130. Moving From Stressful Competition to Enjoying Movement - How to Train Yourself to Love the Gym

As the holiday season comes to a close and the new year greets hello, many health enthusiasts, aspiring athletes, and even gym neophytes focus on starting new habits and revisiting old ones that could help them reach their fitness goals. Gyms and coaches alike have seen the trend of many people starting the year right and having problems being consistent in meeting their goals. Worse, even though they have seen consistency in their efforts, they are having a hard time losing those unnecessary fats. Perhaps, it is time to change your mindset on the gym. In this episode of the Live Your Personal Best podcast, I spoke to Natalie, a former CrossFit competitor, for many years. After ending her CrossFit competition career, she decided to change her mindset around the gym. She also works with different types of people having trouble losing and maintaining their weight. She discussed how different factors like the lack of the right mindset in going to the gym is detrimental in reaching your different fitness goals and what you should do to ensure that you'll have the right mindset as you take the time to achieve your desired results. Key Takeaways: Contrary to popular belief, harder is not always better for physical activities. To get ahead, take the time to rest, especially when you're doing intense physical activities. Listen to your body, especially when it's showing signs that you need to slow down. If you don't see results from your food or workout, it's a stress issue. Don't treat your body like a machine. If you do, it might cause your disconnect with it. When you don't know how to proceed with your journey, create a vision of what life you want to have and start aligning your actions, routines, and habits to realize that vision. Take a step back and assess your relationship with the gym and food to learn more about how you can move forward. If you want to be fit or lean, there are two skills that you should learn: loving movement and looking for activities that are low stress. When you focus yourself on what you love about moving, you're going to show up better, and you're going to be motivated to move your body. Learn to train your mind on what you love about working out, and the body will come with it after. Ask yourself where you want to go, what behaviors are not benefiting me and others, and what skills I need to develop from taking where I want to go. Episode Timeline: [2:32] Natalie shared her CrossFit competition journey [4:28] Natalie discussed her health scare, and it opened her mind to changing her mindset [8:44] Natalie explained the connection between fat loss and stress and how the latter can be detrimental in achieving your target weight [11:46] Natalie discussed how athletes can read their bodies and how it could help build the right mindset. [14:28] Natalie shared some advice that she gives to her clients that are experiencing stress and not seeing results [19:51] Natalie's discussed her transition from competition to finding movement [24:15] Natalie's final thoughts Quotes: I was super confused like what the hell. Like how can you gain weight working out as hard as I can? I'm not an athlete. How can this happen to me? It turns out that stress can make you fat, and I didn't realize that. Nobody really talked about that. - Natalie [6:09] That emotional stress is typically the thing like you can be doing all the things right, eating well, drinking water, getting your sleep, doing your workouts, getting your walks in. If you're always thinking about what's next, what I have to do, why am I not doing enough or you're questioning whether you're eating enough or eating too little or you know you're worried about like if this food's gonna make you fat. That's all stress. - Natalie [17:17] Connect with Natalie: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.newhart/ Free Consultation: www.talk2nat.com Follow for all podcast updates: https://www.instagram.com/liveyourpb/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices