I am originally from Brazil, but the heat and sun of Florida took my heart away over ten years ago. Being a stay-at-home parent to a teenager, a pre-teen and a toddler can bring in some new challenges when it comes to working out and eating healthy. Our home is a multicultural place, a melting pot of Brazilian and Arabic backgrounds in America, with different languages and foods. And yes, we love food!
As a teen and as a young adult, I was always average size, but in my mind I felt huge. I chased the scale number of my early teen years and believed that I could only be thin if I over dieted and overdid cardio. I tried WW, Overeaters Anonymous, weight loss pills, you name it. It would not work for more than a few weeks, I would give up and regain the lost weight. I battled bulimia and chronic depression (triggered by prescription weight loss pills) in my early 20’s and thought I could never achieve the body I wanted. Yo-Yo dieting made me believe that I needed to settle for less to be able to enjoy life. Why bother dieting if it wouldn’t work? I didn’t think there was another way of achieving the body and confidence I wanted. This mind set would always keep me unhappy and unsatisfied deep inside.
Losing a baby when I was 5 months pregnant in 2011, (my second pregnancy, we went through multiple in-vitro treatments) was the wake-up call that I needed to force myself to change. Trying to make the sadness go away, I started working out. As long as I was tired and sweating, I would not feel the pain of the loss. Soon I realized that I needed way more than 1500 calories and something other than cardio madness to live well.
Through research, I found out that I could eat way more than that to lose the weight and look my best. I didn’t need hours in the gym on an empty stomach! Lifting heavier became a part of me. After discovering the EM2WL lifestyle, I got my CPT certification with NASM, became a Cathlete and looked better at almost 40 than in my 20’s! I could have my cake and eat it too!
After trying to put on muscle through a bulk (a bold move that taught me that the number on the scale does not matter at all), I found myself pregnant. It took me 18 months of eating and lifting to go back to my previous size. What I learned with EM2WL helped me go through this pregnancy without worrying about what would happen if I ate to support it. It gave me confidence to do what was best for my baby and for me, it taught me that I that I could do it.
No more settling for less than I deserve! Happiness in my own skin is something that I was only able to achieve after realizing that I could enjoy eating and working out without any extremes, in a mentally sane and moderate way, following the EM2WL lifestyle. I conquered binge eating, food was not the enemy anymore.
Now I can truly say that I am happy and confident with the body I have and how I look. I am able to enjoy life, family time and food. The number on the scale does not define me anymore. Lifting weights gave me confidence to face life in a different way. Working out at home is a good time saver for me, after all nothing beats working out in my pj’s! My garage became my girl cave, where I can just zone out and enjoy the iron. Most of my ideas and decisions happen when I’m lifting. It helps me connect to my mind, body and soul. Taking care of myself makes me a better person, a better mother and better wife.
One of my goals is to share my passion on being healthy and happy with my children and other people, especially moms who have the same struggles and youngsters who are still so lost in this journey of self discovery and self love. There is a better way other than hating and damaging your body thin.
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Are you curious about how the process works, or wondering what's in our Starter Kit E-Book? START HERE. We'll send you a free breakdown of the basics, exclusive videos explaining why everything that you've learned about diets have only led you astray, and an action plan to take your life back immediately.
It’s likely that somewhere along your journey, you’ll hit one. You’re eating like you feel you should, and working out regularly. Yet for some reason, you’re not shaking up your body enough to invoke change.
Workout Plateaus
At this point, many people want to run to cardio as the answer. They get sucked back in to the Cardio Trap thinking, “if 30 minutes on the treadmill each day helped me lose a few pounds, then 60 minutes will of course help me lose even more. And if 60 minutes at a moderate pace helps me lose more, 60 minutes at a strenuous pace must be even better.”
This philosophy is a huge misconception. Even if it works initially, it can and most likely will eventually backfire. What happens when 60 minutes is no longer enough? Go to 90? 120? Do you REALLY want to work for 2 hours to get the same amount of results that you once got in 30 min? This is something to consider before you even consider falling down that rabbit hole:
“What happens when what I’m currently doing, is no longer ‘enough’?”
