How to Build Muscle as a Woman Without Getting Bulky

In this episode, I’m breaking down why building muscle as a woman is one of the best things you can do for your body, your confidence, and your long-term health.

We’re talking about what it actually takes to get that toned look so many women want, why lifting weights does not automatically make you bulky, and the three biggest pieces of the puzzle when it comes to building muscle: nutrition, training, and recovery.

I also talk about:

- why muscle matters for metabolism and healthy aging

- how much protein you really need

- why eating too little can hold you back

- how to train in a way that actually builds muscle

- why progressive overload matters

- the mindset shift that helps you stay consistent

If you’ve ever wanted to feel stronger, more confident, and more at home in your body, this episode is for you.

Video version of the podcast on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoDgX4BSksbnzmiAOb2Sfkg 

Connect with me on Instagram: @lainijojo

Transcript

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Welcome back to Her Revival. I'm your host, Lainey, and today we're talking about how to build muscle as a woman so you can look toned, feel confident, and not fall into the trap of thinking you're gonna get bulky. This is something I'm really passionate about because not only does building muscle completely change your physique, but it changes your mindset, your confidence, and your long-term health in ways most women don't even realize. Most women are training in a way that actually keeps them soft instead of toned. First, we gotta talk about the importance of building muscle. And there is, of course, the aesthetic, the visual side of things of being able to have that toned look. And I want you to think about for a second why people want that, why you maybe want that, or what that communicates to you about somebody if you see someone with that fit, toned, athletic, defined body. You look at them and you see their hard work, their dedication to themselves, how they feel themselves properly, how they are intentional with their workouts, how they're consistent with their workouts, how they really push themselves and they believe in themselves. And they've been doing this for a long enough time to actually see those results. Like you know the work and the time and the dedication and the effort that it takes to get to that. So you see someone that can do that for themselves. And what that either consciously or subconsciously communicates to you about them is that they follow through. They can do hard things. They believe in themselves and they put the action behind it and they'll do it over and over and over again for that delayed gratification to get to that result. All of that confidence that you get is partially from how you look, but really just who you become in the process of it and how you believe in yourself and how that then can correlate into your career or how you show up for other people in your life and other areas of yourself in your life too. So confidence comes from the physical look. It also comes from building strength. Now, if you've experienced this before and you can finally do a push-up or a pull-up or squat a certain weight that you never thought you would be able to, the confidence that comes from that, ladies, is unmatched. Being a woman in the weight room is, oh my goodness, has done so much for my confidence. And mentally, you know that you can be consistent and you can show up for yourselves and you can do hard things and you can do it even when you're not motivated and don't feel like it, because the reality is motivation is a feeling just like happiness or sadness or any of those. And we know that those don't say all the time, and we can't really control when they come. So we can't control when that motivation's come. And you've proved to yourself you don't need that. You can count on yourself. And any of those big goals that you set for yourself, whether that's in fitness or career or anything in life, you trust that you can show up for yourself and do it when you don't feel like it, do it when it's hard to reach that goal. Do you understand how powerful that is? It's so much more than just building muscle. And along with the physical side of things and the confidence, there's actually so much that building muscle does for your health that I don't think a lot of people realize. It enhances your metabolic rate because muscle is more active than fat tissue, meaning if you have more muscle on your body, your body has to burn more calories just to keep up with that muscle, let alone build more muscle. So you will have a faster metabolism. You can eat more calories the more muscle that you have on your body. So that's why you can see all of these women who have lean, toned, defined bodies eating way more food than you maybe, even though you don't have that body. You maybe have more body fat and less muscle. Maybe they are a smaller body, and you wonder how they can eat so much more. It is partially because they're they're likely very active and they push themselves hard and they exercise consistently, but they have more muscle, which increases their metabolic rate. This also aids in weight management. It's easier to maintain a healthy body composition the more muscle that you have. Muscle also helps you with insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control, because muscle is the most insulin-sensitive tissue that you can have on your body. So the more muscle that you have, the better that your body is at using the food and especially those carbs that you feed it. It also helps improve your bone density, because as your muscles get stronger, they're attached to your bones, they pull on your bones to move your limbs and move your body, your bones have to get stronger too. Now, especially for us women who we're far more likely to develop osteoporosis as we age, this is incredibly important. And if you know anybody who has maybe suffered a fall when they were older that led to an injury or even death, some of this can be avoided by having stronger bones. And weightlifting is how we can help strengthen those bones. So it can help with injury prevention, it can help support your joints, it improves your posture, it helps with increased longevity and healthy aging. And I know we all want to age as gracefully as possible. And building muscle helps offset that age-related muscle loss or sarcopenia. As we get older, as we get into our 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, our rate of muscle loss accelerates. So we lose more muscle as we age. But resistance training and actively trying to build and maintain your muscle is how we prevent that. The more muscle that you have, the more useful and energized and healthy your body's able to be as you age. That's why you can see these fit women who are maybe in their 50s and 60s and they absolutely do not look like it. Not only does this help with the looks, but it helps you stay more functional and independent as you age too. Ladies, it is never too late to start. Muscle also provides protective benefits on your cardiovascular and your cognitive health. So a lot of the diseases that occur later in life that either decrease somebody's quality of life or reduce their independence or their health, weightlifting and having muscle can help prevent those things. So you're gonna be healthier, you're gonna be more confident, you're gonna live a better life. Muscle literally helps combat against these things and aging and disease and obesity and other health issues that are so prevalent, especially in America where I live, that is so common for people to struggle with. You guys, building muscle is a necessity, it's a superpower, it's a cheat code, and it's really not as hard as people think. So I want to break this down. There are three categories that we need to talk about when it comes to building muscle. We've got nutrition, we've got exercise, and we've got rest and recovery. On the nutrition side of things, there are two main things that I need you to think of. Do not overcomplicate this. Number one, we need to be eating enough protein. You guys know this. The recommended amount of protein that is sufficient enough to build and maintain muscle is gonna be between 0.8 and one gram per pound of body weight. However, I wanna be careful with this because a lot of times people will say gram per pound of body weight. Well, what is actually a more accurate way to think about this is gram per pound of lean body mass. Your lean body mass, think of like lean muscle, it's your muscle tissue. Now, if someone has a lot of body fat to lose and they eat one gram per pound of their entire body weight, if someone is 300 pounds, they typically don't need to eat 300 grams of protein unless they are maybe a 300-pound bodybuilder that is just all muscle. So if you say 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of lean body mass, that would be more like your goal weight. Let's say you lost a lot of body fat and you had a little bit more toned and defined uh look to you, so it could see a little bit more muscle, or you just had a lower, healthier body fat level. That is the weight that you want to base the 0.8 to 1 gram per pound off of. You following? Now, if you are someone who doesn't have a lot of body fat, then you can just go off of your actual body weight. So we need that much protein. And I do understand that it can be really challenging to figure out how do I eat enough protein? My best tips that I'll give my clients to help them hit their protein goal, take your protein goal and divide it by the number of times per day you're gonna be eating. For most people, I recommend eating four times a day, whether that's four meals or three meals in a snack, whatever works the best for you. Let's say just for the sake of easy math, your protein goal is 100 grams and you're eating four times a day. You need 25 grams of protein per time of eating to be able to hit that goal. When you go to figure out a meal or a snack, first think what's my protein source gonna be? This is really important. Find options that you genuinely enjoy and to make it a lot easier to be consistent, prep those ahead of time. Take maybe 30 minutes on a Sunday, whatever day works for you, and just cook those up, put them in their own containers. You don't have to put all the meals together. You could just have the ingredients separately. That's how I personally do it. So then you have a little bit more flexibility if you want different meals or combinations or amounts throughout the week. So this makes eating protein super easy. You can also utilize things like bars and shakes, but I would encourage you to rely mostly on whole foods as much as possible. That is going to be better for your digestion. I don't know if you've ever heard people talk about the protein farts. Uh, it is because you're eating low quality protein, eat high protein foods, and then try to come back and tell me that you're having issues with that. So we focus on mostly whole foods. I personally on my Instagram share lots of healthy meals and recipes and things that are super simple that are high protein. So many, so many other creators and people do as well. Pinterest, you've got the world at your fingertips right now. I promise you, you can find a couple of protein sources that you enjoy eating to make it simple. Now, the second component of nutrition to be able to build muscle is eating enough calories. Because if you are eating really, really low calories, I want you to think about your calories kind of like a budget. So your body needs a certain amount of calories just to keep the lights on. This is called your basal metabolic rate. So essentially, if you laid in bed just comatose all day, you did not move, you did not eat, you did not get up to go to the bathroom, like you literally did nothing. The amount of calories that it takes your body to just survive, that's still a lot of calories that your body needs to be able to just keep the lights on. So this is just like your rent, essentially. Uh, this is not any of the other fun things or whatever. This is just like your rent to stay alive, to be able to not get evicted. And that's not including building muscle. That is an extra. So, in order for us to have enough money left over to be able to afford that muscle or enough calories left over to actually build muscle, we need to eat more than that. So if you're eating super, super low calories and you're not seeing any muscle growth, chances are you're quite frankly not eating enough for your body to be able to afford to build that muscle. Ideally, at maintenance is a really good place for a lot of people, especially if you are newer to lifting, or even if you're not, you can slowly recomp there over time. But if you're brand new to lifting, good news for you, you get these things called newbie gains. Basically, you are a newbie and you can gain muscle a lot faster. That's where it comes from. And not literally, but I always joke that it's like you can breathe at some weights and your body's like, yes, let's build some muscle from that. It's just a lot easier for you to be able to do that. So if you're eating at maintenance or even in a slight calorie deficit, your body can recomp really well, meaning it can build muscle and loose fat at the same time. For someone who isn't brand new to lifting, we don't get those newbie gains anymore, unfortunately. So we got to be a little bit more strategic with how we go about it. So for those individuals, I encourage staying at maintenance to build muscle. Now, if you're already at a leaner body composition, so you don't have a whole lot of body fat and you want to really just be in a muscle building focused phase, then what you can do is go into a quote unquote lean bulk. So we're gonna stay leaner as we build muscle, or I guess maybe the better term is a lean build, because I think the word bulk, which we'll talk about later, is just not as enticing. You know, we don't want to get bulky. So it's a lean building phase. So we're in just a slight surplus, like 100 or 200 calories above your meanness is all I would encourage to start with. And we really don't want to see the scale go up more than like a quarter to half a pound a week, anything more than that, we can't build muscle that fast. So it's just a lot more body fat. So the lean build is very, very small and controlled, but it gives your body a little bit extra, like a little extra money coming in to build a little bit of extra muscle. So we need enough calories to be able to afford that extra muscle that you want to put on your body. Now, the second thing we need to talk about that is essential to build muscle is your workouts. Now, just doing any workout is not gonna be able to build muscle and give you the toned look that you want. So, what I mean by this, I used to do a lot of body weight circuits and HIT workouts and orange theory in classes or Pilates or things like that. And I thought that just because I was working out, I was gonna look toned. That was not the case. I need to actually build muscle, and there's a specific way that we need to build muscle. And I always say there's actually this principle in exercise science, which is what I went to school for, called the principle of specificity. And you just basically need to be doing a specific thing to get a specific outcome or adaptation for your body. So if you want to be a really good soccer player, you cannot practice that by going for hawker walks and practicing free throws and doing backflips. None of those are specific to the skills you need for soccer. You will not become a very good soccer player. Now, if you want to look toned and build, let's say you want toned arms and you want bigger glutes and you want toned legs, you need to do specific exercise to target those muscles and do what they need to be able to get them to grow. So if you want your body to look toned and you want certain muscles to have like shape or definition, you need to do exercises that target those. And I want to talk about the way that we're gonna go about this because just doing, let's say we've got five-pound dumbbells and we're doing a reverse lunge to a bicep curl to a shoulder press, like some of those combo moves, I'm so sorry, but that's really not gonna build a whole lot of muscle. Unless you are absolutely brand new to lifting. Again, you can kind of do anything and we'll see some change. But I will say, if you are a little bit more strategic, like what I'm gonna talk about here and you're new, you can see progress so fast. And honestly, those some of those are my favorite client transformations to be able to work with them on because they're brand new to lifting and we can change their body incredibly fast because instead of just kind of doing whatever and getting little bits of progress from doing whatever, not that great, we can do it really good, do it really efficient, and see progress and change their body incredibly fast. I'm talking in six, 12 months, they look like a completely different human, none of their clothes fit the same. It's incredible. So I want to encourage you, have a strategy behind this. Now we need to resistance train. We need to be lifting weights, and we need to be lifting weights that are challenging enough for us. You do not need to be lifting six or seven days a week. I actually do not encourage that anybody does that because your body needs to rest. Muscle is not built inside the gym. Inside the gym is when you are breaking down your muscle tissue. You're essentially telling your body, you are not strong enough and big enough to do what I'm asking you to do. I'm pushing you and challenging you really hard. So, in order for you to keep up and do what I'm asking you to do so you don't struggle like this, you need to get stronger and you need to build muscle. So then outside of the gym, we just beat it up in the gym, right? And then outside of the gym, we give it enough protein, we give it enough calories, we give it