4 Ways to Shift Your Fitness Mindset

Still see exercise from a place of restriction and punishment? Let’s change all that!

4 Ways to Shift Your Fitness Mindset

In my community, it’s common for folks to still view exercise and fitness from a place of restriction and punishment. And no wonder.

Look around at advertising and the messages out there that movement is solely for burning calories or making up for what we ate, like physical penance.

So many of us grew up with this mentality that it can be hard to envision any other way.

In this episode, I’m pulling apart four unhelpful ways of looking at exercise and digging into how each is ultimately harmful and takes you away from what’s right for you.

Is it possible to see fitness and movement in general from a place where you nourish yourself? I say yes.

It doesn’t mean you can’t ever do hard things or that exercise isn’t uncomfortable at times…those are powerful experiences. My challenge to you is to examine where your fitness beliefs come from.

On Today’s Episode

Why listening to your body may seem foreign…but is necessary
The one thing women need to stop ignoring when they’re in the gym
Why “more is more” fitness culture needs to die
Why one size does not fit all when it comes to exercise

Thanks for Listening!

I’d really love it if you would take 10 seconds and subscribe to the podcast!
Did you like this episode? Let me know what resonated for you in the comments below.

Transcript: 4 Ways to Shift Your Fitness Mindset

Steph Gaudreau

Hey there, welcome to harder to kill radio. It’s the fierce love Friday edition of this show. I’m Steph Gaudreau, your host, it’s episode 174. And I’ve now recorded this intro about 11 times, I cannot seem to get through it. So if you’re ever wondering to people who have podcasts struggle to podcasts, the answer is undoubtedly Yes.

I’m really pleased you’re hanging out with me today, as you know, or maybe you don’t, because you’re a new listener on Tuesdays, I bring on an expert guest and do an interview. And then on Fridays, I turn the mic on myself. And it’s payback time for all the questions I asked my guests. But seriously, it is a fun time for me to hop on the mic, share my own thoughts, what’s going through my brain, and then also address a lot of the topics that are coming up a lot in my community, whether that’s on Instagram, or it’s in my Facebook group, the harder to kill club, because that’s where the conversation is really taking place.

So oftentimes, I will cast a lens out into the community and and take a look and see what are the things that people are are constantly asking, what are the topics? What are the stumbling blocks, the hurdles that keep tripping people up. And I think the beautiful part about that is, is that you’re not alone. No matter what you feel like you’re struggling with at the moment, someone else is also there with you in their own life. And so if I answered or address these topics, for one of you, no doubt, it’s going to apply to so many people. So today’s show is going to be about four ways to change your fitness mindset.

I couldn’t really come up with a clever name for this show, I get naming things I really do. And it’s that’s not just like a, oh, I need to try more or like, Oh, I’m limiting my own self. Like I just am fully admitting and owning that I’m really not great with naming things. So here we are. But nevertheless, I think this topic is super important. And it will hopefully give you some perspective. I’m talking about this one in particular, because fitness is one of those things that comes up all the time people have questions about, I have shifted my own mindset, my own way of looking at exercise.

And I think this is just so so so valuable, no matter where you’re at in your fitness journey. Remember, Sunday, February 3, we’re starting a big group, core four program. So that’s my six week program, we’re going to be running a big group through that program, starting Sunday, I would really love to be your coach. I am in that group. That’s a separate Facebook group. It’s a login portal on the website, there’s so many amazing resources in that like daily challenges, ways to take action. There’s optional meal plans, fitness stuff, mindset activities, I mean, you name it, it’s everything there. But really what is the purpose, it’s to help you learn sustainable habits so that you can improve your health from the inside out, embrace your body, start taking up space and own the power that you already have. I know that sounds like a lot of things.

See Transformation With Application

But it’s amazing to see the transformation that people go through when they stop just collecting information and like reading things and learning things. And that’s great, but where do you apply it? And so that’s really what the core four program is all about. So if you want to check it out, head to stephgaudreau.com/corefourprogram, head to the show notes for this episode, click on the link, there’s links where to all over the website. I’d love to have you check it out and join us on Sunday, February 3. Okay. So in that program, I have four pillars. I’ve talked about these pillars each on their own podcast last year. They are eat nourishing foods, strengthen your body, recharge your energy and get your mindset right. And today I want to think about that second pillar, which is strengthen your body. And so here’s the thing, when I asked people when they want to join the harder to kill Club, which is the closed group on Facebook.

That’s my big community. When I ask people why do you want to join what I oftentimes hear is language around exercise. That’s very common, but very problematic. And the best parallel I can draw for you is like it’s the diet culture of fitness. So there are a lot of people who are starting to talk more about diet culture, more in in their marketing and this is even in their communities. If they’re health and wellness people like I’m a nutritional therapy consultant. I’ve been in that sort of like holistic, Paleo real food community for a long time. And there are more people now starting to think about, talk about race discussion points regarding diet, culture, and how it’s, it’s like embedded in, in so many things, and the wellness community is not immune to it.

