got my first pull up” strong.
Stephanie: [00:29:42] Yeah, it’s funny. My brother — he’s about nine years younger than I am. And he’s about twice as big as I am. He’s six feet tall. He’s probably usually around 190 pounds and he weight lifts and stuff. And so, he almost can’t wrap his brain around what it’s like to be me because he’s like, “but there’s nothing to lift, you can just do it, right?” And I’m like, “no!”
Kim: [00:30:02] But I will tell you –, can you tell me how much you weigh?
Stephanie: [00:30:05] About a hundred.
Kim: [00:30:06] Okay. Yeah. So, you’re a hundred pounds. You said 5’2″?
Stephanie: [00:30:10] Yep.
Kim: [00:30:10] I will tell you, he’s not right as in “Hey, why can’t you do it?” But he is right in that if you’re lighter, it is easier. I work with people and when they first start with me, if their goal is weight loss, they’re struggling to do pull ups, even as they’re beginning to practice, as they get stronger, it helps, but what also helps is losing weight. There’s less of them to lift.
So, you’re fairly light, so that is going to work in your favor. That is fantastic that you’re light. The other thing is we just have to train those muscles. As you train, you will, without a doubt, you will, without a doubt, be able to do this.
So that’s what we’re going to have you do. We’ll have you do those assistant pull-ups, after a month with that we’ll have you add in the slow eccentric pushups. So, do those coming down and would do about 5 of those. So, slow down, as slow as you can go for the first rep, come back up, do it again, do that five times. Take a two-minute break, do it again, do that three total times. So, three sets of five of those.
Another really good thing that we could add in is what’s called cluster sets. And you’ll use your assist and you’ll see over time, your assist is going to get less and less.
At first you might need the big, thick band and another band. Eventually you’ll be able to start taking bands off and then you won’t need the thick one anymore and you’ll use the medium one. And you’ll notice that happening. And then what we’re going to have you do is do cluster sets. So maybe the first time we would have you do 2x2x2, and here’s what that would look like:
You’ll do 2 reps with your band on, you’ll wait 10 seconds — so, literally, you’ll time it or count it out — 10 seconds, you’ll do another 2 reps, you’ll wait 10 seconds, you’ll do another 2 reps.
So, what you’ll find is, in a very short period of time, you just di
d six where you couldn’t do six before.
Does that make sense?
Stephanie: [00:31:50] Absolutely.
Kim: [00:31:50] So, you do your clusters so that they end up being more volume than what you can usually get with the same assistance. And so those are really fantastic. Those are my really go-to “how to get your first pull up.” And I have this whole program on my YouTube video about how to get your first pull up. I want you to watch that.
The idea is that we’re going to do this systematically. We’re going to prioritize it in your program and you’re going to keep at it and you’re going to see progress and that’s going to be motivating and it’s going to be fricking exciting when you get your first pullup.
Stephanie: [00:32:21] Do you find, like I said, for me, it’s like right there on my hands where it would go white so quickly, even with, I have weightlifting gloves that I use.
Does that just get better with time? It felt like that discomfort gave way before my forearms did.
Kim: [00:32:38] Yeah. And your grip will get stronger and we can talk in a second about some exercises to help your grip. I will tell you, you will likely have better luck without the gloves. The gloves tend to bunch up and it actually is harder to hold on.
If you’re super concerned about never having any callouses on your hand, then yeah, wear the gloves. If it doesn’t bother you to get some calluses on your hand, don’t wear them because you’ll likely find that you’re better able to grip without them.
That’s what I would say about that. And then for grip strength, it’s a big part of pull-ups. Working on deadlifts as part of your training program is going to help with that because you’ll be holding heavy weight and just letting it hang from your hand. Pretty much any exercise where you’re holding a heavier weight and letting it hang, that’s going to help you with your grip. Farmer carries, which is literally picking up a heavy dumbbell and walking around.
So, just holding onto one and walking for 30 to 60 seconds, holding onto that, actually works your core. At the same time, you’re working your grip. So, I really like those for grip strength, as well.
