Why "Listening to Your Body" Kept Her Stuck for Years (Cori Lefkowith) | Ep 452
Can macro tracking actually create food freedom? What if the structure you’ve been avoiding is the exact thing that helps you lose fat, build muscle, and stop starting over?
I’m joined by Cori Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, certified trainer, former Division I athlete, and powerlifting champion, to unpack why macros, nutrition, and strength training are powerful tools for body recomp when used the right way.
We talk about why tracking is just data, how the “change loop” keeps people stuck in weight loss frustration, and why muscle building has to come before more restriction. Cori also shares how to use flexible tracking, non-scale victories, and a habit budget to make nutrition and fitness sustainable for real life.
This is a practical, evidence-based fitness conversation for anyone who wants lasting progress without obsession.
Get Fitness Lab (20% off for listeners), the #1 coaching app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Why tracking feels restrictive
2:08 - Cori’s mindset shift on macros
5:01 - Tracking as neutral data
8:15 - Why intuitive eating backfires
12:16 - The change loop trap
15:37 - The habit budget framework
18:44 - Muscle first for body recomp
23:33 - Handling tracking fatigue
29:27 - Aging, perimenopause, and stress
35:37 - Why there’s no perfect time
Episode resources:
Website: redefiningstrength.com
Book: The STRONG System: Transform Your Mindset and Build Your Best Body at Any Age
YouTube: @redefiningstrengthOC
Instagram: @redefiningstrength
Facebook: @redefiningstrength
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Intro And The Tracking Myth
Philip Pape 0:01
You've been told that tracking your food is obsessive, that if you just listen to your body and eat intuitively, you'll find balance. And that feels right because who wants to weigh chicken on a food scale for the rest of their life? Today's guest believed all of that. She's a certified trainer, a former Division I athlete, a state powerlifting champion, and the founder of one of the fastest growing online coaching companies in the country. And for years, she avoided macro tracking because she thought it would make her relationship with food worse. She tried every other approach first. None of them stuck. When she finally gave tracking a chance, she realized that the thing she'd been avoiding was the thing that set her free. In this episode, she is going to explain why the advice to just be intuitive fails most people. What's actually happening when he feels stuck in a cycle of starting over and a simple system you can use to break out of it for good. Welcome to Wits and Waits, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today I'm excited to be challenging the idea that structure and tracking are the enemy of food freedom. My guest is Corey Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, where she coaches women through sustainable nutrition and strength training. Her company has made the Inc. 5000 list in back-to-back years, and she has a brand new book called The Strong System, a science-backed toolkit to keep you on track. Corey spent years actively resisting macro tracking before becoming one of its biggest advocates. And that 180 is the foundation of what we're talking about. So by the end, you're going to understand why just listen to your body often backfires. For most people who are trying to lose fat or build muscle, what the change loop is, she has an interesting framework that is going to help you out, how to recognize when you're trapped in the change loop and how a six-step system can turn tracking from a chore into a tool that you actually want to use. Corey, thanks for coming on Wits and Weights.
Cori Lefkowith 2:08
Thanks for having me. Super excited to dive in.
Philip Pape 2:11
What I love about your story is that you have the open mind to have learned through your own journey of, hey, you know, in the past you would coach people on nutrition and fitness and telling them maybe you don't need to track macros. And there's definitely a dichotomous kind of thinking out in the fitness industry, which sometimes is its own trap, right? Like the black and white thinking. So, you know, did you truly believe that at one point? How has your thinking evolved? And what did you settle on to where you are today?
Cori Lefkowith 2:38
Well, the internet is amazing and also slightly embarrassing when you go back and look through its archives. But I did find even proof on my blog of when I wrote about how I would never track and how tracking was too restrictive and obsessive. And when I did that, it was after an experience of actually tracking where I'd cut out all the foods I love. I felt miserable, I felt hangry, low energy. And so I really had determined from this experience that it wasn't right for me, but I completely wrote it off. And I determined that if I was eating healthy foods, that had to be enough. But then as I started to do that and recognize my progress wasn't happening the way I wanted, I sat with myself for a second and was like, okay, well, what's going on? And as I began to research, I realized what gets measured gets managed. And I didn't really have any clue of the portions I was eating. And I don't know about you, you, but like peanut butter and that portion, that is not the actual serving size on the jar. So just gonna throw that out there. But I was not measuring it out and my portions were very distorted. And so I decided that I was just gonna log what I was currently doing. And through just logging without making any changes, I began to realize that tracking was just data. I assigned all meaning to it and determined to make a choice to cut stuff out to restrict to a point where I felt hangry. And I say hangry because it was hungry and angry. Hungry isn't just enough. It's the low energy too that comes with that restriction often. So I began to realize that tracking was just a tool and it was a tool to fuel better. So there was that evolution and it's amazing to find, but I think it's also not only recognizing the habits, but the mindsets behind them that allows us to find freedom in the variations or tools or tactics that really help us move forward.