enough rest and recovery. And then your body can say, okay, I'm using this stuff that you're giving me to build muscle. So those next two to two-ish days after the gym really is when your body's trying to rebuild that muscle and repair and get stronger and grow after that workout that you did. So again, I do not encourage lifting any more than five days per week. That is plenty. Four is actually a good amount, but anywhere from three to five days per week of lifting is perfect to be able to develop a toned body, be able to get enough stimulus to be able to see the change, and also not too much that you can't recover from it. And then, like I said, general rule is you want to wait at least two days or 48 hours between training the same muscle group again, just so it actually has that time to recover. Because if you keep training it back to back, it's like you drain the battery and you charge it a little bit, but then you drain it again and you charge it a little bit and you drain it again, versus you let it fully recharge all the way up to 100 and then you go and train it again. You're gonna have a much more productive session and you're gonna be able to build muscle and recover a lot faster. Hopefully, you're getting from this that more is not better. Better is better. We want an actual strategy behind how we're doing this, not just randomly doing whatever or as much as possible, thinking that just doing more is gonna change my body faster. It usually doesn't work that way and it kind of backfires at you. So when we're figuring out what we want to target in these workouts, let's say however many days a week that you're doing it, figure out what muscles you really want to focus on. Maybe you really want to grow your glutes and you wanna grow your shoulders a little bit more for more of that like kind of toned look on your shoulders. Maybe you really just want to work on your legs. You just want toned, nice legs, whatever it is. Focus on those muscles first. So for me personally, I don't really care to have big arms. I used to love training biceps. I trained them a lot and then they got a little bigger than what I wanted, so I don't train them as much anymore. So those muscles I train maybe once a week. But the ones that I want to grow more, I'll train two maybe sometimes three a week if I can work my recovery around that. But two times a week is plenty. One time a week is also enough if you're really focusing, let's say it's just a shoulder day and you do a lot of sets of shoulders. We don't need to get in the nuances of like how many sets and reps and whatever per muscle group per week to be able to effectively grow. Like, we don't need to get in the nitty-gritty of things. Like, I don't want to overcomplicate this, you guys. I just want to make it super simple. So train it one to two times per week. Pick two to maybe five exercises that you could do on that one or two days that's gonna target that muscle, and that's enough. So we're gonna figure out what we want to focus on. We're gonna figure out that program of the exercises and days per week that we're doing. And then before you even focus on any of the other things I'm gonna say with this, you need to learn proper form. Now, this is something that a lot of people don't do. So you'll go into the gym and you'll see people there or on social media with not the best form. And the first thing I will say is, I am just thrilled that they are exercising. Like I just want everybody to exercise and focus on building muscle and being healthy if they have a body that's capable to do so. So I will never, ever, ever think anything poorly or anything, but just I'm so happy that you're here. But if someone comes to me and they say, hey, I'm not really building muscle as well or not seeing as good of progress with that, what can I do to improve this? That is when we would say, Hey, let's work on form. Let's dial back to the basics, or maybe you're brand new to this, we just focus on form at first. Because think about it like this: if you're trying to do hip thrusts, but you never feel your glutes and your glutes really aren't working, and it's like your hamstrings and your quads and your back and everything else is taking over, do you think your glutes are gonna grow from doing a hip thrust? The hip thrust is supposed to target your glutes, but you're not actually using your glutes to do the movement as much as the other muscles are taking over. So your glutes aren't doing a lot of work. So they're not really growing from it. You see where I mean? So what we need to do is focus on the form first so we know that the target muscle or muscles is actually moving the weight and it's controlling it. We feel it squeeze, we feel it stretch. You should feel that with any movement that you do because that's what you're doing with the muscle when you're doing an exercise with it. You're contracting it and squeezing it, and then you're lengthening it, you're stretching it in that eccentric part of the movement. You want to control it through the whole part because if you're swinging it around and using gravity and momentum and other muscles, you're not effectively targeting that muscle. So I don't want to say it's wasted. Like your body's still doing something, like something's always better than nothing here, but it's not as effective. And also it's gonna help you avoid injury if you're properly controlling that weight with the target muscle. So win-win right here. So first we figure out the form, slow it down, make sure we feel the right muscle. Do you understand it what muscle is supposed to be targeted with the exercise in general? Okay, let's focus on how to do the form. Can I actually feel it? Beautiful. Once we get that, not before we get that, because now we're not we're not targeting the right muscle and we could get injured, we do that first. Now we say, okay, I actually learn need to learn how to train hard enough because just doing bicep curls doesn't grow your biceps. If you're using five pound weights and your range says, you