Are you lacking the motivation or energy to train? I often hear this from women athletes, and it often stems from a lack of fueling or being in a low energy availability state. If you are feeling more tired during your workouts or during daily activities, have to go to sleep hours earlier than normal, or find yourself taking the elevator instead of the stairs because you are just so tired, there is a good chance you are not fueling yourself enough.
If You Want To Increase Your Motivation to Train, You Should:
Stop Calling Yourself Lazy
Sometimes we think that low motivation is a character flaw, that we aren't working hard enough, are feeling lazy, and just need to power through. But so often, we forget to look at what could be the underlying causes behind our lack of energy. Not fueling yourself enough, especially if you are an athletic person, is something you need to consider.
I want you to stop blaming yourself and start looking at what, how, and when you are fueling yourself. You may find that your lack of motivation is really just a low energy availability issue by checking in with yourself regarding if you are getting enough daily energy intake.
Getting Real About the Energy Your Body Needs
Your energy levels impact your entire life, not just your intentionally structured physical activity. Low energy intake, or living in a low energy availability state, has psychological, mental, and physical impacts that you might not realize are linked. Not eating enough can play a huge role in determining your relationships, mood, goals, and so much more. This is why ensuring you are fueling enough for your unique body and training schedule is crucial. While the characteristics of low energy availability have a wide range, the impact they have on your body and mind is far-reaching.
Are you ready to stop beating yourself up for being ‘lazy’ or ‘unmotivated’ and start fueling yourself the way your body needs? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.
In This Episode
Quotes
“The inspiration for this podcast really comes from many, many years of working with many of you and clients out in the world, other athletic women. Especially athletic women over 40 who come to me with frustrations about low motivation.” (2:00)
“You know why you love to train. You have goals, and yet, sometimes it just seems like that motivation has gone ‘poof’ and is nowhere to be found.” (2:13)
“It's not just the energy or the ‘motivation’ to go train; we are talking about your energy levels impacting your entire life.” (13:29)
“When you get dragged down into the busyness of life, you can lose sight of how important your energy levels are and what it takes to stay fueled and recharged.” (14:52)
“It is important to note that low energy intake, or low energy availability state, can manifest itself in different ways for different people.” (22:16)
Featured on the Show
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Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price
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LTYB 350: Are You Eating Enough? Low Energy Availability in Sport
LTYB 352: Energy Flux and Fueling for Athletes with Jamie Scott
FYS 382: Making Strength Gains in Your Late 40’s with Allison Fitzpatrick
Diversity and inclusion belong in all areas of the fitness industry. By accepting all body types and sizes, we can help foster a sense of community and inclusion in an industry ravaged by toxic diet culture. I’m joined by Damali Fraiser, a Canadian kettlebell instructor, to talk about her mission of body acceptance in the industry, along with systemic racism and her non-diet approach to fitness.
About Damali Fraiser
Damali Fraiser (she/her/hers) is a Canadian Kettlebell Instructor, Nutrition Coach, and author passionate about exploring fitness from an intersectional lens. Founder of Lift Off Strength & Wellness, Damali is a compassionate coach and student of strength who teaches hardstyle kettlebell technique, inclusive fitness, and sustainable nutrition that supports you in meeting you wherever you are and confidently moving forward to where you want to be.
Dismantling Diet Culture in Kettlebell Coaching
The fitness industry is toxic regarding diet and weight loss culture. Damali Fraiser explains why her mission to de-center weight loss is so important and how her experience growing up in the Slim Fast era initially shaped her beliefs. She makes she educates her children on the dangers of the diet industry.
Damali shares the story of how an injury led her to seek out functional fitness in the form of kettlebells. Though she’s now healed, she has an improved and better quality of life thanks to her continued use of kettlebells, and her goal is to help other people feel that same sense of strength and vitality.
Inclusion and Diversity in the Fitness Industry
The kettlebell industry still has a way to go before it’s fully inclusive and diverse, but Damali is passionate about changing the narrative. She explains some of the steps coaches can take to dismantle toxic diet and fitness culture – it really is about decentering weight loss in their conversations.
Damali also talks about the racist roots of diet culture. It takes all of us working together to dismantle systemic racism to move forward collectively and help heal the damage caused.
How have you used functional fitness to overcome an injury or help your clients overcome injuries? What do you think of a non-diet approach to fitness? Let me know in the comments on the episode page.
“I started to explore functional strength training for my recovery, and that was where kettlebells helped me to reconnect with myself and my body and my identity outside of Muay Thai. I appreciated how kettlebells make you feel unstable, yet that feeling is empowering, and you can now re-envision stability throughout your life.” [10:20]
“With kettlebells, I can have an improved and better quality of life. I feel like I’m fully living when I’m strong in my body and moving well.”[13:25]
“It’s multi-faceted. It’s a challenge just to be there and be present. Wanting to do a good job and have people see my expertise but also to see my humanity and know that I’m just alongside them, dealing with the same things they are.” [32:38]
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Women are starting to fuel better, lift heavier, recover smarter; they have fewer aches and pains, but yet we still collectively place huge importance on the number we see on the bathroom scale. This can be problematic for women athletes, as that number is not an accurate representation of the gains you are working towards.