And we know that having that viewpoint on food oftentimes reduces food to sort of, like, calories in calories out equation, or the the reason behind wanting to address what we’re eating is because we want to fit a very specific certain look, that’s part of the dominant narrative that we want to be a specific weight because we feel like it will mean we’re valuable. I mean, there’s so much stuff going on with diet culture. And so to, to switch, that way of looking at it would be to look at, at least from my perspective, a nourishing point of view, how can I eat nourishing foods, but realize that nourishing our body happens on so many levels, it’s not just what we eat. It’s also how we eat it, why we eat, it is part of our culture, part of our, our family history, its food is so complex.

And if we’re just going to reduce it to Macros and calories, we’re missing a big point memorizing a big part of the picture. So when it comes to exercise, I also hear a lot of that similar, almost like a diet, culture, language, regarding exercise, and from a personal perspective, and a nice say, see this stuff, and I sound like I get a little fired up. And when you might think, Oh, my God, she’s talking about me, she’s judging me.

I have absolutely no judgment, because I used to be there. I know what it’s like to be in the position where you think that because you ate bad food, and I’m using air quotes here, you ate a bad food, that now you need to work it off that because you want to eat a quote, bad food that you have to earn it through burning calories, or doing a certain number of workouts, or whatever it is, like those fucking memes that I see around the holidays that are like, one mini Snickers bar is equivalent to, you know, 70 burpees. And I’m like, What is this shit? You know, why do we have to reduce exercise down into like a, a cost, like, it’s like, almost like we’re bargaining with the devil here. And it just is so problematic in so many ways.

Movement Feels Good And Brings Joy

And it leads people to lose the joy that’s inherent in movement. And that that’s part of our physical expression, it’s part of our physical culture. Moving feels good. Inherently, and yet, we’ve reduced it to a transaction of I ate this thing. Now I need to, you know, or I need to get to this weight. Now I need to like punish myself with this exercise. And PS, I’ve talked about this on the show before that, when we talk about exercise, like people are like, even the word exercise just just brings so much. There’s so much loaded in that particular word. So fitness movement, whatever you want to call it. But I think that there are some ways of looking at exercise or fitness that make it very problematic. And so I wanted to share these with you on the show today to hopefully challenge you to, to expand your own viewpoint. You never have to take my point of view, by the way on this show.

But is there an opportunity for you to expand your own knowledge to expand your own perspective to consider a different perspective. And as I am getting older, the older I get, the more I know, I don’t know, the more I realized that my perspective is very limited, and that there are so many more perspectives to consider. There’s so much more to the story than I even realized. And so I’m challenging you to do the same thing through the topics that I talk about on this particular show. So the first thing that I want to challenge you to think about is no one, not listening to your body.

Okay, and learning how to listen to your body is a process. You don’t just wake up one day after not listening to your body for 30 40 50 years and go, Yep, okay. I’m ready. I’m listening. What is it? What am I listening for? It’s a process. It’s a process as inherently got successes and failures backtracks and progress, plateaus, regression progression, it’s everything. So you’re not just going to learn to listen to your body in one day. But here’s the thing when you when your brain is saying is that you have your body and your brain when it comes to exercise that are going to be protesting at different points. And I see too often people coming into the community or in the community and they’re like, I’m so exhausted. I’m so tired. I haven’t slept, but I need to do this workout. And I’m like, can you listen to yourself for one fucking minute? Again, not judging. I’ve been there.

But you’re you’re ignoring every you’re in pain. You’ve got DOMS, your whatever, you’re injured, and you’re like, but I need to get my workout. And I’m like, can you? Can you can you hear what you’re saying right now, because your body is sending a very clear message. Now your brain sometimes will protest like a petulant, bratty little kid. And sometimes, all it takes is a few minutes of movement to go, Okay, this is not so bad. I’m actually okay. I’m all right. But when your body everything in your body is screaming at you that you need to back off, you need to stop you need to rest or do something different. That’s in your ignoring that that’s a huge problem.

So again, is that a nourishing perspective, that you’re going to force your body through something that it clearly doesn’t want to do? So what are some of the signs that I’ve, I would look for, it is different for everybody and every body being abnormally sore from a workout. I mean Dom’s if you’re doing the toilet trust fall, because you’ve fried your quads, and you can’t even lower yourself to a toilet seat. I mean, that’s a clear signal that you need some recovery time, if you’re recovering from a workout that you’re used to doing is taking way longer than then it should, you know, you did, I don’t know a set of whatever. And like two weeks later, you’re still sore.