Philip Pape 4:29
Great frame on this, right? Because it sounds like when you originally tracked, you connected it to restriction. And really there are two separate concepts happening in parallel, which can give somebody a misaligned association, right? Which happens to us all the time as human beings. And you just said it's a tool that can be used, it's a tool that can be misused. And how you track is important. What I did like one specific thing you said is your idea of portions was distorted until you tracked. And I did an episode not long ago. You guys can find it in the feed about developing intuitive eating skills. And one fact I mentioned is that even the most expert, you know, nutritionists, dietitians, coaches are typically off about 20%, but even with the skill, they're off by 20%. Without the skill, it's 40, 60, 80, 200% off. You know, who knows? So when we have that belief that tracking is disordered, where does that come from? Is it exactly like your situation, or is there something like in the evidence we know that this association has developed, even though it's not reality?
Tracking As Neutral Data
Cori Lefkowith 5:30
I think it all comes back to mindsets. There is not a one size fits all approach to anything. I mean, and the more we see the nuance in things, the more we can allow ourselves to be able to use different tools and tactics at different stages of life. But it's recognizing that you can be obsessive without tracking. I know lots of people, and I've worked with lots of clients who come into tracking because they need to eat more and giving themselves that clear evidence that they can eat more, that they should eat more, that they can include foods they love, really helps them release some of the obsessive tendencies they already have because we can get very restrictive without even like having that thing that we're weighing and measuring. We can decide that foods have to be off limits, that they're evil, that they're bad for us, and we assign moral value. So obsession is a mindset, it is not inherent in a tool or tactic. But we do often use things in a way that then creates that association. And it's really key we recognize that because when I even say that tracking, and I actually believe that tracking in some form is right for everybody, that means vastly different things for people. It can mean just writing down what you're eating, it can be writing down emotions on how you felt with the food, but you need some form of data to give yourself that ability to step back because we are very bad at remembering things and feelings play a huge role. And to slightly go back to the intuitive eating thing, one of the most eye-opening things early on in my coaching career was not only my personal experience with tracking, but I had a client and she was on a weight loss journey and I was having her track macros. And we encountered somebody when we were out who said to her, I can't believe you track. Just eat intuitively, listen to your body. And she was like, Well, my body tells me intuitively that I want to go eat that whole pint of ice cream in the fridge when I get home from work and it's been a stressful day. And with that moment, you could see the other person sort of be like, Oh, because there isn't this recognition that we're each coming at food from a different upbringing or a different perspective on it. And some of us have trained ourselves to emotionally eat because that has solved the feelings in the moment. And that pattern is so ingrained that we don't even sometimes realize we're replicating it until after we've done it. So that tracking can help bring that awareness and recognize when we're eating out of intuition in a way that we've just trained our body to respond.
Philip Pape 7:39
Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense because those signals that people just assume you have become more and more dysregulated and dysfunctional and with certain behaviors like chronic restriction, right? Because you're talking about fueling and but chronic restriction, let alone eating disorders and such, which makes it even worse, where it's just completely dysregulated that connection. And some of it is neurological too, with the between that and your hormones, when we talk about all the types of hunger. So one thing you mentioned that's very powerful is that your system of tracking itself can be so flexible. Like when we talk about flexible eating or flexible dieting, it's not just macros, it's, you know, the way you're tracking. So what I'm interested before we go on is in your past, when you weren't quite on the side of full-on tracking, were there things you, in hindsight, did find successful that may not fit in the tracking window? Does that make sense? Like, are there things you still carry to you to this day that are disconnected from tracking that helped you and still help you with food, let's say?
Cori Lefkowith 8:39
You know, this is a question I've never asked myself, but I would honestly say no.
Philip Pape 8:43
Okay.