Because the time will come. Your body is amazingly adaptive, always seeking ways to bring you back into balance. It naturally wants to adapt to cardio, so that you can go farther on less fuel (burn fewer cals doing more…and more…and moreeeeee work).
That’s why lifting is my number one recommendation when seeking fat loss…even if you LOVE and adore cardio. (aka “cardio for fun, weights to transform”)
Your body also adapts to resistance training, by building your muscles – making you strong enough to carry the same load in the future. This means that when you hit a lifting plateau, you also must make adjustments to your workouts. But these adjustments typically come in terms of weight amounts, not time. So you can still create changes to your body by increasing the challenge of the work load, without increasing your work time.
If you want to throw in a cardio workout or two each week for fun…because you enjoy it, that’s fine. However, be careful throwing in more than 2-3 intense cardio sessions a week (unless endurance is your goal). More is not always better, even if it “feels” awesome. Unknowingly, many ladies are putting far too much stress on their bodies and heading directly toward adrenal fatigue.
Going beyond a certain level of intensity need not be the goal of every.single.workout.
Diet Plateaus
Understand that the number of calories you consume is also subject to this adaptation, making you require less and less to achieve the same goal. Many people start with the absolute lowest number of cals, thinking it will get them to goal weight faster. What they find out instead, is that it gets them to plateau faster…with no way out.
As you lose weight, the amount of food you need automatically lowers for you. (Don’t believe me? Go punch in your stats here, and compare the food your body requires now, vs 5-10 pounds from now.) You don’t need to implement the “minimum food / maximum workouts” suggestions that society promotes – WAY before it’s time. That lifestyle will backfire and kill your metabolism.
It seems counterintuitive to eat more and workout less, especially when you’ve tried the opposite in the past and it seemingly “worked.” Remember…if it “worked,” you wouldn’t need to keep starting over.
Slashing calories, ditching carbs (or other entire macronutrient groups), fasting, or going all out on the treadmill for 90 minutes instead of 30 is not sustainable in the long term for many of us. If the method is not sustainable, it’s not maintainable – no matter how attractive the “results” are in the short term. Chasing down non-sustainable methods, is a huge setup for hitting the inevitable plateau, that much sooner.
We recommend a no-nonsense, slower approach, that helps you to achieve results that you can maintain long-term. Using the Hierarchy of Fat Loss, and incorporating periodized resistance training, provides built-in progressions that naturally keep you climbing toward your goals.
This is no fast fix, so the weight will drop slower than it may if you were on a fad diet or jumped right in to hours of cardio a day. So many people look for those temporary measures, and view them as the gold standard. Many will attempt this lifestyle, but ultimately decide that this way is taking too long and decide to do something drastic to make the process move faster.
Most of those people will end up back where they started, or worse. Quick fixes actually take you further away from your goals in the long run; leaving you impatient, uninformed, and ill-prepared for what it really takes to reach them.
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A lot of people ask should an overweight person lift weights, or should they wait until they’re smaller. A common misconception is that the bigger you are, the more extreme measures you need to take (bigger calorie deficit, higher amounts of cardio, etc). The thinking is that you should wait until you look like the people that are lifting, before you join in.
Extremes are overrated. Don’t believe the hype.
Should an overweight person lift weights?
Cardio will help you lose weight, to an extent. But it will only create a smaller version of the body you have now, with all the same lumps and bumps in all the same areas. You will shrink, but your body shape won’t change. If you lift heavy; however, you will manipulate your body in such a way that it will not only shrink, but also change shape.
Now remember, the definition of heavy varies person to person. My heavy is going to be different from your heavy. The key is to challenge yourself, within your limits. You should be able to lift increasingly heavier as you progress through the different lifting stages. This is an excellent time to challenge yourself, lifting as heavy as possible — the bigger we are, the more power we actually have to push more weight. Challenging yourself by increasing weight will push your metabolism through the roof.
With lifting, you can actually get more done in less time because your body doesn’t have the same opportunity to adapt as it does when doing cardio. When your body begins to adapt, the only solution is to keep pushing it to the limit. A limit that keeps moving further and further away means longer and longer workouts. But when you lift, all you have to do is to increase the poundage. You don’t have to add more time to your workout. More productive in less time. Isn’t that something we all want?
