Unmasking Greatness
Join Fitness/LifeStyle Expert & Mentor Chris Kakouras talk about maximizing your health, business, mindset, and overall life! Let's get better together as I bring on amazing guest to interview and learn from!
Unmasking Greatness
Transformative Tips for a Balanced and Healthy Life
This episode focuses on essential insights for achieving health and fitness goals, emphasizing the importance of understanding your “why,” prioritizing progress over perfection, and creating a supportive environment. Chris shares practical advice that covers everything from nutrition and alcohol consumption to positive self-talk and workout tracking.
• Understanding your “why” to anchor your fitness journey
• The importance of progress over perfection
• Mindful consumption of alcohol and its impact on health
• Focusing on adding quality foods rather than restrictions
• Tracking workouts for sustained progress and motivation
• Clarifying that supplements cannot replace healthy habits
• Removing unhealthy snacks to cultivate a successful environment
• The power of positive self-talk and its motivational effects
• Differentiating the roles of nutrition and exercise in fitness
• Preparing for a sustainable health journey without quick fixes
More Info On >>>Fitness/Nutrition/Lifestyle Coaching<<<
Chris Kakouras on >>>Instagram<<<
Clips of Unmasking Greatness on >>>TikTok<<<
Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your sign to take back control of your health, mindset and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share, as we can all get better together. Let's go.
Speaker 2:What's up guys, welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Koukouris, and today I have a little bit of a twist to the topics we typically talk about. This is going to be geared very specifically on health, fitness and some of the things that I get common questions about, and I just wrote a lot of them down, obviously from the past couple weeks and I was like you know what. Let me give you guys my thoughts, because there's so much information out there, right? There's so much information on Google, on YouTube, on chat, gpt and all of that and I did have a joke with one of my close friends that you know we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Everybody can get everything on chat GPT, and the problem is there is some skewed answers in there, for sure. But also it's funny how society now, like in this current year where we are to date, there is more information and accessibility to anything that you could possibly imagine, meaning there's so much information when it comes to different style workouts and diets and calories and nutrition plans, et cetera. So much information to help people be able to potentially live a healthier lifestyle. But we are also in a time where the US, specifically, is the most unhealthiest, which is wild, right. So it starts to raise the thoughts of like, if the information's out there and the tools are out there, what's going on? And a lot of it comes down to the fact that it's not just about the information, I mean one. It's very conflicting, it's information overload, but how to take that information and actually apply it to an individual's lifestyle and I say individual's lifestyle because your life, my life, our neighbor's life is very different. You know, some have kids, some don't, some work from home, some have to go to work. You know there's a lot of variability, and to find ways that are very just, black and white and now be able to integrate into your lifestyle can be a little confusing, and so that's why, here today, what I want to do is I want to touch on 10 top question answers that I wish I would have known when I first started. But also many of you guys that are probably just starting will also help reinforce some of those new year health and fitness goals that you set for yourself. Okay, so this will be a little rapid fire. I'm not going to get like crazy in depth with each. It's really just gets you guys thinking and hopefully applying some of the stuff that I say to make things more sustainable and realistic for you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the first one is you know you got to understand your why. You ever hear anybody ask, like, what's your why? Well, more than likely this new year's, you guys set goals for yourself and, more specifically, potentially you have set some health and fitness goals, whether it's to lose weight, to build muscle, maybe you want to run a marathon, you know whatever your goal is, but specifically when people are just starting, this is really really important to understand, like why you set that goal and take it another layer deep. What is actually going to change in your life If you are going to accomplish this goal. What is going to change when you start to pull those layers back? This starts to anchor you towards working hard, because we understand like if it was easy, everybody would do it. It's going to take effort, it's going to take work and there's going to be days you just don't feel like doing it. There's plenty of days I don't feel like doing anything.
