Weight Lifting, Walking and Diet Culture with Maverick Willett [Ep. 33]

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This is the eat well. Well live well podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. And this is episode 33 weightlifting walking and diet culture with Maverick Willet. We are going to talk today. About weightlifting for women, how to get started, what movements you can incorporate and ideas on how to fit it in. We're also going to talk about why it matters and why it's important for us to include it. Maverick is also a huge fan of walking. He gives us the reasons behind that as well as again, how to incorporate it and make it a part of your life. It was a lot of fun talking with Maverick because our ideas line up so well. So we ended up. chatting a little bit about diet culture. Self-love. And then be sure to stick around to the end because he does give a great summary of his philosophy and advice for women wanting to get started with fat loss and achieving that physical change. And as I've been doing with my guests lately, we recorded a bonus clip just for my email subscribers. Be sure to grab the link for that in the show notes, the topic is fruit. So Maverick is actually a big proponent of eating fruit with most meals. So I wanted to know why, and I think you're going to be pretty interested in the answer and science behind it. It's such a villainized item in diet culture that a lot of us with that dieting background have come to fear fruit and the sugar in it. But. Maverick is going to dispel that in that bonus clip. So again, grab that link in the show notes. All right. Let's get into our conversation.

Lisa: 1:37

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. All right. Welcome back to the Eat Well Think well live Well podcast. I have Maverick Willett here today with me as my guest. I'm super excited. He is such an expert in his field and you're gonna be just blown away. I know by what he's gonna talk to us about, because I've been stalking him online for quite a while now. And, um, I'm gonna let him introduce himself and then we will jump in.

Maverick: 2:24

What's up Lisa? Thanks so much for having me. So happy to be here. Yeah. I'm, I'm Maverick Willett, uh, owner, c e o of Maverick Online coaching where we help women 30 plus, um, you know, lose 25 plus pounds and, and get revenge bodies without sacrificing wine night or carbs or, or foods that they love. Um, that's my main thing. But on social media, I'm known as, uh, the emotional support Viking, and, um, I'm just here to empower women and help you escape dieting culture and, and have fun while doing it.

Lisa: 2:50

I love that we can escape dieting culture and still lose weight. I think that's something that I've really come into lately. I was struggling with like, okay, well if I'm teaching that people don't have to be part of diet culture, but I'm also teaching that it's okay to still wanna lose weight. How do those things mesh? But you do a beautiful job of that.

Maverick: 3:10

Well, thank you. Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions and and beliefs that have been built because of the failure of the education system to give us nutritional literacy. We believe that we have to diet or restrict in order to get body results, and that's just not true.

Lisa: 3:25

yeah, totally. So one of the main things you're an expert in is weightlifting, which is really the primary reason I wanted to have you on. I have not done enough. Episodes about the movement piece. I'm not an expert. I'm not a trainer. I do train my own body, but that doesn't make me a tr uh, you know, an expert or a trainer. I think that women, prioritizing weightlifting is so important, but I wanted. To hear it from an expert, tell us, talk to us about women weightlifting. I'm always, whenever my clients ask me, I'm like, please lift something heavier than your grocery bags. Please pick up something heavier than your toddler. And they're like, wait, what? like, yes. Pick up heavy stuff. So tell us about women weightlifting and why do we need to prioritize that over other types of.

Maverick: 4:19

Absolutely. I'm really excited because I never get to talk about this. I talk about nutrition, hormones, metabolism primarily in my content. And I don't get to talk about the training piece, and that's actually where the bulk of my knowledge is cuz I've spent my entire life doing it and help other people do it. So my biggest, my biggest thing with, training in order to promote a visual change, like I wanna start right there. It's. Most of the women that that I work with have a goal of body transformation. We want to visually change what we see in the mirror. And so I'm, I spend a great deal of my time helping our clients avoid wasting their time doing exercise that they think is gonna manifest that visual change, but actually will not. And it's one thing to, you know, really try hard and work hard and, and exert yourself. But if it's. Being put towards an exercise and modality that's going to result in muscle tissue development. You're not going to see a lot of change in the mirror because the muscle tissue is, to your point, what gives you that toned, leaner look that women want for the most part. Assuming that that is the goal, and, and I know that there's different, different goals for different people, but assuming that we want to see a visual change, resistance training, weight training, that is the absolute most efficient and effective way to do that.

Lisa: 5:40

Yeah, so part of the reason is for that visual change, but the other part is also for metabolism. Increasing. Our muscle mass has a massive, massive increase in metabolism. How does that play in.

Maverick: 5:55

Gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up. So this is huge because this kind of ties in with the dieting culture, right? The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you burn at rest. Muscle is a calorically expensive tissue, so the more you have, the more calories you'll burn at rest. Just functioning, breathing, living. If you're burning more calories at rest with your basal metabolic rate. you were able to eat more and still lose weight. And the goal of weight loss is not to starve yourself to make the weight loss go faster, it is to eat as much as you can and still lose weight so that we retain that precious muscle tissue. So that's one strike against dieting culture right there. A lot of the extreme dietary approaches, they lead to a loss in muscle tissue, and now you're going to burn less calories at rest and lose the shape that you want to see in the mirror. The more muscle tissue you have, absolutely the, the more calories you're gonna burn at rest. And that's gonna, that's just gonna make your weight loss or fat loss journey a hell of a lot easier. You don't have to eat like a baby rabbit in order to get those same changes that a woman who has more muscle tissue we'll see.

