Ep 32 - Meet Couture Fitness Coach Leigh Ann and Learn How To Build Muscle and Prevent Injury

Meet Couture Fitness Coach Leigh Ann: An ace certified trainer and cancer exercise specialist who has spent years working in physical therapy. In this episode, she and Allison discuss all things resistance training, including soreness and recovery, optimal pre and post-workout nutrition, and the importance of warming up and having good form. 

They also discuss Coach Leigh Ann's recent fitness journey. For years Leigh Ann was undereating and overdoing it on cardio. Working with Allison, she recently increased her calories (by about 700 calories a day) and swapped most of her cardio workouts for resistance training. Leigh Ann reports this was a GAME CHANGER as her joints have stopped aching, she has more energy, and she has slept better than she has in years. 

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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 hosts 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 have me Allison and I am here with one of our awesome fitness and nutrition coaches, Leanne, who I will introduce more in a bit. We're going to talk today all about building muscle and staying injury free. So Leanne has quite a wonderful background. She is an ace certified personal trainer. She has a bachelor's degree in Sport and Exercise Science and is also a cancer exercise specialist. So I'm going to let Leanne tell a bit more about her background in a minute. And then she's going to share a lot of information about like I said, building muscle how to stay injury free. But first I want to very briefly mention our programs, we offer custom one on one fitness and nutrition coaching. So if you buy a program with us, you will be assigned to a personal coach who's going to create a program that is designed very specifically for you based on answers to a pretty lengthy questionnaire that we send all of our clients when they first buy for us. So that's what you get with us, you get your fitness and nutrition program, you will get weekly check ins with your personal coach. And then you also get several meetings that we do each week on Zoom. If you can't make those meetings live on Zoom, we also save all of our replays. so clients can also watch the replays of any meetings that they miss. We actually just finished getting people going for our October launch for our programs. So if you are interested in working with us, the next time we will be bringing on new clients will be January 1. So if you want to work with us, I would say go out to our website, couture fitness coaching.com and just put your name in the pop up that waitlist, it's not going to hold you to anything, but it will just make sure that we do have a spot for you if you want to work with us in January. So let's get back to the topic at hand. Leanne, why don't you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your educational background and your work experience? Sure, well, hi. So first of all, thank you so much for having me, I am very excited to be here. This stuff is my bread and butter. I love nerding out to this information and using it almost like a tool slash weapon in everyday life. And I say that just because it's very applicable for so many people, man, everyone's so diverse. It's just really fun to be able to work with and just adjust to different people. Because there's not a one size fits all when it comes to fitness, nutrition, etc. When it comes to the human body. So but yeah, I just kind of get into things with myself. But yeah, so I do have my bachelor's in Sport and Exercise Sciences, I got that I mean mercy of Northern Colorado, which is also where I became a cancer exercise specialist during my internship at the University of Northern Colorado Cancer Rehabilitation Institute. So that was absolutely amazing. It just really shows the power of how exercise is medicine in so many different ways and just how it can very positively affect the body, mind and soul also ace personal trainer. So I've been certified pretty much for lifestyle and back since 2012. But same time I became certified as a cancer exercise specialist and after that I transitioned to working into physical therapy as an exercise specialist collectively for four years during that time is really when I was able to apply the hands on knowledge of just what happens in the body and it is just so dynamic. Usually if there's an injury, it's not just one connective, not just one thing that went wrong. So for instance, if you were to ski down a hill and break your femur, okay, you know what went wrong, but like back pain, for instance, is usually not just one thing. It tends to be multiple patterns developed over time and different corrective actions that you can do in your body to help alleviate that pain and reduce that pain over time. Everything back, hips, shoulder, knee, everything that you would experience in physical therapy, you name it, learning the corrective exercises that will assist in that. That's really where I gained most of my knowledge with the practicality version of the exercise science behind really injury prevention and injury healing. From there. I brought that knowledge and transitions more to the adaptive sports side of the house. So I'm working a lot Well with adaptive strength and conditioning, adaptive sports like wheelchair basketball, seated volleyball, those kinds of things as well, I am a huge advocate for exercise as medicine and as I already mentioned, but another thing is, I don't care who you are, everyone can move, like, it's movement is such a beautiful thing. And even if you have to tweak one or two things, or just the way you move your body, everyone can move. And it is just so beneficial and has so many great things that contribute to overall quality of life. So overall, with my experience, with the holistic approach, and obviously the physical approach to actually conducting a lot of the corrective exercises, and or just exercises in general for physical health and wellness. And I guess that would sum up most of my experience, obviously, and you have a lot of training around some topics that I think our listeners are going to be really interested in. So today, we're gonna cover a small subset of your knowledge. And we're going to talk about building muscle and also staying injury free. So I'm just going to start with why we should all be concerned with building muscle. We talked about this a lot on this podcast, it's obviously great for your metabolic burn rate, it can also help with insulin sensitivity. I think when a lot of people think about, you know, controlling insulin, they automatically think diet. And yes, diet plays a huge part in that. But building muscle is one of the best things you can do to improve your insulin sensitivity. I don't think that is talked about enough. So if you're worried about you know, insulin issues, you should be concerned with building muscle building muscle, it's also going to help with your mobility. And then you know, for more of a vanity perspective, it's going to help you look good, it's going to give you that you know, if you're a female and you want to look toned, I know a lot of our clients come to us and say I want to look more toned building muscle is what's going to give you that book. So I'm going to start by just saying, Don't be afraid of building too much muscle, I promise you, it doesn't happen easily, especially if you're a female, especially if you're a female over the age of like 35 or 40 It is really hard to put on muscle, you're not going to accidentally just wake up and be like, Oh, wow, I just added way too much muscle and that was just happened and it was so easy. I've been lifting for 20 years and I'm still trying to put on more muscle once you've been doing it for a while it just gets really really hard to you know, add even just that that little bit more you have to be very consciously trying to put on muscle for years to ever look like a bodybuilder I know people might you know, when they think about weightlifting, maybe your minds go to, you know, these bodybuilders who are just ripped and they look really huge and unnaturally lean. I mean, I'll say a couple of things about that, since I've been in that world for quite some time, a lot of them who may be actually are really big and muscular or probably on steroids. It's hard to to get to muscular as a natural female who is not taking some sort of anabolic steroids. And a lot of the times those pictures they make you just look so much bigger and leaner than you really are because you're you're flexing your muscles and you've got this tan and you're really lean. Just being lean in itself makes you look more muscular. I will say that for most of my bodybuilding competitions, I weighed about 110 pounds. So I can promise you even though I look muscular in my pictures, I'm tiny so don't be afraid of putting on muscle I promise you it's not easy to do. And it's the more muscle you can add the better for so many reasons I like to say that lifting weights is the fountain of youth if there is one, so don't be afraid to put on muscle. So Leann, why don't we start with how do you actually build muscle? Can you give us some basics on how your body actually builds muscle and the process that it goes through to do so? Yeah, absolutely. So in order to build muscle you need to place your body in an overload so what that means is if you're doing a bicep curl, you need to be able you can't just sit there and do 100 reps and then not feel anything you need to be able to place your body under stress. So that way you're breaking down those muscle fibers in forcing it to do an activity that is not used to what happens when we do overload our muscles where we load our muscles with a weight and you know we're performing eight to 12 repetitions or we're performing the 10 to 15 repetitions when you place your muscles in an overload what's important is is providing more stress than there was before so what happens when you do lift is in your you are providing heavy weight you are pretty much creating these muscle tears these microscopic muscle tears during your activity now I know that sounds bad for some of you that are listening you're like wow, I'm tearing my muscles. And so should I be concerned? No, not at all. It's actually a great thing that you're doing that so when you're it's almost like you're pulling like a piece of fabric apart and you're watching the the intertwining of the fabric, stretch under the stress doing that With your muscle fibers tearing, so when we are done with your exercises, you're done with the load, the repair happens after that. So when you're actually exercising, that's not when you're building muscle, you are breaking down your muscle. So you are prepping it for the stages afterwards between your exercise sessions to be able to build this is why sleep nutrition and stress, water, all these things are big, big game changers that go into helping you build muscles after you've performed. Because you can go into the gym, you can try and lift all day long. But if you don't have your nutrition to help you sleep stressful, all those things that we just mentioned, you might not be getting the results that you would like, and then whatever nutrition if it is very little that your body gets, it's going to try and delegate it where it needs it the most, whether it's vital organ function, or other areas. So big thing, muscular overload to be able to build, and we'll get into the nutrition part in a little bit. But pretty much as soon as you get done lifting, that's when your body begins