You will train your grip. So, I know it feels really hard right now — everything about pull-ups feels hard — you’ll get better. And pull ups will help your grip, like practicing those assisted ones.
Stephanie: [00:33:57] So a question that I have for you — I was talking a little bit earlier about my mom and how she has issues with arthritis, particularly in her hands and her feet. And so that always kind of niggles in the back of my head when I want to start doing strength things or lunges, or whatever, it’s “well, you better not wear those joints out.” You see what I’m saying?
Kim: [00:34:18] Yeah. I have to tell you; I have not read anything — and I could be totally wrong and I will look into this — I’m going to tell you to start off with: I have never researched a connection between arthritis and strength training. I have not. I will tell you our joints get stronger as we put heavier loads on them.
So, I would assume that it would actually have a positive benefit, not a negative one. When we’re strength training, we’re not just strength training our muscles, we’re training our bones and our ligaments and our tendons and our joints. They all get stronger over time.
Stephanie: [00:34:52] Oh, fantastic. Yeah, because that’s of my big thing, too, is without always knowing what I’m doing, I don’t want to give myself an injury, because I’m like, my husband tries really hard to exercise as well, but he has a tendency to hurt himself.
He was getting ready a couple years ago for a hiking trip he was going to go on — and he has a little bit of a low bone density himself. So, he’d been doing some jumping and he’d been doing lunges, and he gave himself a good case at jumper’s knee. And he’s been dealing with that tendon pain now for two years.
So now he feels like he can’t do the elliptical and he can’t do incline and he can’t do squats. And he feels like he’s just blocked off a whole bunch of things that now he feels he can’t do to be strong or healthy.
Kim: [00:35:35] It is super frustrating to get injured. I’ve been there, lots of people have been there. When I have gotten injured, I will tell you my main rule is I don’t stop. I work around it. I don’t ever work through pain, I do not have my clients work through pain, but I have every single one of them work around pain. And the main goal is we try not to get them injured.
I will tell you more people that I know than not usually injure themselves not lifting. I personally have not injured myself a whole ton lifting, I have injured myself trying to shove a heavy bench, like, in my gym. I herniated a disc many years ago because I just didn’t even think, I just shoved it in a very awkward way and it was way too heavy to be shoved. And so, I hurt myself doing that.
I’ve hurt myself doing all kinds of things, but strength training will help you, in the long run, to not be injured way more than it’s going to endanger you to get injured if you train intelligently.
And what that means is: we have rest days, we don’t train every day. We have you master form first, right? And I will show you, I’ll send you some links, I have full training videos for a full six-week workout.
So, you can follow that, it has videos that says “here’s how your form should look.” So, you nail your form and then you work the weight up as soon as know your form is good, but we always prioritize form first. We get our rest days in and those things really help to make you not get injured.
Stephanie: [00:37:12] Fantastic.
Kim: [00:37:13] Not that I’m promising you in injury free life because sometimes things happen.
Stephanie: [00:37:17] Sure. Oh, absolutely. No, I just can’t say enough, what a resource your Instagram and everything has been. All the bite sized tidbits, but then I’ve been able to incorporate, incorporate, incorporate. I mean, things like what you just said, work around injury, not through an injury, it’s like, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” but I’d never thought of it that way before. And so, it’s just such a great resource.
Kim: [00:37:38] Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. So, look, this is what we’re going to do to make sure that you’re set up. So, I think you’re getting a really good grasp on what makes a good training from our conversation here today, right?
So, we know we’re going to train multiple times a week, we’re going to train the same muscle groups over those weeks, we’re going to work on getting stronger at basic moves over time, really progressing is important. That’s the basics of what you need to know to start working out.
So, what we’re going to do is I’m going to make sure I send you the links to my pull up video on YouTube so that you know for sure how to do that. And I’m going to send you the link to the training program that I have on there. It shows you the exercises and at the end, there’s a place you can screenshot the workout, so you can have the workout itself in hand so you know exactly what to do and you do it for six weeks, just like we just described.
Stephanie: [00:38:24] Perfect.
Kim: [00:38:26] Anything else we can chat about before we go?