Lisa: 6:56

How fast does that happen? A lot of times my clients are like, well, I started exercising. I put on weight. I'm like, well, that's gonna be water weight, cuz wait, the first time you lift weights, you're gonna have some o obviously. Not just the first time, but when you lift weights, you have water coming into the muscles to help with the repair. So when we see a jump on the scale immediately, that's not muscle immediately. How long does it take really to build that muscle to make a difference in the metabolism?

Maverick: 7:25

Well, there's a lot of nuance here. First of all, I, I'm a huge advocate of not weighing yourself every day, especially if you have a past. Toxic love, hate relationship with the scale. It can be completely derailing to the, to the extent of trying to gain muscle tissue. If you keep stopping your journey every time, the scale doesn't go down, and that's gonna constantly conflict and oftentimes, What I, what we do with our clients that's really effective long term is to completely detach from the scale and instead make our metric of progress, your strength in the gym. Because if you're gaining strength in the gym, that's going to correlate with muscle tissue development and that muscle tissue development is gonna correlate with more calories burned at rest, and more calories burned at rest correlates with weight loss. So oftentimes detaching from the scale and instead making our. strength in the gym and progression in the gym. A byproduct of that is the weight loss and fat loss that women are actually looking for in the first place.

Lisa: 8:20

Mm. Okay. So there's not really, uh, a timeframe that would be like predictable, but rather we're just watching for strength gains. So you wanna track that you. The sets that you're doing

Maverick: 8:33

Yeah. Progression. Progression and exertion. Um, and, and that's kind of ties in. You know, how to simplify things because that the training can be overwhelming, just like the nutrition can be cuz there's so much conflicting stuff. You should do hit cardio, you should do Zumba, you should do Pilate, you should do this. The main metric, just to keep to simplify everything is am I stronger than I was? A week or two ago, and strength can be measured in different ways. You can quantify it with, are you doing more reps with the same weight? Are you able to do more sets with the same weight, more rep? Are you able to go up in weight? I mean, there's, there's a lot of metrics you can use and manipulating your workout to make it more challenging. Each week is very important. As long as you are, you know, progressing with your strength and progressing with intensity in your workouts, you're going to see progress. So that's huge. But as far as like the acute weight gain from. Uh, from, from weightlifting, yeah. You're always gonna have, like you said, water, um, is gonna go to the muscle group that you targeted and that, and that's just a, that's part of infl natural inflammation as a response to training. Doesn't mean body fat gain?

Lisa: 9:32

right? Yeah. so tell us a little bit about. And this is obviously better to be done individual specific, but for the general listenership, like what would an ideal, training regimen look like for a woman, like as far as how many times per week, how many times to hit what muscles, and mostly it's kind of like with the eating, we kind of wanna like eat as much as we possibly can and still lose weight. I actually wanna be in the gym as little as possible and still build muscle, right? which doesn't just only means I just don't want to be lifting weights twice a day every single day, obviously. Partly cuz my gym is in my garage and it's cold out there. it's cold.

Maverick: 10:16

yeah. Yeah, I, uh, I'm so glad you said that because this is one thing that completely blows the minds of most people. Less is more. You don't have to be in the gym for hours to, to transform your body. And, and there's more nuance to this when we think about what are you capable of doing right now with your current level of commitment and your current schedule. And a lot of people think that you have to be, you know, you have to do these long, complicated workouts when the reality is, You need to look at it from a compound interest standpoint. What are you doing now? Are you doing nothing now? Cool, let's start there. Let's add very, very little, cuz people, people barely trust themselves to follow through on their commitments and stick with something. So in order to stick with something, we have to make it attainable. We have to make it realistic. So if you're not doing anything now, how do you expect yourself to start working out six times a week? It's just not gonna happen. That's why New Year's resolutions always fall off the wagon. So I. Make a very small commitment, you know, you can complete. That might be, I'm gonna do five air squats today. Sounds ridiculously simple. That's the point. You know, you can complete it. Go ahead, prove to yourself you can complete it. Now. You feel good about it. And the cool part about that is when you set the bar so low, Let's say I'm gonna do five air squats today, and you end up doing 20, you overachieve. Whereas if you said, I'm gonna work out five times this week and you, and you did 20 air squats, now you feel like a failure even though you did the same thing. So it's so important to set that bar for yourself so low so that, not that, not because we're. Uh, undermining your potential is because we want to be able to build momentum and keep going and not feel like a failure. So, and you can get results that way because something is always better than nothing. And I see so many women making, um, making perfect enemy of good enough. So for busy mothers, especially busy, I'm a busy parent myself, not a mom, but I'm a parent. And you know, if, I know, it's unrealistic when the, the influencer, the 20 year old influencers with high metabolisms and no kids are like, work out when the kids go down. It's.

