Ep 166 – It’s Taking Too Long To Reach My Goal!

Giacomo:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Russell’s radio. My name is Giacomo.

Dani:

And I’m Dani.

Giacomo:

And this is episode 166.

Dani:

All right, so this is different, huh?

Giacomo:

Oh, yeah. Listen, some of our best conversations happen when we are on the road. So we figure, why not give this thing a shot? And if you like it, we’ll start to do more of these episodes on the road and even be intentional about where we’re traveling. And perhaps it’ll make for some better episodes.

Dani:

We’ll see. I mean, the number of times we’ve been having conversations in the car, like, oh, God, I wish we had the microphones. This would so be good for the podcast. Like, I can’t count how many times that’s happened, but it always seems spontaneous when it does happen. So I don’t know. This is an experiment.

We know there’s a little bit of car background noise, but, you know, it is what it is. We’re currently driving back home from Vermont. We drove up there to see the eclipse, like, we were only a couple hours from the full eclipse, so we drove up there for that, just for one night. And now we’re driving home.

Giacomo:

Yeah. And beautiful weather out, beautiful scenery here in New England. I don’t know how much of that you’ll get to see in the background over there looks like. Oh, well, we’ll describe it to you. We’re not

getting into what we’re talking about today.

Dani:

We’re in, like, a very crazy, busy week. So we have the eclipse on Monday, driving home on Tuesday. Giacomo gets his final teeth in tomorrow, which, if you’ve been listening, you know, it’s been like a year since they had to pull the old ones. And then I. Thursday, I have Lasik surgery on my eyes. Saturday, we’re going to the Boston Marathon Expo.

Giacomo:

There’s a client coming to visit on Friday. And Saturday we’re going to hang out for a little bit. And then after the marathon Expo, we’re going to see the Red Sox for the first time, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Oh, and on top of all of this, we are recruiting athletes from all over the world for the vegan, strong plant bill team.

So by the end of the day tomorrow, I will have been on 50 separate calls, many of which I’m speaking to people who I’ve never spoken to before and getting to know them and then obviously getting everything sorted. That way, we can get ready to introduce our 2024 team, which, spoiler alert, we’re going to two sporting events this year, not one. So we are, as usual, biting off a bit more than we can chew.

But fortunately, we’ve been doing stuff like this for a while that. Well, for the most part, it’s gonna go pretty. It’s gonna go good. It’s gonna be a lot, but. But it’s gonna be good. And our team this year is. Oh, my gosh, these are. These athletes are incredible. Like, we are going to do even better than last year, I think. At least it seems like we are. So I’m pretty excited.

Dani:

Yeah, I’m super excited. And hopefully by the time this comes out of, I’ll be able to see. Yeah, hopefully. I’m like. I’m a bit nervous. I mean, I’m less nervous about the actual procedure, which I know is what freaks most people out, but I’m a bit nervous that they’ll, like, screw up my eyes worse or forever. That makes me nervous.

Giacomo:

Well, you have the flat. They’re doing the flap on where they do a little incision on the eye. And for me, I have much worse eyesight and my eyes are older, so they actually want to stick a lens in my eyes, which kind of freaks me out cause I gotta remove my natural lens and put another one.

Dani:

Kind of are gonna do cataract surgery.

Giacomo:

On Giacomo, which if you make it into your seventies, chances are you’ll need it anyway. So their cell is. Well, you can recover from it faster when you’re younger, but it still kind of freaks me out a little bit. Cause it’s a much more invasive surgery.

Dani:

But your vision is much, much worse than mine.

Giacomo:

It’s really, really bad. Like when you were a kid and you got tested and they asked you what letter you could read. I was not able to distinguish the difference between the eye chart and the wall. That’s how bad it was. And I was in, what, first or second grade when they were doing it in the cafeteria at school. And it’s only gotten worse over the years.

Dani:

Yeah. People probably don’t know because you wear contacts all the time.

Giacomo:

Anyways, what are we talking about today, Dani?

Dani:

Today we’re talking about goals and how a lot of the time people are disappointed. Disappointed or frustrated with the amount of time that it is taking to get to their goals. It’s a big thing.

Giacomo:

Yeah. And how could you blame someone for being frustrated? When they set a goal for themselves, they set a timeline to achieve said goal. They see others who are able to do it despite obstacles and hurdles. And then they look at themselves and are like well, crap, I wanted to lose 50 pounds this year, or I wanted to lose ten pounds in the next three months, and I am nowhere near this goal and it’s not going to happen.

It’s pretty hard to not feel like a failure, and it’s pretty hard to not blame yourself, and it’s pretty hard to keep going without shoot, self sabotaging or just giving up altogether.