Speaker 2:You know, actually I'm making this podcast on a Sunday to post on Monday. Normally I make it on a Wednesday. This week was a little hectic, I couldn't get to it, but I have made a commitment to put out one podcast every week. Is it ideal that I want to do this right now? Not really, but I made that commitment to myself and the only way you're going to be able to build your confidence in yourself is to keep your word. Just do it Right.
Speaker 2:So, understanding your, why Figure that out? This is a personal question. You know you may have something where you're like I got 40, 50, 60, 100 pounds to lose. Of course, yeah, you do have some extra body weight to lose. Of course the doctor told you need to lose weight, but you personally, like what is going to change in your life? That is sorry, I had a call come in. What is going to change in your life that is going to create the quality to be that much better?
Speaker 2:You know, I've talked to individuals that have a significant amount of weight to lose and their why is I just want to be able to take my kid to an amusement park Disney World and walk the park. Like, physically, in my current state, I cannot walk further than to my mailbox without being completely gassed. And now you're starting to lose memories with your family and losing those precious moments, because once I get older, it's done and over. So really understand why and write it down. Write it down, put it on your mirror as a constant reminder because again, more times than you realize, there's going to be times you just don't want to do what is necessary to reach your goals. It's okay to have these emotions I have them all the time but it doesn't mean it has to dictate the actions that you're going to be taking moving forward. So you need to be very strategic as well when you start putting these goals in place.
Speaker 2:The second thing I would tell somebody is you want to focus on consistency versus perfection, progress over perfection. There's so many people that are g ho I get it especially and I'm going to keep referring to the new years because this is the time that we're in so many people are so gun ho on their goals and they are just like coming out the gate sprinting you know gas to the floor full throttle, and they will. They'll accelerate super, super fast until that gas runs out. And the minute the gas runs out, they don't know how to refuel, they don't know how to pull over. They're just at a dead stop. It's a dead end, game over, and so I would rather someone take their time and continuously get a little bit better every day than just completely blow a gasket in the front end. I've worked with tons of people that are like that. They're mentally like they get set in stone for a very short period of time though, and I'm like if we can just do a little bit every day, it's not so much about how far you need to go. It's the moment when you look back and you're like man, I've actually came really far from where I was, and you have to get in that mindset of like this is going to take time.
Speaker 2:I think people underestimate the amount of time it actually takes to reach their goals, and specifically for somebody that is just starting out, you know you guys are, you're fresh to. You know fitness and health. You know I would even start setting goals that are 12 months out or more, because you're trying to create this into a lifestyle. It's not to say that you won't reach your weight goal or a certain landmark goal as you are going through, but to make this a real sustainable lifestyle. It takes time, especially if you have created a lot of unhealthy habits, to break those and have new ones start to replace them. Yeah, it's going to take some time.
Speaker 2:So understand, you want to find ways to keep track of the progress that you're making so you know that you are making the right decisions moving forward. Stop focusing on being perfect and just focus on making progress. Sometimes it takes making some messy action right, just taking some action towards something, versus just sitting still, because failure is real and failure happens all the time. But I would rather fail by trying than fail by never trying right, because that's a guarantee 100% you're done. You know you never even gave your best shot, but if you actually put your best effort it's not necessarily failing. Now you're learning that didn't work, let's try something different.
Speaker 2:So number three, and if you guys know me on this, one, alcohol. Just stop drinking alcohol. You know there's no benefit to drinking alcohol. Now, I know someone out there is listening to this. Well, like, the doctor says one glass of wine is, you know, good for my health. Okay, like, but are you drinking that one glass of wine and calling it, or are you continuing to drink another glass? How big is your glass right? Are you drinking it to celebrate, you know? Are you drinking it to wind down at night? You know these are questions I do ask a lot of our clients because, you know, drinking is in moderation. Okay, you know, I'm not going to talk down on anybody that drinks, that's a personal decision. But when you start to abuse it, that becomes a problem. And if you're using it to numb your life, that is another problem.