Lisa: 12:05

Yeah,

Maverick: 12:05

No, Vanessa, we can't do that. When he goes down for his nap, I'm picking, you know, glue out of the carpet and corn flakes outta my beard. And you know, there's so much stuff that I have to put my whole life back together when he goes down because of the destruction that just happened. So it's more realistic to say, hey. When he's watching Blippy on tv, I'm gonna knock out, you know, 10 air squats or some lunges while I'm vacuuming, and then maybe later on in the day you can do five or 10 more air squats and maybe some, maybe some modified pushups, maybe some crunches. And it'll seem silly because all we, all we've heard is, oh, you gotta spend an hour in the gym minimum, or you're not getting results. And that becomes our belief. But the reality is the compound interest of. 30 air squats in a day, and then repeating that again, and then repeating that again because it's attainable. That compounds and adds up over time, and you can actually build on that versus the unrealistic expectation of a super busy mom or or working woman, making it to the gym for an hour and a half every day. That's just not realistic for most people, but it is realistic to get it in where you fit it in and challenge yourself. Meet yourself where you're at is the general point here, and that is where people are missing the mark.

Lisa: 13:06

totally. So I'm hearing also. a beginner to start with some body weight stuff. Even though we said in the beginning, Hey, weightlifting resistance training. Really the beginning part for someone that's first starting out would be body weight.

Maverick: 13:22

absolutely. And, and compound movements, which is multi-joint movements, so things that recruit a lot of different mus muscle groups. So that's why I keep saying squats, lunges, if you have equipment at home, like some simple dumbbells, you know, dumbbells from five to 30 pounds, doing things like shoulder press or bench press. If you don't have a bench, do it on the floor. Uh, Ben Over Rose, stuff like that. Just very simple. Fundamental, but still the most effective. The stuff that worked for people in the sixties and seventies, like when my mother and father were body buildings, same stuff that works for people now. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. Um, and to your original question, you had asked like, what's a general, like how many times per week, et cetera. I know, I, I kind of. Uh, didn't answer that, but if I were to give an answer to that, I would say it's much less than you think. I think that three hours per week, three to five hours per week, however you get that in, is sufficient to really transform your body over time.

Lisa: 14:16

and that last part over time, that's really the key muscle building and body transformation, like what we're talking about, recomposition. This does take time. And like, I don't wanna sugarcoat that I've been lifting for four years steady, and I'm starting to see some stuff. I mean, I don't, I don't overload very often. So I think I probably need to work a little bit more on my, um, progressions. But, um, yeah, it takes time. It takes time. And I'm also not looking to be on stage. Right. So the depends on what your goal is too.

Maverick: 14:52

Thank goodness for that cuz that's a whole other thing we could talk about

Lisa: 14:55

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody do that. let's, let's just say right now. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's for some people, but it's not the, I, I know like one time on Instagram, someone was like asking me that on one of my posts, like something about, well, how do you, how do you do this? And I was like, oh, you've misunderstood. That is not what I do

Maverick: 15:15

I, I, I admire, like, I think the dedication is great. I think the discipline is admirable, but I don't support that type of approach ever.

Lisa: 15:24

Yeah. It's so much restriction. But anyway, we digress. So women historically have been the cardio bunnies. right. So much, I mean, I can't even tell you how many hours I've spent on an elliptical machine like StairMaster, elliptical, um, I, I actually do have a stationary bike as part of my garage, but like for example, this morning I used it as a 10 minute warmup for then My weights. So how does cardio fit in and do we even need it? Like what is its purpose here?

Maverick: 16:03

Uh, it's, it comes down to defining the purpose of cardio and defining our goals that we want to have, and the congruency between the two. So, cardiovascular endurance training is for your cardiovascular health. Then that's it. It's for your cardiovascular health. There are carryover benefits to your weight training. It can make. Not fatigue as soon, uh, as you would normally. It can help you have better endurance during, during your weightlifting workouts. However, again, we, we go back to what do most the women that I work with having a body transformation program are looking for visual results. And so to have those visual results, you have to develop your muscle tissue and cardiovascular endurance training does not develop your muscle. in the least. It is, It is, a endurance activity and it does not induce muscle hypertrophy, which is the breakdown of muscle tissue to rebuild differently, stronger, and have a different appearance than before. So it is a component of a healthy lifestyle, but it is not a, a tool in the toolbox for promoting visual change in your body. And. That's a huge, huge misconception that so many people have and, and we, we also correlate certain things with seeing a visual result. For example, when you're on the StairMaster and you feel it burning in your glutes or your quads, you believe that since it's burning, it's going to correlate to visual change. But again, in order to induce muscle hypertrophy, there has to be time under tension. You have to be resisting a weight or resisting a. For a certain amount of time in order to induce that muscle hypertrophy. You may even get sore from cardiovascular training. You know, you may get sore from the, from a, from a cycling class, but that doesn't mean it's gonna correlate to the visual change you want to see. So, I always recommend like a three to one ratio of strength training versus, you know, cardiovascular training. Like if you do, uh, three to five hours of weightlifting per week, then you want like one to three hours of, of your cardio max. And, and maybe not even that. Um, most of our clients dramatically transform doing less than three hours of cardio per week, sometimes even less than that. So, You also wanna look at, this is the final piece I'll add to this, and this is just the, the evidence-based, um, proof is when the way we burn calories, right? So if you wanna burn fat, there's a difference between losing body fat and burning body fat. But I won't get too far into the weeds with that, but the way we burn calories every day. Only 5% of our calories burn comes from exercise only 5%. The majority of it is our baso metabolic rate. 70%, 15% or more comes from our non-exercise activity. So your step count and 10% comes from digesting food, a thermic effect of food. So knowing that those are the pieces of the pie, why would we focus the most to, to burn calories being a calor deficit in order to burn fat on the thing that has the. Say in it, right? So, and not only that, if we're gonna spend focus our time on that 5%, it better be focused towards the thing that's actually gonna promote visual change, which is the strength training. So you actually burn more calories, you know, in the other, let's say, let's say you do go to the gym for 30 minutes to an hour a day. Well, there's 23 other hour hours of the day. So your activity level during those 23 other hours is actually gonna make a much bigger impact on your fat loss than the 30 minutes to an hour of cardio that you did that wasn't building any muscle. So, step count, huge, huge advocate of tracking your steps, seeing how active you are outside of that workout session. And if you are a person who is active in averaging. I hate to say a step goal because everyone's different and has different needs, but usually if, you know, if you're getting, if you're averaging eight to 10,000 a day, you are a generally an active person. You're, you're on the right track. If you're averaging under 5,000 steps a day, that's probably what's keeping you from seeing the results you want with your fat loss. So huge advocate of step count because that actually encompasses a lot bigger chunk of your calories burn for the.