Stephanie: [00:38:29] Gosh, I mean, you the other thing I would say, I definitely have benefited from the different nutrition videos that you’ve done. I had never tried canned chicken before your “what I eat in the day.” I’ve eaten canned tuna forever, but I was like, “this is quite reasonable,” and so just some of those ways to get protein, because I’ve been tracking calories and I’ve been tracking protein, which again, I think one of your videos had recommended — not necessarily getting too bogged down with some of the other things.
Kim: [00:38:58] Absolutely. Tracking carbs and fats is just extra math. If you keep your calories in line and you keep your protein in line, they can be wherever and so why track them?
Stephanie: [00:39:08] I would say probably the naughtiest I am, I’m still not super good at the 80/20 split. Even if I’m staying within my calories, I’m still probably spending a little too much of it on the sweets. I liked them ever so. And like I said, I’ve been able to spend most of my life just being able to eat, but my mom said the same thing. She said “I could eat an entire cake at once if I want and it did not matter.” And she said, “and then later it mattered.”
Kim: [00:39:32] And then eventually it mattered.
And we always know in the back of our mind that it’s probably not super healthy to have more of our calories be from cake than vegetables, right? We know that intuitively, but when we can get away with it and it doesn’t affect how we look, sometimes we let that stuff slide.
So, it’s good. That’s definitely going to help your health that you work on that. And here’s the thing. If you’re not at 80/20 right now, that’s okay. Let’s say you’re at 60/40, start trying to edge that dial, you know? And so, you’re at 60/40, and then you’re at like 65/35, and you just keep working it until you work your way up to comfortably being at 80/20.
It doesn’t have to happen today. It doesn’t have to happen this month. It can happen over the next year or so that you just really make a dedicated effort to eat more fruits, more vegetables, more lean protein, still having cake, but less incidences of cake. And I have to tell you, you’re talking to a person who I didn’t eat vegetables until I was 43.
You can do this. Like I, not even out of a sense of, I need to eat vegetables. Like, I had Belgian endive as part of my breakfast this morning because now I love it. Like, I ate Belgian endive with my cottage cheese because it’s delicious. And that took me until I was like 48 to do.
Stephanie: [00:40:50] And I would say that’s probably one of the bigger mindset shifts I’ve had since I’ve been tracking calories since mid-January. And I think back then, I was just like, “my pants are of tight. I’m probably drinking wine more often than I should. I just need to go crazy for a month and get back to normal and that I can do whatever I want again.” And it’s a little more of the, “no, this just of needs to be a new, deciding when I’m at maintenance and then what maintenance looks like for life.”
Kim: [00:41:23] Absolutely. And building the habits to make maintenance be maintainable. And that means, sure, have wine, but have wine in an amount that allows for maintenance and not weight gain. And so that’s a habit change, like, “all right, what am I going to do if I want wine, if I’m bored, if whatever.” Some people use it because they want to unwind and some people use it because it’s a fun thing to do. So, looking for other strategies, “okay, if I want to unwind, what am I going to do instead of wine?” “If I’m feeling like I’m bored and ‘oh, I’m just going to sit and enjoy my bottle of wine,’ what could I do that doesn’t involve wine.” So, looking for those kinds of strategies to make maintenance maintainable.
Stephanie: [00:42:03] And I would say again, that’s what I’ve been so appreciative of the resources you’ve offered. Because I feel like there’s the fitness part of it, there’s the nutrition part of it, then there’s the lifestyle part of it.
Because it is true. I think I was just listening to one of your podcasts where somebody was just eating out of boredom and it’s like, yeah, because sometimes you just want to feel different. I’m cold, I’m tired, I’m irritated. This feels different.
Kim: [00:42:24] Yeah. You’re totally spot on there. We want to make ourselves feel different, feel better, and the easiest, lowest hanging fruit is usually “what can I eat?” And it’s harder to be like, “oh, why do I feel so blah today? What can I do to not feel so blah today?” Or whatever the things are, right? You’re spot on. And doing that emotional work is way harder than being like, “hmmm. Cupcake.”
Stephanie: [00:42:48] And I’m very fortunate, you know, I have an amazing husband, my kids are awesome, my folks actually just live next door, they’re a great resource for us, but still life just throws its stresses at you.
