Ep 17 - Meet The Couture Fitness Coaches! Interview with Coach Lauren - Learn How She Transformed Her Body By Doing Less Cardio!

Meet Couture Fitness Coach Lauren!  By day she is a cryptocurrency regulator and expert, but by early morning, late night, and weekends she is a mom, wife, fitness fanatic, and Couture Fitness Coach!  Lauren's philosophy about creating a fit lifestyle is that--even if you have a busy life (like her) --a little bit of intention and planning go a long way.  Her favorite thing about coaching Couture Fitness clients is helping women achieve their wildest fitness and weight loss goals!
 
 In her 20's, Lauren thought the key to keeping a fit physique was running and doing hours of cardio.    Then,  in her late 20s,  she discovered resistance training and later competed in her first fitness competition and learned how optimized nutrition and resistance training could drastically change and improve body composition (far more than running ever did).  Despite that knowledge, Lauren got herself into an undereating/overexercising rut after having her two children.  Listen to how embracing a Calories Up lifestyle and reducing the amount of cardiovascular exercise she was doing has helped her get more fit and look better than ever!
 
Listen up!  This episode is packed full of helpful information about the role exercise - cardiovascular exercise in particular - plays in weight loss and how you can fine tune your  exercise routine for optimal results!

Connect with us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching and check out our website https://www.couturefitnesscoaching.com/

Sign up for our FREE monthly challenge Muscles In May:   
https://view.flodesk.com/pages/623a7864e4da3a4464c30d86

Want to work with us?  Schedule a free, 15-minute weight loss consultation call:   https://calendly.com/couture_fitness/weight-loss-strategy-call

Sign up for our Weekly Bee Healthy News (recipes, tips , tricks, etc.):  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/621539c6e0eda1a0d870bcf1

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed it. Follow us for more tips, tricks, and support in our private Facebook Group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30.

Take our FREE quiz: What's Sabotaging Your Metabolism?

Follow us on Instagram @couture_fitness_coaching

Check at our website and blog.

Grab our free mini course - The REAL Reason you can't lose weight

Want to start boosting your metabolism today? Buy our $79 DIY, self-paced "Master Your Metabolism" course.

Want customized plan for boosting your metabolism? Learn more about our 1:1 coaching