Lisa: 20:00

what if your step count is, um, including your, like, uh, my watch when it tracks, it includes my steps during my workout. Is that, is that okay to include those steps?

Maverick: 20:11

Absolutely. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, overthink that. I would absolutely just bulk all of your steps together cuz it all counts.

Lisa: 20:17

Okay. I'm so glad that you're talking about these percentages because again, historically for women, I think with the, especially with the MyFitness Pal, which I talk a lot about on that, The podcast, the whole idea that we can like eat our exercise calories back, like that was a setting on MyFitness Pal, do you want to include your exercise calories and increase the amount that you're eating? And it was such a misnomer and it told us, first of all, it told us we had to earn our calories to, you know, to be able to eat, which is a terrible thought. But secondly, it told us that those calorie. Were the same, and it's just not, like you said, it's such a small amount burning fat as opposed to, uh, how did you say

Maverick: 21:01

Losing body fat versus burning body fat.

Lisa: 21:03

Yeah, losing body fat versus burning body fat is something just completely different. And cardio for me has so many other benefits that are completely outside of, like you say, the visual change. For me, cardio is, a lot of times it's getting outside and it's. It's just kind of having that like breathing hard feeling of just a half an hour on my bike or something, and that is almost exclusively mental benefit for me, and I feel like that is just so overlooked that cardio really is the mental piece and the weights are really gonna be the visual piece, the physical.

Maverick: 21:44

I love that because I, I run and, and people generally classify me as being anti cardio. I'm not anti cardio, but, I'm very pro the things that are gonna, you know, cause a visual change and I, I actually, I enjoy running, but I know now in this stage of my life that I am doing it. To your point, just to feel that euphoria after, to feel, uh, my heart, my heart rate, get up to the, you know, just the cardiovascular benefits that it gives me. That that is what I run for. I know that, that, you know, mile or two run that I just did is not gonna give me a six pack. It's gonna make me feel good. And that's, and that is reason enough to do it, you know, and,

Lisa: 22:19

for sure.

Maverick: 22:20

Um, I also wanted to say like, what the fuck My fitness pal, they ma they, they make you pay for premium to get rid of that function. like that, that's wild to me. Like not only is that function totally irrelevant and inaccurate, like it's a huge inaccurate way to gauge calories burn, but now they make you pay for premium to get rid of it. Like that's gotta be by design those greedy bastards.

Lisa: 22:45

Yeah, I, um, my fitness p was really probably the. The instigator of most of my anxiety slash depression around my weight and body image, because I just, so many times I would hit Sumit at the end of the day and it would say, Harray, if every day we're like today, you would lose. This many pounds and weigh this much in six weeks. And I was like, ok, yay,

Maverick: 23:13

I

Lisa: 23:13

I mean, I have that little message memorized because I did it so many times and no, I mean, I deleted my fitness P like years ago, but still, it just was such a force for my dieting for so many years.

Maverick: 23:27

Dude, I, that's wild. And I'm so glad you you bring this up. I, we use it because it syncs with the training software that we use in our program. And I do have to say, ignore whatever it recommends to you. We're just using this to gain awareness of your caloric intake because the, the recommendations are so generalized and they're, they're, they're not gonna help the average person long term. And I, I never even thought about that. How. It could cause such a, a mental warfare with, with, if every day was like today, you would lose X, Y, Z.

Lisa: 24:00

I don't know if they still send that message, but it only happens if you hit complete the day. So you can tell your people not to complete the day, and then you don't get that dumb message.

Maverick: 24:07

Yeah. Because that

Lisa: 24:09

yeah, if you are using it for, yeah, if you're using it for, cuz you have to enter your weight to start so it knows what your weight is and so then it will do its little calculation. So if you are a person that's using a tracking app, I would just say don't, don't complete the day and it won't give you that dumb message.

Maverick: 24:28

Yeah. God, I, I, I need you to, I'm glad you've reminded me of this. I'm gonna go in my Facebook graph this and, and give a reminder of that.

Lisa: 24:35

Well, like you said, you, you do work a lot with the emotional piece, as do I, and so the thoughts, the thoughts matter, and so those kinds of things, those become thoughts and thoughts become our beliefs, and that leads to our results. So,

Maverick: 24:49

Yep.

