SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey team, welcome to week two. I hope last week started to shift something for you, even if it was just a little bit. Because once you understand how your metabolism actually works and how much of the energy that you're burning is quietly happening in the background just from existing and also dependent on how much muscle you carry, once you truly start to understand that, it really does change the way you see everything when it comes to transformation. And that's exactly where we're picking up on from today. This week we're going to talk about movement and specifically how to move smarter, not harder, not more. And I think that what you're going to hear is genuinely going to be a relief to you. So let's get into it. So for the health track this week, we're looking at exercise, what type matters most, how much you actually need, and why doing more is almost never the answer. And just a reminder that you'll find your health track lesson right here in the app, and it's already dropped for you. So straight after you've listened to this episode, make sure you have a read over the written copy and you'll be able to clearly see the seven steps to work through. Okay, so here's where I want to start. Most women come to us thinking that the key to changing their body is doing more cardio. More classes, more running, more time on the treadmill, and I completely understand why, because we've been told that our whole lives. Want to lose weight? Do more cardio. Burn more, lose more. It seems logical, but here's what the research actually shows us. You cannot outrun your diet. The science is really clear on this, and here's why. If you cast your mind back to last week, we looked at the pie chart that breaks down where your daily energy burn comes from. Remember the four parts of the metabolism. And one of those slices was eat, exercise, activity, thermogenesis. That's all the intentional exercise that you do, every training session, every class, every workout that you do with purpose. And that slice, all of it, accounts for less than 10% of your total daily energy burn. Less than 10%. So when we add another cardio session to your week, hoping it's going to create the shift we're looking for, the maths just isn't there. It's not that exercise doesn't matter, it really absolutely does, but it's the type that matters enormously. And doing more cardio in the hope of burning more calories is simply not the answer. Especially when we understand what excessive cardio can actually do to our body. And here's the thing that just doesn't get talked about enough. When we do a lot of cardio, excessive amounts of cardio, in a situation where we're also eating less, our body can start to break down muscle tissue for fuel. That's because it's a process called catabolism, where the body will break down the muscle to get energy to support the training. And when that happens, we're not just missing out on building muscle, we're actively losing it. And the weight might come off, but it's important to know that a significant amount of that weight we're losing is muscle and not fat. And as that muscle disappears, our metabolism quietly slows down with it. So we have to eat less and less just to maintain the same result. And that's the trap. So if cardio isn't the primary lever, then what is? And hopefully you know by now, it's your muscle. Yes, it's the amount of lean muscle that you carry. Remember BMR, what we spoke about last week, your basal metabolic rate, that takes up a huge part of the pie chart. The energy that your body burns just to keep you alive. It accounts for 65 to 70% of everything you burn in a day. And the single biggest thing that determines how high or low that number sits is how much lean muscle you have. So the take-home message here is that muscle is metabolically active tissue. It burns energy around the clock, at rest, while you sleep, while you're sitting at your desk. So the more you have, the harder your body is working for you in the background without doing anything extra. And here's why that matters even more for us women. As we know, we spoke about this last week, from the age of 30, we all naturally start to lose muscle mass. And it happens gradually first, men and women, but it accelerates significantly for women as we move through perimenopause and menopause. That's because estrogen plays a really important role in supporting muscle protein synthesis, process of helping our bodies build and maintain muscle. And as estrogen declines, that process, muscle protein synthesis, becomes harder. And therefore, muscle loss speeds up. This is what's called sarcopenia, age-related muscle loss. And it's one of the most under-talked about reasons why women find themselves gaining weight through their 30s, 40s, and 50s without changing anything about how they eat. It's not a willpower problem, it's that their BMR has quietly dropped because they've been losing lean muscle over time and nothing in their exercise routine has been working to replace it or preserve it. So that's why the goal of exercise in this program is not to burn calories during the session, it's to build and protect the muscle that keeps your metabolism working for you. Not just for the next 12 weeks, but for the rest of your life. And the beautiful thing is you don't need hours in the gym to make that happen. All it takes is about 3% of your week. 3%. When you think about the week, you have 168 hours in one week. 3% roughly sits at four to five hours a week. You split that across a few sessions, you get in a couple of good power walks, and that's all we really need if we're doing the right type of exercise. So what does this look like? The foundation of this is strength training. So you're talking about two sessions a week, that's enough to start building and protecting your lean muscle mass. So think of it as resistance work, it's weights, it can be body weight as well, whatever you have access to, but what matters is that it's progressive, meaning that the challenge increases gradually over time. So your muscles are always having to adapt and to grow and get stronger. That progressive overload is what drives the change. If you're training at Legacy, you've already got this built in. Our Lift Ignite classes and our Lift Sculpt classes are designed around that progressive overload. Every session is structured to challenge your muscles in a way that builds on the week before. And we also have our Saturday X-Train classes to give you another opportunity to hit those muscle groups. So within the Legacy timetable alone, you have at least four opportunities every week to do exactly that kind of work. The second piece I want to talk to you about, which is also included in your 3% of your week, is your high-intensity interval training. At Legacy, it's what we call our burn and core, our shred classes, which are designed to get your heart rate up. They're our cardio sessions. They combine body weight movement with dumbbells and strength work in a way that challenges your body. And because of the intensity, something really powerful happens after the session ends. Your body continues burning energy for hours afterwards as it recovers and repairs. This is a phenomenon known as the afterburn effect, which basically means you're not just burning energy during the session, you're keeping your metabolism elevated long after you left the gym. And because these classes include strength movements as well, you're also supporting your muscle at the same time. You're not just wearing it away like you would if you were