Listen To Your Body

That’s a huge signal that something is going on. Listen to that signal. Your body feeling really uncoordinated is another one. So normally, if you’re used to doing snatches, which is an Olympic lifts, where the bar goes from the floor to overhead in one movement, it’s a very explosive, very technical movement. If you’re just, you’re doing a warm up weight, and it’s just like you’re all over the place or running across the platform, you’re dropping the bar, whatever it like, and it doesn’t get better, I don’t know, like, you’re probably not primed for that particular movement on that day, switch to a less technical movement, or drop the weight down in percentage or do something different altogether, or take the day off, your heart rate is higher than normal at rest.

This is one a good one for people that just need data. They’re like, but if I see the numbers, I’ll be convinced. start tracking heart rate variability. If the bar feels heavier, is if you’re lifting weights to the bar, or the weights feel heavier than they should. And it doesn’t get better after you warmed up, remove for five or 10 minutes, listen to your body. So these are all different ways, I think we need to start tuning in a little bit more and being more intuitive when it comes to movement, and exercise. That’s one. Number two, ignoring the effect of your menstrual cycle on your hormones, on movement on exercise. And again, you don’t know what you don’t know. This might be the first time you’ve ever heard about it. And you’re like, wait, what that has an effect.

But a lot of coaches and trainers don’t talk about this. A lot of women don’t even know about this. But where you’re at in your cycle can have massive impact on how you feel during a workout during the different phases of your cycle. Whether you’re in the follicular phase, you’re ovulating, you are in the luteal phase, you are actually bleeding and menstruating, where you’re at can have a huge impact on how you feel and it’s not in your head, please, we need to stop telling women that this shifts all in their head. So if you need more details on this, I have a couple of podcast episodes about this. I’ve interviewed some amazing people on a Tuesday show about this. And I have a blog post about about movement about training and your menstrual cycle.

So I just want to say that if we keep ignoring that as women and we’re like But something’s wrong with me, why can’t I do this lift the light can always do and your two days before your period that could be unlikely is playing into how you’re feeling. So please, if we’re tracking all these other things about our workout, and we’re paying attention to our nutrition and we’re getting our sleep and we’re you know doing all of our all these things and reducing stress. We need to also take into consideration our cycle and how the different parts of our cycle affect how we feel in terms of physical movement. and that doesn’t always mean that we’re going to take a day off.

But it could mean that instead of opting for, you know, pulling for a PR, two days before your period starts, you’re like, Oh, well, this might be a good time to work on technique. Or maybe now’s a good time to do a hit workout. Or maybe today is a good time to do some, you know, walking or whatever it is, but learning again, to honor where we’re at. Super, super important. Okay. Probably gonna get a little bit chilly pepper on this one.

Fitness Mindset

The third thing that I think we need to change in terms of fitness mindset is thinking more is more. Again, I’m not making this up. I see when people asked to join the harder to kill club on Facebook. And I asked him like, why do you want to join like why? You’re Why do you think this is a good fit? And I hear all the time. And I’m so again, I have such deep compassion for for these folks. But they’re like, I’m working out five or six times a week and reducing, I’ve reduced my calories way down, and I’m not seeing any progress. I think I need to work out more. And I’m like, No. But you can understand why we have that reaction that if it’s not working, it’s because we’re not doing enough. And it’s because, okay, we have the shitty in fits bow inspo meme culture that’s like, rest days are for wimps, you know, I don’t know, sweat is fat crying. I mean, all of these fucked up messages that we can never take time off. And that if we’re not working harder, harder, harder, that we are worthless piece of crap. It just is so damaging in so many ways. And here’s the thing that all feeds back into the sort of, eat less, move more culture, eat less, move more.

And I’ll tell you what, there may be people, there may be people for whom the Eat less move more is valid, it’s a valid way to get started. But I see a lot. And again, I’m in. There’s 11 and a half 1000 people in my group, my Facebook group. There’s, like over 200,000 people in my Instagram community, although I think a lot of those accounts are bots from stupid easy paleo days. Nevertheless, there’s still a lot of real people in there. And a lot of those real people in there are already slashing their calories, cutting back their food, afraid to eat food, literally, like afraid they’re eating too much cutting back and then ramping up their workouts and also very stressed and and not sleeping, and you get the picture. And for them the advice to eat less and move more is fucking irresponsible.

If somebody and I’m just gonna put like this out there, if you’re a practitioner, you’re a coach, and you’re just blanket statement telling everybody to eat less, move more, you are hurting people. Because they’re listening to you. And they’re looking to you for advice. And they’re looking to you as a leader. And so to do the blanket statement thing is that’s even a verb. You know, we all need to be eating less and moving more, I can tell you that there are already people who are really pushing it in those directions.