Kim: [00:42:59] Absolutely! You can have the most perfect life ever, but you know what? Kids are still kids. I love my kids, I think they’re great kids, they friggin’ annoying me sometimes. Jobs are like, I love my job. This is like the ideal job for me. It is my dream job. It friggin’ stresses me out sometimes. That’s how life is. Even if everything is great, it’s still life.
Stephanie: [00:43:20] Right. And that’s the other thing, too, is I feel like, again, my goal at the beginning was just, “I want the number on the scale to be smaller.”
But while that’s still a goal, I’m trying to come up with some of those other gains as well. You know, sleeping better. So, again, you can eat a bunch of cookies at 8 and then go to bed at 10:30 and you’re hungry again and then that wasn’t that satisfying, so just, I don’t know.
Oh, things like cardiovascular, that kind of thing. Just knowing that, again, when I’m 60, when I’m 70, I want to be around for my adult kids. I want to be around for their kids. And so, what are the things I can do? I think one of the videos I just saw posted was about being skinny, fat. And so, I think I’ve probably been pretty guilty of that over the years.
Kim: [00:44:19] Yeah, a lot of people are. And so, working on your strength training is going to help you to not be skinny fat. It’s going to change your body composition. You will have more muscle, less fat, and it will be very, not only appealing visually, but it will be healthy.
So, one thing I want to follow up on — did you say you were around a hundred? So how do you feel about — because one of the things you said you still would kinda like to see that number go down — in your mind, what would be the number you’d want to see?
Stephanie: [00:44:48] It’s one of the things I want to be realistic and healthy and not of get too stuck in my head. I think I probably spent high school and college being, you know, 97, 98 pounds. And again, that’s that kind of who I identified as. And some things change and they’re never going back. I had big babies. My smallest baby was 8lbs 11oz, my biggest baby was 9lbs 7oz.
Kim: [00:45:23] Oh, that’s a big baby.
Stephanie: [00:45:25] So mean, I could wear bikini. I would have a bikini body if I chose to wear a bikini, but my stomach looks like I fell asleep on an afghan. It looks like a shattered windshield.
Kim: [00:45:39] That’s a funny way to put it.
Stephanie: [00:45:42] But it’s like, “eh, nothing I can do about that.” But I could look really cool in a tank top, to my eyeballs.
And I think also part of it is just wiggle room. Feeling like, okay, if I got to whatever that magical number is — and I don’t even exactly know what that magical is — but then it’s like, okay, well then if I had a week where I’m carrying around extra water weight or we went on vacation or something, but then I don’t come back and be like, “well I just ruined three months of everything.”
Kim: [00:46:12] What if I told you that you could have those arms and that tank top that you really liked, and you could be busting out pull ups and you could be fitting in your clothes better than ever, still enjoying your wine and all that, but you would never go under a hundred pounds?
Stephanie: [00:46:28] I think I just knew that I wouldn’t go down a slippery slope of, like — and again, I feel like I’m vilifying my mom, which I’m not, my mother is amazing — I just feel like she doesn’t feel good and so I kind of have her a little bit as my cautionary tale, as it were. Because she is an incredibly hard worker, she takes care of her elderly father, she takes care of my three kids, she takes care of my two nephews, she’s a neat freak so she can’t stop cleaning house, she mows all of our property, I mean, she goes, goes, goes. She says she has two speeds: go and stop. So, she goes all day until she’s exhausted and then she’s down. So, she says at nighttime, she wants to have her beer. And she’s going to have her beer and she’s gonna have her beer every single night, her two. But she has those two every night forever. And you’re not going to talk her out of it.
And she bakes, she’s an amazing baker, but she has never met buttercream or sugar she did not like. She’s actually probably the worst sabotage that I have because I’ll come home from work and then there’s this huge thing of homemade brownies. So maybe that’s part of it too, is feeling like I can get to a number where then I’ve come home and she’s left out a whole bunch of brownies and it’s “you know what? I can indulge. Today I can indulge. My mom made homemade brownies and that’s going to be okay. And then tomorrow I can get back to normal again.”
