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In today’s episode of the Fitness Simplified podcast, Fitness & Nutrition Specialist Brooke Davis shares three key lessons she wishes she knew earlier about fitness. 

Explore the vital role of strength training for overall health, strike a balance between enjoying favorite foods and a healthy diet, and realize that effective workouts don’t require excessive time. This episode aims to offer practical insights, transforming your approach to fitness for a healthier, more balanced lifestyle.

Ready to revolutionize your fitness routine? Tune in now!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Fitness Simplified Podcast. I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Fitness and Nutrition Specialist with B. Davis Training, and I’m here to simplify your fitness. Today’s episode is about you learning from my mistakes.

I’m going to talk about three things that I wish I knew about fitness sooner. So I’m going to dive right in with number one, and that is that strength training is just as important, if not more, than cardio for overall health and fitness, but especially aesthetics. I hear all the time, “I want to be toned.”

I know a lot of ladies are looking for a big booty, a small waist. Okay, in order to achieve that, you need muscle. When you see somebody that you would describe as toned, yes, they are lean, but they have also spent time building muscle, and you don’t get that from sweating or running or getting your heart rate up.

You don’t get that from cardio. You will never get that simply from cardio. If you have listened to my journey, you know that I started out my fitness journey like I think most women do, and that’s with cardio.

I played soccer, basketball, I ran track in high school, I used my mom’s tight bow and Pilates DVDs at home, and I would go for runs. It really wasn’t until I got into college and started weightlifting there that I realized, one, how much I loved it, and two, the impact that it can have on your capabilities as well as your physique. So when I was younger, I trained mostly to look a certain way, right? I wanted to be lean, but I always wanted to be fast.

I wanted to be able to play my sports well. Also, I just really never realized that there was a better way, so I primarily ran. After college, when I got my training certification, the head trainer at the gym that I worked at did CrossFit, and given my competitive background, I took right to it.

That was really the first time in my life I had lifted hard and consistently enough to see results from it, which was amazing. I started to get belts and see some abs, but really I would argue that especially today’s CrossFit and the program design that they have in the box gyms is really still a lot of cardio. On top of that, I was also doing triathlon training, so it really wasn’t until I started training for my bodybuilding competition that I made the most of the strength work that I was doing, strength and hypertrophy work, as a priority.

I spent the better part of, I would say, six years or so making cardio my primary form of exercise. When you look back at my transformation pictures from my transition to preparing for my bodybuilding competition, the way that my body changed speaks for itself, along with the fact that I actually learned about nutrition and fueling my body, but that’s for the next point. So now as a busy mom, I really do very little cardio and I think it shocks a lot of people what you can actually get away with doing and still see such amazing results because I maintain my health, my abilities, and my strength now with just really like sometimes two to four one-hour long strength training sessions per week.

My priority now is somewhat aesthetic. Obviously, I want to look good, but I also have longevity goals. Along with that, increased muscle mass is directly correlated with longer lifespan and increased quality of life.

Not only does it build muscle, but it also actually helps to strengthen your bones, reduces your risk of injury as you age, and because it is a metabolically active tissue, it is actually more effective for fat loss along with a host of other health markers like cholesterol, insulin sensitivity, and so many more. And I hear all the time, people just want to look like they work out. Well, in order to do that, you have to build muscle.

And so that only comes from strength training. So my advice to you, if you are starting on this fitness journey, is to prioritize your strength work. That should be the bulk of what you are doing.

If you have specific cardiovascular goals, like you’re training for a marathon or something like that, then obviously that is a little bit different. You still need to be doing strength training, but your strength might take a slight backseat. That being said, if you are doing this for overall health, I would suggest always prioritizing strength.

So this brings me to number two, and that is that eating healthy and eating to reach your goals doesn’t necessarily mean cutting out all of your favorite foods. Again, when it comes to my health and fitness journey, I grew up eating McDonald’s and KFC and Hamburger Helper, things like that. And so when I started to eat healthy, when I started to even think about those kinds of things, it was in high school.

And I was eating Lean Pockets instead of the regular Hot Pockets and Honey Nut Cheerios, because honey was good for you. And I ultimately was not eating enough. But then coming out of high school, I thought that in order to lose weight and get the body I wanted, I had to eat salad all the time.

I couldn’t eat foods that I enjoyed like hamburgers and things like that. So then going into CrossFit, I started doing Paleo. And with Paleo, you can’t have dairy, you can’t have grains, you can’t have legumes.

And probably I would say some of my foods are dairy-based. I love dairy. And there still is maybe an argument that some of it is not the greatest for you in different aspects.

I’m not going to get into that right now. However, when it comes to aesthetic goals, there is no food that you cannot eat. And it really wasn’t until my bodybuilding career that I started By IIFYM or If It Fits Your Macros.

And this is where I learned that you really can eat pretty much whatever you want. You just can’t eat as much of whatever you want. So the component of finding that balance of making sure that you are eating to nourish your body and you are fueling the activity that you’re doing, along with eating your favorite foods is going to be the most sustainable thing you can do.