know, 10 to 12 reps, and you do 12 reps and you just put it down and you're done, and maybe it burned a little bit, but you weren't actually struggling. I got news for you. Your body's really not going to need to grow much muscle or get your biceps a lot stronger because quite frankly, it didn't struggle. And your body doesn't want to build muscle. We have to force it to. If it wanted to build muscle, we would all walk around crazy jacked, right? It's hard to build muscle, especially if you've been trying and you still don't look toned and see that. You have to train harder. And that's where a lot of people miss the mark. And there's actually a lot of research on this. And a research study I that I just remember so clearly from class back in my degree, was about how some scientists had a group of they had men and women, and they said, Hey, we're gonna do, I believe it was squats, and I want you to pick a weight where you can do, you know, 10 reps, you know, no more, no less. So they had the people pick the weight that they thought they could do 10 reps with. And they said, Okay, now get onto the weight. And we're actually not gonna stop at 10, we're just gonna go to failure, like until you literally can't get another rep. Now, pretty much every single person underestimated themselves, but especially the women. They were getting 20 plus reps with the weight that they picked. So if that tells you something, we all underestimate what we're capable of. And your brain, this makes sense from like a psychology perspective. Your brain wants to keep you safe. It doesn't want you to struggle, it doesn't want you to potentially fail. It seems like a threat, blah, blah, blah. Our little reptilian brains have not really evolved from that. So your body is not gonna really, or your brain's not gonna really want to push your body to what it's actually capable of. So when we're figuring out first the form and now how to actually push ourselves, first just pick a weight and just make sure you it feels okay. We feel the muscle, we feel confident with the form. But if you're getting to the top of your rep range or you're hitting your reps and you are not struggling, that weight is too light to be effective for what you're actually in the gym for. So you need to increase the weight. What this should actually look like, let's say your rep range is 10 to 12. By rep like eight or nine, you should be struggling. Not and it's gonna look slower. Your reps are gonna be slower, not because you decided to like just go slow motion, but because that's as fast as your body could actually move the weight. It was struggling. And what's happening from like a science perspective is there's all those little parts of your muscle. If you've ever seen like a diagram or a muscle or something like that, there's all these little like muscle fibers. It looks like a little bunch of like lines on it. All those little fibers, right? So your brain isn't or your body isn't using every part of your muscle at the beginning of a set or with a light weight because it doesn't need to. It's not hard enough to get all hands on deck. It's just doing like the minimum amount it needs. And then as you go heavier or as you get closer to the end of the set where you start to struggle, your body goes, Oh shoot, we were only using part of the bicep, and now that part of the bicep was not strong enough. Like it's struggling. So we got to get more of the bicep involved. Let's get more of it on deck here. So now more of it's helping out and it's still hard and you still keep going. And then now your body's like, holy crap, all hands on deck. All of the bicep is working right now. And then you still get to a point where you really struggle to get it all the way up, or maybe you can't get it all up. Way up that's called failure. So, like you, your muscle failed to be able to complete another rep again with good form. We're not like cheating or using other muscles or gravity momentum here with good form. What that signifies, if you got really close or you got to failure, is holy crap. All hands were on deck. We did everything that we possibly could with how we were, and we were still not strong enough. The muscle was not big enough. So, in order for them to not struggle the next time, because your body doesn't want you to struggle, it wants to keep you safe and like good, your body's gonna say, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna get stronger and we're gonna build more muscle. And again, that happens when we're recovering outside of the gym and we get proper nutrition to support that. So we have to get to that point where we are like zero to two, zero to three reps away from failure. That's where we need to get to with our sets to signal to our body, okay, how we're at is not enough. I can't stay the same. I have to build muscle, I have to get bigger, I have to get stronger. If you consistently just stop because the rep range said to, but you weren't actually close to that. If you consistently stop because it's hard, because your brain wants you to, because it's challenging, maybe it burns a little bit, you are leaving so much progress on the table. And those extra five, 10, maybe 15 seconds of it being challenging, I get that it's hard physically and mentally, but that's the whole point of this. That's part of again where that confidence comes from. But if you're telling me that I have to just struggle a little bit more and be a little bit uncomfortable physically and mentally for an extra 5, 10, 15 seconds and I'm gonna grow muscle way faster, uh, yeah, five, 10, 15 seconds is totally worth me building muscle and getting to my goal a heck of a lot faster. That's how I logically go about it in my brain, if that helps anybody. So now that we know how to train hard enough. Oh, and I guess I will say if you pick a weight, and again, let's say it's like 10 to 12 and you get to 12 and you could like just really keep going, do not count that as a working set. That was like your warm-up set. That was you figuring out