the part the repair portion of everything, everything from being able to replenish the stores that you have just depleted while you're working out your body is using the stores that you have built up. So it's using the glycogen stores, it's using your protein stores. So you're kind of bringing down your energy tank a little bit, there are two types of muscle fibers in case you're interested. And this is typically why you see a big body type difference between runners and lifters. Just for instance. So type one is the slow oxidative so runners tend to have a lot more proportionally wise of type one muscle fibers than type two, type two muscle fibers are more of the short strength training muscle fibers. And they do tend to be a little bit bigger in nature, because they are providing that power that strength initially. So in terms of building their muscle and maintaining your muscle, those are the different types of muscles that your body maintain, depending on muscle function or age. And however we're training our body, our body will contain different proportions of these types of muscle fibers in our body, which is actually pretty cool. The type one muscle fibers, they are very much meant for endurance and delivering oxygen over time. So you know running for two or three hours type one, you will want those muscle fibers to be able to continually deliver oxygen to your muscles while you're performing that activity. Type Two muscle fibers. Yeah, you absolutely want that power, you want those bigger muscle fibers to be able to perform your activities that you want to do. And there's two types that are kind of subcategorize to a is one of them. And it's kind of like the hybrid between type one and type two are kind of like the happy medium, and then type two, b tends to be just purely fast twitch of just power. So yeah, yeah, it's actually pretty cool. If you ever get a chance to look like under a microscope or something at the different types of muscle fibers, it's so cool to see type one tends to be like the quote unquote red muscle fiber just because of the blood deliverance, and delivering of all the nutrients like once again, oxygenated over time. And then type two tends to be more of the white muscle tissue. So okay, so I think there's this myth out there. And that's awesome, awesome scientific explanation of you know, the process that your body goes through to actually build muscle. I think there's a myth out there that if you're not sore after a workout, you feel like Well, that wasn't a great workout. And that was a waste of my time. I know I personally I don't get sore that sore after lifting even when I'm you know, I'm really pushing myself I'm trying to push myself every time but I do remember back to the very very first time I ever lifted in any sort of significant or quote real way. It was back in high school when I took a weight class. And I remember the first time we did lower body I probably was literally squatting with just the bar like no weights on No, no no plates on the bar. But I remember go trying to walk down into the locker room after my class. And I my legs almost gave out on me because they were just like so weak, and I was so sore. And then again, when we did upper body, like after that weights class, I remember trying to like hold my pencil and write and I could barely lift my arm. And I can't even tell you how sore I was in the days after that. But my body got used to it pretty quickly. And now it really like it's pretty rare that I'm like, Oh, I'm pretty sore there from lifting. So can you talk a little bit about you know, why do your muscles get sore? And how can you be building muscle even though you're not getting sore after a workout? Yeah, absolutely. So the soreness really goes back to tearing up your muscle fibers and damaging the muscles in a good way the muscle soreness that you'll be experiencing is called delayed onset muscle soreness, which is typically D O M S, or it might be pretty quick, they may not be delayed or someone who is just getting into strength training for the first time, you might start feeling it, you know, within 12 hours or so. But you may not be feeling sore, like as soon as you get done with your workout walk out of the gym. But yeah, delayed onset muscle soreness, that is the period where your muscles are pretty much just trying to repair themselves and go through the metabolic process of replenishing, refueling, and also rebuilding. So I like to use this analogy of, you know, moving a wooden table versus moving a marble table, right? So if you're gonna start with a wooden table, you're like, Yep, okay, I'm gonna work with this wooden table. And eventually, I want to work up to moving them marble table, you do repetitions, you're able to move the wooden table and you're sore after using it, or after moving the wooden table, your muscle fibers are eventually going to repair. And your body's saying, oh, I need to be able to prepare myself to be able to lift this amount again. So after I'm torn, torn apart shredded, I'm going to go ahead and build up again and repair my muscle fibers even more, and provide even more muscle fibers to be able to perform that activity. Eventually, as you work your weights up in the gym, you're you're adding additional muscle fibers, which is where that muscular hypertrophy is what the term is that comes from is building the muscle fibers over time. So we're eventually Alright, I'm going to lift that marble table over there, and you'll be able to perform that you'll have enough muscle fibers built up after tearing down after them repairing and building back up again. Eventually, that's how it works. And then the soreness is just all of that it's your body telling you. Yep, I have been put under stress. And I will be repairing and growing back more for