Why Intuitive Eating Backfires
Cori Lefkowith 8:44
Because I think in some way you always are tracking. You're keeping a log of what you've done. Like even if you think about the mindsets and the confidence you have, it's a log of proof that if you've stacked one way or the other. When you don't trust yourself to go into a program again to make changes, that's because of proof you feel you've stacked. So in some way, we're always tracking everything mentally, whether or not we're aware of it. And so I think what happened before is that I would track my food by having specific foods I deemed healthy to eat, but I was still sort of tracking what I was doing. It was just from the framework of having good and bad foods, which for me honestly led to more obsession and restriction and more starting over again because I would ultimately want some food that I had labeled as bad. For me, the the stricter macro cycling and tracking actually allowed more food freedom because I worked in those foods, saw that they could be a balance. And when I want to balance in a little more fun foods, I switch how I'm tracking. So maybe it's a more minimalist approach, only watching protein and calories, or maybe I'm taking pictures just to make sure my portions are somewhat in line and to allow myself to really understand am I feeling full or am I not feeling full? If I'm not feeling full, am I not feeling full because I had more processed foods that might not have, you know, really made me feel full so that the hunger cue is still there. You know, I would say we're always tracking whether or not we realize it.
Philip Pape 10:06
That's a great way to put it. So then can you systemize your tracking to make it work for you? Is really the goal. You know, we all have bank accounts and there's some level of tracking going on, but some people don't think about it and they spend, spend, spend, and then before long they're like, oh no, I don't have any more money. I need to use a credit card. Others, you know, may track every single expense and use budgeting software. Um, and I and I spent like a weekend not long ago doing that for my business and saying, oh no, I need to cut out a bunch of expenses. But sometimes you need that next level. You need to level up the amount that you're scrutinizing and using that data. So what is it about logging that I guess threatens people that I would suspect is emotional about all of this? I mean, you kind of alluded to it here and there, but do you see today one or two big buckets where people still resist when you say, no, this is gonna do it for you?
Cori Lefkowith 10:52
I think a lot is tied to our past experiences with it, where when you have a bad experience with something, you're not gonna want to do it again. I also think that we have to recognize that when we say tracking, the mental pushback we get is against the form that we envision first. And so we don't like to make changes because we're only comfortable being uncomfortable in certain ways. And generally the changes we're resisting are discomfort in a different way. And we do see that data as judgment because we instantly place judgment on ourselves. We know we are not doing the things we feel we should, and so therefore we see it as a negative. So I always like to start people with just tracking what they're currently doing. Hey, you're not trying to make changes, you're not trying to judge, you're just seeing what you're doing. Because maybe they're the changes you think you need to make, you don't actually need to make. Maybe you need to eat more, not less. And that is honestly the biggest relief because you start to separate out the emotions from like the tool a little bit. But we so often just go into something wanting to make changes and trying to make these sweeping overhauls that it's not the tracking, it's the overhauls that are really getting us, but it gets the association anyway. So I would say the mental hang up really does come back to the discomfort of something new and outside what we've always done. Because we push ourselves into pain. It's just pain we're okay with. And then it's recognizing, like, hey, how can I do this in a way that doesn't get that mental pushback to start?
The Change Loop Explained
Philip Pape 12:16
Yeah, that makes sense. So the form we envision using most is usually what comes to our head, is what you said, which sometimes makes us repel against this idea until you realize, no, there are multiple ways to do it, and let's do it and take a baby step of letting it show us what's happening, what's reality, what's your baseline, rather than going to the next step. And that's super, super revealing. I totally agree. So you talk about something called the change loop, which is a cycle of you try something new, they get some results, but then they hit a wall or a plateau, uh, then they quit, right? Or switch to another program or the next shiny object. And I'm assuming you went through this yourself many times in your past. Tell us about that change loop, how you recognize it, like why it's important to understand that pattern, so then we can do something about it.