Reserve your spot with a Couture Coach: Buy a 1:1 coaching package

Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Welcome to the Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30 Podcast. I'm Joe. And I'm Allison and we're your co host and the founders of couture Fitness and Lifestyle coaching. We're on a quest to help women design lives they love and bodies they adore. We were fed up with the dieting industry and decided to create something different. We're starting a calories up revolution where women are nourished, their metabolisms are healed and their bodies and brains start working for them in the battle against weight loss. If you feel like your metabolism is wrecked and you want to lose weight once and for all, you are in the right place. Welcome everyone. Today, you're going to have Allison Joe is not with us today. But I'm actually going to be chatting with one of our coaches Lauren, and we're going to be talking today about cardio. And I will get right to the punchline that we do not think cardio is the most effective way to lose weight. There's a lot of data behind this, we've got a lot of just anecdotal evidence that we have seen about cardio, just not being the most effective way to lose weight. We're gonna get into this in a lot more detail here as we go on. But I want to start just by very briefly saying thank you to all of you who have signed up for our April program, we actually completely filled our April program, I know we've got some people who are still joining our waitlist. So if you are interested in working with us, you're on our waitlist we do run our programs on the quarter just mostly to keep things organized. And so if you want to work with us, we are going to be offering a way for you to get started before our next program opens which would be on July 1. So if you are on our waitlist, and you are you interested in working with us and want to get started sooner than July book a call with us you can do that on our website, you can book a short 15 minute consult call, we'll talk to you there until you know answer any questions you have. But we're giving everybody their macros early this time. So if you want to buy the July program, now you can get your you can get started with your food and well before that. So that way you can be well on your way to making progress before July even begins. And then very briefly, I will mention just what you get with our programs when you work with us. So we will build a customized fitness and nutrition plan just for you, you will get assigned a personal coach to check in with you once a week. And then in addition to that, we also do at least two zoom meetings each week Joe runs most of those, some of them are open q&a meetings, some of them is where she's teaching on a particular topic. There's a lot of mindset stuff. And so that's what you get with our programs. So I wanted to mention that before we get going into the topic at hand, which is cardio and why we do not think it's a great strategy for weight loss. So cardio will often go hand in hand with restricting food, not always. But very often, I think when a lot of people think that they want to lose weight, they immediately go to Well, I need to start doing a lot of cardio and I need to eat less. And the truth is you really don't have to do any cardio to lose weight. So I guess we can start by talking about how does somebody lose weight and sorry, I haven't gotten a chance to really introduce Lauren yet I'm gonna get to her in just a second quickly. If you want to lose weight, you need to be in a caloric deficit, that's it really just comes down to that there might be a few other factors present that make things more difficult for some individuals such as insulin resistance and hormonal issues. That is not the majority of people. However, and we're not going to go into detail on that today, I do plan to do a podcast on those issues in the future. But regardless of that, if you want to lose weight, you have to be in a caloric deficit, there is no way around that. And you can achieve this by eating less moving more or a combination of both. And so that's why cardio can produce some excellent short term results. And so Lauren, let's take this time to for you to just say hello, and maybe just do a very brief introduction of yourself. And then more about cardio. And I know you can tell your story because both Lauren and I have gone through phases where we've done tons of cardio, so we'll talk about that. But Laura, do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm Lauren. Like Alison said, I'm one of the couture coaches. I've been coaching. This is my third session and I was a client before I was a customer I was actually reverse client and then went into a cut, which I'm just ending right now and going into my maintenance. I have had a very long background of cardio and the do's and the don'ts. And so yeah, we'll get into all of that. But yeah, that's me, but I'll talk more about my experiences cardio and working out and how nutrition has played a part into all of that as well. Awesome. Okay, so getting back to this cardio thing. So it definitely can produce some really good short term results. And I think that's why you know, people might start doing it and say, Okay, I started let's just say running running seems to be a really common one. That's what I did. That was my preferred form of cardio back. You know, when I used to do a lot of cardio, Lauren, I think that was probably probably yours to at least Oh, yes, no, yes, I actually in college, I guess is when I really started like working out a lot. And gosh, in college like I did mostly cardio, like I didn't even lift weights. And after college, I started a job and as a demanding job, and I was working a lot. And again, like not lifting weights, and I thought a good way that I could lose weight is to do a marathon. And you would think that would you know, you're running a time and you are active, obviously, you know, I was running 10s of miles a week for training. And I can honestly say, looking back at pictures, you know, I was in my mid 20s. And I looked terrible, I look terrible. I mean, my nutrition, I was not intentional about my eating at that point in time. But my goodness, when you're talking about running, you know, like I said, 2030 4050 miles