MakeSumGains
Are you ready to get real and raw AF about the journey that we call life? Leave the bullsh*t behind and tune in for intimate conversations that will inspire you to live out your most aligned life. Leave limited thinking and self doubt at the door and let's tap into your full potential. Your host, health and mindset coach, and entrepreneur Summer Vennewitz, will dive deep into a variety of topics, including developing a winning mindset, overcoming obstacles, cultivating resilience, optimizing physical well-being, mastering time management, embracing the power of self-belief and more! Let's do the d*mn thing!!
MakeSumGains
You already know how to count calories and train hard... so why aren’t you living in a body you love?
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Are you tired of counting calories and working out hard, yet still feeling unhappy in your body? You're not alone! In this episode, we unravel the complex relationship between mindset and fitness that keeps many of us trapped in cycles of frustration and self-doubt. We discuss why accumulating knowledge on fitness isn’t enough if we continue to measure our self-worth through external validation.
As athletes, we often chase after an ideal body image, yet what we truly desire lies in aligning our actions with our values. Together, we explore the importance of redefining what it means to live a life we love while integrating fun and excitement into our routines.
This episode challenges the norms of diet culture and encourages listeners to embrace their true selves. You'll leave inspired to shift from restriction to fulfillment and find ways to inject joy into your fitness journey. Join us as we redefine our goals and start living not just for the grind, but for the fun of it.
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Welcome to the Make Some Gains podcast. I'm your host, summer Venowitz, and this is a space where I'll be cutting through the bullshit and stripping away the filter. My aim is to help you reframe your mind, question the norms and push you to achieve new levels of success. Through raw conversations, I'll open up about my personal experiences, my ideas and my struggles. I want to empower you to live up to your full potential. Let's go make some gains. Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:How the fuck are we doing? I have my third ever gymnastics class tonight. It's going well. I did a front walkover handspring mix last week on the actual floor. So we're progressing, we're doing good.
Speaker 1:Um, this week I've really I I kind of hit a point where I'm like I want even more fun in my week. My dog is jingle jingling around with his collar lay down, buddy. Um, yeah, that that's kind of what's new this week is, outside of even just gymnastics, outside of. I clearly love the gym, but outside of all of that, I have been trying to think of creative little ways and like points of joy that I can add into my life. Um, so, even after I record this, I'm gonna go out. It's like 60 degrees in Colorado. It's freaking February 25th and it's 60 degrees and sunny and all the snow is gone, so me and Ozzy are gonna go for a little roller blade ride. Um, what else I think I am gonna start incorporating? So I did a trial pass to yoga a few weeks ago, but it's so. It's like 15 minutes away from my house and I'm like I know that I am gonna have so much resistance to that, so I think I might try a few other places. Um, let me know if anybody relates to this.
Speaker 1:But my energy it really kicks in later in the day. That's when I have the most motivation, like it's 2 45 right now, and I would say from here on, I usually have the most energy, the most motivation, and a lot of times what's been happening recently is Logan will come home from work and he's ready to be in relax, relax mode and me I I mean I spend all day on screens between looking at this freaking computer, my phone. I am on screens all day and I feel like at nighttime, naturally, that's when I want to do something different, do something fun, do something that maybe I haven't tried before. So Logan comes home and he's like well, let's watch comedy. Let let's watch something. And then my life just feels boring, even though, right, we can focus on the positives, we can focus on the negatives. Like there's all these positives, but I'm like, how can life get even 10 times better than what it is? And this is just me, like I am so, so into growth.
Speaker 1:I would say, back in the day, it used to be from a place of scarcity. It used to be from a place of scarcity, it used to be from a place of I'm not enough, so I need to go out and do all these things. Now it's just like yo, we only live one life and I don't want to spend it just going day by day by day, doing the same fucking things over and over again. So this is where this idea is like, okay, around maybe 6 pm, 7 pm, that's when my uh gymnastic starts, so that's amazing on Tuesdays. But outside of that, I'm like, what are some other fun little things that I can do? Places I can go, whether it's alone, I don't even give a shit. I'm like I will do it alone. Um, so yoga is something I uh, I mean my hairstylist.