Cori Lefkowith 13:01
I did the starting over Monday for far too long. And I think a lot of people can sympathize with that. But then I recognize I am never starting over. You are stuck with everything you have done prior. And that sounds really negative, and I don't mean it to be, because you're also stuck in a positive way with the lessons you've learned if you really reflect on everything that's happened. But that's why when someone will ask me, like, how long is it between X photo and X photo in this transformation? I'm like, my entire life. And so when I started to really recognize this pattern of constantly starting over, I recognize the emotions that went with it. We get really excited for a new program because we've hit this point of like the pain of change, like just is worth anything, right? To us, right? Because the pain of staying stuck just stinks so bad. We are not liking where we are. So we get really excited with a program promise, something that says it's like new, exciting, whatever else. And so we go all in. But in going all in, we never reflected on who and what we are, what habits have sabotaged us in the past, any of our realistic lifestyle, right? We just go for this ideal we see. Hey, this woman looks lean. I'm gonna do that program. That's right for me. We get super excited by it, do all the habits, and we hit like that habit overload where you start to be like, okay, I'm doing all these things, you know, I can do two-a-da workouts, I can cut out the dessert I love, I don't have to have the wine. And then, you know, like at the end of the week, you weigh in, you're like, okay, I lost some weight. I think I can do this. And then another week goes by and maybe the scale doesn't go down or even goes up, and you're like, what the heck am I doing? Why am I doing this? Right. And so that's where we hit the habit overload leading to emotional sabotage, where I also call this the flat tire rule, uh, where it doesn't feel worth it. It's Friday night. You're like, forget everything. You go pour the glass of wine, and then you pull out the box of cookies, and one cookie becomes like 10, especially if you're me or the pint of ice cream. I prefer ice cream. But it just is this whole downward spiral. And it's basically what I call the flat tire rule because you get a flat tire, right? You don't get the results you want. Maybe you even do have the wine, but instead of stopping there, you pull over to the side of the road. Instead of fixing the flat, you slash the other three tires, maybe even light the car on fire and walk away. But you spiral a lot more than you need to. And then there's the guilt. This is part of that emotional sabotage because so often, if we just stop at the event instead of making ourselves feel guilty, we wouldn't fall off and quit for multiple more weeks. But that's what we do. And then we end up getting to a point where we are so not happy with the situation, but we're also so not trusting ourself that all we can do is hope that the next thing will be the thing. And so that's where we repeat the pattern. And the only way to break it is to ultimately like sit with ourselves and say, why does this keep happening? Is it the same point? Is it how I'm doing the habits? But it's that self-awareness we need to build because there is no perfect plan. And the more we keep trying to go on a plan or fall off a plan and see it that way versus seeing ourselves as a plan, the more we just keep ourselves stuck.
Philip Pape 16:00
So I have two follow-ups to some things you just said. So on habit overload, and you kind of alluded to the fact that if you're trying to do a lot of things and then you make a little progress, but then you stop making progress, it kind of correlates with those speed bumps. So do you have like a framework of, hey, literally one habit at a time for a certain amount of time before you go to the next, like a stacking framework that you suggest to people? Or is it a little more individualized?
The Habit Budget For Consistency
Cori Lefkowith 16:27
Well, the more individualized, always the better. But I think what the thing comes back to is that self-assessment of effort and outcome. I like to think of it as the habit budget. And it was funny that you brought up money before because I do think of it as like, what are you putting into yourself to invest that gives you more energy, less stress, more ability to do more things? And then what is taking out from your self-control? And this is a lot of different things. And I don't think it's one set time of like 21 days, 45 days, whatever it is. I think it's more when that budget gets out of balance that we start to see that real pushback or habit overload. So if you're making changes in January, where maybe the holiday wake-in has you, you're feeling a little blah, you know, it's not a time where you're traveling, you're like, okay, I have an ideal time, like work's not busy, whatever else. So you can make changes based on that time. Maybe it is working out six days a week, maybe it is truly tracking macros intensively. And you start those habits and you have enough in your savings to really budget for them. But then you see the summer come, or for some people, it might be all the way to the holidays, or some it might be, you know, their birthday, like just in February, whatever it is, we have that time where all of a sudden stress or lifestyle shifts. And maybe we're not putting as much into savings, we're not doing as much for ourselves in terms of like the self-care, or maybe work stressors increase or family life changes. And all of a sudden, the habits that felt within budget no longer do, even though they didn't change. The effort didn't really change, but the feeling of effort did. And we have to recognize when that shifts, because when that shifts, if we don't evolve those habits or see what else we can adjust in our outside life, that's where we end up saying, forget everything, I'm done.
Muscle First And Smarter Metrics
Philip Pape 18:09
Yeah, that's resilience, at least, at least in my opinion, that's what came to me was that ability to stretch the rubber band and let it come back rather than break when time gets hard. You know, planning for the worst case, let's say you could either run in such a way where you're always behind paycheck to paycheck, which maybe we think about that as the budget you just mentioned, or also even our calories, let's be honest, where you're kind of always on fumes and or you can like focus on muscle and focus on fuel and like pay yourself first. Again, thinking in money terms, like take out the profit and the owner's pay first, which is like taking care of yourself and then seeing what's left. So when we talk about fuel and adding things in and building muscle and all that, I know that's like in your bailiwick, right? Where does that sit in all of this, even from day one? Like as you're starting to do an audit with someone or habit assessment, how are these conversations going, Corey, with regards to building muscle? Because there's so many fears and like myths around that, especially for women, for example.