Lisa: 24:49

not as much of what we're talking about today. Tell us more about walking. I know you're a big fan of walking. Um, again, I, you gave a step count, but how, how do we all fit this in and. as you mentioned before, many of your clients as well as mine are moms or they are working, or both? Not, not that moms, you know what I mean? They're, they're either stay at home moms working all day with kids, or they're also trying to figure out how to go to work and fit in, uh, workout in. I think, um, the idea that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, I've just realized like that's. Really inaccurate and doesn't speak to the woman that has just a lot on her plate. So I find I can fit a weightlifting routine in, and then on off days I walk, I don't find that I'm able to fit both in. Do you like to see a walk every day?

Maverick: 25:45

Your average is what truly matters because it's unrealistic to say for someone busy that. You're gonna walk x amount of steps every single day. But what you can do is take a look at your week as a whole and say, okay, here's the days that I'm working. I know I'll be more sedentary that days. I'll do my best on those days. And on the days that I'm not working, I'm a double, triple up, quadruple up on my walks to bring my average up because it's a, it's the same concept as with your, your caloric intake or anything else. If you average you. 3000 steps Monday through Thursday, but you triple up whatever, go out to the park, go to go get a ton of walks in Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and you, you average, you know, 10,000 those days, you're gonna bring your overall average up and whatever your average is, is what you need to focus on. So that's why I, I'm really big on getting a seven day average and, and just kind of let a step tracker. Run in the background just on, on autopilot and see what your average is. Once you have that seven day average, let's say it's, you know, 5,000, just throwing numbers out there, then your goal for the next week is 5150, 200 to, you wanna slowly add, um, a couple hundred steps to your average here and there. Or just to your total. You could even do it with a total, let's say that you, you know, you a, you, you got 35,000 steps in, you know, 5,000 times seven, 35,000 is, is, you know what? You averaged that. And then you came up with that 35,000 step total for the week. You could add 200 to that total. Now, now your total is 35,200. And over time, as you increase that step count average, your calorie cushion for the day gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and you will start to lose weight and body fat over time. And, and there's. unless you are just severely overeating every day and without any kind of awareness of your eating, you will start to lose weight. There's no ways around that, but I think that it's really important to first see where you're at. And this applies to everything. This applies to your training. This applies to your protein intake. You have to see where you're at because the number one question I get around these types of topics is how much should I be doing? Or what is a good step count goal? And if I tell someone 10,000, who's only averaging 2000? That's super discouraging. So instead of telling that person to get to 10,000, I would say 2100, you know, one, 100 more than where you're at. And then once you do that, build, build, build, that's a great way to build confidence. It's a great way to have a target, a reasonable attainable target, not exhaust yourself or overwhelm yourself and, and make it fun because you have a new target every week to go to and maybe you overachieve, maybe go way over that target. Great. It's, it feels much better to overachieve and go over that target than it does to say, I'm gonna get 10,000 and fall away under it and feel like a.

Lisa: 28:21

yeah, for sure. when I start my clients with some nutrition changes, I'm like, just pick one thing. Let's just pick one meal to fix this week. Like, let's just start with breakfast. Let's see if we can get more protein at breakfast and see how that goes for this week. Let's just plan that. So I love the idea of just starting and it's, it's a doable. We wanna rate that, like, look at your plan for the week are you an eight or better on a scale of one to 10 on it being doable. Okay. If you're looking at that plan and thinking, uh, it's 50 50. If I, if I'm gonna make this, we gotta reduce it, we gotta go down.

Maverick: 28:58

meet yourself where you're at always. And, and that is, and the, the compound interest of of being 1%, I mean, that, that comes, this comes from like books, like Atomic Habits and stuff, but it really is true, like the compound interest of improving 1% better on something every day it compounds to where six to eight months from now, you won't recognize yourself. but you're not gonna get there with a dynamic overnight overhaul of your habits. That never works. it just, it never works. And if it does work, it works for like two weeks and then you completely fall off the wagon. Cause it's not realistic.

Lisa: 29:28

And that's, I think that's the whole dieting culture and the dieting industry is it's like, okay, on Monday, here's your food list, here's your workouts. This is what you're gonna do now for the next six weeks, and it has an end date. And those kinds of things just don't work. When we make small changes, we make a little change today, a little change. Next week, that's what lifestyle change is, and I think. You and I, I think, get kind of a bad rap as like, oh, you're just a diet in disguise, which I spoke to a couple weeks ago on the podcast, which I'm like, no, we really, truly are going for lifestyle change, if my clients feel like they're dieting, I've done something wrong. if they don't feel like they're creating a new lifestyle, something that looks like they can do for the rest of their life. We don't want you to diet for the rest of your life. We want you to care about your nutrition for the rest of your life. And I think the same thing goes for workouts. I, I wanna care about the health of my body for the rest of my life. And when I see like these older women on Instagram lifting weights, I'm just like, yes, that's gonna be me,