Speaker 2:I can tell you I used to drink. You know, when I was younger I used to go out every you know thirsty Thursdays, and then Friday and Saturday. It was just like this thing that you know, I'd go out with my friends. Because people ask me like, why, why didn't you drink, chris? I'm gonna tell you why Cause I realized how much I hated my life. Real talk, I didn't like my life at all.
Speaker 2:Because when you go out, you're with all your friends, you're a little tipsy, your endorphins are flying. You know it's a good time, it's a real good time until you wake up the next morning and you don't feel so good, you have a hangover, and you do that long enough. You start to realize, like, is this? It? Is this what I'm like working towards? Is this like what my life has become? To work throughout the week, to party on the weekends, to feel like trash the next day? I got to that point and I realized I was like this isn't what I want to do the rest of my life. So I had to make a change. I had to make a shift. I stopped going out and I didn't just dead stop drinking.
Speaker 2:But over time I realized why do I need to drink? Why do I need to drink? To have fun and talk with people. People joke about the social lubricant. What do you need a social lubricant for? You can't talk to people. That's something that you need to address. You know. Why do you need a drink? To wind down at night. Another, another thing that you need to face, you know, the very thing that you are avoiding is the thing that you need to go head first in and tackle, because these are the things that's going to hold you from reaching your goals. Outside of the fact that alcohol plays a big role on your sleep, on your hormones, on trying to reproduce body fat, I mean, you are setting yourself up for failure if you're drinking a lot.
Speaker 2:So my advice to anybody that is drinking is if somebody's like, well, how much can I drink? I would say as least as possible. You know, if that's none, that's none. If you're a, I drink a case a night, I will say what's the least you could do? Half a case. Okay, let's start there Again. It goes down back to the progress over perfection. All right, so you guys understand my take when it comes to alcohol.
Speaker 2:The next one this is specifically gonna go towards nutrition. Okay, your diet, your nutrition, focus on adding more quality foods versus eliminating. Most people when I'm talking to them, they're like oh, I need to clean up my diet, I know I shouldn't eat carbs, I need to take carbs out. Or I know I shouldn't be eating all these like fruits because it has sugar in it. I don't need sugars and like. The reality is, if you start saying to yourself, like I always got to, like take away, take away, restrict, restrict we start to have kind of bad feelings about that, because we don't like feeling restricted. We want freedom, right. So my advice to many people is let's add more quality foods, right. Let's add some additional ones and a lot of the.
Speaker 2:You know the sweet treats, the snacks that you guys may be eating. There is a healthy option. You know there's yogurt that's like loaded with sugar, and then you have things like shout out to Okio's triple zero Greek yogurt or the ratio. Yogurt, protein yogurt, I mean great way to get an additional 15 to 20 ish grams of protein from yogurt. You know chips. If you're like a savory person, quest out there makes all kinds of flavor chips and each bag, I think, is 20 grams of protein in an individual size bag and they're good. So anything that you have that you know is not like the best for you. There is an option out there that is very similar. Now is it going to be exactly the same? No, there's going to be, I'm sure, a different little flavor profile. Now is it going to be exactly the same? No, there's going to be, I'm sure, a different little flavor profile texture. But again, it is going to help you with those cravings.
Speaker 2:So we want to focus on adding more nutritious, fibrous, higher protein meals and snacks versus, you know, things that are very easily palatable and digestible, where it doesn't satiate you. And now you're just constantly eating. I mean, people can eat a whole bag of potato chips, but have you ever thought about, like, how many potatoes like whole potatoes it took to fill up that bag of chips? I'm pretty sure nobody can eat three whole potatoes, three, four whole potatoes probably not right Baked potatoes, but chips. How do we do that? Again, that's how it works. So put more emphasis on adding more quality foods.
Speaker 2:The next one this is go into your workouts, track your workouts. This is a big mistake I see many people doing. Does it take a couple minutes? Sure, but you're resting in between sets, all right. So this is a great time to track because, again, the only way to make progress is to be able to track and measure that. So you know, and you guys may have seen this, you go to the gym. Maybe this is you, maybe you resonate with this, or you see somebody at the gym that goes on a regular three, four, five, six days a week. They never change. They never change. Their physique never changes.