later, the human body is really quite interesting to me in that sense, just to have the ability for your body to say, Oh, yep, I need to be able to lift this and lift more and be prepared next time for it is such an amazing response that we can take advantage of to help us with our own health. Okay, so just because you're not sore, you know, that doesn't mean your body is not going through that process. It's maybe just not as extreme as like the first time you ever lifted? Absolutely no, you were absolutely still getting all the benefits of lifting, your body is just used to lifting at that action and you know, under load. So you are still absolutely receiving all the benefits of strength training to include decreased blood pressure, your regulation of blood sugar's as you had mentioned, improve balance. That's a really big thing, especially as we age, I absolutely am a huge, huge, huge supporter of this. And actually, when I was at the gym earlier today, I unfortunately witnessed a client being trained to fall during the workout session. And, you know, that's always a scary moment for anyone, whether it be a relative or seeing anybody fall, but she was a great Trooper about it. And she said, You know, that's why I'm here is I fall like this around the house, and I don't want to do it anymore. So worried that she's taking the steps to where you know, that is less likely to happen. Absolutely. So. So I was really happy to see that. But another benefit, I just wanted to say that even though you may not be feeling sore, decreasing your risk of osteoporosis is huge. Yeah, not only are you building your muscle mass, but you are helping to maintain and build your bone density as well, especially for women. You know, as as we age, the it just is a natural thing that happens where we have to put more effort into our bone density, or else osteoporosis will be one of those things that can creep up on us. So absolutely, still reap all the benefits of it. It's almost like it's a good thing that you're not sore anymore, because that tells me that your body is used to it. Mm hmm. Yep. Okay, so you touched earlier on the importance of Properly fueling your body. So let's talk a little bit about that. So, you know, we're very big proponents contour Fitness on, you know, a flexible dieting approach. We're not too strict with necessarily the foods you choose. Obviously, we want people eating, you know, healthy, whole unprocessed foods for the most part, but we are big believers in fitting treats into our day. We're not super strict on meal timing, but let's just talk about what is ideal for building muscle. What should you be eating before and after a workout to help you aid in that muscle building process? Absolutely. So ideally, in a perfect world, I say this because life isn't exactly linear for all of us. We're all super busy and have lots of stuff going on. So I'm going to say this all in a perfect world and based off of studies that have gone on and I know some of this has gone back and forth with different studies out there. But in a perfect world pre workout should contain a source of carb within one hour of working out. Now it should be a pretty quick to digesting quick to use energy resource. My personal favorites are like apples or strawberries, I feel my best. before a workout when I'm able to have a piece of fruit plus for me i for almost prefer that someone was almost not eating empty calories, but other people have also, you know, use some things like gummy bears that are just really quick energy to eat, choose those kinds of things. Anything that's just a carb source, you really want to try and avoid the fat sources any one to two hours before your workout, just because that is wonderful for slow sustained energy throughout the day. But it also slows down utilization of your energy that you want to use before your workout. So perfect world is within an hour before a source of a car now post workout a combination of a carbon and protein within one to two hours of a workout. Now I can just use myself as a personal example I work out after work and I come home to make dinner I personally have found the fair life that free milk to be a nice little quick something. As soon as I get home just to put down it has a nice balance of like a carbon or protein just to tie me over and tell I do have dinner within it'll with be within that two hours. But it's just something to tide you over until then now I'm saying all of this, but my advice to everyone listening would be you have to find what works best for you and your lifestyle. If you are someone who works out at 4am. And you're like not waking up an extra hour early just to get in fuel, you have to find something that works for you. And if it's working for you right now that you're not eating anything, then okay, then don't change it like that's perfectly fine. What you're doing when you are eating something to pre workout is you're pretty much topping off your stores, you're topping off your carbohydrate stores that your body is going to be using for energy during your workout. So if you are eating well and regularly throughout the day, just spreading out your nutrition, it's not the end of the world, I can tell you personally, that I feel a difference if I have a pre workout snack versus if I don't, I personally just feel better, I feel more energized, my muscles definitely feel like they can really get a good workout in and I can really lift heavy. But once again, I highly suggest just figuring out what works best for you. And going from there. During the workout. Our body utilizes the carbohydrate and protein stores that we have. And that goes through a process called a catabolic process. So it's breaking down the carbs and proteins that we should have stored in our body, given that we have enough to