a week, you're thinking like, you're, you're burning a lot of calories. But what happened, like Alison just said is your body becomes used to that, and your body becomes more efficient. So I'll give Allison a chance to go into the science behind that and why that happens. Yeah, I have a similar story. I didn't ever do a marathon. But I did a lot of cardio myself, which I'll talk about more in a bit. But I think what happens is a lot of people, you know, that's what they think they think if I want to lose weight, I need to be doing something like running or something that gets my heart up high, my heart rate up really high, something that's going to make me sweat something that's going to make me feel like I worked really hard and burned a lot of calories. And so I do think people see often some short term results. And that's why they keep going. And also the running or whatever your preferred form of cardio is, if it's higher in intensity, it's going to produce cortisol and endorphins. And people can get really addicted to those, that thing that's called a runner's high is very real, you go for a run or you know, whatever, a hard bike ride or do an orange theory or some sort of hit training class and you feel really good. Afterwards, you've got all this energy, you're ready to tackle the rest of the day. And you can get really addicted to that feeling. So here's the negative side of all of this. So your body can adapt very, very quickly to cardio, it's just like we've talked about your body adapts to foods. So when you lower your calories, your body adapts to that pretty quickly. It also adapts to more activity. The reason it does that is because it wants to keep you alive, it's going to sense that wow, this, you know, my body is moving a lot and burning all these calories will if I keep burning all these calories at this crazy rate, I'm going to burn everything and, and starve to death. And so your body really just like with food, it wants to keep you alive. So it's going to adjust by burning far fewer calories as it gets used to you doing more cardiovascular activity. And it also thinks that you want to, you know, it's going to make you more efficient at those activities. So normally, when we hear the word efficient, we think of that being a good thing. But here, it just means your body is becoming efficient, and it needs less fuel to do the same activity. So as you become more efficient at running, it means you are going to be burning less calories. Right. So like when I was training for the marathon, I you know, trained over I think, oh goodness, probably a four to six month period. And eventually, obviously tip for your body to get itself through a marathon at 26.2 mile run over the course of many hours. Over the course of the month, I was training, of course, my body became more efficient, I did not change my eating habits. And so I was not getting any, like weight loss benefit, because my body just wasn't burning as many calories. Even though I was running more and more and more, it just became more efficient. Mm hmm. And this is not just Lauren and I's you know, personal experiences. It's not like I'm saying all of this because, you know, I had a bad experience doing all this cardio and Lauren did. And so therefore we've determined cardio is bad. There's a there are studies that show this. And so one very interesting study that I remember reading 20 or so years ago back when I was trying to figure out what was going on with my body and my hormones and all you know what was what was wrong with me back in my early 20s. I found this study by a man named Charles Poliquin. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing his name, right. But he coined this term and this is his term not mine. So don't get mad at me. But he coined this term that's was chubby aerobics instructor syndrome. And he did a study he studied those who did very high amounts of aerobic activity. And he just found that they couldn't lose body fat, despite them doing a tremendous amount of cardio hours a day. And I think originally he embarked on this study, because he was baffled by it the same way. Most people probably wouldn't be you see people working out all the time and you think, well, they should be in amazing shape. They shouldn't be ripped, they should have really low body fat and be burning so many calories that they look amazing. But what he found is that the body becoming more efficient combined with all of the extra cortisol that you produce, by doing all of this cardio that cortisol really inhibits your fat loss. Another factor in all of this is that more cardio is going to cause you to lose muscle which will degrade your metabolism and inhibit fat loss over time and this isn't something you You see, immediately you see this very, very gradually. So it's really difficult to pinpoint, you know, to the cause and effect, it's really hard to say, Oh, well, you know, I started running and then I, again this way, you're going to see this very slowly over time. And so you're not necessarily going to correlate the two with each other. I think a lot of people, they just assume, Oh, I'm just getting older and therefore, you know, I can't lose weight as easily. But it's usually not that it's usually another lifestyle factor. And so there are there actually are studies showing that doing a lot of aerobic activity can actually make it harder to lose fat. I think we probably all know people, and I've been one of these people who do all kinds of aerobic activity, but they're always chasing that last 10 to 20 pounds of weight loss. And so Lauren, maybe you can tell I know you've kind of started and hinted at, you know, your day a little bit. But tell us a little bit more about, you know, your journey and how you feel like you have actually achieved good results with changing your body and feeling your best. Yeah, so I've talked a little about the marathon and how looking back you know, I just it was not a look, you know, that I would want I looked chubby, I mean, I've never been like, you know, very, very overweight, I'm petite. I'm five two, but I just looked chubby during that time. So about I would say like a year or two after I did the marathon is actually when I started getting into weightlifting. It is actually in preparation for my wedding to lose