If You Want to Change Your Relationship with the Bathroom Scale, You Should:
The bathroom scale has a collective power over many of us when it comes to being an athletic woman who wants to train and be strong. We can make an entire list of things that have been improving since we started training, but if the scale isn't going down, we have been conditioned to think it is not successful. But the truth is, there are so many gains we get from taking care of ourselves that have nothing to do with counting calories, eating less and moving more, or weighing ourselves every day. The scale can get in the way of your ability to feel at ease with things and fully embrace your identity as an athletic woman.
Focusing on What Matters
Weighing yourself less, removing the scale from your environment, and keeping things in perspective when it comes to gaining muscle mass and bone strength are all ways that you can work on your health rather than the number on the scale. This is not just an aesthetics game anymore; we need to move past being ‘toned’ or ‘skinny’ and focus on what really matters.
When you are fueling yourself better, lifting heavier, and recovering smarter, you begin to have more energy, see more muscle definition and size, see improvements in your recovery and your energy, and so much more. These habits might not lower our body weight to what society idealizes, but they will help you stay strong and healthy for as long as possible.
How does the bathroom scale factor into your relationship with your body, your weight, and your training? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.
“I want to help you move past the bathroom scale as having so much power over you as a woman athlete.” (2:21)
“Especially as athletic women, who constantly have the message drilled into us that we need to just eat less and move more, eat less and move more, we deserve a little bit more of a sophisticated conversation than that.” (13:33)
“There can be a lot of reasons why we still continue to put so much emphasis and importance on the scale, even when everything else is better!” (26:06)
“As an athletic woman, relying on weighing yourself less as a metric of your strength, as a metric of your improvements in the way that you are taking care of yourself and the things that you are prioritizing, is a smart way to move eventually.” (30:01)
“There are lots of different things that you can think about, instead of just keeping track of your body weight on the scale.” (39:36)
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LTYB 314: How To Set Health Goals Beyond the Scale with Steph Dodier
LTYB 350: Are You Eating Enough? Low Energy Availability in Sport
FYS 373: The Problem with Tiny Pink Dumbells with Nikki Naab-Levy
One area that I see athletic women over 40 consistently struggling with is the implementation of the high-quality information, techniques, and strategies they know would benefit them to include. Making change can be hard, and there is a mental and emotional challenge to adapting your training as you get older. However, with the right tools and mindset, the rewards of your training and longevity will amaze you.
If you want to effectively implement new training, nutrition, and recovery techniques as you age, you should:
Information and the implementation of that information are two very different things. You could have high-quality information and tools to help you make a change in your training, but if you get stuck when implementing it into your routine, all that great information isn't serving you in the way it should.
You don't need to do more just for the sake of doing more. Training more efficiently, or getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to your training, is only possible by changing the way you are thinking and adapting your training routine to your changing physiology.
The Unsung Hero of Implementation
We all have been conditioned by society to fear being lazy and that if there is no pain, there is no gain. This limiting belief is a perfect example of how powerful our belief systems are and the role they play in our training, nutrition, and recovery. If you are having a hard time getting started or implementing changes, it could be because of the beliefs you are holding onto about how you train and see results.
Your beliefs affect your ability to follow through with implementing new habits that you know will be good for you. Your identity and belief system hold the key to adjusting how you can train more efficiently.
Are you ready to implement effective training techniques as you age? Share your thoughts about the connection between beliefs and identity with me in the comments on the episode page.
“If you are an athletic woman over 40 and you are someone who likes to challenge yourself, you know that you might have to do things differently as you continue to get older.” (3:52)
“It's hard sometimes to recognize that you are in a different place, and to make peace with that, and then to implement the new strategies that you know are going to be better for you.” (8:18)
“Beliefs are a big factor in us as we are approaching our changing physiology, and training and doing fitness and nutrition in different ways. But beliefs are going to get in our way.” (21:29)
“Coach is how we help you implement habits and behaviors to create new outcomes for yourself now and in the future. And it is very interesting to observe here how beliefs intersect with changing our habits around training and fueling and recovery.” (27:19)
“As were approaching our 40s and beyond as women athletes, we are trying to make a change based on our old identities, the previous versions of ourselves. (29:03)
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Acute effect of HIIT on testosterone and cortisol levels in healthy individuals study
Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price
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I'd really love it if you would take 1 min and leave us a rating and review on iTunes!
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FYS 367: 5 Strength Nutrition Lessons I Wish I Learned a Decade Ago
FYS 381: 6 Reasons To Hire a Nutrition Coach
FYS 375: Strength Training Changes for Peri-Menopause and Post-Menopause with Dr. Stacy Sims