perform, then afterwards, it goes into that anabolic process where it needs the gas tank needs to be refilled again. And it needs to break down carbs and proteins that we consume to be able to replenish that's where that one to two hours post workout, really highly suggest doing something there just so your muscles can help repair and start the process of rebuilding your muscles and repairing. Yeah, and you know, you said and I'm glad you mentioned this, like this is ideals, right? If we were just being paid to, like, work out and build muscle, we could do everything exactly perfect. But I don't think any of us are getting paid to do that. You know, you kind of just have to find what works for you. I would say in general, what you don't want to be doing is getting up at 5am and working out and then going to work and not eating until 11 or 12. I think that would be a no no, you know, but other than that, I wouldn't stress too much. I wouldn't say like, you know what I lifted and now I'm drinking a protein shake on the way home from the gym, that going to two extremes and you don't do that just find what works for you. And just try I mean one to two hours after your workout. That's that's pretty easy to accomplish. And if you think that it might be difficult to make that happen, just, you know, pack something with you that's easy to eat, even like a protein bar will have carbs and protein in it. And so that's always an option if you're going to be more on the go. But yeah, you want to try to get carbs in protein in near you know, near your workouts, especially post workout, I think is the main takeaway. Okay, so switching gears a little bit, let's get more into some of this injury prevention stuff. So I definitely think strength training is one of the best things you can do to prevent injuries. It certainly is possible, however to get injured while you were lifting if you're not properly warmed up or if you're not focusing on your form. So let's talk about that a little bit more. Can you tell us why a warm up is so important? Absolutely. So I like to use the analogy. Well, a couple of analogies. So Oh, one of them is starting up a car on a cold day, right. So ideally, you have a few minutes, if you're starting up your car has negative 10 degrees, you want to give your car at least a few minutes for all the fluids to start running through and give it time to warm up to be able to work properly. Same with strength, straightening out a frozen garden hose. I use that because I'm sure that any of us at any time have heard that same sound in our joints at some point and it makes you go ooh, it's always good to provide a slight workout. So I suggest doing five to 10 minutes more than better. So upwards of that 10 minutes is what I try to make time for I know sometimes it can be a little bit of a crunch just to try and squeeze it in. So minimum five minutes, but more time to better to dedicate towards your body while you're doing when you're warming up your body is you are priming your body for a workout. So you're allowing your blood to be able to go towards the areas that you're about to use to perform at a higher level, it would be a terrible idea for me to just walk into the gym and start doing maximum weight on a deadlift. Like that's a recipe for disaster, but my back muscles won't be warmed up, my leg muscles won't be warmed up and more than likely I might hear one of those. Or out that it's just not good. So to me, next to being hungry, I think an injury that could have been prevented is one of the most frustrating things you will ever experience. It might seem tedious to do it but what I suggest doing is a form of an active into a static warmup. So active meaning you can do arm swings front to back side side, same with the legs that I know I also use like a PVC pipe just to actively bring the arm bar over my head, bring it back down side side get my lats warmed up a little bit some form of light active activity. Now I'm not doing these sharp movements, they're very slow controlled movements that go into this act of warmup. From there, I transition into a static stretch. So what is a static stretch, think about your hair standing up when you're cold. It's not like you know, a field of wheat swaying back and forth, it's straight up. So you are staying straight in a position and you're holding that stretch for a duration of anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds, I prefer to hold a stretch from upward from like 6070 seconds. But that's what works for me. It's different for everybody. So you just kind of kind of work with your body and see what feels good for you when you're doing that. But it's really important, like I said, just at the beginning to prime your body. So that way you can get your the muscles warm the area literally warm with blood and oxygen deliverance before you start exercising. Yeah, so basically, Don't skip your warmup everybody. I used to not warm up when I was younger, but there's no way you could get away with that now. And I knew I was I should have been doing it when I was younger, but I was just, you know, just thought I was too busy. But now yeah, I always make sure I personally like to do the rowing machine because I feel like it hits so many different muscle groups all at one time. I usually do that for five minutes, and then maybe do a few sets of some of the exercises that I'm going to do that day. But without weights like maybe if I'm going to do some squats, I might squat with bodyweight squats. So I'll do a little bit of that after I do the row machine. But yeah, just don't skip your warm up people. For sure I do the same thing. I also like to compare it to as far as maintenance goes, and just warming up. And maybe I was gonna touch on this later. I'm not sure. But I always like to think about it