doing long runs. You're actually stimulating the muscles that we're trying to build and grow. So there's two benefits in one session. And then there's your incidental movement, which was that part of the pie chart called neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is also still really important, and it includes things like your steps, your cleaning the house, gardening, walking the dog, taking the stairs. It's that daily movement. And the one thing I want to highlight is here, you do have a powerful opportunity to get your steps up. The walking, the daily walks, they do more than just benefit from a calorie burning perspective. They actually benefit us from a whole body, heart and brain integration perspective. It's that swinging movement of your arms actually helps correlate the brain's hemispheres and it helps you ground and process your day. So if you're not already doing daily walking as part of your routine, I highly encourage you to try that during this 12-week program. You know, go outside for 15 minutes at the start of the day, 15 minutes at the end of the day, and just start to feel how that time in nature actually helps you stay integrated and make better choices as well. So the big picture that I really want you to hold on to is this exercise is a stimulus, it's not a punishment, and it's not a way to compensate for the food that you've eaten. It's a tool and it's a really powerful one. And the most powerful version of that tool for women at every stage of life is building and protecting muscle through strength training. And more is not always better. Overtraining, under-recovery, running yourself into the ground, that raises your cortisol, it impairs your recovery, and it signals to your body to hold on to fat rather than release it. So if you ever felt like you're spinning your wheels, you're working incredibly hard, and you're not seeing the results you expected, now you have a better picture of why and what might be happening in the background. So the women we've seen transform the most in this program are not the ones doing the most exercise, they're the ones doing the right exercise consistently over time and pairing it with good recovery and smart nutrition. Now I want to bring Peter in for a moment because she sees this play out every day on the gym floor every single week.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Hey team, Peter here. I want to share something I see happen consistently across this program. Women come in at the start, sometimes a little hesitant, maybe they haven't lifted weights before, or it's been a while. And what I notice over the weeks isn't just physical. Yes, the strength builds, the weights go up, the movements get cleaner, the confidence in the gym grows. But what shifts just as much is the relationship with food and with daily habits. When women start fueling properly around their training, getting that protein in, eating consistently, everything accelerates. The body starts responding the way it's supposed to. That's the combination we're going for here. Smart training and smart nutrition working together. And I'm here to support you with both.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Thanks, Peter. So it's that combination of smart training and smart nutrition, is exactly what this program is built on. So make sure you jump into your written lesson now and we'll keep building from there. Now let's move into the mindset lesson for this week. Our mindset lesson this week will drop in a little later in the app. And this one is all about habits and limiting beliefs. So please don't skip it. It really is an important piece within the whole program. But here's what I want to touch on with you now. Have you ever noticed that you can know exactly what you need to do and still not do it? You know movement is good for you, you know you feel better when you train, and yet some weeks it just doesn't happen. And then the story starts. I'm just too busy, I'm too tired, I'll start on Monday. I'm just not a gym person. Those aren't facts. They're actually thoughts. And our thoughts, this is the bit I really want you to get, create our feelings. And our feelings then drive our actions, which create our results. So if the thought is I'm too tired to train, the feeling is dread or resistance. And then the action is staying on the couch and the result is another week where nothing changes. But here's what's fascinating. You can interrupt that cycle at the thought level before it becomes a feeling, before it becomes an action. What if instead of I'm too tired, you tried I always feel better after I move? Not toxic positivity, just a truer thought. Because most of us will agree that that is true. We do feel better after we move. We've just forgotten that in the moment. The mindset lesson this week goes deeper into this. The habits that keep us stuck, the beliefs that feel like facts but aren't, and how we can start choosing differently. So it's really worth your time. And for now, one more thing, be kind to yourself this week. If last week felt like a lot, that's completely normal. It's not like you need to figure this all out in weeks one, two, and three. You don't need to be perfect. You just need to keep showing up and keep learning bit by bit. So to finish off for today, let's finish up with our action track for this week and we've got three things. First, like last week, book your workouts if you haven't already. At least two strength sessions and one or two cardio sessions, pop them in your diary. They're non-negotiable appointments with yourself. If it's not scheduled, it won't happen. So make sure you pop them in and do that before this episode finishes. Secondly, just a reminder to complete your why worksheet. This week we're coming together on Zoom and to complete step five, the guided visualization. That's something we're going to do as a group. But before you come, it's really useful if you can go through steps one to four before we meet. We will go through them together as a group and you might decide to elaborate them and develop them further there. But at least have a look over them and start to jot some thoughts down. You can find them in the resource tab if you haven't already found it. Print it out, grab a pen, give it some proper time, not just a quick skim, just have some real honest reflection time. And remember the deeper you go, the more powerful the session will be for you. So, third, this week, I want you to notice how you feel after your train. Not during, but after. Really start to take note because often we've forgotten what that feeling is like. So I want you to pay attention to it. Write it down or just simply notice it as you're driving home or after the workout. What's that feeling that you've got? Because that feeling is your evidence. It's what starts to make movement feel less like something you have to do and more like something you really want to do, because you'll start to notice those endorphins, those serotonin levels are spiking, and you're feeling like a better, more whole version of yourself. So really take notice of that. So there we go. We've got our booking our workouts, we're going to finish our why worksheet, and we're really going to tune in and notice how we feel after our move. That's it for this week. So to wrap it up, once again, thank you and well done for showing up for week two. That really does matter more than you realize. It's not about being perfect, but it's about building something slowly and honestly, week by week. So thanks again and take care of yourself this week. I'll see you in the gym.