Kim: [00:47:53] Yeah. So, it sounds to me like you’re looking for, to get low enough so that you can eat what you want with having this buffer range so that you’re not constantly ramping up how much you weigh, how much you weigh.
Stephanie: [00:48:02] Yes. And like I said, I don’t intend to just be like, “oh cool. All I’m going to eat is potato chips and candy bars.” No, I think the last few months have taught me that having that basis of spinach and chicken and cottage cheese, and Greek yogurt, that’s a really good place to be. And that’s sustainable, but just still being able to have that fun zone.
Kim: [00:48:23] I will say this: I think you could still be in that place and never have that scale go under a hundred. Realistically speaking, as you start to strength train and build muscle and your body composition changes, you will likely find that you like the way your body looks even though it is not at 97 pounds.
So, as you switch your body composition it would be something I want you to start having this idea about surrounding your head, that getting under a hundred pounds isn’t necessarily t
he goal that’s going to get you the outcome you want. If you want to have those toned arms in a tank top, get your pull up and be able to eat some brownies as they show up even though most of your food is going to be those other things, you can get and all of that, and be 102, 103, like you do not need to be at 97 and I’m going to venture to guess you won’t be if you do the things I’m telling you. And I want you to start having that bounce around in your head and saying like, “how will I feel about that? Can I get out of my head that I define myself as the 20-some year old who’s 97 pounds?”
Stephanie: [00:49:25] And I find that interesting, because I wonder how many, particularly women, I don’t know how guys think about things, but how many of us– it’s like, I had a friend of mine once post on Facebook, who, she said, “I wish I was as fat now, as I thought I was in high school.”
Or how many, it’s like the, “if I was only what I weighed in high school,” or “if I was only what I weighed the day I got married,” or “if I was only what I weighed before I had kids.” And it’s just an interesting mindset.
Kim: [00:50:02] Loads of people are there. I was there for a really long on time.
We’re so there because we’re so used to defining success at weight loss by that one number on the scale. That’s what is success for us. That number being smaller equals we’re heading in the right direction. And it’s true, like, when I was in high school, I was perpetually a person who was trying to lose weight as a teenager.
I was 119 pounds; I didn’t need to lose weight. What would have done me a world of good is building some muscle. I wish I could go back and be like “here, lift this weight up, Kim, you will like what you look like better.” And then in my twenties, I just wanted to be under 125. That was my goal. When I went to get married, my husband was very small. His goal was to reach 125 going up. And my goal was reached 125 coming down.
And then I eventually struggled with obesity, but my goal was always to get back to under 125, under 120. I will tell you now — I don’t even know I weigh — the last time I weighed myself, it was sometime during quarantine, and I was 137. I look better now than I ever have. I’ve gotten to the point where, I’ve been doing this for years, so part of my weight is literally bone. Like, I have more bone. I’ve been lifting hundreds of pounds as a powerlifter for years now.
I look better now at the weight I am, probably 137-ish, than I ever looked at 125. Like, world’s better.
Stephanie: [00:51:20] And there was a time I remember you did a post that was really cool. And it was like three pictures side to side, and it was of like, “this is where I was at this age. And then here’s where I was.” And, I don’t remember, you were in a really cute shirt and you were like, “I really, I liked how I looked. I hated how I felt.” You said, I think, calories were really low. And so how you find that livable area.
Kim: [00:51:39] Yeah. And so that was where I got to the leanest I’d ever been as an adult. And I was 119. I got down to 117 once for a weigh-in, for a powerlifting meet, but that was just for a day or two, but I was 119. I was miserable when it came to my lifestyle. Like, I couldn’t eat the things I enjoyed, when I did it was very much a “cheat day” mentality and it would come and I would think about it, I couldn’t wait for it to come, I couldn’t wait for that day, and I would eat all the things, I would usually still feel guilty, even though it was my plan, and then I’d have to get right back to eating extremely low calories. We’re talking zero calorie dressing, plain chicken, lettuce, like, how appealing does that sound? That sounds terrible. That sounds terrible.