So don’t be intimidated by the thought of lifting “heavy.” Heavy is relative, but you definitely want to start lifting as soon as possible. Start with what you’re able to lift and work your way up. Heavy two weeks from now should be different than heavy today. There was a time when 7 or 8 pounds was heavy for me! But I kept increasing, and in turn, I gained strength. If you don’t increase, your body will adapt, and stop changing. The initial toned look from your first few weeks of a new workout will become softer.
Your body needs the challenge in order to keep morphing into the body you want and deserve.
Looking for a new challenge to your workouts? Try out our EM2WL Training App!
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Should you just do cardio to lose weight? How heavy is heavy lifting? Do "strength" DVDs count? What if you don't want to lift? Sign up now for in-depth info on strength training and fat loss. You'll also receive special vids and free workout plans to help you get the most from your time in the gym.
When it comes to fitness gadgets, one of the most popular items is the heart rate monitor. Heart rate monitors can be a great way to track calorie burn, and measure recovery levels during overly-stressed periods — but they are not always the best in every workout situation. In fact, when it comes to lifting, Heart Rate Monitors are not accurate for lifting.
Heart Rate Monitors are not accurate for lifting
If you jump on a cardio machine for a half hour workout, you’ll notice a spike in calorie burn. If you spend the same amount of time doing a lifting routine, you’ll notice you don’t burn as many calories as you did in your cardio session. So cardio is the obvious winner, right?
Not quite.
When it comes to lifting weights, the bulk of the calorie burn comes in the EPOC (afterburn). Afterburn, as the name suggests, is the period of time after your workout concludes in which your body’s metabolic rate is much higher than normal. So while you may burn fewer calories during the initial lift, you burn more overall in the hours/days following due to boosted metabolism. On the flip side, when it comes to cardio, what you see is what you get. This means is that when your cardio workout ceases, so does your calorie burn.
This can put heart rate monitors at a disadvantage when it comes to lifting, because they can dissuade “burn addicts” from strength training. Being addicted to the burn often causes people to place more focus on cardio than necessary, because they love to see that number spike during workouts. And I get it. We all want more bang for our buck – but when we let an initially low number on our heart rate monitor dissuade us from lifting, we’re heading down the wrong road. Because muscle is the key to a healthy metabolism and high quality of life, we can’t count on the number of calories burned during the workout to tell us how well we’re doing.
The type of workout, doesn’t immediately correlate to the burn that your HRM will show. This is true not only of weight lifting, but also with different types of cardio, as with HIIT/interval type workouts. Longer cardio sessions may show a higher burn than short, quick, HIIT style workouts. Circuits may show a higher calorie burn that lift/rest/lift style training. The key is to understand that both weight lifting and interval type workouts (anaerobic) lead to building (and keeping) more muscle than their alternatives. As you continue to build more muscle, your resting metabolic rate continues to increase (think more calories burned simply by sitting on the couch! Yeaaaahhhhh!).
If you’re attached to your heart rate monitor, have no fear. The key is to make your heart rate monitor work for you – use it during cardio to gauge effectiveness and adaptability and keep in mind that wearing it during lifting isn’t going to give you an accurate result. If you’re bent on trying to get a more accurate number, you can look into adding something like a Fitbit to your arsenal, which will do a slightly better job of helping you understand how to properly fuel your body. Just be sure to note that when it’s all said and done, even these “more accurate” devices typically underestimate the amount of cals burned. So don’t use either as an excuse to undereat. ;)
Keeping the limitations of your HRM in mind will help you to continue including the workouts that are giving you the most return on your investment, while sprinkling in moderate doses of activities that you love. Seek true balance, rather than constantly fighting the uphill battle of too much cardio, and zero weights, to the detriment of your fat loss goals.
Remember: “cardio for fun, weights to transform!”
~Kiki
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Should you just do cardio to lose weight? How heavy is heavy lifting? Do "strength" DVDs count? What if you don't want to lift? Sign up now for in-depth info on strength training and fat loss. You'll also receive special vids and free workout plans to help you get the most from your time in the gym.
How did this mom and fitness model incorporate healthy, realistic methods to lose the baby weight? Click to read her story…
Diet and workout fads come and go. When a workout or diet plan becomes popular, it’s natural to feel like it’s the thing to do.