Maverick: 30:33

Hell yeah. Yeah. I always ask, I always ask people to think logically about a meal plan. Let's just break it down to a simplest form. Think about it logically. Okay. Here's your, here's your meal plan. Here are the list of foods that you have to eat. God knows how they came to this conclusion of these foods that you're gonna arbitrarily put into your lifestyle. What happens after? What happens after? What happens when you, okay, cool. Use this, this list to box yourself into this way of eating. Irre, like regardless of your lifestyle, and you, let's say you do lose those 15, 20 pounds, whatever your goal was, eating only these foods great. You're there. Now, where do we go? You gonna eat chicken and rice the rest of your life like. what is the long-term plan? No, fuck, no, you're not, you're not gonna eat from that list the rest of your life. You're gonna want to eat like a normal human being. And so at the end of this meal plan that you've, that you've started, if, if you st assuming you stuck with it, which less than 5% of people actually stick with meal plans, by the way, or any kind of diet. So let's say you're one of the 5%, it's like, where do you, where do you go now? It's like you haven't gained any intuitive eating skills. You haven't educated yourself, you haven't empowered. With the knowledge that is readily available to now make intuitive eating decisions ba, that are congruent with your goals, right? So no matter which way you frame it, no matter what diet you decide to do to try and skirt around becoming mindful of your eating, eventually it's, you're going to come back to the exact same place, which is, I still don't have the tools. I still don't know my asshole from a hole on the ground When it comes to what should. Eat in order to manifest X result with my body. And so that, that is what people like you and I provide. We, we give people the, the, the actual knowledge to make intuitive decisions to where you can enjoy a barbecue, you can enjoy a work dinner, you can go out to eat without this anxiety and fear that you're gonna have to erase this quote unquote bad thing. You just. right? Like we put labels on, that's, that's another thing. Meal plans and diets. Do they reinforce this good versus bad mentality that people have with food and they're like, oh no, I ate something bad. I now have to punish myself. I have to erase it. By fasting, overdoing, exercise, what does that lead to? Pendulum swings the other way. Now we're, now we're bing because we restrict it so much. Now we have to erase that again and it's like Monday through Friday. The cycle's repeating and so that's, that is what we are empowering women to escape from. That psych, that cyclical sabotage that the dieting industry manifests for people.

Lisa: 33:02

Yeah, which I think really goes back to just this whole movement piece of. We often are punish, punishing ourselves in the gym instead of enjoying ourselves. How many times have you heard a trainer? I mean, I, I did CrossFit years ago and there was, you know, that the day after Thanksgiving class and it's like, we know you ate blah, blah, blah yesterday, and just the whole like, or, or starting that day with a workout so that you can eat. That's so damaging and, and it's just not true. It's not true. Can you speak a little bit about why, I mean, we talked a little bit about how it doesn't ef, you know, it's not the same as your calories, but I just think that is something that is hard for women to believe. It's hard to get out of that belief, that exercise is to undo

Maverick: 33:57

When we try to, yeah, when we try to undo this, first of all, I think you start with taking the label off, right? Let's stop labeling. It's not bad. It's not good. There's nutrient dense foods. There's processed foods. Believe it or not, both of 'em have a place in your nutrition, in my opinion.

Lisa: 34:12

For sure. I agree.

Maverick: 34:14

Great. I'm glad we're in alignment on that. I figure we would be, but, so let's take the label off, but when you attempt to erase. Uh, overcompensate for some quote unquote bad decision you made. You're essentially, you've, you've blown a tire out on the interstate and you're getting out and you're gonna slash the other three Now, because you, you know, you, you, you've made some decision that you have labeled bad. When in reality, what are we gonna do? We're gonna get out and we're gonna fix the tire. We're gonna keep going. That's what you do. You just get back on track. And because we, our body is the law of averages, we're not what we. One day or two days or, or even three, a three day vacation. We are what we do consistently over time. So if you have a day where you happen to go out to eat or maybe, maybe you, you overate, maybe you did, maybe you went into caloric surplus that day. Okay, awesome. Guess what? Get back on track and it will average out the next two or three days. Just kind of get back to your routine. Walk a lot, increase your protein consumption. Get back within a range of calories, and we could, we could talk about that too. as long as you do that, you will be an average. You'll, you're a culmination. Your body depicts a culmination of decisions, not one or two bad meals. Like they're, or again, we're using that label because that's what people say, bad meals, but meals, let's just say indulgences, right? Like your, your body doesn't reflect those two indulgences. It reflects your decisions in, in culmination over time. So I think that's, that's really a good shift. And then, you know, the language you used earlier was like using workout as punishment. It. That's a, that's something I'm really big on. And, and you said earlier, you know, our, our thoughts become things, right? Like we, our mind is always searching for evidence of what we believe to be true. Well, if we change the language there, like so much of the language that we use is important, centered around workouts and, and, and tracking food or, or eating, choosing, making different choices, whether it's nutrient dense foods, et cetera. Like we. To do these things, and we're doing these things out of self-love. We're doing these things because we love our body. So instead of this language where we're like, I hate my body, so I'm gonna go work out, or I have to work out, otherwise I won't look like this, or I have to work out to erase food. It's like, no, I, I get to work out. I, I'm working out because I love my body so much. I value my body so much that I'm going to go exercise it so I can feel strong and I can feel healthy. I am, I value my body and I value. My, my confidence and my health so much that I'm gonna become aware of my eating habits using this app. Which by the way, when my mom was doing it back in the day, they had to look up food in a book. They had to find the food item, they had to add, they had to do math, they had to weigh it on one of those old timey scales, the ones that have tooth one on each side. And they had to like had chains on it. And then they had to do long division and figure out how many, they had to convert grams to ounces, and then they would know how many calories they got from that item. Whereas, You take a picture of the food and it does all that for you. So like we're way more privileged than we realize to even have the opportunity to be able to change our body, to be able to exercise, to be able to make different choices of our food, to have access to information. that EDU empowers us with that knowledge. Like it's, it's such a blessing and, and just shifting the mind from I have to, to I'm grateful to can be powerful. It, it will just, it can help you come from a place of self-love instead of self-loathing.