Cori Lefkowith 19:05
Most of us do come into wanting to make healthy lifestyle changes because we want to lose weight. I know for me, like out of college, I did want to perform a certain way. I was into like lifting and building muscle, but a big journey into macros was because I had decided, you know, I want to see body recomp. I want to lose fat, I want to get lean. And in that process, I recognized that if I actually wanted to stay lean, not only did I have to recognize there were more phases to fat loss than just the constant cutting, but I recognized that muscle was everything. And if we start with a focus on muscle, everything else is gonna happen because you're gonna see improvements in your health, which is gonna make your body more efficient, which is gonna lead to fat loss. And while it's not sexy to think about it in that way, the reason you feel like things work, but nothing has actually worked long term is because you're approaching it as fat loss first over building muscle first. And those practices have often made us lose muscle in the process and trying to weigh less, but they've also adapted our metabolism. And if you think about your metabolism as like all the lights on your house being on to start, and then with your dieting practices, maybe with age, some have dimmed, some have been turned off. You can go turn them back on. But it means giving your house the energy so that it can do that. And so you have to fuel to build that lean muscle. And in the process of building that lean muscle and all the processes regulating back because they've potentially downregulated in order to survive off the calories you're consuming and the training that you're doing, you'll see yourself actually building that muscle and losing fat and seeing the recomp happen. Of course, it's not a fun process and often takes far longer than we want. And it's really challenging, especially mentally, because you often at first see the reverse of what you want to have happen actually happen.
Philip Pape 20:47
Yeah, you see maybe a little bit of extra weight gain, you carry a little more fluid, you maybe even gain a little bit of fat. And you're right, this kind of messaging is everywhere because it's important because it leads to the other question I was going to ask you, which is about these what you're measuring from the beginning. Because we mentioned nutrition, okay, that makes sense, but you also mentioned weight, which involves the scale. And, you know, we know that the scale can be helpful, but definitely it out of context can be very dangerous in the wrong hands in terms of how it's interpreted. So given muscle and fuel and no longer restricting and having a flexible diet, and all these are important, what are the basic things that people should be measuring and not paying attention to as well, at least early on?
Cori Lefkowith 21:30
It really does depend on your goal, because if your goal is gaining muscle, I'm probably gonna tell someone to just chuck the scale out or put it in the in their closet for a little bit just because you can't really watch it. Because often you will even be building muscle before you lose fat. And yes, your glycogen stores are gonna be full because your body thinks it's in a calorie surplus as it adapts. But we measure a lot what we like to call NSVs or non scale victories. And so we have reflection sheets not only on are you doing the habit consistently? Because I think a lot of times we don't notice our own inconsistencies. And then we get really frustrated, we're putting in a lot of effort for things not to snowball. But we want to measure progress in other ways because that's really the signals often before we reach our goal that things are working. So is your sleep improving? As you're increasing calories, are your nails growing? Is your hair growing? Are you fidgeting more? We want to make note of all the different ways that we can see those habits paying off to know that we're on the right track because we see a lot of those signals well before our ultimate goal. And then I do think body measurements, progress pictures can be very helpful to track progress. But the more ways you measure success, the more ways you give yourself to be successful. So you got to measure progress outside of your ultimate goal. And I even think setting complementary targets is really important. So if you're going after weight loss, you want to think about a performance goal in the gym. You want to think a habit consistency goal. You want to think about outside challenges that you know will keep you in the habits that ultimately pay off with if you're going after the scale change, the scale change.
Philip Pape 22:56
That's great. And you just said complementary metrics. So again, digging in one more layer, does that mean that the suite of metrics can change quite a bit from person to person? Not even one person from goal to goal, but literally like this person may need to have these three things on their list at most of the time, even for the rest of their lives. And this person over here is these three other things. I'm curious, like how that comes up.
Cori Lefkowith 23:21
Oh, it definitely does. Like each season of our life is going to be different. And if you're trying to work towards a muscle-building goal, you're going to have to work, like let go of some of the habits that you did to lose fat. And so you have to track then progress in different ways. But it really depends. Like I always start with clients with getting an accurate assessment of where they are. What aren't you happy with in your life right now? What have you struggled to do in the past? What do you feel like has sabotaged you in programs? Like, where would you like to see improvements in your life outside of the weight that you want to lose? And when we do that, we can often find little things that I like to call sort of pulling on the thread that unravels everything, where we know things that will be signals that things aren't paying off the way we want or habits have started to slide. So if a client comes in saying, My sleep is just horrible, as we're making changes, if we start to notice their sleep is bad again, we'll yes, look at outside stressors, but say, Hey, have things changed in how you're doing your meal timing? Are you starting to try to do too much in your workouts? Are you adding more somewhere? But we'll find the little ways of measuring progress that are key to them and how they want to feel in everyday life and use those as those checkpoints throughout. Because we don't do well with forever. We we need some sort of end date in our head. And so by even saying, hey, I'm gonna check in with myself every few weeks on these other things and do a more deep dive reflection, we give ourselves that point at which we're assessing our lifestyle to make tweaks because it's fun to adjust. We should always be growing. And creating a lifestyle doesn't mean you're doing one thing. So I do like to set those things forever because I think we all need those little boundaries or buffers. Otherwise, we get those 1% deviations that just completely pull us off course.
