Self Love & Sweat The Podcast

Make Fitness Work for YOU (7 tips)

Season 1 Episode 90

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Lunden shares 7 tips to help you root down in your fitness goals, make things work when it doesn't seem possible and never have to start, stop, start, stop and start over again. Content like this is SO helpful to consume when you're working on REALLY making fitness part of your lifestyle and who you are.

If you liked this episode, here are some others you'll probably like, too:
#86 CPR Healthy Lifestyle Revival
#74 Redefining F.I.T.N.E.S.S.

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Lunden Souza: [00:00:01]
Welcome to Self Love and Sweat, THE PODCAST. The Place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers and do what sets your soul on fire. I’m your host, Lunden Souza.

Lunden Souza:  [00:00:11]
Hey friend, it’s me, Lunden Souza, online lifestyle transformation coach. I help people all over the world, just like you, who know they are meant for more, get their mind right and their body tight and go from crazy busy to crazy happy. And hey, if it’s our first time meeting….Welcome, so happy to have you! And if you’ve been with us for a while, it’s so great that you’re here too. I’m really excited to share this episode of the Self Love & Sweat THE PODCAST with you.

Lunden Souza: [00:01:05] Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. On today's episode we're talking about making fitness work for you, not for somebody else, not for everybody else, but making fitness work for you. And today I have seven tips for making fitness work for you. Things that we're going to go through, that we're going to talk about that you really don't have to do with like OC Fitness is not working because you're not doing the perfect plan, right? I'm not here to pick apart the training plan that you're doing and saying like, Oh, if you just walk more or run more or squat more, you know, then that's the answer to all your problems. That's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about making fitness work for you in a way that feels good, that feels sustainable, that makes you feel strong in a way that makes you feel empowered and something that you want to continue to do forever. Right. I was talking to my friend Ella before recording this podcast and I was like, I don't know about you, but like, I want to work out forever. And she was like, Me too. And so making fitness work for you is beyond what you're doing now or what you look like now, but what it's going to look like and kind of the big picture too. So being able to include fitness in your big picture, in your life to infinity and beyond, these tips will help you.


Lunden Souza: [00:02:21] Right? So it's not just like, tell me what workout you're doing. Oh, you're doing three sets of ten squats. You should be doing four. Right. That's a thing if you're really into, you know, taking your fitness and some of those quantitative goals that we'll talk about to that next next level. Yes, right. That's important. Sometimes, depending on what your goals are. Not everybody's goals are that. But these tips are really going to be, you know, you can write these down and come back to them later. Right. You can come back and reflect on these tips and things later as well, because they're not going to be specific to what goal you're specifically working on in this moment. But they are going to be super helpful no matter what your fitness level is, no matter what your goals are. If you find yourself at a space where you're like, Hey, I want to make this work. Like, I want this to be a part of who I am and how I show up and just how I do things and how I roll. Then these tips are for you. Okay, cool. Let's jump right in. Number one. Number one is always like if you if you coach with me and work with me usually like number one, I'm always like setting the expectation, setting the foundation for a lot of the other tips. So that's what this one is. Number one, the first tip in making fitness work for you is for you is the key word.


Lunden Souza: [00:03:37] Right? Like I said, the first tip for making fitness work for you is understanding that you are unique. Some things that may be worked that you find worked for someone else might work for you to write, but for the most part it's like this has to be for you. So this isn't what this is in the comparison game and we'll talk about that to this isn't, you know, oh, this works for them so this should work for me or Dr. Oz said Hedo was just like, you know, awesome. So that's what I should be doing. To write for you is the keyword. My dad is a baseball coach or was a baseball coach for many, many years. And so in baseball you have a dugout, which is where all the players like sit. And he'd always be like, Keep your nose in your own dugout. That was his way of just being like he would say that in in the sport and also like in parenting, I guess. Yeah, it was a great tactic. I liked it. It was like, keep your mind your own business. Like stay in your lane, like keep your nose in your own dugout. Like, don't be worried about what this person's doing or what, you know as kids, what grade that person got or what place you got here. Like keep your nose in your own dugout.