Lisa: 37:32

For sure the, I mean, I think the most beautiful path to change is from self-love, and I always say we take care of the things that we love. We don't like get up and and feed our kids breakfast because we hate them. Right. We're like, I love you. Let me take care of you. Let me feed you and clothe you and be kind to you. Like, and then we don't give ourselves that same opportunity. And I just think, yeah, we just, we do take care of the things that we love. And if you feel like losing some weight is a way that you can take care of your body better, I mean, I've referenced this a couple times, but I just, I just love it cuz I just had a client say, you know what? I just get up from a chair. Like, I don't make a noise, I just get up and I'm like, yes, that there's just like functional things, you know, I just, and some of my older clients that are like, I just wanna be able to get up and down off the floor. And that's, that can be, you know, a joint mobility thing, but it can also be a weight thing. And so if you feel like losing some weight is gonna make your function a little better, like love your body enough to let it function in that way. It's totally an okay goal. You know, I think we sometimes think like, well, if I love my body, I should just love it the way it is.

Maverick: 38:51

Well, let's not conf. I think it's a key thing here. We don't want to confuse contentment with complacency, and people think that they're that, that they're one and the same. You can, you can love who you are. You can love your body and also, Make healthy changes and also make, you know, get leaner or exercise more. Exercise doesn't have to come from a place of not being, you know, um, content, right? Complacent is settling. Complacent is, well, I'm not happy and I accept that. Right? Contentment is, I love myself. I, I am, um, I am okay with my, I am, I am enough, I am worthy. And because of that I'm going to make some changes that. Increase my quality of life, that's contentment. Right? So we don't, I, I always big on that because contentment is, you know, working to improve, but also loving who we are. And we can do both of those things. We can do that and we can do that. It's not either or. Um, you brought up kids and I wanna, if you don't mind, I want to really like hone in on that for a sec.

Lisa: 39:58

Sure.

Maverick: 39:58

So the other day I was out on my patio here and I was, I was doing some, some rehabilitation exercises for my knees cuz I've got tin and eyes on my knees. And so I have to constantly do stuff to strengthen the surrounding area. And I was doing some squats on this incline wedge I have out there. And my son, who's two and a half, um, he was out there playing on his bike and I did a set. He immediately comes over, gets on the platform, starts to do some squats, like, or trying his best. adorable. And it just was just a reminder, like a super simple reminder that kids do what we do, not necessarily what we say. And I just wanted to put that out there because. You know, we, we want these, we want our kids to be healthy and we want them to, uh, adopt healthy habits, but it, it starts with us. That sounds cliche, but it really does. It starts with not what we advocate and say, but what we do. And that goes back to when I was talking about, you know, if you knock out five or 10 air squats during blippy while your kids are watching it or get in where you fit it in, and they see you doing that. What's that going to say? It's gonna say so many things like, mom is, mom is willing to do this no matter what, and therefore, so will I. Mom's not afraid to look silly doing some squats and lunges in the middle of the carpet, therefore, neither will I. Mom puts her health first a lot. She's, she's wanting to make some healthy changes. Therefore, now I, now I am going to embody that. But if you're dieting. and you are getting on the scale and crying every day, or you are sucking in, in all your pictures or moving to the back, or you're switching out the hangers in the store to a smaller size of the cashier. Does it think you're buying a larger size and you're doing all these things in front of them? What are they then going to learn? And this isn't a shame, this isn't to make people feel, it's just, you know, I've had thousands and thousands of conversations with women, intimate conversations where they've told me these, these struggles they have, they're, they painted their hell for me. And if there's no other reason to move away from those types of thought processes and behaviors, it's our kids are watching you, our kids are watching us. They watch everything we do, and they're going. emulate that and, and so just, I just wanted to make that a point cuz you know, so many people are, think that, well, if I can't work out for an hour, then it might as well not even go. Or if I can't, you know, if I can't do it perfectly, I won't even, I just won't even do it. But meeting yourself where you're at and, and striving for progress over perfection, it will send the message to your kids to do the same and to move away from some of the behaviors that, that you have as a result of your childhood or your upbringing or your beliefs. It will, that's the best thing you can do is just em.

Lisa: 42:27

Yeah, I've been really working lately to do undo some of the things I taught my kids when they were younger because, um, my kids are actually older. My youngest is 15, so I've got teenagers and plus kids that are out. out of the house in college, but when they were all home and I was heavy into dieting and macro counting, I would bring my kitchen scale and I've shared this story before, but I would bring my kitchen scale to the dinner table and weigh my portion in front of my kids and. I just think that was really damaging for them. So not only that, but then also, especially when they were younger, I insisted on the Clean Plate Club, which is a whole other problem, you know, well, if you want dessert, you have to finish your dinner. Like some sort of reward And so I've been really being open and honest, especially my teenagers that live at home are, are girls. And just trying to be just tell them like, Hey, that was not great what I did. That was not right to be so. You know, obsessed and anxiety ridden about, about my dieting and I've just had to really, thankfully, you know, they are open to talking about it and so they see that I eat differently now. And obviously what we do is more important than what we say. But, um, if you are in that position where you've demonstrated some of these things that you're not proud of, like it isn't too late because I really don't think it's too late for me and my. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, my daughter like didn't finish her dinner like, fine. She was like, I got too much, sorry. And I was like, not a problem. I just like dumped it. And I had made a dessert that day and she ate the dessert and I was like, not a problem. And she's like, uh oh. Oh, okay. I'm like, remember like it's okay now. Like it has taken some time to undo, but it can be.