Philip Pape 24:58
So the tension here that I feel, and I've seen this in my own clients, is the ones that then start adopting this mindset and doing the tracking and learning from it. And then they get all the wins and they start to progress. And then six months or year down, they've they've really made a big improvement. And now they hit this other wall that I've noticed, right? Which is a little bit of a new tracking fatigue wall where you're almost like bored because things are going well and you're tracking the same things over and over again and you're looking for a little bit of something different. So it's almost like this longer-term tracking fatigue. Have you seen that phenomenon?
Cori Lefkowith 25:29
Yeah, and that's where you want to almost proactively assess and address that. So like I know it during the holidays, I get tracking fatigue in the way that I do it in January. I will not do it. And so I started to recognize, like, hey, I can't force the same habits. So proactively now going into the holidays, I come up with a different game plan. So when a client starts to say, like, oh, this doesn't feel worth it, or well, I deserve just one, you know, like this is just like a bite, lick a nibble, it doesn't matter, right? And you start to see that excuse creep like creep in, you got to recognize that is self-sabotage starting to happen. And so at this point, while we struggle to do less, it is a time to do less to ultimately move forward more consistently. So as you feel that sort of pain pushback, that fatigue with the habits you're doing, uh a desire to do something new, do something new. Just do it with strategy and intention. Because if you're controlling it in that way, you're not going to end up doing something that's going to derail you, right? If tracking full macrocycles like protein, carbs, and fats is feeling like too much, why not just track protein? Or why not say, hey, I'm feeling fatigued with my meals and this full tracking because there's other things I want. How can I work this in? Like I love to say, like, how can I get away with more stuff, right? Can I work out a little bit less because right now I just don't feel energized to go six days a week and get away with that, so to speak? Can I include more foods that I love? Can I go out to eat more? Or can I adjust the way I'm doing some of the habits that really match what I need now? But proactively like evolving and adapting the habits is so key because we do get bored and that's why we search for something new. We just want to make sure that that doesn't make us jump ship on something that's working.
Philip Pape 27:10
When I hear someone say, hey, I'm going on a trip in a month, what do I do? I'm like, yes, like you're that's step one is saying, like, I need to have a structure or plan. Even if the plan is I'm not gonna track, but I'm gonna have certain guidelines or thoughts or whatever around the trip so that I enjoy it. I also thought of the idea that, you know, you can always exchange within that budget you talked about if working out six days a week and you're like, well, I'm gonna go down to three, I can get some more sleep now on those other days, right? So there's always these wonderful trade-offs that you can get. So that kind of addresses the, I guess, a little bit of a fatigue, which is probably more of a novelty and a seasonal thing that humans deal with all the time, right? And just kind of keeping it different. What about when you're actually trying to then nail in on a root cause or a bottleneck for someone? But you also said you don't want to try to do everything at once. So, how do you narrow that down? What is a good system to do that when you have all this data coming in?
Cori Lefkowith 28:03
Data can overwhelm us. And I say that as I have like a tracker on my wrist, but you have to understand what the data is telling you and you have to come back to who and what you are. So, with all the different habits, with all the different metrics, you have to then say, what does my lifestyle actually look like right now? And the reason I come back to that is because what feels doable for you right now. And that's where we sort of started. And when you get those wins stacking, all of a sudden you want to do more. And it's going back to even the the working out six days a week, because I think this is a great example of it. If you have six workouts on your schedule for the week and you do three, generally you kind of feel bad. Like you could say, well, I still did three, but generally we're like, oh, I only did three. Versus if you only had three workouts on your schedule for the week and you did three or four, all of a sudden you're like, I'm a rock star. It's the same three. Yes, maybe you design the workout slightly differently. So you optimize the three days a little bit better, but it's still the same time technically, and both would still count, but it's the momentum and mindset you create. So I think when we're trying to address bottlenecks, so much of it isn't just a tool or tactic that we're looking for. It's the mindsets and lifestyle that we need to address underlying it. Because a perfect plan, if something it's not something we can do consistently, it really doesn't matter versus imperfect changes done consistently are going to add up far faster.