And like potatoes that were literally just made out of broccoli and avocado mash, it was literally just avocado. My food was so limited and going out to eat meant that I didn’t eat those things. I couldn’t eat anything my family ate. I literally, in my mind, couldn’t do that.
It was no way to live. It was no way to live.
Stephanie: [00:52:45] What were the circumstances at the time that led you down that path?
Kim: [00:52:55] So, I had been obese, got fit through tracking my calories and lifting weights fell in love, with weightlifting.
The way I entered the fitness industry was by following bodybuilders. This is what I thought fit people were. In my mind, a fit person was a bodybuilder. A lot of bodybuilders are super unhealthy. A lot of bodybuilders have eating disorders. A lot of bodybuilders have a terrible relationship with food.
What they can achieve physically is incredible. I thought I wanted to be a bodybuilder. My goal was, at that time, to enter a bodybuilding competition. Like, I was going to do a bikini show. My very next step was going to be to hire a coach to help me get there. It’s the kind of thing, like, I got lean enough on my own, I hire the coach, we pick a show 12 weeks out and I get even leaner. The goal would have been to get even leaner. And in that moment, I just had a moment of realizing, “I have worked so hard to get healthy.”
This was a lot of work. I was really overweight. I had revamped my entire life and it just occurred to me, like, what I’m about to do is going to take me the opposite direction. This is not healthy. Like, I am going the opposite direction from health. What I’ve been looking for was to get healthy and now I’m really making a U-turn and heading back to unhealthy in a different way. And right around the same time is when I read an article about powerlifting and I had never heard of powerlifting.
I’m like, “what is powerlifting?” Because I loved the gym, but I only knew bodybuilders. And so, I started watching these women and I’m like, “they’re lifting heavy weight. I want to lift heavy weight. I like that.” And when I stopped focusing on getting smaller, getting smaller, getting smaller, and started focusing on getting stronger, that’s what caused me to come out of that.
Stephanie: [00:54:33] Gotcha. Gotcha. And like I said, that’s why having measurable goals– I think that’s also probably why we get stuck on a scale. It’s so easy to measure.
Kim: [00:54:42] Yes, absolutely. And so, here’s the thing I would say, what I would want you to do if you’re going to really be looking for physique progress, what I would suggest you do is t
ake measurements with a tape measure.
Measure your chest, measure your waist at the smallest part, measure your waist at your belly button, measure your hips by going across your butt at the biggest part, measure one thigh — I just do the right side, just because it’s easy to remember — at the widest part, and measure your right biceps with your biceps loose, not flexed.
Do that once a month and keep an eye on those measurements. Also take progress pictures. Full body, in a bikini or bathing suit bottom and top. So, bikini or underwear and a sports bra. You want to see as much as possible, same lighting every month, front, back, both sides. Keep an eye on that.
Put some clothes on, pick a pair of pants or something, notice how it fits. Every month, put those back on. Using that conglomerate of information — and you can use the scale if you want. There’s a lot of people that I expect the scale to move, too, I don’t expect the scale to move a lot with you — use all of that data together to see how you’re progressing.
Stephanie: [00:55:56] Sure. Absolutely.
Kim: [00:55:58] And that’s going to give you a better picture. That, in conjunction with you specifically, like, how is your strength improving? You’re going to see really big gains in the gym. And all of that together hopefully will be motivating enough for you to be like, “I am making amazing progress.”
Stephanie: [00:56:12] And that’s why, like I said, as arbitrary as the pull up thing is, again, it seems very measurable because it’s yes or no.
Kim: [00:56:22] I either did it or I did not do it.
Stephanie: [00:56:24] Right. As opposed to, again, like I said, I don’t have a goal of being a runner. It doesn’t sound very interesting to me and so I’m not going to be somebody who is like, “oh man, now I got an eight-minute mile. Now maybe next time I can get a 7:52.” That’s not going to be it.
And I measure my calories on the treadmill, but even that’s just a general idea of how much was able to stick to it today. And I do find it, it’s interesting, it’s like on a day that maybe it was a day, the night before, it’s like we did go out to a restaurant and I did, I was like, “you know what? Special occasion I’m going to track the calories, but they’re big calories. I’m going to mark them down and I’m gonna enjoy it.” Man, that next day I have a lot more oomph on the treadmill than I did the day before when it was egg, whites and spinach.
