I have two clients who are specifically trying to reduce belly fat.
Both train with me twice a week and eat super quality foods.
Despite these similarities, my workout prescriptions for each of them couldn’t be more different.
Let’s take Client A, we’ll call her Angela. She is a workout freaking warrior. She trains often and hard, from powerlifting to running. Yet she struggles to find time to eat.
When she does eat, it’s super healthy food, but is in no way enough to sustain the metabolism of such an active body.
On top of that, Angela is hyper-busy. She works her butt off from early to late. And while she is otherwise in a happy time in her her life, the last year has brought on some massive stressors.
She’s tired and sleeps deeply. And is occasionally moody. Her body tells her it’s tired but she laces up her sneakers and ignores the voice.
In the last year, she’s accumulated an extra ten pounds of belly fat and can’t seem to shake it despite working out a ton and eating less.
My exercise prescription for Angela?
Train LESS. Eat MORE.
Client B, we’ll call her Bonnie, has been through an absolute onslaught of recent stress.
She’s not sedentary, but also isn’t very active.
She would like to significantly alter her body composition. She eats very healthfully and in proper proportions.
She sleeps terribly, wakes up feeling unrested, and often feels emotional.
She’s been at a plateau for a couple of months. She can’t understand why after cutting out processed carbs and sugars she isn’t losing more weight.
My exercise prescription for Bonnie?
Train MORE. Keep Eating Beautifully.
What mistakes are these two women making?
1. Finding balance.
Exercise has been proven to help relieve anxiety, improve focus, heighten clarity, balance hormones, deepen sleep, and even improve moods.
In Angela’s case, however, she’s overexercising. Her stress cup runneth over and that excess cortisol is getting stored as belly fat. Her body is begging for rest and she isn’t listening.
In Bonnie’s case, she has the opportunity to leverage the powers of exercise as a stress outlet and natural mood stabilizer. The extra exercise will also help her sleep more soundly at night, which is critical to absolutely every function in the body.
2. Eating for their metabolic needs.
Angela had recently finished a popular high-protein, high-fat diet that left her feeling bloated, constipated, and sluggish. Although the food was organic and pasture-raised, it simply didn’t work for her. Her body prefers lighter foods with more natural carbohydrates. And she unquestionably needed more food, more often, to sustain her athletic lifestyle. Her metabolism and adrenals are giving her a double middle finger.
Bonnie, on the other hand, feels nourished and satisfied with her meals. That’s so awesome. She can harness that nourishment into exercises that will bring more energy to her body, but help her sleep soundly at night so that she can rest and recover.
How can you know if it’s time to rest or hit the gym? Ask yourself these 3 questions:
1. Have I had a rest day recently? If you’ve exercised two days in a row and feel ready to sleep 8 hours straight, rest.
If not, go workout.
2. Have I had trouble sleeping lately? If yes, go lift something heavy for 20 minutes, and do some aerobic movements for 20 movements.
3. Would you feel better if you worked out? If the answer is honestly yes, tell that resistance monster seducing you to the sofa to step off. The resistance monster likes to step in when you want to grow as a person. Peace out resistance monster. Go get your blood pumping.
🙂
I hope this helps. I enjoy sharing you this free content with you so that I can help you feel your fittest.
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xo
Andrea