Tracking Fatigue And Seasonal Plans
Philip Pape 29:27
For sure. The compounding effect. I mean, even a fat loss phase that that you plan out from day one, you don't know if by day two or the next week something interrupts your life or something changes. So always be ready to pivot and kind of squish it, expand it, go up and down. Like it doesn't matter. As long as you're in control of that, you'll be fine. Even if it's even day-to-day, like that, that's what I've seen. So thank you for for kind of validating that for people. This is not a fixed thing. You don't just have a plan on day one and just, you know, run with it. So then if you expand that out longer term to a decade, let's say, and or two decades, and now you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, right? I'm sure you get the question like, my body doesn't work like it used to, my hormones are different, my recovery's not there, my joints hurt, and you know, whatever system you've put in place doesn't work either. And and I I say that with a caveat, because if they work with you, you already helped them put in a resilient system, right? But how does like say the women and the men in their 40s and 50s listening to this handle that?
Cori Lefkowith 30:28
Well, I'm of the suck it up buttercup mindset. And I say this not from the no pain, no gain, push-through pain type attitude, but more the give yourself agency to control what you can control. And I bring this up because guess what? As we get older, our body does change. We don't have the optimal hormone levels we once did. We aren't as efficient at a lot of processes, that's aging. But we also have to own that a lot of the things we did before that, when we thought we were a superhero and could just push through the pain and, you know, diet and eat whatever we wanted, created a lot of the situation we're in right now. And so if we created a lot of it, we can also reverse a lot of it. So life is constant evolution. And the more we own that and give ourselves back the power of choice and give ourselves the ability to really assess what we need now to move forward, the better off we're gonna be. So as we enter, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, I have a client who just at 79, going into her 80th year, has seen amazing recon, built muscle. And it was because she decided, hey, I'm gonna train in a way that fits what I need right now. And when we truly own what we need right now and don't think about a number of years that we've been on this planet, but more, hey, do my joints feel achy? How am I fueling? What's going on with my lifestyle? Then we can start to assess and adjust because there's so much from how we fuel and even our hydration, because we don't recognize how much our hydration has an impact on our joint health, but even to our training that can really help us move forward better, but it means optimizing for our body now.
Philip Pape 31:57
When you think of some of the most persistent myths that people come to you with in that category of age-related body change, because I I do like the idea of like, let's not use excuses, let's have this stoic attitude toward things, like control what you can control. What are like the top two strategies in general for dealing with those kinds of challenges? So let's pick one. Let's pick perimenopause and weight loss resistance.
Aging Perimenopause And Stress Levers
Cori Lefkowith 32:23
So perimenopause and the hormone shifts, it does change how you need to fuel and train. And you're gonna see a lot more variability that you have to address. But again, and I don't say like the agency, the choice as like a push through pain or just willpower your way into it because you can't. But it's more taking ownership of what you're actually seeing going on and recognizing you always have a choice. And like part of that choice is the perspective you have on what you're dealing with, right? You can see those hormone changes as you're doomed. This is just too hard, you can't handle it. Or you can choose to see the hormone changes as okay, my body is telling me these signals. How can I address them to feel most fabulous? Because if I control what I can control, it is the cycle of if you start to adjust your nutrition, you see changes in some of that hormone balance, which then impacts your sleep positively, which then allows you to make more changes, right? So it's you can get caught in that cycle. But I would tell them, like, hey, you need to really look at what changes you're seeing. Has your sleep shifted? Are you seeing more inflammation? Are you not recovering as fast? Do your joints hurt? Are you having night sweats? Like, what's going on for you? And then from there, we start to look at, well, what's the smallest change we can make that addresses the most of these things? And really, that all starts with tracking what you're currently doing because we don't recognize how much our food is not only contributing to making some of the symptoms worse, but we're not optimizing our nutrition to make some of the symptoms better. And then from there, we go into the diet and workouts. With perimenopause, we see a rise in stress, so to speak, on your body. And so because your body is more stressed and your mind might even feel more stressed, especially with other lifestyle things, you can't add more stressors on top of that, no matter how positive the stressors technically are, because working out is a stressor. Trying to adjust your diet is gonna take some mental strain. So you need to really assess those things and recognize that if you're in extreme calorie deficit, that is a stress on your body. So, how can you reduce the stress through how you're fueling and training to match what you need?