weight for my wedding. And I picked up like a weightlifting. I mean, this was like, gosh, this was in 2009 2010. So this is a while ago, and I picked up a like a weightlifting book. And I started teaching myself how to lift weights but I'm still doing cardio at that time. And I was also restricting my calories a lot but the but adding the lifting in I started to see even then, like changes in my body that I just never was able to achieve from doing cardio alone. I mean, you just you build up muscle on your body and your body looks different. So that was kind of my first experience was with weightlifting. And then after I got married and lost the you know, lost the 10 pounds or whatnot for my wedding. I actually it was around the same time at Allison, we started working together and she did fitness competitions. And she's like, You should do a fitness competition. I was like, great. How do you do that? Sign me up. And so during that prep, which was, gosh, I think in 2011, I really started to learn how to lift weights properly, and really saw big changes in my body by very consistently lifting weights, you know, five times a week. But at that time, you know, in order to step on stage, you're still you're doing a ton of cardio right to get off the weight fast. So at the end of that prep, I was doing so much cardio, I mean, I think I was doing I bet I was doing eight hours a week of cardio, it was insane. I was doing, you know, one to two hours a day. Yes, it achieved a look for a moment in time. But when I backed off that cardio because you can't maintain that right, I looked terrible, like I gained weight so quickly, because you know, my body like was used to all this cardio, and then I took it away, there was no way to maintain the physique that I had achieved by doing the massive amounts of cardio and the weight lifting and the huge calorie deficit. And you want to interrupt me, I want to interrupt really quickly here and just say that, Lauren, and I did not have we use the same coaches, I will not name these coaches. But we did not have the best guidance when we did the show. We do not have to do an hour to two hours of cardio right and eat 1000 calories to get in shape for the stage. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But yeah, I mean, of course, you rebounded because you were doing crazy amounts of activity and eating so little. But I think we've learned so much now we would never let anybody coach us that way now, since we've learned a lot since then. Exactly, exactly. Again, this was like you know, 10 years ago, but really it kind of that over cardio and that lifting though that kind of became my my go to for workouts for a really long time really until last summer until I was a couture client. As I said earlier as a client before I was coach and really for the last to maintain, you know, the physique I wanted before kids after kids in between kids, I would do massive amounts of cardio. And I just was never you know, could do it for maybe six or eight weeks at a time. And I would mean you know, I would get to my goal but then I would gain you know, five pounds back and I always still looked kind of soft like I wasn't maintaining like that really or attain that. That kind of toned tight look that we all are kind of going for then last summer I you know, when Alison and Joe started couture and I kind of went through that journey, I cut up my cardio tremendously. I mean, like I went even at that time, I was doing like three hours of cardio a week and I lowered it all the way house and what was it first? I think we lowered it all the way to like 70 minutes a week. I mean it was like we cut it in like drastically. Yeah and I focused on lifting really heavy and I up and also I was I was eight more at this time. And amazingly what happened is I lost weight. I lost body fat, and like my body just tightened in a way that just I never had I'd seen before doing the massive amounts of cardio, I mean, it was mind boggling to me that I had been living this way for 10 years, you know, using cardio as this tool really to, like get weight off quickly. And then in this very short amount of time, when I cut my cardio down, I was able to like look better than I had, you know, working out literally five times as much. So you learn, you would say you look better now doing less cardio, eating more food and focusing more on lifting. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So right now I'm deep into a cut. So meaning like, I have two weeks left of a cut. So I've been in this, which at this point in a cut, like you were doing the most cardio and you're eating the least that's just the way it works. But even now, I'm only doing 60 to 75 minutes of cardio a week. I mean, and that is when I'm like in totally trying to like lose weight. That is not bad at all. I lift four days a week. And then I do like I said, like more like 60 minutes of cardio. But let's be honest, it's really not. It's really not more than 60 at this point. Because here's the other thing, when you finally cut your cardio down and you realize like, Oh my God, I didn't turn into a cow from like cutting down cardio when I looked better. It's really hard to want to do cardio again. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I used to Oh, my gosh, I used to live on. So the Stairmaster was my cardio of choice in addition to running. I lived on that thing. I mean, I would do 4560 minutes on, you know, the real Stairmaster and I can't, I can barely get through a 20 minute hit workout now. Because you just it's great. It's so amazing how you don't have to do all of that to like really look better. And I think we also like we brainwashed ourselves a little bit when we're doing it. This is what I did to myself. I like I convinced myself that I liked doing it. I was like, Oh, I like I like running. I like getting on a cardio machine because I can watch my TV show on my phone. But once you realize you don't have to do it. You're like no, I was just convincing myself that I enjoyed it. I didn't really enjoy it. I think that's yeah, I don't ever like love cardio. But the runner's high you were talking about I very much got I mean, I felt so like I achieved something right. So like I always work out I at this time, I worked out in the mornings, and you know, I get up