There are so many diets out there that are cutting things out, that are restricting you, that are, in addition to all of that restriction, not actually feeding you enough to sustain your life. And then people are always wondering why they’re failing at these diets. And it’s because there’s nothing about them that is sustainable.

Not only are you generally not eating enough, and so you’re tired and miserable, but also they’re cutting out foods that are a part of our culture and our society. And they are a part of who we are as people. And there’s, again, a component of this is arguable.

But when it comes to just living a healthy life, if you have no severe medical issues or anything like that, and feeling your workouts, you can literally… I mean, you can eat any types of foods and balance them with foods that are also nourishing, and you can still reach your goals. So this is where understanding macronutrients and calorie balance and energy balance becomes important. And so if you haven’t listened to it already, I did a podcast on macros and dove into that.

But I just want you to know that if you are looking at keto or Atkins or low carb to try and reach a health goal or an aesthetic goal, that not only are you likely not going to keep the weight off, but you are going to be missing out on things. And it’s not going to be something that you’re going to stick with. So happy to chat more.

So that is number two. Number three is that working out and training properly doesn’t have to take a lot of time. This is something that I know so many people struggle with.

Again, I’m a busy mom. I have two littles. And I totally understand.

Sometimes… I mean, there’s never enough hours in the day. But I always say that something is always better than nothing. Even literally just a few minutes of exercise every day can make a huge difference in your overall fitness.

There are studies on Tabata work, which consists of 8 rounds of 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds to rest. So it’s a total of 4 minutes! 4 minutes of your day of high intensity work actually shows tremendous benefits.

Not just aesthetically. We’re not just here to burn calories. But in terms of your heart health and cardiovascular health, you can get tremendous benefits from that.

So that being said, spending 10 minutes just moving or if you haven’t already listened to my “less stressful fat loss” going over non-exercise activity thermogenesis. But finding things throughout your day that get you up and moving. If you’re playing with your kids, or you are taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or you are parking further away at the parking lot, all of those things count.

And I’m sure you’ve heard of step counts. So working toward that 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day. All of those things have a huge impact on not just again, aesthetics, but your overall health.

And so that is something that I’ve heard a lot is like, “I don’t have time to work out.” And we specialize in individualizing programs for people. And so what we do is we take… What time do you have? Do you have 10 minutes in the morning after you get out of bed to just move your body in a way that feels good? Can we work on some joint health? Can we work on whatever feels tight or is restricted because you’re doing the same things like carrying a baby all day? And then on the days that you maybe have 30 minutes, can we squeeze in a couple of circuits? And okay, you can’t make it to the gym, but there’s a ton you can do at home.

You have a gallon of water is eight pounds. There are soup cans that are two pounds. And when you’re starting out, really that’s all you need.

And even just body weight movement, that is strength training. There are ways to modify that and make that a hyper effective workout in a very short amount of time. That doesn’t just have to be cardio based.

That doesn’t just have to be going for a run, things like that. There’s so much benefit to strength work that can be condensed down into short sessions. So that is my number three, because I used to spend hours at the gym, especially training for bodybuilding.

I thought that, and I loved it to be honest. I don’t hate it. I wish I could spend more time at the gym only because not because I want to change how I look or whatever, but I just enjoy it.

And so when I transitioned into being a mom and not having the time that I used to to work out, I had to also get creative. And there are times when I do literally just have 10 minutes in the morning to roll out my yoga mat and do some breathing, some core exercises and get my joints moving before I am off for the rest of the day. So I totally understand when people say they don’t have the time, but there is always something you can do.

And I’ve made posts on this before too, but I will very often walk out of my house with a pile of dishes in the sink to go work out. I will absolutely do that because my health and my body is not going to wait for those dishes. But those dishes, they’re going to be there. I will get to them.

And so I prioritize things. I prioritize my body and my fitness over things that I know a lot of women choose not to for various reasons, but I can promise you that the laundry, the dishes, the floors, those are always going to be there.

You will be able to go find time for them later. They’re not going anywhere. Your health, however, every day that you are putting off your health, it’s gone.

You are not getting it back and your health is not going to get better. So that is my encouragement to you. And I hope this message is helpful to you to start prioritizing yourself and start putting some other things on the back burner that are going to be there tomorrow.

So those are my three main things that I wish I had known sooner in fitness. And I hope that my lessons and some of my mistakes are better served for you to learn from and take away so that you don’t have to make those mistakes for as long as I did. And you can start applying some of the lessons that I’ve learned in your life today.

I will see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fitness simplified podcast. We’re stoked to have you join us on your journey to better health and fitness.

If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @Brooke_Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website, Elysianwomenswellness.com. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half second to leave us a five-star review. Not only will you be helping others find our show, but you’ll also be entered into our monthly hundred dollar giveaway for new reviews. New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more.

Thanks for listening. See you soon.

Coach Brooke Davis Links:

Website: elysianwomenswellness.com

LinkedIn: Brooke Davis

Facebook: Brooke Davis, CPT 

Instagram: Brooke Davis  (@brooke_elysian)

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