Speaker 1:Again, we're planning monthly events. So our event for uh March, we're going line dancing, which is so fun. Um yeah, we're going to do, try new things that maybe we wouldn't normally try without a group, so that'll be fun. Um, I'm like, ooh, crocheting could be fun. Um, yeah, if anybody has any other ideas, let me know. But I'm I'm looking for fun stuff to do.
Speaker 1:I used to be so good at that in high school too. It was like every single weekend I had some adventure planned for me and my friends, whether they knew it or not, or wanted to go or not. I'm like, yeah, I'm dragging you, I'm driving, I'm paying. Just come, let's go, let's go, and somewhere along the line in the adult days, it's what is it? I don't know. It's harder, it's it's fun in the moment, but I feel like it's so hard to plan and get something on the calendar and to actually do do it because of, I don't know, energy, responsibilities, what else I don't know. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. So, yes, that is something that is an absolute must I, outside of just a work calendar and a productivity calendar, blah, blah, blah I want to create a fun calendar where it's like each weekend there's something fun planned, something different planned. It doesn't even have to be like extravagant. It doesn't have to be a hot air balloon or skydiving, but just something that I haven't tried. So that's kind of yeah, that's the theme moving forward, but let's get the fuck into this episode because I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1:As you can see it's titled, you Already Know how to Count your Calories and Train Hard, so why Aren't you Living in a Body that you Love, most likely in 2025,? Your problem is not lack of knowledge. It's not lack of information. We are in an information society. We are in an information era. We are jam-packed with information. Chances are you know exactly what you need to do to get lean, to build muscle, to quote-unquote, do it right.
Speaker 1:But it's not the knowledge that's the problem. It's the fact that you're still operating from an identity that keeps you stuck right. You can freaking track your calories and your head and your sleep. You show up to the gym. It's like like your fucking second home. You know the exact steps, right, but why do we still feel stuck? Why do we still feel stuck in a body that we're not proud of, that we pick apart, that is uncomfortable, that our clothes don't fit on Because your mind? I cannot. I cannot fucking drill this into your head enough.
Speaker 1:I have spent 10 years. I'm not some fucking little years. I'm not some fucking little influencer, teeny bop, who is posting about my core circuit. I have been in the game for 10 fucking years. I have been through every single freaking cycle and phase and era that you could possibly go through in a fitness journey and a personal not maybe not personal development. I think we're always developing, but in the fitness journey not, maybe not personal development. I think we're always developing.
Speaker 1:But in the fitness journey, I'm telling you from my own experience, from working with 400 plus clients at this point it's not because of the knowledge, it's not because of the information, it's because of your mindset, it's because of your emotions and your self-image. They are out of alignment with the results that you want and until you fix that, no amount of macros, no amount of training, no amount of discipline will make you feel how you actually want to feel Confident, sexy, outgoing, audacious, comfortable. None of those feelings will come until your mindset, emotions and self-image align with, with the woman that you want to become. So most women in the fitness space specifically think and and you know I tend to attract some type a high achievers because that's me. We fucking love it.
Speaker 1:But most women, especially in the fitness space if you're a high achiever, a type a, which most likely you are, if you're listening to this they think that if they just try harder they'll finally have a breakthrough. Right, it's just like I remember back in the day, I just need to, I just need to do 75 hard again, even though I fit failed it the last two times. I just need to get back on, I need to cut out sweets and then after those 75 days, like I'll be cured, I'll be good, right, maybe I? I work with so many females who are like well, I had this body at one point in my life and I got there from slashing calories, so maybe I just need to slash my calories again. But my question is the first time, the first time that you ever slashed calories and you got the quote-unquote body, why don't you still fucking have it? If that approach worked, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:A lot of women think if I could just get my body to look like x or feel like x or feel comfortable, if I could, just if I could just be 10 to 15 pounds lighter, then I'd be confident, then I'd feel happy, then I'd feel good in my body, but the real fucking issue. Ooh, you guys, I am spicy. Today I recorded a TikTok and I'm like geez, summer, did you have to be? That mean, I am not the coach for the pussies. I am not the coach for the pussies. So sorry, that was a little bit extreme, but anyways, you need to be able to take some real fucking talk, because I'm going to dose it to you. Your actions don't matter if your mindset is still playing the same old script as it always has.