Speaker 2:Now, one, yes, the nutrition could definitely be a big role in that. But two, the idea in the gym is to build muscle. That is the focus on lifting weights. We're not lifting weights to burn body fat, you know. We're not lifting weights for cardio purposes. We're lifting weights to build muscle. This is inevitably going to be the biggest chunk of increasing your metabolism. Now, I'm not going to get into the whole pie of that. I have another training. If you're really interested in understanding your metabolism. Shoot me a message on Instagram Say, hey, I'll listen to your podcast. Can I have that metabolism pie thing that you were talking about? I have a whole training on that that I'll just you know. I'll send you the link and you can watch it.
Speaker 2:But the point is, the goal in the gym should be to lift weights and build quality, healthy muscle tissue. Now we need to make sure that we're staying in the right rep ranges. Right, I'd probably suggest between like eight and 12 upwards to 15. That's fine, but it's all about progression. My, our concept in our program is progressive, progressive overload. So we want to see that our clients are challenging themselves in the gym.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean adding weight all the time. It could be doing an extra rep, doing another set. You know time under tension. There's a lot of ways that you can increase the intensity to engage the muscle to get some really good progress. So the only way to do that is the track. So you're going in the gym, you know exactly what to do, you have a game plan, you know what you lift last week and that's like an internal battle for yourself.
Speaker 2:Let me see if I can outdo myself right. Who cares what the next person is lifting, because at the end of the day, I always tell people you cannot compare your first 15 days to my 15 years. Of course I'm going to be stronger. Of course I'm going to have healthier muscle tissue, fuller muscle bellies. I've been doing this for years and there's nothing wrong with that right. Everybody starts somewhere. I didn't start at the 15-year mark, I started on day, just like everybody else, but consistency is what got me to where I'm at. Okay, so understand that. Track your workouts. By the way, there's tons of free apps out there that will do this too. You could be old school with a notebook or download an app. You know there are apps that you can. I think most of them are free. Even when it comes to tracking calories, you know there's, there's, there's just tons out there, which kind of goes into my second. My second one, which is uh, you can't. You cannot out supplement a bad diet. Okay, you cannot out supplement.
Speaker 2:It's wild to me when I talk to individuals on a regular that have tried everything, from you know fat burning pills to you know these different herbs that's supposed to just melt body fat off you. You know even medical medicines like semiglutide, trizepatide, wagobe if you've heard of those sort of things. These are weight loss prescription injections. That's a big hype here recently. The thing is you can't out supplement and these things cost money. A fat burner can run you $60, $80, $100. I'm not even going to get into what it costs to get some of these injections.
Speaker 2:But again, people are willing to invest and pay that sort of money for a quick fix, thinking this is going to solve all their problems and long-term it never does. It never does because they've never changed their lifestyle. But come to investing into a coach, a mentorship, someone to teach them the right way to do this, oh no, I can't spend that money. I can't spend that money. That's too much money. You're spending hundreds of dollars every single month on something that's not going to work for you long-term, you know, and I'm not going to say I'm not going to work for you long term. You know, and I'm not going to say I'm not going to sit here and say those supplements do not help. Okay, I'm not going to sit here and say they don't aid in what you're already doing, but if you haven't built a strong foundation, it never lasts. It never lasts. This is the same reason why somebody can win the lottery and they go bankrupt in two years. They don't have a foundation of understanding money. They don't know how to invest it. They don't know how to save it. They don't know how to grow it. They don't know anything about taxes. Guaranteed failure Again. But these are the foundational works. So you know, you got to understand these supplements are to aid what you are already doing. But you got to have a good foundation if you want to make this long-term All right.