Maverick: 44:17

That's, that's powerful in itself. Because you're, you know, you're, you're, you're moving away from maybe some shame that you had over exhibiting certain behaviors in front of them. And, and I, I go through this as well. Like, we all, we all make mistakes as parents. We're

Lisa: 44:32

Oh, well, yes,

Maverick: 44:33

we we're all gonna, you know, fuck our kids up a little bit, but goal being, to minimize it as much as possible. But the very fact that now you're showing, hey, I've learned, I've learned new information as an adult. I've, I've, I've learned new information, have new data, and therefore we're gonna make different decisions based on that data. And you have the freedom to do the same. Like now that's what you're showing, which is an amazing example in itself.

Lisa: 44:56

Yeah. And I love having a gym in, in my garage. I'm always like, Hey, come lift waits with me. They haven't taken me up on it yet, but they see me doing it. So. Um, alright. Uh, what else do you have to offer? Just anything else about lifting, walking, any, any last tidbits about movement you would love to?

Maverick: 45:20

Well, I, I think the main theme Lisa would, would be, um, meet yourself where you're at. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. You know, and even if it's, I think just making small commitments is, is the. Most important thing you can do and, and you don't have to do a lot of things in order to start seeing changes. You, you can do, like you said earlier, one or two things. Start with that. Prove to yourself, we have to build the self-trust. So, you know, I think if I could give like two of the biggest levers that you could move and we're keeping it activity and, and movement and workout focused and, and not nutrition focused, I would say step count. Biggest one, biggest lever. You can move right there. Just start tracking your steps. That's so. It's free, it's accessible, and you can start doing it today. It's just walk more people who walk have a much, uh, easier time with, with losing body fat if that's your goal. And even if your goal is to gain strength, it's, it, it's so important to have a high step count so that you minimize body fat gain within a chloric surplus. So step count. And then as far as workouts go, It's, I would focus less on the frequency, less on the duration, and more on the intensity. Are you challenging yourself and is it, uh, is it progressively more challenging for you? Your body's a very adaptable machine, so as long as you are. Progressively moving up in weight or making the same weight, more challenging, like slowing down your reps. Great tool to do that. Um, trying to keep it, you know, you keep it basic. I would say YouTube, beginner dumbbell exercises, beginner body weight exercises, and just work on implementing those into your weekly routine a couple times a week. And then once you've mastered those or you're getting a lot better at those, then look at maybe doing them more frequently or making them more challenging and. again, meet yourself where you're at. Don't overcomplicate it by, am I doing enough? Am I doing it long enough? Am I doing it frequent enough? Just challenge yourself as long as you are challenged. That's all that matters because your body will then say, Hey, this was really challenging. I need to adjust and change and a k a, develop muscle tissue so that the next time she does this, I'll be ready to do it. So, step count, challenge yourself with workouts no matter what it is, and you will see progress. Just be consistent with that. Be consistent with it and, and be kind to yourself during the entire process. Don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. Just meet yourself where you're at and, you know, do your very best. That's, that's all that matters.

Lisa: 47:48

Perfect. I love it. Thank you so much. just again, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. When people are gonna look you up on Instagram, sometimes he's like crazy and then sometimes you're just like, calm and collected and I just love the two versions of you. So why don't you, um, on that note, tell people how they can find you and a little bit about, about that part.

Maverick: 48:10

Yeah, uh, Maverick Online coaching is the quickest way to find me, um, on Instagram or TikTok. Um, or Facebook Maverick online coaching. Um, my podcast is the Revenge Body Podcast, so if you wanna check that out as well. Um, I have an entire episode on training, and I think that would be very valuable for, its for what you and I talked about the day, Lisa. But yeah, Maverick Online coaching would be the easiest way to find me on, on all social media platforms, and I'm glad that. I'm glad you said that because yeah, this is the real me, this is the, the actual me. Uh, but the me you see on social media, the Viking and all those characters I play, you know, purely for, for comedy and uh, and for marketing purposes. But yeah, this is, this is what you actually get. So just so

Lisa: 48:48

Yeah. No, it's fun. I love it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll link all that up in the show notes.

Maverick: 48:54

Awesome.

Lisa: 48:54

All right. Thank you again. Have a great day.

Maverick: 48:57

too.

48:58

Thanks for joining Maverick and I, on this episode today, I've got a bonus clip, especially for my email subscribers. So if you want to hear Maverick's no-nonsense and quite science-based approach to eating fruit, be sure to grab that link is in the show notes.

Lisa: 49:17

hey, thanks for listening today. If you're ready to get some personalized coaching from me, I'd encourage you to schedule a free strategy session. Visit www.wellwithlisa.as.me or it's easier just to find that link in the show notes. We'll talk about where you currently are with your weight loss goals. And I'll give you some actionable tools. You can start implementing right away. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you're learning something new and enjoying the podcast, I'd love for you to leave me a five star rating and a review. Thanks again for joining me, Lisa Salisbury in this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well.