#164: Will You Look Like Me If You Do My Program?

Someone commented on my latest reel: "Show me your legs. I want to know if your program is going to get my legs in shape too."

That one comment opened up something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time.

Because fitness influencers everywhere are using their bodies as "proof" that their programs work. The implied promise is: 'Do this workout, look like me.' And most of them will never pull back the curtain on what's actually going on behind the scenes.

In this episode, I'm getting completely honest about what you can actually expect. I talk about the role of genetics, fat distribution, what those before-and-after photos aren't showing you, and why comparing your results to anyone else's is a trap.

I'm also sharing the honest truth about my own results and why my upper body is outpacing my legs.

If you've ever looked at a fit woman online and wondered, "Could I look like her?", this one is for you.

Enjoy the show!

Resources mentioned:

Learn to Lift

Strength Training Membership

Transcript

#164: Will You Look Like Me If You Do My Program?

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 Plus Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today I wanna talk about a comment on a post I put out last week. I'd posted a video showing my body. I've been training for four years and before I get started with my fat loss phase, I wanted kind of a before picture of myself. And the comment said, show me your legs. I wanna know if your program is gonna get my legs in shape. Now, I was wearing leggings and a jog bra, so no, you couldn't see my leg muscles in the same way as you could my upper body. But I think that's not the point. That comment opened up something that I've been wanting to talk about for a long time, [00:01:00] because everywhere you look, fitness influencers are selling programs using their own bodies as like proof, right? And the promise, the implied promise there is that if you do this workout, you will look like me. And today I wanna talk about what you can actually expect, I'm also gonna share the honest truth about my own results, so if you've ever looked at a woman online who's fit and looking the way you wanna look, and you've wondered, could I look like her? This one is for you.

So this is one of the reasons that I actually don't like to share before and after pictures very much. I know they're rampant online women getting various results, and I think some of the worst are coaches that work with women who are hopping on stage, and they'll [00:02:00] show pictures of somebody in their bulk phase or at the very beginning of their journey, and then what they look like right before they're stepping on stage. I mean, come on. You cannot expect to get those results unless you're putting in that kind of crazy work, but they're not telling you about everything that's going on behind the scenes. 

First of all, there's genetics, which is playing a huge role. We all have different body proportions. We all have different ways that our muscles are attached to our skeleton. We have different amounts of type one and type two muscle fibers in each of our muscles. So. Those things alone are gonna make a huge difference in how we look. Even if we were to put on the exact same amount of muscle, like let's say on our biceps or somewhere [00:03:00] else, they would just sit differently. Some pop out more, some stay more flat. And your genetics are gonna actually affect how much yours could pop or how much you could put on your body. So for me, for example, I know just from looking at women around me who are strength training as well, there are a lot of women who look a lot more muscular. They have more poppy muscles than I do, but they're lifting a lot less than I am. So even though I'm strong. It's not like when you get this strong, your muscles will be this big. That's just not the way it goes. And the ones that are stepping on stage, and a lot of the people that look amazing on Instagram, they're like genetic unicorns. They have. Beautiful bodies and then they've done a lot of work to get them to, you know, the max that they can be. And then they've [00:04:00] learned posing camera angles, all the lighting, all the things. So you do need to keep these kinds of things in mind when you are looking at their results. 

And really, we are so different that even if you were to stick. People into rat experiment kind of conditions and feed them the exact same thing, give them the exact same workout plan, um, exact amount of sleep. Everything, every variable you can imagine. You know, just keep them consistent. They would have different results. And then when you go into the real world where people have different stress levels, they're eating at different amounts, might be going out partying, their sleep is disrupted, they've got stress in their life, they're doing more or less of their workouts, they're training harder or less hard. I mean, come on. [00:05:00] So the results are gonna be all across the board.

And especially when you're comparing yourself to somebody who's really doing this for a living, like staying looking good for a living, they rarely give a peek behind the curtain to how much time they are spending. In the gym working out how hard they're working out, how much they are restricting their calorie intake. They're not drinking, they don't go out to dinner with friends. They are completely controlling everything that they do, so they're, they're just playing a whole different ball game than you or I. And honestly, if you were to actually see what all goes into looking the way they do, you'd probably come to the same conclusion that I have that. It just ain't worth it. I'll [00:06:00] keep a few extra kilos of fat on my body so that I can go out with my friends, go out with my parents to dinner so that I can have that glass of wine. Or in my case, it's normally a gin and tonic, but you know, those are the life trade-offs people make. And you need to decide where you are on that spectrum. But it would be really nice if a lot more of them would open up about what it actually takes to keep looking the way they look.

So I talked about the muscle genetics that go into how you look, and then the other piece is your fat distribution genetics, because that is also controlled by your genes. You probably have a friend who is lucky in that gains all her weight in her chest, or at least in my life, that would be a lucky thing rather than on your belly.