Lunden Souza: [00:04:40] Like stay in your space and know how to show up best for you. So that's the first tip for making fitness work for you is understand like key word is for you, which also means that you're the only one that can do the work. You can't outsource that work to someone else because they're not you. So they're not going to be able to say like, that's perfect for you. But then you're feeling over here like, this is not perfect for me, this doesn't work. This doesn't feel right for me, right? So number one for you is the keyword. Number two. In our seven Tips for making fitness work for you. Number two. What works now? Or what worked then doesn't always work forever. Right? So what works now might not work later on in your life. What works? What worked earlier on in your life might not be working now. And you might be in this like tug of war, struggle of like, what the heck I used to run. And that would just keep me super fit and stronger. I used to do workouts like this and that was awesome and it made me feel great. You know, we're always changing and we're always evolving. I'm 33 now. I started working out outside of, like, playing sports and being a kid and doing like school stuff. I started working out when I was 17, when I started college, and what worked then does not work now at all.


Lunden Souza: [00:06:00] Like I was doing way too much volume. I was just like, Yeah, working my body, stressing myself out, like, but I guess at a young age I could probably, you know, I could probably tolerate that a little bit more. Now what works for me is like, Yeah, I love to push my limits. I love to work really hard. I love to lift heavy weights, but just not as frequently, not as many days of the week. Also, I love restorative exercise like I will foam roll voluntarily. I love the melt method. I will stretch, I will do the tennis ball thing and all the hard spots. Right? It's like I do not skimp on recovery at all whatsoever. That's a big non-negotiable for me. We'll talk about that too. But just understanding, like, hey, like who you are in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. I have a client right now is training for a marathon in his sixties. I've been working with him for a while. He's freaking amazing, like what you're capable of and what you do throughout different phases of your life. That doesn't mean they're linear either, right? It's like you don't have to or like it doesn't mean like when you're younger, you do the most fit things you could be. You know, there's no too late when it comes to age, when to start, what you're capable of all of that.


Lunden Souza: [00:07:09] But just know that like there's going to be different phases of your life and your same workout plan, your same gym split, your same walking route, your same running route, all the things your body is used to, or maybe your body liked for a period of time and doesn't like now. All that kind of stuff you have to pay attention to. It's important to make sure that you know that you're the one that has to do the work for you. You're like, I love the little spy emoji, you know, the emojis on the iPhone or whatever phone, the one with like the spy. It's like there's a girl and a boy and they have like the little magnifying glass to their eye with the hat. And it's like, you know, we got to be that in our lives, not up in other people's business. Not up in what other worked for other people. Right? Put that magnifying glass up to your own self and figure it out. Okay. Number three on our tips for making fitness work for you. Number three, embrace the cycle. Now, this could be like the cycle or the season. So this could be the season of the year, right? So right now with the one on one client I'm working on for the marathon, he lives in a part of the world where some parts of the world like it is snowing. You don't go outside. So there's different seasons in terms of making fitness work for you, depending on the weather and where you might be and what you have access to and what you have resources for and all of that, like I said.


Lunden Souza: [00:08:34] And number two, it could also be like the cycle or the season of your life. What do you feel like doing? What feels good? Maybe you were training for something really intense before. Maybe now you're not. Maybe you're just in a different season of your life. Also, when it comes to embracing the cycle and the season, I'm speaking to women here. We have different cycles in our menstrual cycle and throughout the month we have four different phases of our cycle and the types of workouts that we do cannot be the same throughout every single cycle of our or every single phase of our cycle. There's moments where we need to tone it back. There's moments when we can push for a PR and lift heavier and run faster and run farther and all of that kind of thing. And there's moments where it's time to take a chill pill. And so I feel like that all or nothing mindset or some of that tug of war that I've seen women play is really like, Oh my gosh, like I was on my period and I ate everything and I worked and I didn't work out and oh my gosh, like, I ruined my I ruined my results.