Kim: [00:57:08] It’s amazing what fueling our bodies can do to make us perform better. And for women who have lived permanently on super low calories, once you get some calories in your body, it’s just shocking. Like, “wow, I have energy in the gym. I’m not so lethargic in life, generally. I sleep better,” because we’re just so used to really restrictive calories.
Stephanie: [00:57:30] And that’s the other thing, too, that you’ve said recently that I’m really trying to take to heart is not how low do you need to go lose any weight? It’s what’s the most you can eat and still see that. And then those charts have been very helpful, too.
I mean, right now, if I’m shaving off maybe a quarter of a pound a week, I’m like, that’s fine. That’s fine. Even if I steady out, because I’m happy with that. Because, you know, like the first month, five pounds went away because water weight and just random whatever. And knowing that I am adding in strength things to hopefully means that where I’m losing is fat and then where it’s balancing out is muscle.
Kim: [00:58:11] Yeah. Yeah. That’s an exciting process to see, right? That’s body recomposition, as you lose fat and you build muscle. That’s what we’re going to look for here for you.
So, let’s kind come up with exactly the next action steps for you. How do you feel about in the next couple of days doing pictures and measurements and trying on some clothing?
Stephanie: [00:58:31] That’s very doable.
Kim: [00:58:32] Ok. Do that and set that up somewhere so you can see it. And then I’m going to send you the pull up video, the pushup video, and the training plan video all from YouTube.
Guys listening, I will put those in the show notes. I don’t know that there’ll be clickable, but you can see them and look at them. And you can look there and we’ll have you get going on that strength training plan.
Stephanie: [00:59:01] Awesome. Thank you again, not only for your time today, but just all the work that you do to put all those materials out. Because those have just been, like I said, they’ve just been very absorbable and very practical and in a way that’s not just “drink a magic tea and three weeks later…”
Kim: [00:59:14] Yeah. That stuff is nonsense. So many people are out there saying that stuff and we want to believe it. And I used to believe that stuff because, first of all, wow, they can make the marketing sound so believable. Like, surely these people aren’t all making this up. Yeah, they are.
And then the last thing is, send me a video of your equipment at home. Like you can take some stills at all different angles or just like literally walk around and take a video and send it to me via email so I can see what you’ve got there.
Stephanie: [00:59:42] Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, I was kind of fan-girling. I was like, it’s like a celebrity. It’s crazy.
Kim: [00:59:50] Whenever people say that, I’m just like, “really?!?”
But I get it because I’m the same way. I’m the exact same way with people who I’ve gotten to be friendly with on Instagram, who were people who I look up to in the fitness industry. And then eventually I get them on here for a conversation. I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m talking to you.” And they’re like, “I’m not a celebrity. I’m literally a trainer.”
Stephanie: [01:00:09] No, but it was just so cool because it’s like I was trying to mess with some settings on the cable machine and the other day, and while I was working on it, I was like, “I need some entertainment, oooo she has a new video!” So, I was listening to your meal prep video while I’m like trying to get the settings right. Because, like I said, I need to be entertained when I’m in the weight room.
Kim: [01:00:28] I just filmed one this morning. My next YouTube video is going to be all about how to squat, literally from, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” all the way through lots of variations, all the way to a barbell, and there’s going to be a squat in there for everybody and it tells you exactly what to do.
So hopefully that’ll come out next week.
Stephanie: [01:00:42] Awesome! Well just thank you for all you do. It’s really appreciated and it makes a difference.
Kim: [01:00:47] You’re very welcome! Thank you so much for coming on.
Stephanie: [01:00:49] Thank you!
Kim: [01:00:51] Alright, bye!
Thanks so much for being here and listening in to the Fitness Simplified podcast today. I hope you found it educational, motivational, inspirational, all the kinds of -ational.
If you enjoyed it, if you found value in it, it would mean so much to me if you would go ahead and leave a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to this on. It really does help to get this podcast to other people.
Thanks so much.
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