at 4: 17:21

35am Go to the gym, get on the Stairmaster for an hour. And like, by time I got to work I'm like, Oh, my God, I feel so great. Like I really achieved something today. I mean, it's it's real. It's it's real. It is it totally is. I mean, my story is pretty similar to Lauren. So when I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to lose a few pounds. And so I combined you know, watching my calories with mostly running I did lift though I never really didn't lift I started lifting in high school. I just took a weightlifting class and I loved it. So I always combined it with lifting thank goodness I did. But when I initially started, you know, running and watching my calories I lost weight extremely quickly. I got under 100 pounds very easily. I looked probably terrible. I know I look terrible. I look at pictures and I'm like, oh gosh, I look anorexic, which I wasn't but I just I lost weight so quickly because I hadn't been I'd never dieted before. And that's a phenomenon we see with somebody who's never dieted before they will lose weight so easily. But what happened is pretty quickly my body adapted to that to keep me alive to prevent me from starving to death. And you know, I kept on running all through college I ran when I graduated college, and I started working, I was still running Nothing, not a ton more probably on average, like three miles, five days a week, I would say if I had to average it all out, and I lifted a little bit too but I was probably 80% cardio 20% lifting, I would say I just kept gaining weight. And this and I've talked about this before, like I gain weight very slowly over the like a five or so year time period. All the while I was eating too little and working out too much. And that's you know, that really began my journey of figuring out what was going on with my hormones because I got my hormones really messed up. Doctors wouldn't they just kept saying, Oh, go you know, go on birth control, whatever. And this is getting way too sciency and I'll talk about this more in another podcast, but it was just my HPA axis was completely messed up from under fueling myself for so long. And just like Lauren said, when I was doing all this cardio, I did a few triathlons too, I ran but then I started training for some triathlons and I just didn't look the way I thought I should I was like I'm doing all this working out I'm eating right but I'm not quote ripped, like I wanted to be super lean. And I just didn't look that way and it was so frustrating and I know now that it's you know, the ratio of cardio to lifting that I was doing was completely wrong. I would say it was about around the time. You know, when I was figuring out all this stuff. I was also I got pregnant I had two babies, but after I had my first two babies, I really flipped my training around and became probably more 80% Lifting 20% cardio and also started really truly fueling myself with enough food meaning 2000 calories or so a day. And that is when I started to see the changes that I had been wanting, you know, to my body for years, it was the lifting and the eating enough, that changed my body. And now I do very little cardio, all I care about is getting in my lifting and getting in my steps. I don't really go and do much cardio, I do play doubles tennis. And that's really my main form of cardio these days. Yeah, I was just gonna Yeah, like so cardio is great. Like in the short term, like out, like we keep saying, I mean, it's really easy to lose weight in the short term, especially if you've never dieted, or you've never worked out in any real way, like, yeah, like higher calories, do a bunch of cardio, and of course, you're going to lose weight. But What's difficult is keeping it off in the long term. And the thing about Keymapping long term, it's actually I think, because of like just mainstream diet culture, it's actually kind of like counterintuitive to what you think it's actually like keeping your calories up and not restricting your food and not over exercising all the time. Like you have to do that in short bursts of time. But when you do that over the long term, or that's kind of your way of life, you make your metabolism just totally like go in the toilet, honestly. I mean, the goal is like to keep your metabolism functioning to the best of its ability, like as you age. And you're not going to do that by constantly restricting food. And by constantly doing like hours and hours of cardio. You do that by lifting weights. And you do that by eating a healthy diet that's made up all the right macronutrients. Absolutely. So Lauren, how much cardio do you think is ideal for somebody? And how do you handle I know you've had, you know, some clients and we all of our coaches have had some clients who come to us saying, Well, I'm running five days a week for 40 minutes. Do you think that how do you handle those? And how much do you think is an ideal amount of cardio for somebody to be doing? Yeah, so it kind of depends on like, what they're doing when they come to me, right. So like, if someone is not working out at all, I do not give them any prescribed cardio, I do not give them actual