Lunden Souza: [00:09:31] It's like, no, it's just part of it. So I plan not to work out on my period. Personally, I also plan to eat these really good cookies, these almond flour, chocolate chip cookies. I also plan to eat the whole box during my period. That's part of my plan. So like embrace the cycles of your life. I'm not like, you know, this is what I love to do and I love to work out and I want to feel good and I want to feel strong and I want to relax when I'm on my menstrual cycle. And I also want to have these cookies that I don't normally eat throughout the whole entire other phases of my cycle either, right? It's like a planned approach. I know how I'm going to feel. I'm embracing the cycles, not fighting against them. I'm loving on myself in the process and embracing some of the cravings or low energy that I might have during during different cycles. Girls and men feel this too. I'm just not as in depth, like in terms of researching a lot of that or knowing a lot of that. But I do know that men have different phases and like, quite frankly, you can feel it, right? We go through different seasons of our lives. It's not always like we want to push super hard. In fact, I prefer a more like, you know, I kind of say I like to live how I like my workouts, like in high intensity intervals.


Lunden Souza: [00:10:40] I like that push and then I like to be able to rest and then I like to kind of get a lot of stuff done and then be able to rest. So personally, that's kind of how I see my workout cycle, my fitness cycle and things like that too. There's moments to push my limits and work hard and get those powers, and there's also moments to just like chillax and take a moment to recover and nourish our body with movement, with fitness in a different way. So that's number three. Number four, check your definition of fitness. Check your definition of fitness. So what do you think about when you think about fitness? What comes up for you? What internal representation do you have when it comes to fitness? Do you think about something in particular? Do you hear something in particular? Do you see something in particular? Do you smell something like what comes up for you when you think about fitness? Is it more positive vibes? Is it like funky feelings? Like, ain't nobody. I don't want to do this. What comes up for you when you are thinking about fitness? And I want to quickly go through I want to quickly. Yeah. Offer a new way of looking at fitness. So I don't know how you're thinking about it now, but you know how you're thinking about it. And I want to offer you a new perspective on how to think about fitness.


Lunden Souza: [00:12:07] But I do want to go through it quickly because I do have a whole episode on this podcast about this redefining of fitness that you can listen to. And then I also wrote an article about it in the August issue of Best Holistic Life magazine. So if you want to read it, you can. It's an acronym using the word fitness. And so that's number four. Here is check your definition of fitness. And here is this acronym that I love to use that you can yeah, can do what you want with it. You can put it in your back pocket. You could take it, you could take some of it. You could take a little bit of it. Redefining Fitness. So F stands for feelings overlooks focus on how you feel through fitness versus just how you look I, I versus me, right? Not comparing not me versus somebody else like me versus me yesterday I versus me. That's the i t t stands for talk to self. So we're redefining fitness. We have this acronym, the t stands for Talk to Self. You can have the most bangin body, best abs, you know, booty, you can bounce a coin off of and still talk shit to yourself and not love yourself and not feel good about yourself and have a lot of stuff going on between our ears. Right. We all have it, of course, but talk to our self is very important, right? Do you work out because you know you have to or do you work out because you get to and it's going to help you show up even better in other areas of your life.


Lunden Souza: [00:13:38] Right. So even what we think about and what we say when it comes to our workouts and fitness is really important. So sometimes we hear the term like clean eating and I always say like clean self talk, right? Like nourishing, whole uplifting words in our self talk. That's the T and of course when it comes to fitness is nutrition. Nutrition is very important. You cannot not think about nutrition when it comes to longevity and just feeling good. What we eat is the building blocks of who we are and basically it tells our body what to create more of, right? Whether we're building more lean muscle tissue or we're storing more unwanted fat. And so nutrition is really important and a powerful player in fitness. E in fitness stands for empowering ownership. So just stopping pointing the finger at everything outside of us for causing this and messing our this up and that up and pointing the finger back at ourselves in an empowering way, saying like, Hey, I'm in control of how I show up. I'm in control of if I do or do not do my workouts. It's my thing if I'm not eating quality nutrition or getting good sleep, right? It's like empowering ownership basically says like, I'm the common denominator and I like it, right? I'm not pointing the finger right back at me.