Speaker 1:I have a client in particular who she felt like she was doing everything right when she came to me. She's like I've been working with a coach for years. Now I am lifting six days a week, I'm eating all whole foods, I'm eating clean, but it never felt good enough. She hated her body. She kept binge eating, despite knowing quote-unquote better, knowing that she shouldn't be doing that, but feeling so out of control around the goddamn cookies. And why? Why? Well, first of all, there's a few different reasons why we can't eat 100% whole foods. We live in 2025. I talk about this all the time. We live in 2025 and there are temptations everywhere, so that's part of it.
Speaker 1:But also, on an identity level. Deep down, her self-worth was tied to being shredded. It didn't matter if she hit her macros. In her mind, it didn't even matter if if she lost the weight or she lost the fat in her mind, she believed that she wasn't doing enough. She was chasing an outcome that, honestly, when we dove into her values, it wasn't even aligned with the life that she truly wanted, right? And so what we changed is we got brutally honest about what she actually valued, right. When I asked her what are your top values in life? She's like starting a family, feeling strong and food freedom or being able to feel, you know, not fucking crazy around the food. And we reprogrammed her mindset to match that. Instead of this fitness jail cell mentality where you're just tied to all of all of the numbers and all of the success that again, maybe you, you consciously don't even give a shit about, you're just programmed to want to chase after it. So macros and training, calories and training it won't fix the fact that you're still living in a mental space that it just sucks If you're afraid to eat a cookie, you don't have a macro problem, you have a trust self-trust problem If you keep losing weight and still feel like it's not enough, like you don't have a training problem, you have a self-worth problem, right? If you, I'm.
Speaker 1:I talked to so many females who they're trying to get back to this body that they once had. I actually just had a conversation with a female yesterday and she's like, yep, I was a bodybuilder, I went through prep and I, even when I was a size two, I still wasn't even happy. I was still picking my body apart. Right, you're, you're quote-unquote making progress, but it never feels like enough. That's not a training problem, an eating problem, a discipline problem. It's a self-fucking-worth problem, right? I always say, if you and this isn't some like body positivity bullshit, all right, I'm not, I'm not here for just letting everything slip and being 300 pounds and and calling it good, like I'm not that woman.
Speaker 1:But if you don't appreciate your body for what it currently is, you will never, ever, ever appreciate it for what it becomes, period. Right, it's not because you didn't. You haven't lost enough fat, you haven't lost enough weight, you haven't made enough progress. It's because you don't have fucking self-worth. Oh, my god, I'm so spicy.
Speaker 1:If you keep falling off off track and self-sabotaging and starting over every Monday, you don't have a discipline problem. You don't need more discipline. You don't need more willpower, especially if you're a type a overachiever. You are a female who has a rocking career. You maybe you're a mom. You're fucking great at it. You're good at everything that you do. Most likely, if you keep falling off track and self-sabotaging in your health and fitness, you don't need more discipline. You need to break the cycle of grasping for control.
Speaker 1:All right, I had another client who there's a very common theme here. She was shredded. At one point. She had hired your classic health and fitness coach who had given her a macro plan and a workout plan and she looked perfect on the outside, but behind closed doors she was food obsessed. She was like she couldn't eat peanut butter or granola bars or couldn't have any of that around. And then the second that maybe she bought candy for her friend's birthday, she would eat the entire bag on the way home. So, food obsessed, she felt just pissed off. She felt weak and she felt miserable and she thought she thought that she needed to be smaller to be happy. And then, right, go figure After, after getting to that point, she rebounded, gained I don't know 20 pounds.