Speaker 2:Number eight get your junk out of your house. Get the junk food out of your house. If you are tempted, every single day you go into your kitchen in your living room and there's like snacks and candies and things like that. Just an eyesight, you're just going to grab them. You're not even hungry. I see people so many times that go into the kitchen. They'll have like little candies or snacks or sweet treats, cookies, just on their kitchen table just sitting there, you walking in the kitchen. You don't even want anything, right, you're just going into your kitchen but because you saw it, you're like I'll just grab one. You are setting yourself up for failure. Get it out right.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't put alcohol in somebody's house that is an alcoholic. You wouldn't put drugs in somebody's house that you know has a drug addiction. You would completely eliminate it. So you need to ask yourself where are you in the level of being confident in saying no? Because if you're not, then you need to eliminate it. Now some of you guys are going to say, well, I have kids. Okay, me too.
Speaker 2:Now here's the difference If you have kids at your home same concept I would not put anything in eyesight. Put healthier options fruits, bananas, apples. You want to do some almonds, nuts, whatever you can have those things out if you want. But those cookies, the treats, the sweets, whatever put those up in a cabinet in the back, like it's going to take you some effort to even go back there and get it. So I'm hoping by the time you are fighting your way to get back to those little sweet treats, in your subconscious you're like I know I shouldn't be doing this. You know what I mean. It's like somebody's like tapping you on the shoulder Don't do it, don't do it. So I'm hoping that delays it enough to where you're like dude, I don't need it, I don't need it. Right, make those sort of things hard to get accessed.
Speaker 2:And it's the same thing for your kids. I mean, you guys are setting the standards and expectations for your kids If they see you. And the normality is we just come home, we watch Netflix, I eat Cheetos, drink a Dr Pepper. They don't know any better. That's their normality. But ask yourself this are you happy with your life? Are you happy with your health? Do you have health conditions, medical conditions that could be prevented purely by just moving a little more? And then now, do you want your kids to go through the same thing that you're going through? I would hope not. So instead of just thinking about yourself, think about you being a leader, being an example, being a leader. I mean, it's crazy to me that it's just like that is not even thought about the kids. These kids are young, they're watching you, they're learning just by watching.
Speaker 2:You don't have to say anything, but your actions will do all the talking, that's for sure. All right, so do your best to keep all of those things out of your house until you get to a point where you have that confidence and that ability to say no if you had to. I'm not saying you can never have a cookie. I'm not saying you can never have a soft drink. I'm not saying that you can never have these things, but you shouldn't be having them every day. So, until you get to a point where you can be able to control your emotions and your feelings when it comes to those sorts of foods, just don't have them in there. I wouldn't, I really wouldn't. And have the alternatives, like we talked about.
Speaker 2:Okay, number nine stop talking bad about yourself and stop joking about your health. Listen, we live in a mean world. Social media is tough. Everybody got something to say, you know, and not all of it is nice. So let them do all the negative talking. You don't need to do any more of it. Talk good to yourself.
Speaker 2:The words that come out of your mouth you don't realize this. You're listening to the words that are coming out of your house and it is going into your subconscious. Those words are powerful. You ever get real frustrated. I used to do this. You ever get real frustrated that you're trying to do something you can't figure out. You're like, damn, I'm so stupid I can't believe I did that. Never say that, never say anything like that. You say that enough, you'll believe it. You need to tell yourself that you can do things. All right, you can do it and it just is going to take time and it's going to take work and it's going to be hard, but anything worth having is hard.
Speaker 2:So stop talking negative to yourself and those of you that are joking about your health. I know a couple people that do this. You know you're overweight and you kind of like laugh Ha ha ha, it's so hard to get my hoodie on. Or ha ha ha, you know I love eating. Like don't do that. I'm not saying we can't joke around, but if you're doing that to hide your feelings or so others don't make fun of you or you guys can kind of giggle and laugh together. If it's serious to you, don't do that. Don't joke about your health. Your health is serious. Without it you're going to be real sad. I promise you that. So if you're in a condition or a position you're pre-diabetic, maybe you are diabetic. High cholesterol, you know, can't fit in your clothes. You're overweight, like don't joke about that. That's serious.