what weight, and you're like, oh, I'm I'm stronger than this. Okay, so now we're gonna go up in weight, and now this is gonna count once it's actually at that rep range. So when you first start a new workout program, that first week or two is kind of just you figuring out what weight's appropriate, and then we really focus on training really hard and progressively overloading. So if you are really close to maybe starting to struggle, you know, hey, I mean you got two or three reps in the tank, just keep going, go above that rep range, and then you know for the next set, okay, I could actually increase the weight here. So the goal is to like just barely squeak into that rep range. Again, if it's like 10 to 12, you just barely get 10. And then the next week we try to get a little bit more and try to get a little bit more. And that segues into this other component that's really important for building muscle. So we need proper form and then we learn how to train hard and then we progressively overload. Basically, what it means is so progressively, so like over time, we are overloading the muscle or just making it do more. We're forcing it to just go a little bit further. But again, we have to get close to that failure point because if you progressive overload with first side bicep curl with two and a half pounds, and then five pounds, and then seven and a half pounds, for me at least, maybe for other people, but for my body, that's too light. So even if I progressively overload, but with a not a heavy enough weight that's not close enough to failure, it doesn't matter. It's the progressive overload doesn't matter. So we need to be close enough to failure. But with progressive overload, we are essentially giving your body a reason to just go a little, we're having to force to go a little bit further, to do a little bit more than it did before, to give us a stimulus of, hey, you adapted last time, but now I'm gonna push you even more. So I need you to adapt to this one now. So the ways that we can progressively overload is we can increase weight, but we're not gonna increase weight every single exercise, every single time. And that's where a lot of people get tripped up and they increase weight just because they think they have to, but then their form is maybe the range of motion isn't good, they can't get the reps, they can't control the weight, it's not effective, maybe they get hurt. So we're not just trying to increase the weight by any means necessary. That is one way to progressively overload, but not the only way. Uh, another way is to just add reps. Let's say you get 10 reps on your shoulder press. So, and then you can't get any more. And then the next week, your goal is to try to get 11. And then the next week, the goal is to try to get 12. And then maybe your rep range was 10 to 12. So once you can get the 12, then you'll increase the weight. And again, you're trying to shoot for the 10 again. So we can increase reps. The other way without even having to increase weight or reps is just to improve your form. Let's say you're doing a shoulder press, but you're not able to get really good form. You're not coming down very far. Maybe it's kind of sloppy, you're kind of rushing it. Okay, so maybe we don't increase the weight or increase the reps. Let's actually just clean up that form a little bit. Let's work on being able to own that weight a little bit more so that muscle gets good at actually controlling and moving that weight. Then when that form and that control is improved, that is when we're then able to try to get more reps or to increase the weight from there. So there's a lot of other ways to progressively overload. So just to recap, training-wise, we need to make sure that we are training enough, not too much that we can't recover, that we are having proper forms, so we're using the right muscle, we're targeting the right muscle, we're getting close enough to failure with that right muscle, so our body has a reason to change and then progressively overload. So we keep giving it a reason to change because if you always do, let's say, bicep curls with 10-pound dumbbells, and at first it's really challenging, but now it's super easy. Again, we're not getting close to failure. We need to keep progressively overloading. So our body keeps getting a reason to change. The third component is gonna be recovery. And this is where I was saying we cannot train like six, seven days a week or keep training the same muscle group back to back because muscle's not built inside the gym. It's broken down inside the gym. That's what gives your body the signal, like the stimulus to say, you need to get stronger and grow. So we need that stimulus, that signal in the gym. But then we need the rest. So we're getting enough sleep, we're getting the proper nutrition. We are doing other recovery things. Like if you can get like an ice bath or an Epsom salt bath or maybe deep tissue massage, whatever things that you personally need and have access to to help with your recovery, that will benefit. You don't need any of those things. You can just get proper sleep and take your rest days and you know get proper nutrition and not overtrain, like we're good there. But if you can add the other things, like beautiful, they can help with the recovery. So we need to make sure that we can recover. Otherwise, we just spin our wheels. That was a big mistake that I made when I was earlier on my fitness journey. I thought more was better. I was training six, seven days a week, sometimes two times a day. If I thought my workout wasn't good, I was stacking way too many reps and exercises and sets because I wasn't actually training hard enough and having good enough uh stimulus on the muscles. And I was like, I'm just gonna keep doing more and more and more, thinking I'm gonna build more muscle. And I just looked worse and worse. And it was puffy and flame and skinny fat, and I was not getting strong, and it was really frustrating. And then I realized, oh, more is not better. Better's better. And