Speaker 1:We'll call it point. She rebounded, gained I don't know 20 pounds, we'll call it and then spent the rest of her life, up until the point that we met wanting to get back to that shredded version because, because right before she was, she's seeking this external validation. We have an external validation problem in the fitness industry and in girl world and specifically where we seek it, right, our egos, the part of us that I described this at one point what the ego was on a different podcast, but it's, it's right, it's's. That's the part of us that, almost like the callous around our real selves, it's there to protect us, um, and it's something that develops early on in life, like all the way from childhood, and so what happens is most women, we grow up and we right, maybe we did really good in sports, we did really good in school, we got validated for our hard work, and that haunts us, it follows us into adulthood and we seek this external validation.
Speaker 1:So what was happening to her some uncomfortable conversations that we had is, I asked her, like when you were shredded? Right, you were food obsessed, you were angry, you were weak, you were miserable, but what's so positive about it? What did you love? What were the feelings that that body brought that really, it's so powerful that it makes you want to go back to that time. And through the conversation we got to the point of wow, I got a lot more compliments, I got a lot more attention, my social media engagement was way up. I just felt better. I, I, you know, I kept getting like people would come up to me in the gym and ask me if I was prepping, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, that's's external validation.
Speaker 1:And that shit sinks into our subconscious minds and so many females are living on autopilot. They're living based off of these values like external validation, without even realizing it, without even bringing the consciousness to it. And if you were actually conscious of why the fuck are you interested in things like bodybuilding, like, like getting ripped right, it's totally's totally okay, I think, to want to get jacked and want to get ripped from a place of. I can't wait to see what the fuck I'm capable of and this is going to add to my life. But the second that it starts to take away from your life, you lose your period, you lose friends, you lose your sex drive, you lose your control around food. That is when we are seeking external validation more than we are seeking health.
Speaker 1:And so, with this client in particular, what we had to do was we really had to shift again what she valued right. Instead of chasing abs, she focused on lifting heavy and running fast and actually enjoying her life and enjoying company and still being a fucking badass. And I remember one conversation, too. We talked about her definition of fit. Like she's like, well, when I was fit, my collarbones were popping out and my hips were popping out and my stomach was indented and I'm like, okay now, is that actually your definition of fit? And she looked at that and she's like, fuck no, it's lifting heavy, it's running fast, it's enjoying my life, it's it's feeling powerful. Like that is what fit is, it's not a look, it's not uh, uh, some cookie cutter bullshit, right? And so we readjusted her definition of fit and of healthy and what that looks like and what that feels like, and she was able then to lift the heaviest that she ever has, run the fastest that she ever has, and be able to have this respect, this like deep internal respect for her body. And in the future she can absolutely have aesthetic goals. But for the time being, it was about undoing all of that external validation that she had built up.
Speaker 1:So the reason why maybe you're you're stuck isn't because you need another fucking program, you need another meal plan, you need another workout routine. It's because you're still thinking like the old version of yourself. If you still have the same identity, right, you still identify as someone who restricts themselves and then you go into, maybe, a phase where it's like, okay, I'm going to try to not restrict myself. How long is that going to last If you deep down believe, oh my gosh, I have to restrict myself to be able to get jacked? You have to. So your identity comes first, your thoughts come second. Your thoughts dictate your actions and your actions dictate your results. It all stems from identity and this is where so many health and fitness coaches go wrong. They don't talk about this shit. Nobody's talking about this shit because nobody thinks about it. Half of the fucking health and fitness coaches out there they're bodybuilders. They're still living on an unconscious level and just teaching from an unconscious level. To all of these unconscious people. And I am here like wake the fuck up. Everybody needs to wake the fuck up.
Speaker 1:So ask yourself. Here's a list of questions that I want you to seriously write down and reflect on. So if you had your dream body today, what would you still be afraid of? Right? If you got dropped your dream body today, what would you still be afraid of? Would it be? Oh my gosh, I have to restrict to maintain this. Oh my gosh, I'm not worthy of this. Oh my gosh, this isn't going to stick around. What would you still be afraid of? What would your fears still be?