as just general maintenance for our body. Right. So another analogy here, we first get a car, it's brand new, we don't expect anything to happen. And then we keep that car for a long period of time. As that car ages, things start to go wrong. And you have to, you know, it requires a little bit more maintenance over time to keep everything running. Well, to me that's a parallel to the human body. Like as we age, there's certain things that are just naturally with aging that come about that will require a little bit more maintenance. But with or without the aging process. Warming up is always going to be great. And you might find over time that your warmup might change just because of how your body is and what stage you are in life. So I just want to add that little part. So besides warm up, what are some other ways that we can prevent injuries from occurring either during our lifting workout or just you know doing other everyday things such as playing a sport or picking things up around the house or just playing with your kids? What are some other things to keep in mind? Yeah, just staying active is the biggest thing. So when you are playing with your kids, I mean, even like some of the simple things like You know, bend, not without your back bend with your knees or you know, some of the more safe things there, but just really staying active around the house with moderately intense activities. And I think when people initially think, moderately intense activity, their mind automatically goes towards exercise, which isn't a bad thing. But it can also just be staying active around the house playing with your kids mopping the floor, vacuuming, all these things are just staying active and keeping your body moving to me, they're almost a complement to when you are working out. So if you go from going from completely sedentary to not doing really anything, just as a general active lifestyle, it can be a little bit harder for your body to adjust. Yeah, really just staying active and busy around the house, or just finding activities you'd like something to keep in mind when you are lifting, you know, pick a weight that's not too heavy, I wouldn't want to see somebody just, you know, trying maybe for ego reasons or whatever, to lift something so heavy, but maybe losing their good form. So I would always prioritize form over how much you're lifting. Obviously, we want to be you know, lifting heavier and heavier, but you don't want to sacrifice form. So always, always have form in mind, really think about the muscles that you're working. If you're doing like a lateral shoulder race, think about using those shoulders and not letting other muscles maybe take over things like that when you're actually lifting that will help you as well. And I think that mind body connection with that is huge, too. You know, like you're saying, so it's super easy to like you said, almost let ego take over. Or I see so many people just swinging weights around. And I'm like, What are you doing your poor body? No, I know, I've seen that too. And I It's so tempting to want to go up to them and say, Can I help you do this? Yeah, I heard and you're not I promise you. You're not going to you're not doing what you're hoping to do, which is building muscle in this area. But I never I never do that. But I want to. Yes, absolutely. And one other thing I wanted to add sorry, I almost forgot this. One of my lines, I like to say is muscular stability and flexibility. Add those things to support healthy mobility. So what does that mean? So stabilizing small muscle groups. So it's not always all about the big muscle groups, there are these really small muscle groups that are in our body that are those small stabilizers that you were talking about Allison, that are huge game changers that will help prevent injury. And they'll also they're meant to help us with endurance activities, like, you know, carrying kids around the house, vacuuming, all those different things. So taking the time to also maybe add a few of those exercises here and there. So for instance, if I'm just doing a leg day, I like to try and do like shoulder internal external rotation to support my rotator cuff. You know, some of that may be some some other exercises for MultiFit eye muscles. So MultiFit eye muscles are these little Christmas tree muscles that are in our lower back and are huge for spine stability. Just little things that if you're finding when you're, you know, waiting your 30 to 90 seconds in between exercises to like, what do I want to do, maybe you can switch it up and do some stability, or balance. So I mentioned before balance is huge. You can even just do simple stuff now. Huge asterik here, make sure if you're doing balanced activities, that you have something to hold on to next to you where you feel comfortable, because falling is not fun, nor is it allowed. So make sure that you have a comfortable area where you're doing an exercise, but you can do some single leg stance, you can even stand up on your toe while you're doing a calf raise a good challenge would be to stand on one leg. Once again, have your hand next to something you can comfortably support yourself with if need be, and close your eyes and see how long you can do that. So it's so much harder than you think it would be so close your eyes. I've had to do things like that when I've had I've had knee surgery and have some problems with one of my knees. And yeah, when you close your eyes, it's 10 times harder. Yes, it is. It's amazing. When you take away your vision proprioception is totally thrown off, which is your body in relation to space around you. So those are some other things I highly suggest doing just to you know, couple little things that can also just help you improve your health and strength over time but also support just healthy