Speaker 2:You need to handle that. And if you can't do it alone, you need to find someone that can support you. And it doesn't have to be like getting a coach. You can get around other individuals, like at the gym. There's a lot of meal prep companies out there that are very well, very well like to get you included into what they're doing. There's run clubs. I mean you want to start surrounding yourself with healthy individuals.
Speaker 2:I made this post the other day that was talking about your friends are assigned, not aligned, right. You go to school, you went to that school, so those friends there were really assigned to you. You have work friends. Those work friends are assigned because you work at that job. But ask yourself, if you never went to that job, went to that school, would you pick them? Would you choose them individually to be a good friend to you? Maybe yes, maybe no. Choose your friends wisely.
Speaker 2:Okay, and the last one, number 10,. Nutrition is for weight loss. Okay, weightlifting is for building muscle and cardio. Cardio, it's in the word. It is for cardiovascular health. Don't mix and match these. You have to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. You have to be in a calorie surplus to gain weight. Period, nutrition is the number one focal point when it comes to weight loss and weight gain.
Speaker 2:Okay, without getting into all the hormones and all that kind of stuff, weight training lifting build muscle. You are not weightlifting to burn body fat. You're not weightlifting to tone muscle. And, oh, chris, I don't want to get bulky. Trust me, if it was that easy to get bulky, we'd have a lot bigger individuals walking around the world. It's not as easy as you think. If I can put on and this is me trying hard, like hard If I could put six, eight pounds of lean muscle tissue on, oh my God, I'm thrilled. I am thrilled. It is not easy and that's me trying hard. Like following a strict routine, a strict nutrition plan, like I'm dialed in. It's tough, it's not easy. So get that out of your mind. You can still build muscle, but you're not going to get bulky, okay.
Speaker 2:And then cardio should be for cardiovascular health. You should be able to, you know, breathe better, pump blood to the body and the muscles a lot more efficiently. You know, do that. And even cardio, like walking, jogging this is a great time for you guys to quote unquote meditate. Meditation is not always sitting on the floor cross-legged with your with your thumbs and pointer finger in a circle. You know, you can get into a meditative state by just being out in nature, feeling some some real sun and vitamin D on you, getting some fresh air is quite relaxing and it gets the brain thinking. This is like my prime time to really just come up with great ideas and just to kind of just zone out for a minute. So use that for that. Now there are ways that you can potentially put yourself in a further deficit because it's more physical activity.
Speaker 2:But this goes back to why your metabolism is so important. I would rather be able to burn more calories by doing nothing than have to do an extra like 30 minutes of like running and jogging. You know what I'm saying. It's a lot easier to cut out 30 or I'm sorry, 300 calories from a cookie versus burning 300 calories on a treadmill. I would definitely not eat the cookie if calories were an issue for me.
Speaker 2:So those are my top 10 question answers tips for you guys. Hopefully this is helpful. I do want to do a little more down the road of these types of episodes. Like I said, I think we're going to start doing a you know, two episodes a week. One be more like this to help you guys with your health and fitness goals, and the other one's going to be more of a mindset shift, because that is just as important, because if you don't have your mind right, none of this stuff is going to work. None of this, and probably you got a lot of that just from me talking about these 10 tips. You know a lot of it has to do with your perspective and the way that you're thinking. All right, so if you want longevity, if you want to have something that's sustainable, I hope you guys keep tuning in.
Speaker 2:If this was helpful to anybody, do me a favor, just subscribe. Do me a favor, just subscribe. Leave me a five-star review. That would be great. I appreciate it. Share it with anybody that may want to hear it. That's my only ask. I keep doing this, I enjoy it and I want to keep giving you guys value. So I hope you guys have a good rest of the week. I'll see you on the next episode. Peace.