Speaker 1:Next number two am I chasing these goals, these fitness, these health goals, these aesthetic goals? Am I chasing them because they actually make me happy, or am I chasing them just because I think I should chase them, just because maybe I've felt a way in the past and I want to feel that way again and I feel like this is the only way to get me there, right? Am I chasing these fitness goals, these health goals, these aesthetic goals, to actually make myself happy, to build a life based off of my values, or just ones that I think I should have because of society, because of my parents, because of my upbringing, because of my experiences? Am I training and eating and making choices from a place of love and excitement and I can't wait to see what the fuck I'm capable of or from a place of fear and control. Am I training and eating and making decisions from a place of love and excitement or from a place of fear and control? Because until you change who you believe you are, you'll continue running in the same fucking loops over and over and over and over again, right?
Speaker 1:So the process that I went through many times. There's been many cycles of having to fucking learn all of this. That's why I'm here to stop you from making the same gosh dang mistakes that took me 10 years to finally figure out and like, crack the code for real, but how I live my life and how I teach my clients to live their lives and break free from the bullshit. You have to learn to trust yourself around food. You have to let go of needing to prove something through your body, needing to prove that you're capable, that you're worthy, that you're sexy, that you're capable, that you're worthy, that you're sexy through your body. We have to let go of this Like it's just such an icky energy, right? This energy of of fear and control and like obsession. Nothing good is ever going to come from that energy. We know that it's like.
Speaker 1:I think I saw a metaphor at one point. The control is like when you're in a pool and you have a balloon or a ball and you're trying to shove it down, right, you're shoving that balloon down as hard as you can. That's like you trying to control the situation and you basing all of your decisions off of fear and these negative feelings. You're pushing that balloon underneath the water. And then what happens? Eventually, you lose control of it and it comes shooting the fuck out of the pool, out of the water. That's the rebound right and we have to. We have to let go of this control and needing to prove something.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, you have to align your choices, your fitness, your health, your nutrition decisions, with your real values. And when I ask most people what are you, what do you value? They're like I don't fucking know. So this is so important. And again, a lot of times we have these conscious values like, oh, yeah, I value family and I value health, but then you're putting everybody else before yourself, you're putting your job before everything, you're burning yourself out the amount of like nurses that I work with who work 16 hour days and they eat one meal and they're like, yeah, I value my health. It's like, no, you value money, you value career, you value other people over your health at that point, and so you might consciously say that you have these values, but you're letting a subconscious system rule your life. So you have to start aligning fitness nutrition. So you have to start aligning fitness nutrition mindset with your real values, not just the diet culture bullshit.
Speaker 1:To wrap it up, you don't need a new diet plan. I promise you. You could put that in the fucking chat GPT, for gosh sakes. You could go to chat GPT, google. You could say give me a diet plan for the rest of the year. It would give you one. That's not what you need. It's not what you need, I promise you. What you need is this new identity and until you shift that, you're going to stay stuck, no matter how well you track your freaking calories or no matter how hard you train. We have to have to start trusting yourself, letting go of the external validation and trying to prove something, and running and functioning out of fear and control. And you have to start aligning your life with your true, true values.
Speaker 1:And this is the exact work that we do inside about us revolution. It is set up in. It is divided into six phases. That brings you through each of these, each of these phases. Number one looking at nutrition from a holistic perspective rather than a control perspective. It is from love and excitement, and how to nourish your body rather than how to starve your body to, you know, as a means to an end.
Speaker 1:The next phase is self-image identity work, so figuring out who the fuck you are, because that's so important. And then we move into emotional mastery, so being able to handle your emotions in any given situation and not let those bitches control your life. Then we move into values, then we move into environment, then we move into encompassing and intertwining every single one of those together. So if this is a journey that you're sensing you're like, oh, I could really go through that, I'm going to leave the link to the application in the show notes and we can chat from there about how to break the fucking cycle. And again, it's not. It's not the calorie count and the training hard. You already got that down, you already got that down right. And so it's about being able to operate from this identity that allows you to live in a body that you fucking love. So link in show notes. That's a wrap for this episode. I love ya and we'll talk next week.