Lunden Souza: [00:14:59] And then se and se in fitness, the last two letters in fitness stands for Self Love, and then the last SW stands for Sweat, which is the title of the podcast Self Love and Sweat. So for Self Love, I know that's a big topic. It can be it can be really broad. The topic of self love can be really broad, and sometimes it can feel like, you know, what is what is self love and what is self love look like and what does it mean for me? And one of the main things that you can really do is ask yourself. What am I doing when I feel the most love for myself? And then go do more of that, right? Because self love can look like a lot of things. It can be working out. It can be, you know, a spa day at home. It can be setting clear boundaries with someone who's clearly taken, you know, a step beyond where they should. And self love can be gratitude. Self love can be going out and serving others and loving on others, you know, because then we can love and love on ourselves through giving and things like that. So self love is really unique to you. So just asking yourself, what am I doing when I feel the most love for myself? And then going out and doing more of that.


Lunden Souza: [00:16:14] I always feel like that's a good jumping off point. And then the last se, like I said, is sweat. So Sweat is yeah, your workout getting moving. It's important, right? When it comes to our definition of fitness, working out should be in there. But it's not an end all, be all. It's not the only tool when it comes to a fit and healthy life. And if not used properly, fitness can be we can do a little too much. We can stress our bodies out a little bit too much. That happens, too. So that is number four of making fitness work for you. Number four is redefining fitness and that acronym that I just gave you as a way to redefine fitness. I have a whole podcast episode on it on this, on self love and Sweat. The podcast, I believe it's episode number 74, but I'll double check. It's all about redefining fitness. So you can dig a little bit deeper on that if you want to. We have number five, six, seven, so we have three more tips on making fitness work for you. Stay with me. And if you have any aha moments or anything you want to share, you're taking notes and something's coming up for you. Like totally share that with me either in the DM's on Instagram or you can hit reply to any of the emails that I send to you.


Lunden Souza: [00:17:26] I always get the reply sent right back to my personal email address and I always try to get back as soon as possible. So if you have any aha moments you want to share, do that. Oc Number five Making fitness work for you, setting up non-negotiables with yourself. So this is like where. You know, when you're in school, you have a teacher sometimes, you know, or like in work. Sometimes if you work somewhere where you have a boss, you have a boss, right? You have like someone who's there to like for checks and balances. But with our health and wellness, like, there's not I mean, I guess our doctor will do that. But, you know, unless you're in a job where you have to be a certain size, like if you're a fit model, I have some friends that work in a fit model, you know, space, you know, like unless you. Need to be a certain size in that space. It's nice to have flexible non-negotiables. So number five of our seven tips for making fitness work for you. Number five is having non-negotiables. So this can be yeah, this can be overarching big non-negotiables that you really say like, hey, this is what I stand for. These are my core values. I mean, that's kind of a bigger topic, core values. But these non-negotiables can be something that's like, okay. This is something to infinity and beyond I stand for.


Lunden Souza: [00:18:53] I want to do I want to embody absolutely and non non-negotiables can be really helpful boundaries for the season that you're in. So we have teachers when we're young, we might have bosses when we work, right? Some of us are our own boss, but sometimes we have bosses like checks and balances, people who keep you in check. And when it comes to our health and fitness, I guess our doctors might check our health and wellness, but we don't really have to listen to them. Right, regardless of if you think that we should. I do have some friends that are are models or like fit models. So they actually have to stay like a certain size for the clothings and the jobs that they do and wear. But for the most part, we don't really have like checks and balances or someone saying like, did you do your workout or did you not or did you eat that healthy meal or did you not? Right. And I always thrived in classroom settings. In fact, that's why I love being a student is like having a teacher and having curriculum and having like set up and processes and all those things. But we don't really get that in Big Girl, and especially when it comes to our health and wellness and things like that. So it's great to have these non-negotiables with ourselves that can be that structure, that can feel like that structure, and that can help set us up for success and get get us to do the thing that we know we need to be doing.