cardio, I give them steps. So I give them meat and I give them lifting like a lifting regime or a lifting regiment, but I will not give someone cardio if they're not already doing cardio, I like to use cardio very strategically and very minimally I want to see like what someone how someone's body will respond by just activity and by lifting and by getting you're getting your nutrition calibrated correctly. But then I other extreme, if I have someone coming to me that has been doing you know, like, hours of running every week. Normally this is what it is normally you get someone very seldomly do you get someone who comes to you who's like lifting like three or four times a week and doing cardio like five times a week, like they're normally just doing cardio, or they're not doing like anything. So when someone's doing like five days of cardio, I'll, what I tell them is great, like, I'm glad you're already working out, and you already have time carved out for working out. But replace that cardio, the majority of that cardio with strength training and lifting. So like I will swap out, you know, three or four of their days of cardio for strength training, and then like leave them maybe like 30 to 45 minutes of cardio a week, basically like three to four strength training sessions, and maybe like one cardio session. Yeah, I think that sounds about what you know, that's what I would do, I would handle somebody exactly the same way that you said, Yeah, we do usually see one or one extreme or the other. If somebody I mean, if somebody's got this all figured out, they're not going to come to us for help. You know, if you're already they've got the nutrition down in the lifting down. They're not they're not going to come to us. But yeah, we often help women who are either just not really doing much of anything, or they're doing too much cardio and believe it or not, that really, really can inhibit your fat loss. It really can. I mean, I've seen it. So I've had, you know, reversing clients, especially who are overdoing the cardio, and they're under eating. And of course, it helps only me, the majority, I mean, it helps tremendously when we raise their calories. But even if you raise their calories, and they're still engaging in a ton of cardio, it really is counterproductive and it really defeats the purpose of like upping those calories. I mean, I even think I mean, I'm just I'm just thinking back on, you know, the two shows that I did and I will say, you know if you're talking about like what's more damaging, like under eating or over exercising cardio if I had to pick one, I honestly might say it's overdoing the cardio versus like under eating neither is good. Like, don't get me wrong, like on you shouldn't be under eating either. But like when I'm thinking about the two shows, I did one I was you know, eating low calories and doing crazy amounts of cardio. And then the second show I was still not eating enough when I was training I still was on very low calories that was not healthy, but I was doing minimal cardio that show and my rebound. I mean I didn't really rebound from that second show because I wasn't doing the creatine even though my calories are low. I wasn't doing the crazy cardio and I do think that is the reason I didn't rebound the way I did from the first show. I just think it's a cardio can be so dangerous. Yeah, either way your body just adapts to them and adapts to the lower food and adapts to more cardio. And so if you get yourself to a spot, I kind of equate it to caffeine. So like, let's say, you start drinking caffeine, because you know, maybe you have a baby and you're like, Okay, I'm gonna drink coffee in the morning, it's gonna give me this energy. Well, at first it is going to give you energy, but really soon, your body's gonna get used to it. And you just have to drink that caffeine now to just simply feel normal. But if you want to actually have more energy, now you have to drink two cups a day? Well, what do you do after that when your body gets used to that, oh, you start drinking three cups a day. Same with cardio, let's say you lose weight by running 20 minutes a day, well, eventually, your body's going to get used to that. So if you want to use cardio as your tool to lose more weight, you're going to have to run 30 minutes a day, then you're going to have to run 40 minutes a day, there comes a point when you cannot, you simply cannot continue to add more and more cardio and your body, you're probably going to get injured if you do. So that's kind of the that I like to use. Yeah, that caffeine analogy is perfect. It really is perfect. I mean, even now I will say I still like I said I'm deep into a cut right now. So I'm what 1213 weeks into a cut. And I wear a heartrate monitor when I do my cardio. It's just like a personal preference. I like to make sure that I'm like putting in the right amount of basically the right amount of input and I'm not overdoing it or under doing it when I do cardio. It's just one of the things but I have to work I just noticed this morning I was doing my cardio, I have to work so much harder in order to get my heart rate up than I did even like three or four weeks ago. We're only talking like a 12 week, timespan that I've been like, I'm still not doing a ton of cardio, but I have to work much harder in order to basically like produce the same result it from like are the same reaction from my body. Yeah, your body. You're probably very conditioned now. And yup, your body has probably gotten really efficient. Yeah. And workouts. Yep. Right. And so just imagine that but running year after year, you know, like how efficient your body? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so Lauren, why don't you sum it all up here. So we've talked about why cardio, while it can be a short term strategy, it is not the best long term strategy. So how I don't think anybody says, I want to lose weight, but then I and I don't care if I gain it all back and ruin my metabolism in the process. I don't think anybody says that. I think a lot of people do things that do that to themselves. But nobody consciously says that I think what everybody wants is they want to lose weight, and they want to know how to keep it off in a reasonable way. So what would you tell everyone? What's your best advice to keep the weight off long term? To keep the weight off? Long term? Short, simple answer is lift weights, be active, not cardio, active, but like walking, active, you know, be active and eat a healthy diet that consists of the right combination of macronutrients? That's the short answer. But in that is when you do you know, when you're not doing mass amounts of cardio, and you're not working out and you know, massive amounts of time every week and keep your calories low, what you're doing is you're also creating a lifestyle that you can maintain, you're creating a lifestyle that's easy to adhere to. And when you're not on the you know that the crazy calorie deficit roller coaster, you're your body is going to adjust up, like we talked about how it can adjust down, but eventually it's going to adjust up and you know, the muscle that you build from lifting weights is also going to help you burn more calories. So you're naturally just doing a lifestyle that consists of strength training, and eating enough food, your body eventually is going to get used to that and it's going to be very easy to adhere to that lifestyle. Yep, I think that's perfect. And I heard this somewhere. I did not make this up. But I've heard of somewhere. And it's another good analogy that cardio is a way to burn calories manually. But lifting weights and building muscle is a way to basically automate your calorie building to where it's happening all day, whether you are moving or just sitting on your butt. And I think like you just said that it's kind of like passive income. Yeah. And, and and well, what is called active income. Income, I don't know. So like yes, so you can like work really hard to like have income or you can invest and dividend income. I guess if you're a finance we Alice and I are both finance people. So like it's kind of like that, too. I mean, yeah, and here's the other thing you're not going to your nutrition does really matter because you cannot work out enough you cannot do enough cardio to make up for like a crappy diet. A lot of it is really coming from like your muscle mass and like what were your body is naturally burning. And absolutely. So last question for you. Do you have to do cardio to lose weight? No, not everybody has to no not at all. In fact, that's kind of like one of my lifetime goals right now. is to like, eventually be able to like engage in a cut, or I don't have to do actual cardio. I mean, we see clients all the time, that never actually have a cardio goal. And honestly, the ones that come into us that never have a cardio goal usually are the ones that like end up losing the most weight because they haven't put their body in a position where that they need that cardio in order to lose weight. Yeah, they don't have, we have plenty of clients who never have a who never have an actual cardio goal. And they just lift and they have their step goal, and they have their nutrition calibrated correctly. Yo, actually last spring was the first time I ever attempted to do what we call a cut basically just you know, a short fat loss phase without doing any cardio and it was kind of just by circumstance, I have some knee problems. And I that's probably one reason I don't do cardio at all anymore. I'm sure if I didn't have the knee issues going on, I would still do a little bit because I don't mind I love doing outdoor cardio, I should say, but I had some knee problems going on. And so last spring, I wanted to lose a few pounds. And when I say a few pounds, I mean maybe like five not much at all. But I did it without changing my cardio at all. And I lost weight as easily if not easier than I ever had in the past, when normally I would do a combination of bringing my calories down and adding in more cardio, I did not add in more cardio last year, last week, just as easily, I will be doing the same thing, I'm actually going to be starting to cut. So this episode will probably be releasing in late April. So I probably will have just been just started