Popular marketing has taught for years, that if you introduce a product enough times (usually around seven), you move to the top of a persons’ mind, and they’ll actually begin to consider something that they may have once dismissed. Savvy parents often use this same tactic with their little ones — casually introducing veggies at every meal, but not forcing them, in hopes that the child will eventually try them on their own. Diet and exercise is no different.
While you may easily look past a certain style of eating/exercising at first glance, after another dozen or so “introductions” (via mags/commercials/social media) you may actually find yourself wondering if you should drop your current routine to instead do this “new” one. Although the most successful diets tend to hold to no-nonsense approach (adhering to best practices in nutrition, exercise, and a heavy dose of patience), every once in a while something comes along that promises faster results, and all-out war on those “stubborn-fat” areas.
Whether it’s slashing your calories, taking special supplements, doing excessive cardio, intermittent fasting, working out twice a day or cutting a food completely out of your diet, certain approaches tend to gain traction as a surefire way to give you the edge. Understanding the meaning of “edge” is key to understanding if/when you need to employ such an approach. Even though many of the strategies have roots based in science, the media (and admittedly, the fitness industry) does a great job of over-emphasizing marginal gains. The average Jane is often misled by the hype, not understanding, that marginal gain tactics are only beneficial in certain circumstances — such as when you’re looking at reaching the finish line and are fast approaching a date/vacation/competition or are an elite exerciser/professional athlete (and only when all other bases are covered).
It’s important to understand the timing to employ certain tactics at the right time (for you). Let’s take a look at four critical things you MUST understand before diving into the next great diet/exercise hope:
The Tactic Will Fail if Applied too Soon
Certain tricks of the trade are meant to help really attack stubborn-fat areas. But the problem lies in the fact that many of us have a fuzzy vision of what stubborn fat means in the industry.
Isn’t all fat stubborn? LOL. Not quite.
Plateau busting, stubborn-fat-loss strategies are typically aimed toward those who are at the vanity weight stage – not someone who is still in the middle of their journey. Vanity weight loss applies to those that are looking to loose the last five pounds, step on a competition stage, do a fitness DVD/photoshoot, etc.. In other words, you have a four pack…but are looking to uncover the last two.
If you employ a workout or diet tactic too soon (before it’s the right time for you), it will ultimately fail. The end result won’t be what “everyone else’s” end result is/was. The tactic may work temporarily, but you will eventually hit a plateau — with no room for making more tweaks. When that happens, the small dent that you may have quickly made in your progress, likely won’t be worth how much harder you’ll have made your journey.
Because many of these are meant to be temporary, finish line tactics…being no where near the finish line when you apply them simply means you have no other tricks up your sleeve.
The Tactic Is Meant to Give You the Edge After All Avenues are Exhausted
Once all avenues are exhausted, certain tactics can be beneficial, but only after you’ve put in work. People often lean on stubborn-fat-loss workout/diet plans because they want to go from A-Z without doing all the steps in between. The steps are where the magic happens. Skipping (or rushing) steps because you want results faster, almost always hurts you more than it helps. We often seek the stubborn fat loss tactics in frustration of having “tried everything,” but we must make sure that we are not just tossing those words around lightly. If you’ve tried everything – for a couple of weeks at a time – then you haven’t really tried anything.
True transformation takes time. Attempts to speed through that typically involves lots of wheel spinning and/or speeding up only to land back at square one (or worse!). Make sure that you are giving proven, long-term, sustainable tactics enough time to work before launching into marginal gains territory.
If you haven’t conquered the basics, it’s not the right time. And don’t just try the basics before moving on…nail them.
The Tactic May Be Viewed as a Quick Fix
When considering switching things up, always ask yourself “why?” Sounds simple, but sometimes we must check our mentality to know if we’re on the right track. If you find yourself looking for an out or wanting a quick fix, then you’re taking the wrong approach. If this isn’t your first rodeo, then you already know that it’s never been about losing the weight. Keeping the weight off has always been the hardest part. So if you’re looking for a way around building the habits that will actually aid in keeping the weight off, check yourself ;)
Disordered eating, the new normal? Check out our interview with fitness competitor and author Dani Shugart.