Lunden Souza: [00:20:23] Right. So like I said, these can be big overarching non-negotiables and it could also be like seasonal like during the holidays. For example, we're talking today about making fitness work for you all the times, right? For so like throughout the holidays or throughout busier seasons of your life, sometimes non-negotiable can be like 10 minutes of weight training, four days a week. That's it. I'm showing up for it. It's happening and I'm making it work, no question. Right. Non-negotiable can be like, okay, for the next two months, 10,000 steps every day. That could be a non-negotiable. But taking time to check where you are, seek clarity on your goals, and then set boundaries and accountability factors accordingly. That's going to be really important. So yeah, different types of non-negotiables. Like for me, I have a nutrition non-negotiable that is no food through a window except for coffee, through drive, through Starbucks and French fries through in and out. I know that's very specific, but hey, it's my life and I get to be specific as I want. So these non-negotiables are. Yeah. Ones that can be set in stone and ones that can be seasonal. So that nutritional one for me is like, yeah, it's always for me, I just don't want to have food through a window.


Lunden Souza: [00:21:40] I don't want to be eating fast food. I don't even like it. And that one's been with me for years, like over ten years. And some non-negotiables are seasonal. Like some non-negotiables are daily. I'll wake up and be like, Okay, Lunden, like as long as you wake up, brush your teeth, you know, go for a walk and fix this mess of laundry and answer these emails like we're good, right? I'll set up like daily non-negotiables depending on really how I'm feeling. And, and I think I do a pretty good job of monitoring that, of pushing my limits and but I can always do better. And that's why I have coaches and things like that. But sometimes we need the flexibility to be able to set those daily non-negotiables and being like, okay, no matter what happens if all the shit hits, all the fans like this is still getting done pronto. But it's also low enough hanging fruit too, where it's not like you're going to run a marathon today. It's like, No, you're going to get in 5 minutes of core and you're going to do that after a walk, and that's it. And that's my plan and that's my non-negotiable. So set some rules with yourself. Start to have a little bit of authority with ourselves and in a nice way. And I say that because a lot of being able to do that with yourself and build that authority with yourself comes from being able to enough times do what we say we're going to do right tomorrow.


Lunden Souza: [00:22:58] When I wake up, I'm going to ride the bike and then I actually do it tomorrow. When I wake up, I'm going to do this workout and then I actually do it. I'm going to organize that cabinet tomorrow and then I actually do it right. You have to build that trust and build that accountability with yourself in order to have some of these non-negotiables work or else it's just like the kid that doesn't pay attention to the teacher. It's just like, okay, rules, what rules? See you later. You know, we have to be able to set some of those boundaries and like, yeah, listen to them. And it's fun because it's like setting the rules to your game so that you can win. My role is my life, but healthy non-negotiables, that's important. Two more in our seven tips for making fitness work for you. Number six is track your goals. You don't have to do this always. You don't have to be a militant food tracker and track every single workout in PR all the time. But it's helpful when you do it sometimes, and it can be helpful to do it all the time for you. Maybe that's your jam. I know some people who have like their fitness journal and they just track every workout and they're just like always tracking progress totally.


