53- Built for Real Life: The Fitness Shift Every Woman Needs

If you’ve ever felt that fitness just doesn’t fit your life, you’re not alone. In this episode, Kat shares a story she hears repeatedly from high-achieving moms and career-driven women who are burnt out, overwhelmed, and starting to think they are the problem. Spoiler alert: you’re not. The program is.

Kat breaks down the key difference between build and maintenance phases, why most plans fail busy women over 35, and how shifting your approach can help you feel strong, energized, and successful, without overhauling your life. Whether you're in the thick of parenting, balancing a demanding job, or both, this episode will leave you feeling seen—and ready to train smarter, not harder.

 ✨ Ready to stop starting over? Book a free discovery call, and let’s build a plan that works with your life, not against it. There is no pressure—just a real conversation.
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00:00 Introduction: A Common Struggle

00:24 Welcome to MilesFromHerView

01:52 A Familiar Story of Frustration

02:41 The Real Problem: It's Not You

03:43 Introducing C Fit Strength

06:11 Understanding Fitness Phases

10:23 Adapting Workouts to Real Life

12:44 Personal Experience and Coaching Philosophy

16:01 Conclusion and Call to Action

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Transcript

KAT: 0:00

She sat across from me, tired, overwhelmed, and questioning everything. She tried it all programs, challenges, trainers, different gyms, all of it. And still, she said the words I've heard too many times to count. Maybe I'm just not billed for this. I. That moment, it stuck with me because the truth is she's not the problem, but no one had ever told her that. Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties. With nearly two decades of experience, I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood, all while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I am Kat. I am your host. I am so happy the weather has finally turned to spring, and I will say this, if you hear birds chirping in the background or maybe some road noise, my office door is open right now. Couple reasons behind that. My dogs are with me and they're running in and out, so. Please forgive the background noise, if any does pop up on the recording. I just cannot get enough of this weather and I hope you are getting out, walking, running, cycling, doing whatever you can do to get outside and enjoy this terrific weather and hopefully where you're located. The weather is amazing and you are just. Enjoying it. So today I wanna share a story that is probably gonna familiar, be familiar to a lot of you, you know, and it starts with a conversation that I recently had with a mom of little ones. She came to me just completely exhausted, frustrated, and honestly questioning if she'd ever be the kind of woman who could stay consistent with her fitness. We talked about everything she had tried, the different programs, trainers, online, challenges, just everything. Everything you can think of. You name it, she's tried it, baby, this sounds familiar for you. How many programs have you tried different trainers online challenges, thinking this would be the one thing? Well, she looked at me and said something I have heard so many times before. Maybe I'm just not built for this. Maybe I'll just never be someone who sticks with it. The thing is, with this statement, I hear it on almost every single discovery call I have with new leads and honestly. It just breaks my heart because I know there's a better way, but I also totally get where the fatigue and frustration are coming from the programs that they've tried. Just don't consider the full picture, and after enough failed attempts, it's easy for you to start believing it's you. The words, maybe I'm just not built for this. I have mixed feelings. Empathy because I've been there, frustration because the industry keeps recycling the same old solution. However, this gives me such a deep sense of purpose because this is exactly what I do. It actually gives me this push to keep showing up and showing women what's possible when the program finally fits them. I wanna take a quick moment to share this. Exact realization is at the heart of what I do. C Fit strength. If you're a busy mom who feels like every program asks you to mold your life around it instead of the other way around, I created C Fit for You. We design strength training that adapts to your life. Not the other way around. It's personalized, flexible, and rooted in the seasons in which you are going through. If this sounds like what you've been looking for, keep listening and we're gonna dive into all of it. So let's get to back to that moment in the conversation. And this is where I had to pause her because I want to say this to every woman who has felt this way. It is not you. It's the program. Most fitness programs, even the good ones, are built for an idealized version of life, unlimited time, consistent high energy, and zero interruptions. I mean, that all sounds amazing. I would, I would love that. I don't know if you're like, that sounds epic, but let's be real. That is just not how life works. Especially not when you're a mom or managing a career or frankly just being a human. So where exactly does working out fit into all that? For most women I talk to, it doesn't. Or it only fits in when they sacrifice something else like sleep sanity or one more thing they should be doing. And when you manage, when