I fixed these things, and lo and behold, it actually works the way that the science says it does. Okay, and then the other component with this is that we need consistency and time. Now that sounds like a duh, but I feel like then people get into it and it's baby been a month and they're like, I don't look different, I don't have the goal body, I failed, I quit. That's not how this works. We all know if you eat one salad, you don't get, you know, you don't get abs. If you eat one burger, you don't weigh 700 pounds. Like it doesn't work that way. It's what you do consistently, not perfectly. We do not need perfection that does not exist. Perfection only exists in your mind, and if that's your standard, you're always gonna fail, you're always gonna beat yourself up and probably wanna quit. So the goal is consistently. How many times are you consistently having good workouts, consistently hitting your nutrition, consistently getting enough sleep? There are gonna be days and times where we're not perfect with this because this happens in real life. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. You've got work, you've got sickness, you've got injury, you've got family stuff, you've got a social life, all the things. And we want to prioritize taking care of our body because you get one body, you do not get a spare, take care of your body. But we need to understand that it's just that consistency compounded over time. The longer that you've been doing these things, not perfectly but consistently, your body will keep changing. I have been on my fitness journey for over a decade now. I have built up a lot of consistency. I have I have no means been perfect. I'm still not perfect, even though this is technically part of my job description, is too exercising me right and everything. Um, really, it's just the way that I like to live and I just share that. But it's just the over time. So if you're looking at somebody who has this really toned and defined and whatever body, and you think, but why don't I look like that? I've been consistent for the past year or two. They've probably been consistent for five, 10, however many years. Like it takes a long time, and not only a long time, but a long time doing it right. And that's the thing that why partially why I share the information that I do is because it took me a long time. It's not been a decade on my fitness journey of doing the right thing. I would be a lot farther along than where I'm at now. It was a lot of trial and error and not understanding these principles that I share, especially when it comes to building muscle and looking toned. So we need to not just focus on the look. And that's where I think a lot of people go wrong. It takes time to build muscle, it takes time to change your body. It's not Amazon Prime culture, it just happens overnight. So, yes, focus on the aesthetics and celebrate when you see more muscle and all those, but focus on getting stronger. Chase numbers in the gym. Let's say you want to grow your glutes. Pick a couple of glute exercises and pick a goal. Maybe you want to hip thrust a certain amount of weight. Maybe you want to squat a certain amount of weight. Chase those numbers in the gym. I always see the best progress when I do that because then I truly push myself and I'm a little bit more excited to be able to go. And then make this a part of your lifestyle. Focus on the confidence that's gonna give you. Create friends and relationships who also value these kinds of things. Because if we can enjoy this just being part of your life, it is so much easier to be consistent and just have those results compound and we get to enjoy the process of it versus just being so hell-bent on I need to look a certain way and I'm only doing this to look a certain way, and I don't look a certain way. So I'm not happy, I'm not enough. Like, I'll never be happy till I get there. Like that is a surefire way to never feel happy or satisfied or proud of yourself and want to stay consistent, enjoy the process to get there. Again, a lesson I had to learn the hard way. Now I want to talk about because people can do these things or think that they're doing these things and either get bulky or not want to do these things because they're afraid to get bulky. Because I don't know about you guys, but I grew up in a time where, again, it was just to be skinny and not eat very much, and lifting made you super manly and like a bodybuilder, and like you didn't want that. And that's actually not how that works. I lift very heavy. I push myself very hard. I'm a tiny human. Like, I really I'm not a very large human. I don't know if I look big in social media, but in real life, I am not that big. Um, maybe if I get a pump, it looks a little bit more impressive. But it's hard to get bulky. And what makes people bulky is not the lifting hard, is not the weight training. Because again, I lift heavy for my relative to my body is what heavy would mean for everybody. And I'm consistent and I still am not bulky. So I can look small and toned and lean, lifting really hard. Or if I did this mistake that I'm gonna share in a second, I could do the lifting like that and then get bulky. So the difference between those two is the nutrition. Because what bulky is, is it's having muscle but too much body fat over top that you look a lot larger because there's a difference between being really lean and just looking super jacked, like a bodybuilder where you see so much muscle on their body, but not a lot of body fat. That's like super jacked, right? That's again in charge of your nutrition, but you are lifting really heavy for a long period of time. It's really hard to look like that, especially as a woman. I'm sure you guys have heard we do not have the same amount of testosterone as a man, not even close. It's a lot harder for us to build muscle. So you have to be extremely, extremely intentional to get too jacked. Uh, so you are not gonna get too jacked on accident. It is not like you you wake up and you're like, holy crap, I'm way