my cut I'm planning to do take a few more pictures for that we'll use in social media. And so I want to lose a few pounds and just tighten up, I don't even really care how much I lose. If I lose two pounds, that's fine. But I want to tighten up a little. And I'm going to be doing it all simply by manipulating my food, not by changing my activity level at all. So I'll be reporting back and letting you all know how that goes. That's a good point too. It is really like a luxury, it is so important to get your food up and your calories up as high as you can and your cardio as low as you can, in order to like have a cut or do like a weight loss phase that isn't totally miserable. I mean, that really should be I mean, everyone's goal is to like eat as much as they can without gaining weight. You know, eat as much as you can and lose weight at the same time. I mean, it's such a again, like so there's so much like morality around like eating less, or like eating under a certain amount of calories as a woman, like, know that your goal should be eat the most you can to maintain the physique you want. Absolutely. Okay, Lauren, I'm gonna put you on the spot with a question here. And I'll answer it first. So you have a minute to think about it. But we like to end and we sometimes forget to do this, but we like to end our podcasts where we talk about one of our favorite foods that we've been fitting into our macros lately. So yours will be interesting because you are on lower calories right now with your cut, but I will go first. So because I do still have about another week or two before I start cutting my calories are very high, they're probably close to about 2200 and I am only five foot two and I weigh under 120 pounds. So I'm getting in a lot of food. And since it's Easter season, I've maybe said this before because I'm obsessed with these but it's Cadbury eggs, I go to the store and if I see a box of Cadbury eggs, I will buy them I think they are actually a great thing to fit into your macros if you want something chocolatey because they have an endpoint. For me the most dangerous things to buy are things without an endpoint like a bag of m&ms I can just keep on going. But this Cadbury egg, it's 150 calories and I know when I eat it, I will be very satisfied. And I know I can't just like keep on eating it like one Cadbury egg and I'm good. So that's mine. What's one of your favorite things you've been eating lately? So you're gonna laugh? I mean, you know the answer, you know the answer, and I still fit it in its cereal. I love I still do it I still make. So I'm trying to think at the height of my calories I was at about 2000 so easily fit in a bowl cereal. I like to eat my cereal at night, while I watch like whatever show that my kids aren't bothering me after they go to bed. It's like my it's literally my heaven. So I still even now so I'm at about 1400 calories and pretty low carbs like under 150 carbs. Now I was eating like Lucky Charms during my luxury macros days. Now that has moved to Cheerios. Cheerios has like very low sugar and has like pretty good amount of protein or what it is, and you get a lot of Cheerios, but my trick is I do first of all, I don't just pour cereal in a bowl ever. Like you didn't have to wait it like I measure it. So I do one cup of Cheerios. And my trick is I always drink it with fairlife milk because it has so much protein in it. So those carbs aren't making carbs. So yep, I still am doing the cereal. I plan to do the cereal. If I have to get the cereal out like it's going to be a sad day, but I only have two weeks left. So I assume I'm going to for the most part good to keep it in. Yeah, you can. You can you can keep a new cereal if you've managed to keep it in this whole time. I'm sure you'll be able to keep it in the next two weeks. have awesome. Okay. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, if anybody feels like they really connected with Lauren and want to work with us and what Lauren is your personal coach just tell us that when you fill out your questionnaire and we would love to assign Lauren as your personal coach, she does an awesome job. And she is very passionate about teaching women how they can do this and how weight loss can be kind of easy and very sustainable. So I want to end with reminding everyone if you do want to work with us, go to our website couture fitness coaching.com. You can read more about our programs there, you can schedule a constant call with us and you can also get on our waitlist. And you too can work with us starting in July or October and we can show you how you can lose weight without doing cardio as well. So that's all we've got for you today. Bye. Bye. That's what we've got for you today about how you can invest in your metabolism and start losing weight by eating more and exercising less. Trust us you aren't too old and it's never too late. If you want to learn more about this topic, head over to our Facebook group, Boost Your Metabolism After Age 30. You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook at Couture Fitness Coaching. And if you want to work with us, join us for our next 12 weeks session.