lifestyle at home. So cool. Okay, Leanne, you've shared some awesome things with us. You've given us some really good tips to staying injury free and some tips for you know, maybe improving what we're doing if we're trying to build muscle or so you have been doing your own new reverse diet. We talk a lot about reverse dieting on here. So a few months ago, you were working out you were lifting you were doing cardio regularly, but you were not seeing the results that you wanted you You're probably eating somewhere around 1300 calories a day, we've now gotten your food all the way up to we got you over 2000 calories a day, and you sat there for a few months and your body responded really, really well. What other changes did you notice? Just from increasing your food? Oh, man. Okay, so first of all, I will once again say game changer. I reduced my cardio drastically and, you know, replaced with a lot of the strength training, I would say prior to doing everything, my cardio To Strength Training ratio would have been about 90 to 85% Cardio to 10 15% strength training. So since swapping those out, and then since you know, really just really intently focusing on the nutrition, I've noticed quite a few things. For one, the strength training has definitely tightened me up quite a bit. Even in the reverse period, I lost a couple inches on my weight, even though I ended the reverse about the same weight as where I started. But I was still a couple inches lower than when I first started, which was total, the mind blown moment for me, which is crazy, but my joints feel so much better. So for cardio, I used to, you know, do probably three to four days a week of running and you know, still enjoy the cycling and stuff like that. And, man, my joints just wouldn't feel very good. Yeah, you know, in the morning, it's just yeah, more that you were talking about. But for me, obviously, the energy has been amazing. But to me, my sleep has, I can't remember the last time I've gotten this good of sleep. From just not being tired here and there, my body compensating here and there from whatever lack of sleep lack of nutrition that I was experiencing during the day, then, you know, you tried to compensate with more caffeine during the day. I don't even do that anymore. Yeah, those are just a few things that I've really improved, but no way I'm ever going back. Absolutely not. Yeah, once you realize, wow, I can eat so much more than I ever thought, yeah, you'll never want to go back. Now that being said, after you sat at those high calories for several months, we did start you in a cut and you're still in a cut, but you're cutting now on 1600 calories a day, which is you know, much better than your 1300 calories a day and you're losing weight on your 1600 calories a day. So I would say that is a huge win. So we just wanted to share Leanne's own story with her nutrition as well. Okay, do you have any last things you want to leave our listeners with before we wrap up? Yeah, just a couple of on facts that also first to say, if you're listening to this, and you know, you're new to strength training, and you're thinking, Oh, my gosh, okay, now I think about muscular health. Where do I start? I would say, if muscular health is something you'd like to focus on, just like anything, start small and work your way up, knowledge is power. But it can almost be like drinking through a garden hose. And then next thing you know, you hop on the Google machine, I like to call it and then there's all this information out there. So start small pick something that intrigues you that you'd like to try out, and then build on that from there. The next big thing is listen to your body, you know, your body best, your brain is the one that's creating the signals in your body where if something is going wrong, or it doesn't like something, you are the only one that's going to know if it's not going right. So if you have any sharp pains, stop immediately, there's a difference between sharp pain and dull, achy pain. So get to know your body a little bit more identify where there are those sharp pains versus adult achy pains, if you are doing exercises, and you're working into pain, I suggest going until right before pain and just kind of back off for a while because there's no need to just keep on pushing and pushing and pushing. And then next thing you know, your body is going to push back and say nope, now you're injured. So absolutely listen to your body and go from there. And then just a little fun fact, if you are shorter, you will actually have an easier time putting on muscle than someone who is taller. And it has to do with a lever system. So if you think about the bone length of someone who's you know, short like myself, and I'm like five foot three, versus someone who's six foot, if we compare the length of our femur or our humerus, we're gonna have to prove you're gonna have to work a lot harder if you're taller, with a lot more torque to build muscle fibers to cover that area with the attachment sites than someone who is shorter like myself. So just a little fun fact that's absolutely not, you know, to discourage anyone who's tall. But if you see, you know, if you tend to see that shorter people are a little you know, they tend to look a little more muscular. It can be easier at times for people who are shorter to build muscle just a little fun fact. Okay, well Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Like I mentioned at the beginning, we will be enrolling people for our next one on one coaching program in January. Get on the waitlist if you think you might want to work with us, and you can definitely request Leann as your personal coach, if you would like as well. So that is all we have for you today. Thanks, everyone. 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.