too jacked. Like it happens over time. So, in order to get bulky, that's you having too much body fat over top of that muscle. So, the way that we avoid that is number one, we make sure we get to a healthy body fat percentage. So, whether you need to do a small calorie deficit uh to be able to lose a little body fat, or you could just recompact maintenance. Basically, that's building muscle and losing fat at your maintenance point versus being in a dedicated building or fat loss phase, you kind of do both. If you are someone who's really not eating enough calories and you need to do what's called a reverse diet, I make a lot of content about this. I can make an episode about this too specifically, but we would want to focus on that reverse diet. When you're doing that reverse diet, you essentially just really, really broad overview of this. You can improve your body composition, build muscle in that process of healing your metabolism, and then be able to go into a fat loss phase, but you have more muscle and you have a faster metabolism, so you're gonna look better, a lot more toned in that fat loss phase. So different ways that we can go about doing this, but we wanna be specific with like what phase we kind of pick to help us get to that goal that we want. Also keeping in mind where's your current metabolism, where's your current lifestyle, where's your current goals? So we make sure it also fits into your lifestyle where you're at right now. So this really does come down to nutrition at the end of the day, because we could have the training in the right spot, but the nutrition is what's ultimately gonna make you look toned or look bulky. So that's why I am so passionate about helping people understand and just want to learn about nutrition, because when you do, it unlocks everything. It gives you a healthy relationship with food and with your body and understanding how to fuel and take care of your body and how to create, if you have physical goals or performance goals or just want a healthy body composition, understanding nutrition unlocks all of that for you. And it just gives you so much freedom to realize how I can eat for my nourishing my body and my goals and also go out to eat and have treats and have a burger and like fit it into that versus worrying and second guessing or accidentally getting bulky. Like we, if we the more that you know, knowledge is absolutely power here. So the next episode that I do is gonna be about how to create a healthy relationship with food, whether you are on a fitness journey and pursuing certain goals, or just want to live a healthy life and have a healthy body and a healthy body composition and lifestyle and relationship with food. Because I learned all of this the hard way. And I have spent the past seven years helping other people understand nutrition better and create a healthy body and relationship with food through in-person and online coaching. So I got a lot of information in my head and experiences that I want to be able to give to people because my favorite message is as much as I love helping women be able to lose weight or finally see definition or grow their glutes, or maybe if they want abs, they see abs. I love those physical goals. Don't get me wrong, because I understand the confidence that they get from it. But my favorite transformations are when I hear women tell me about how our work together has completely changed their relationship with food and their body and just their life. Like they can truly have this goal body they never thought they could have eating more food than they ever thought, have a healthy relationship with it. There's no restriction, there's no second guessing, there's no shame, there's no nothing. It's just you get to enjoy life in this body that you work so hard for. And I feel like that relationship with food is extremely, extremely important. So that will be what this next episode is about. So if that is an important component for you to puzzle piece all this together to get toned and not bulky and build the muscle that you want, stay tuned for that one. But otherwise, I just want to close this one out with this. Being able to build muscle has been one of the most important and just best decisions that I have ever made for myself. And I am so grateful that younger me, she went. If you guys heard my story about my fitness journey, just went up to the biggest dude she saw in the gym and was like, hey, can you teach me how to lift? Can I follow you around? And being able to do that just unlocked confidence in myself. I never thought I had this just drive to shoot for these big goals and be okay with failure and okay to be a beginner and just enjoy the process of it and all of the mental things it's given me, the physical things it's given me, and how I've been able to carry that over into my career and my entrepreneurial journey and just my relationships and the life that I'm building and the life that I've built with my husband, who also values health and building muscle and taking care of his body. And life is just life is just better, man. Like there are no downsides to building some muscle and having a healthy amount of muscle mass on your body and all the good things that come from it. So I hope that this made my case. If you're on the fence, you're like, I know I should, but it's just hard to get my soul to do it. I promise I have more content coming to be able to help you be able to implement it, to make it simple if that's the case for you. If you have any questions regarding any information that I shared here or anything at all, feel free if you're watching on YouTube to leave a comment down below or shoot me a message on Instagram and I'll try to get back to everybody. Otherwise, that's all I have for you guys today. I hope you got some nuggets. I hope you feel the passion that I have for this and this inspires you to take this and implement it into your own life. And I'll see you guys in the next one. And until then, go do something that your future self will thank you for.