Philip Pape 34:16
I love it. So there's a reframe, there's the tracking to see what your biggest ROI levers are gonna be. And then, of course, you want to fuel and train to be successful. And look, anybody who says, Well, I'm not lifting weights, and you suggest it to them and they still say they're not lifting weights, I'm sorry. You got to start lifting too as part of this process at some point, right?
Cori Lefkowith 34:34
Yeah, but even that, like it's not even okay, well, why don't you want to lift?
Philip Pape 34:38
Yeah, of course.
Cori Lefkowith 34:39
And then how can we do strength work that maybe meets you where you are right now? Can that be bodyweight training? Can it be bands? Like, where is your resistance to this? So I want you to go research all the reasons why someone might promote this. And then I want you to give all the arguments you have against doing it and then really research why they're valid or why they're not valid. And then I want you to assess how they might be a mismatch for what you need right now. And through that, we then get to the point of okay, so what are you willing to do? And what are you willing to say is worth it for that goal, even?
Philip Pape 35:08
If you could only track calories or macros, what would you track?
Cori Lefkowith 35:12
Macros.
Philip Pape 35:13
What's a food rule that you used to follow that you now think is nonsense?
Cori Lefkowith 35:17
Carbs are bad.
Philip Pape 35:18
What's the hardest habit for your clients to build?
Cori Lefkowith 35:20
That's a good one. You know what? And maybe this is personal bias too, but drinking enough water.
Philip Pape 35:26
Okay.
Cori Lefkowith 35:26
I would say that's the hardest habit because it's so simple seeming, but it's so important. And when we think we're getting enough, we're not getting enough. The second one I was gonna go with is protein, and increasing protein is often hard.
Philip Pape 35:37
Yeah, it's interesting because walking comes on the list for me too. But hydration is a good one.
Cori Lefkowith 35:42
They're almost the things we take for granted.
Philip Pape 35:44
If you if you're listening to this, it's a thing that you're not doing. All right. So when we think of tracking apps, how long before someone should maybe try not using an app? And I'm talking about apps specifically, not necessarily tracking in general, but most of the time people are using apps.
Cori Lefkowith 35:59
I say, why go in with the mentality that you're ever gonna stop using it?
Philip Pape 36:03
Okay, good one, good one. And then um, let's say you are coaching yourself when you were 25.
Cori Lefkowith 36:08
Do less.
Philip Pape 36:09
Can you elaborate?
Cori Lefkowith 36:10
Yeah, so I would say do less because I decided that I was gonna try and out extra my diet and I ended up injured. I would also say train intentionally off of that because I would push through and not be paying attention to what I felt working, which led to a lot of injuries and my now love of prehab. So often we waste a lot of effort trying to outwork time and it's just not gonna happen. And that's also what leaves us really frustrated, feeling like the effort hasn't been worth the outcome we get. But if we do less, we're gonna create more sustainability and consistency long term, and we're probably actually gonna see results faster.
Philip Pape 36:42
All right. So to wrap it up, I often ask this question is there anything you wished I had asked? And what is your answer?
Cori Lefkowith 36:48
I would just add, with all of that we've talked about today, there is no right time to start. And when it feels really wrong to start, that's actually the right time because so often we do only try and make changes when we've deemed it the right time or the perfect time. And that's why we keep making changes and habit changes that don't stick. So I would say if now feels like the wrong time, if everything in your life is just fighting against you wanting to make changes, make one small change because if you can do minimums at the worst of times, you're gonna be able to do so much more when times are really good. And that's how we sort of level up so that we see progress over the weeks, the months, the years. It's not the best times and optimizing them. It's the 1% improvements at the worst of worst times.
Philip Pape 37:30
There's no right time to start. That's so good. What's the biggest excuse when is it people say they don't have enough time or this thing has come up, or like what's the biggest one they use to say it's not the right time?
Cori Lefkowith 37:41
Oh, there's so many specific ones, but let's let's face it, it's always life. Life is always our excuse, but life is always going to be there, right?
Philip Pape 37:49
All right. So this is good stuff. A lot of psychology in here, a lot of counterintuitive things that people may not have heard about why tracking could be so powerful in anything in your life. Anything, guys, not just food, not just training, but everything, finances, everything else in your life, tracking be helpful. Where can people look you up, Corey? Where can they connect with you? And we'll throw those in the show notes.
Cori Lefkowith 38:06
I am Redefining Strength on every platform and redefiningstrength.com. So you can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz.
Philip Pape 38:13
And you guys can check Corey out. She's awesome. And you know, it's been a pleasure talking to you today on Wits and Weights. Well, thanks for having me.