you do manage to block out time, the universe senses it. The dog throws up. Your kid starts crying. The boss schedules a quick meeting that runs over and someone needs help with homework, your workout window disappears. Before you even press play on the video, pull up your workout or pick out your dumbbells. So what happens? You try harder. You try to make that perfect plan fit into your very imperfect life. You push through the fatigue, you muscle your way through the few weeks that you can, and then you burn out. You skip a day, you quit. And then you think you're the problem, but you are not the problem. And this is something that we work through constantly in cat Fit strength. Whether you are deep in the newborn fog or juggling five drop offs a day, your program should work with your real life and not add another layer of pressure. That's why my coaching includes support for both build phases and maintenance phases. You don't have to go all in all the time. In fact, the quickest, that's the quickest way to burn out. Let's break that down for a second. See, there are seasons in fitness. There is a push phase where you challenge yourself and there's a maintenance phase where the goals literally for you just to hold the line and keep moving forward. The build phase is when you're pushing, you're gaining strength, you're chasing performance goals, and then there's that maintenance phase where your life demands are more. And so. That's where we're just focusing on holding the line, maintaining that habit. Let's break that down a little bit. When I say the push phase. That does not mean that we're doing every workout at super high intensity, all out maxes with the heaviest thing you can lift. But what that means is we can have or put our energy and our focus into our workouts a little bit more. That's where you feel like, man, I'm clicking, this is happening. Life is going swimmingly. Work is at a balance. Kids are good. That maintenance phase is when life. Throws you those curve balls and we need to scale back or hold that line. So what this might look like, so we give it in more tangible terms. We'll start with that. Maintenance phase is when a work project pops up. Partner travel, kid illness. Or right now we're at the end of the year with schooling. There is a lot of things that is gonna come up. I know in my schedule, my kids have a lot of extra things. The school has different activities, different concerts happening, sports, et cetera. So what I look at is how can I honor my energy? It may look like for a client who has been routinely doing three strength workouts, that we go down to two strength workouts. It may look like we. If the world is just falling or all around you, where you're being hit with all of it, a kid illness, partner, travel, or even travel for yourself in work projects piling up. It might be that week or two weeks. We are gonna focus on mobility, focus on getting quality nutrition in and sleep because that is gonna serve you more in that time than trying to push harder in your workouts. Ideally, yes, I would love to get a strength training in there, but we're gonna pull back. We're gonna make sure that we are not falling off the proverbial track with our fitness, turning ourselves into guilting and shaming so that we build that frustration and that greater resistance to maintaining our routine. Because here is the fact, there is never gonna be a time in your life where you are going to finally hit that utopic. Picture where you're never ever going to miss a workout. You're always gonna have that amazing energy resource. And you're always gonna complete the workout because you have the time. That is not realistic, and that is what I started out by saying is the, a lot of the programs out there are built on this ideology and made to make you believe that you have to have unlimited time or people out there, even in your position with all the things and all the titles behind your name have unlimited time, constantly high energy. Flawless routines and that's just not the case. That's not real life. So that's where if you have that push phase, knowing where in theory'cause things of what if in life come up. You can push a little harder with your workouts, meaning it might be okay, I can manage three strength training routines, two cardio routines in a week, so essentially five workouts that I have the capacity here, and within that. We honor our energy through those workouts. I talk with my clients a little bit more on like, how do we understand the rate of perceived exertion? I've gone into this, and I'm not gonna go into it today on the podcast, but in that push phase, we know we have that time there. Again, not unlimited. I'm not talking about, okay, my clients are doing two, three hour workouts. No, they're, they know they can. Get the 30 minute workout in because there aren't those unforeseen or other life stressors seem to be controlled. Okay. In a maintenance phase, like we're coming up in summer, a lot of my clients are like, I'm traveling more. My kids are home. My routine is a little bit more up in the air. So we look at, okay, here's where we're not gonna really focus on building strength, we're not going to be focused on. Pushing more aerobic capacity. Here we're going to be looking at, we wanna keep moving, we wanna switch. Maybe our cardio training specific workouts are going to be revolving around chasing our kids in the yard, playing soccer with them in the yard, playing basketball with the kids, playing tag, going for family bike rides, family hikes, walks on the beaches. We're really using that as the capacity of how do we nurture that cardiac, uh. Component there, that cardio component there so that we get that movement still. It's not saying it goes away, we're transforming it so it works with life. The strength training, depending on what the travel looks like there it may be, Hey, you know what? I cut back my hours or maybe I work home from home during the summer so I don't have my gym that is there at my office building available to me. This is what I have at home. We adapt, we pivot, we. Focus the workouts on that because it sets you up for success. So really it is helping you build that resilience of when life gets chaotic, you learn how to show up. Okay? You learn that I don't walk out on myself, my health in these times because I can pivot and still feel good in moving my body and it still counts. So the biggest problem is programs out there do not teach you this. They don't teach you why. There needs to be a maintenance and a build phase. The programs communicate to you that you should be pushing a hundred percent of the time. But real fitness, sustainable fitness has to flex with your life and when you stop trying to make your life fit into someone else's perfect program, and when you let your program fit you. That's when consistency becomes doable. Both phases matter. You don't need to become a different person, you just need a different approach. And I know this because I've lived it too. I thought I had it all figured out when I became a mom. I had spent years college coaching. I knew how to write a killer training plan. I knew how to set my athletes up for success. I knew how to get the best out of myself prior to being a mom. But let me tell you, motherhood humbled me so, so fast. Unpredictable nap times, unpredictable sleep, running on zero sleep. I lost total control over my own schedule and for years I thought discipline looked like getting up at 4:00 AM after only getting about an hour of sleep, running on fumes, and then forcing myself to chase this mythologically eating super clean and squeezing workouts in no matter what. I was a coach. I knew how to program, but when I became a mom, I kept trying to do fitness the old way. Like I wasn't also dealing with a newborn, no sleep, unpredictable days, and a body that just felt foreign to me. Like I didn't understand why what I used to do wasn't working now and when my body didn't respond like it used to, I would double down. I push myself harder, I would look at, okay, well I need to cut calories. I need to omit different food groups. I need to just keep pushing. And honestly, it made me feel, feel worse. It wasn't until I hit a wall mentally and physically that I realized the best plan in the world means nothing if it isn't built for the whole person. And that shift changed everything. I started training with my body. Instead of against it, I embraced the seasons of maintenance without guilt, and that's when I finally started to get strong in a way that felt good, not forced. And that's exactly how I coach now with Cat Fit strength. I don't try to jam your life into something that's rigid and unrealistic for you. I build a program around your life. Strength training that adapts to your schedule. You can find real strength without having to be in a gym for hours. It's possible, trust me, and movement that fits into the pockets of your day. The truth be told, not every person is going to have a perfect amount of time to get a workout in, but if we can work with ourselves and work with our schedule, you will find movement. You will see those gains that you are looking for and nutrition that supports. And not punishes your body like life is too short to punish yourself. Food is too good to sit here and punish yourself, and there are ways to eat in which it serves you without sacrificing on nutrient dense foods and accountability that really honors the humanity and not your willpower, because honestly, motivation is fleeting. You're not going to feel motivated every day. I don't feel motivated every day. Literally, my desk is two feet from a gym, and I don't always feel motivated to get in and pick up a weight. Whether you're deep in the thick of parenting or leading a team at work, or just trying to reclaim 10 minutes to yourself, you don't need to become someone else. You don't need to be more disciplined. You need a program that finally fits you. I'm gonna tell you this, if you're tired of feeling like fitness is something that you're failing at. I would love to have a chat with you to see it's a no pressure conversation, just to see where you're at. You can even just message in to the podcast or email me at kat@kat.fit I, and I'd love to hear where you're at. Also, if you are a rock in it and you're like, man, I found a program that really is amazing for me. Let me know. That's amazing. I would love to celebrate your wins too. If this episode has been helpful, feel free to share it with another friend. Pass it along. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView Powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to Stay updated on the new episodes and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast, and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next, you can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit Strength or share this episode with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember. Fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.