Lunden Souza: [00:24:02] But having quantifiable data is cool, especially when it comes to fitness, because sometimes you won't see or feel some of the changes, but you're like, Oh, last week I did 12 repetitions, and this week I did 15. You know, last time I squat, I did £100, this time I did 110, right? So being able to track your goals quantifiably is not the end all, be all obsession point. And it's helpful to be like, okay, this is proof that I'm putting in the work because sometimes we're just like, is it even working? You know, like help. And it's cool. I've been doing this for a long time. It's nice to see when I run a5ka few minutes faster. It's nice to see when I can lunge a little bit heavier and use the twenties instead of the fifteens in my leg workout. And it's like sometimes I don't even remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, let alone what I squat or lunged or whatever two weeks ago. So it's nice to be able to track that progress and then look back later. So in the process of making fitness work for you and making it stick and feel good, part of consistency and motivation is like being able to get motivated off yourself, like hype yourself up, right? And like, okay, cool, I made progress here. I'm doing a little bit more here and even to like tracking your goals and progress could be like I'm celebrating a rest day, right? Sometimes I do that too, where it's like I have to my friend Ali, she'll say, Back up your dump truck, back up your dump truck.


Lunden Souza: [00:25:30] So sometimes I have to like back up my dump truck and kind of like check myself and make sure that part of tracking my goals is tracking my rest and relaxing. I had to do that yesterday because Sunday I worked out for a really, really long time filming fitness videos. And yesterday it was like, Oh my gosh, no progress can be made today except for progress in Epsom salt baths. And that was it and that's where it was. So that was part of like, okay, if I want to make progress in my workouts moving forward, I'm also going to have to rest today and take a little bit of a break. Last one and then we're out of here. If you caught the first part of the video, hopefully you saw number one through four. But yeah, my phone died. So here we are. And for those of you listening on the podcast, there was no issue because your your audio was edited based on the recording of the video dying. So it's no problem. Number seven, last one. Last but not least in making fitness work for you is have fun. Have fun, like do what's fun for you. Right. Like, I love lifting weights and I like resistance training and I also like yoga and I also like biking and I like, you know, walking and like laying in bed and doing nothing.


Lunden Souza: [00:26:44] Right. There's a lot of things outside of just like fitness stuff that I like and having fun is super important. We want to be able to enjoy what we're doing and find some satisfaction and fun in it. And so just because you see on Instagram that some people are doing certain exercises or certain modalities of fitness and they look a certain way. But for you, that's not realistic to your lifestyle. It's not even fun, right? We got to be moving. But how we do it is kind of our business and up to us to get done. And so yeah, I'm I'm a big advocate of strength training and resistance training just because of the benefits it has for the longevity of our body and our bones and things like that. But like, I think Zumba is super fun. I love it. I love bodyweight training, I love dancing, I love water aerobics. I like, you know, whatever's going to get me like moving. I just have found fun in movement. And so sometimes we can just kind of find that it's like, okay, as long as I'm moving, I'm going to have fun with it. And sometimes you might be like, No, that is not fun for me. I don't like it. That's fun for me. I like that and that's my jam.


Lunden Souza: [00:27:50] And I'm going to push my limits here so you can do that, too. So those are our seven tips today for making fitness work for you. I'll go through them super quickly, especially because I know the first part of the video got cut off. Number one for you is the keyword, not for anybody else. Making fitness work for you is you. Number two, what works now or what worked then won't always work forever. Number three, embracing the cycle that you're in the season of your life. Number four, checking your definition of fitness. Number five, setting up those non-negotiables, whether they are overarching, big, non-negotiable themes in your life or something seasonal that keeps you on track. Number six, track your goals. Having quantifiable data is super, super helpful and motivating and helps you stay consistent and also just know it helps you know where you are. And then number seven, have fun. Have fun with it. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of the podcast. We'll see you next time. And yeah, it's a process making fitness work for you. It doesn't happen overnight, but hopefully you were taking notes through this or you had some aha moments that really spoke to you because even if you just implement one little baby thing from this podcast, one little nugget. Just take 1% of what you heard today. It can and will make a difference in your life. So keep showing up and keep having fun.


Lunden Souza: [00:29:16] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Self Love and Sweat THE PODCAST. Hey, do me a favor. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review. This really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help, we can really spread the message of self love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm Lunden Souza, reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose fueled by self, love and sweat. This podcast is a Hitspot Austria production.

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