There are certain habits, and several mental transformations that must occur in order to have sustainable success on this journey. If you’re evading them by going after a quick fix instead, reevaluate your why. Are you avoiding dealing with who you are, thinking that losing weight will solve all your problems? (Spoiler alert: it won’t)
Try as we might, we’ll never be able to separate physiology (or biology) from psychology. Your mind will (and must) make the transition with you – especially if you plan on not only surviving this journey, but actually thriving in LIFE. Ditch the quick fix mentality, and be all in.
The Tactics Avoid The Basics
Eating enough veggies/food/protein/fiber, drinking enough water, lifting weights etc. are all diet and workout basics. When starting a routine, people often want to avoid the beginning, most important parts/steps because they’re boring, not fun, or just plain hard. We often associate fat loss with torture, and because of that want to spend the least amount of time to achieve results.
The ability to say no to certain foods or the feeling of hunger makes many people feel like they have control. Unfortunately, this can lead to eating disorders or disordered eating– we categorize foods into things we can and can’t have. But when you practice a cutthroat or hardcore tactic for too long, you can eventually create health problems, such as adrenal fatigue. There’s always a better way to get where you want to go and get the results and progress you are hoping for.
Consistency in the basics (fundamentals) must come first. If a program/diet/teaching that you’re hearing is “new and improved” and promotes a particular pill, shot, or type of workout, with complete disregard to the fundamentals – you’re looking at a quick fix. Diet with the end and mind, and leave all the quick fixes, and stubborn fat loss tactics for those that actually need (and get paid for doing) them.
New to EM2WL?
Grab our FREE quick start guide!
Are you curious about how the process works, or wondering what's in our Starter Kit E-Book? START HERE. We'll send you a free breakdown of the basics, exclusive videos explaining why everything that you've learned about diets have only led you astray, and an action plan to take your life back immediately.
I am originally from Brazil, but the heat and sun of Florida took my heart away over ten years ago. Being a stay-at-home parent to a teenager, a pre-teen and a toddler can bring in some new challenges when it comes to working out and eating healthy. Our home is a multicultural place, a melting pot of Brazilian and Arabic backgrounds in America, with different languages and foods. And yes, we love food!
Losing a baby when I was 5 months pregnant in 2011, (my second pregnancy, we went through multiple in-vitro treatments) was the wake-up call that I needed to force myself to change. Trying to make the sadness go away, I started working out. As long as I was tired and sweating, I would not feel the pain of the loss. Soon I realized that I needed way more than 1500 calories and something other than cardio madness to live well.
No more settling for less than I deserve! Happiness in my own skin is something that I was only able to achieve after realizing that I could enjoy eating and working out without any extremes, in a mentally sane and moderate way, following the EM2WL lifestyle. I conquered binge eating, food was not the enemy anymore.
As you lose weight, the amount of food you need automatically lowers for you. (Don’t believe me? Go punch in your stats 
A lot of people ask should an overweight person lift weights, or should they wait until they’re smaller. A common misconception is that the bigger you are, the more extreme measures you need to take (bigger calorie deficit, higher amounts of cardio, etc). The thinking is that you should wait until you look like the people that are lifting, before you join in.
With lifting, you can actually get more done in less time because your body doesn’t have the same opportunity to adapt as it does when doing cardio. When your body begins to adapt, the only solution is to keep pushing it to the limit. A limit that keeps moving further and further away means longer and longer workouts. But when you lift, all you have to do is to increase the poundage. You don’t have to add more time to your workout. More productive in less time. Isn’t that something we all want?
If you’re attached to your heart rate monitor, have no fear. The key is to make your heart rate monitor work for you – use it during cardio to gauge effectiveness and adaptability and keep in mind that wearing it during lifting isn’t going to give you an accurate result. If you’re bent on trying to get a more accurate number, you can look into adding something like a 
The Tactic Will Fail if Applied too Soon
Once all avenues are exhausted, certain tactics can be beneficial, but only after you’ve put in work. People often lean on stubborn-fat-loss workout/diet plans because they want to go from A-Z without doing all the steps in between. The steps are where the magic happens. Skipping (or 
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