And it’s not working because they are underfed, they’re undernourished. They’re overstressed. They’re not recovering. So, again, we need to think about nourishing ourselves. And we need to think about moving in ways that are more efficient and effective. And not always just more, right. quality, not quantity is super, super important. And I mean, can we all like just get up and move around more during our date shirt, but I’m talking about things like really intense exercise, which leads me into point number four, the fitness mindset of one size fits all really has to go. So, again, this happens a lot where things get trendy, new exercise, things take off. I mean, CrossFit is a perfect example.

Not All Fitness Trends Are Appropriate For Every Person

Again, not I’ve talked about CrossFit a lot on this show, not bagging it just saying it’s one of those things where like it came out of seemingly nowhere, which isn’t actually true, but once it kind of, you know, followed the curve, and it was sort of like, okay, now we have this majority of people, we have a lot more people it becomes more popular. I mean, on the fitness on the nutrition side of things, you know, Paleo has gone through this keto is going through it right now. These things come up into the cultural zeitgeist and then people are like, Oh my god, I gotta do this thing. And hopping around for on trend to trend and I’m not, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try things out and try new things. That’s amazing. That’s great.

But I want you to think about if it’s right for you, your health, your life, the things that are important to you, and or is it just hopping on the next thing. And so here’s the thing, not all movement, or fitness or exercise is appropriate for every person, just like it’s not appropriate for every person to do keto, just like it’s not appropriate for every person to intermittent fast, just like it’s not appropriate for every person to forego animal products, just like it’s not appropriate for every person to go low fat like I don’t you can, you can use there’s so many examples of this. But for fitness, you know, I want you to think about do you have an autoimmune condition that’s actively flaring up?

Probably not the best time to go smash yourself with high intensity interval training. Especially if you do your hit workout. And you’re like, Fuck, it’s two weeks later, and I’m still not recovered from that workout. Are you hyper mobile and your joints, doing hot yoga, all the time, may not be a very good idea for you, or even doing extra stretching, because you’re already hyper mobile. If you’re pregnant. Every woman’s pregnancy is different. You need to treat yourself as an individual. What you know, even if you were fit and active before your pregnancy may dictate that that’s not that’s not going to happen for you. Right? So I want you to really think about yourself and what’s what fits into your life.

What brings you joy. I know we have this thing where we think everything about exercise has to suck. Like if we’re not hating it every single moment. And it’s a chore, it’s not effective. It doesn’t count. Somebody was like I’m shoveling snow. I didn’t get my workout today. And I’m like, what, but you just shoveled snow. Like a whole driveway, I lived I grew up in Massachusetts, I lived there for 25 years, I’ve done my fair share of shoveling, that shit is a workout. Okay, we need to stop thinking that like, unless we’re in a gym, that it’s not a workout. But you also, overall, I really believe we need to enjoy what we’re doing. And yes, exercise fitness can be a way for us to challenge ourselves and stretch ourselves and stretch our comfort zone. And sometimes it is going to be painful, and hurt and be uncomfortable. Although I really don’t think we should be actually feeling actual pain.

But I mean discomfort. It’s uncomfortable mentally it’s uncomfortable physically, but we get through it. And that’s how we get stronger. We learn where our you know, our limits are we learn that our limits are so far beyond what we thought they were. But when you hate every minute of what you’re doing, it’s time to find a new routine. KonMari that shit? Do What gives you joy, and think the other day further experience and be like I’m done with you. And what else is there for you to find.

Find Movement That Brings You Joy

Find something that you ultimately enjoy, because life is too short. You can find ways to move that are beneficial for your mind and your body that challenge you to stretch and get outside those comfort zones that honor what’s individual and unique about you and your health and your body. And that still gives you an awesome benefit. And if you haven’t, you know sometimes you had to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the handsome prince. And that’s totally fine. And yes, it’s okay to try new things.

But beware of like just hopping around because it’s the next best thing. And then you end up finding out it’s not a good fit for you and you keep doing it because it’s just what everybody else is doing. All right, here we go. Four Ways to Change Your Fitness mindset for the better. If that sounds appealing to you, and you’re ready to learn how to nourish your body through movement and move intentionally and listen to your body.

That is part of my second pillar, which is strengthen your body would love to have you learn more about the four pillars of health. You can find them on my website. You can also find them in my core four program, which is starting Sunday, February 3. That’s our next one that we’re doing as a big group. We’d love to have you there. Check out more at Steph gaudreau.com/core For program. That’s the number four or Find it. Find the link in the show notes for this episode. Thank you so much for spending part of your Friday with me and I hope you have an amazing weekend. This is Steph Gaudreau of Steph gaudreau.com and I’ll catch you next week.