And you yourself have probably noticed that, hey, [00:07:00] when you lose a little bit of weight, it comes off of somewhere first, and oh my God, it is stubbornly holding on somewhere else. And that is something that we cannot change. That is our genetics. And by the way, that changes a little bit when we go into menopause because when we lose the estrogen, our fat starts to actually migrate towards our midsection, our belly, and especially visceral fat, which is that not good fat to accumulate, which is between your organs and is harder to get moving from there. So. If you see somebody and they have six pack abs, well it may be that actually that's the first place that they lose fat and the last place that they put fat on. So they're able to maintain those six pack abs really, really easily. But they gain weight in their [00:08:00] thighs and for them to have leaner legs is super duper effort. So we're, we're all different.

For me, I gain weight first in my belly, second in my thighs. When I lose weight, it is my upper body that starts to lose it first 

so there are a lot of factors going on in what results you will get. And I wanna say that I hope that that does not discourage you to get going because the thing is that you have your God given genetics, or if you don't believe in God, you anyway have your genetics that you, you know, that are unique to you and you can always improve the strength. The fitness, the health of your body, . So if you follow my program, absolutely you will get stronger. Your [00:09:00] body will be in better shape. It may not look anything like my body because our genetics are so different, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth doing the exercise right.

So when this woman asks that, Hey, can you show me your legs so I can know whether your programming works for legs? I can give you all the program, all the information so that you can do the very best with your body. 

And then I wanna talk a little bit about just my own. Legs versus upper body thing. I just did a body fat measurement. I talked about it in last week's episode and I had gained muscle a significant amount of muscle for somebody who's been training as long as I am, but it'd been mostly in my torso and my arms not much in my legs. And the reason for that. Is very clear. It is that I [00:10:00] have a knee with arthritis and I have a hip that had an old injury from childhood and, and those affect my training. I know I could. Leg press more than I'd leg press because I get up to 15 reps and I'm like, okay, I'm not close to failure. But the thing is that my knee, when I increase weights on that, it starts to talk to me and say, Hey, you're at the limits of where I'm gonna be happy with you. And so I hold off and. I have also had the issue that if I push too hard on either one of those parts, then I end up a little bit overdoing it. They start to get cranky and then I have to back off and build back, and I am tired of doing that. So I've been like a slow and steady turtle with challenging my lower body. [00:11:00] I am very strong on my lower body. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am not like. Not training my lower body. I am leg pressing twice my body weight and all the things, but the progress is not the same kind as I'm getting in my upper body, which doesn't have these kinds of niggly things bothering me.

So each one of us is going to have a very different journey and very different results. And it is going to be a combination of so many things. It's gonna be our genetics. Our muscles. Our skeletal structure and where fat distribution is on our body, that is gonna be a big part of it. But then also things like how consistently are you able to train? So I'm somebody who can go consistently. That's just something I prioritize. I prioritize fitness ever since I was a kid. Like if there's something I'm gonna leave outta my life, it's not gonna be my fitness program. So, and I know that's not for [00:12:00] everybody, so some people will be less consistent and then their results will come more slowly. You know, that's just. That's just life. And then there are things like, how's your nutrition? Is it on point? , how about your recovery? How about your sleep? How about your stress levels? So we are all a wonderful, unique combination of factors, which is really going to affect our results.

What I hope to do when I share pictures of me with muscle at age 55 being strong, lifting heavy in the gym, is I wanna show you that it is possible not to look identical to me. I wanna show you that it is possible. To be strong, to have muscle, to change your body, not to be identical to mine, but to be the best version of you.

And I hope [00:13:00] that when you look in the future at people's accounts and you're thinking, oh man, maybe I should start doing that exercise because oh my God, look at her glutes. And she says, it came from that exercise. It's like. Ah, there's a lot of layers in that. Onion to peel probably is not just that particular exercise that did it.

So I hope that this episode has helped you to take a little bit more realistic perspective When you see those and you think, oh my God. I want that. Maybe I need to do those things. 

What you need in order to build muscle, get your body stronger is to get your hands on a good proper strength training program and then progressively overload. And then when you've gotten comfortable strength training. Then you start to lift heavier. Increasing your intensity, decreasing your rep [00:14:00] ranges. And I talk about that in other videos. And if you're in my programs, for example, this happens naturally because that's how I program.

 And this is actually something that I do differently than I think anybody out there that, at least that I've run across, is that I put everybody through the same path to strength. So when you start with me in Learn to Lift you learn the basics. Then you join my membership and the membership goes block by block. Each block progressing you from the previous one so that you start with exercises that are maybe more simple to learn. Though I do give R DLS to everybody right at the start because it's such an important exercise. And then you progress over time and then we start to decrease your rep [00:15:00] range at a certain point where you should be ready for it. Whereas if you jump into a lot of other people's programs. Everybody is doing the same phase in that program. So if you're a beginner, you might be doing the same thing as somebody who's been lifting for 10 years. And I do think there's a little bit of a learning curve 

 So anyway. Get to strength training. Apply the progressive overload and build the body that you wanna spend the rest of your life in the strongest, fittest, healthiest version of you. And with that, I leave you till next week and wish you happy training.