Dani:

Giving up? Yeah, I think a lot of people give up because they’re moving slower than they wanted to be moving. But, you know, I really believe that all forward movement counts, even if it’s slower. I actually, I actually think slower is better for most goals. That’s my two cent.

Giacomo:

Right. But sometimes that’s not an acceptable answer. That’s not what someone wants to hear. When they have big goals, big dreams, they want the results now, and they perhaps feel like, well, they want to push themselves or they want to be pushed and you’re not doing that, or they’re not able to do it themselves.

So it’s like that gray area where, yes, forward momentum and any momentum is good momentum, but at what point do you take a good hard look at what you’re doing and realize, well, shoot, this isn’t the process that I want, and how do I reckon with that?

Dani:

I mean, I think that most of the information that we have to say about fitness and changing your body is not what most people want to hear. Like, there’s not much that you can say about fitness and changing your body. That is what people want to hear. It’s hard, it’s boring, it takes a long time. Like, that’s just kind of the way it is.

There’s smarter and less intelligent ways to do things, but that those, like, three things are kind of always going to hold true. It’s going to be harder than you think, it’s going to require more dedication than you think, and it’s going to take longer than you think.

Giacomo:

And the patterns that have repeated over the years, and I, with your habits or lack thereof and your lifestyle, are only that much harder to undo in a short amount of time. When you think you’re gonna do it and you don’t, you have to give yourself time to change. Like you could get.

I mean, hypothetically speaking, let’s say you do get to where you want to get to on paper, are you gonna maintain those results? And if you don’t, I mean, it’s easy to take a look at your past and be like, well, I’m not gonna change who I was overnight. That takes time.

Dani:

Yeah, so I think, okay, so let me go back to what I was saying before when I said, I think slower is better. I think that certain things can be achieved in a really short period of time. You know, fat loss can absolutely be achieved pretty quickly. Like, it’s possible. Muscle building is only gonna go as fast as it can go. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything, there’s very few things you can do to really speed up muscle building.

But with fat loss, like, yeah, you can lose weight pretty quickly, you know, but if you do that, nine times out of ten, you’re gonna go right back to where you were. And I know that’s not, I mean, short of like a bodybuilding competition, where that’s kind of the point. You get to where you’re going, you stay there for a minute, and then you go back basically on purpose.

Most people, that’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to make lifelong changes to their physique, to their habits, all of that. And if you rip it off like a band aid, most of the time, you’re not going to keep it.

Giacomo:

And say, you take a look at the other priorities you have in life and your other goals in life and your other responsibilities. If you just set a match and light all that stuff on fire to be able to reach your goal, what are the consequences to that? And are you eventually going to lose sight and be unable to achieve the goal that you were looking to achieve in the first place, as far as your fitness goals?

So it’s not that simple. I mean, your responsibilities and priorities and goals in life, yes, it’s all connected. And by working on one, you work on everything because you’re working on yourself. But it’s not that simple. It’s just not that simple. Your process takes a while to change. You really gotta get invested in it. It does take time.

Dani:

Yeah. So, you know, if you think about it, let’s say somebody’s ultimate goal, like you said, is to lose 50 pounds and they want to keep it off, right? So they do some crazy, intense diet. They lose 30 pounds, and then they break, right? Mentally, they break, they gain back. Let’s be generous here and say they gained back 25 of the pounds. So now they’re down five pounds, but it’s been quite a while now.

They do another crazy diet, they lose another 30 or 35 pounds, and then they inevitably break again and then gain most of it back. Like, it’s gonna end up taking a really long time to get there that way anyway, you know, so better to kind of slow and steady it and be able to really habituate the things that it takes to get there and keep them, you know, for the foreseeable future.

Giacomo:

Yeah, totally. And I guess this is where you start to think about, well, aside from saying this takes time, and aside from celebrating forward momentum, what do you do when you realize that your goal is out of sight?

Dani:

Well, first, I think really, when you set a goal right, if you’re setting a smart goal, one of the things about it is that it’s time bound, like there’s a date or a deadline that you intend to hit this goal by. I think that it’s really important to talk to somebody that knows to see if that is actually a realistic, which is another one of the things about smart goals is that they need to be realistic.

Is it a realistic goal in that timeframe? The goal itself might be very realistic, but the timeframe might be too short or sometimes, you know, the goal itself is not realistic. That’s a different conversation. So I think that when it comes to weight loss specifically, it’s gonna take twice as long as you think it’s gonna take. And I mean it twice as long.

If you think it’s gonna take you six months, it’s gonna take you a year. If you think something’s gonna take you a year, it’s gonna take you two. Like, you know, if there might be rare exceptions to that rule, but almost all of the time, that is the truth, because everybody calculates their weight loss at one to two pounds per week. And everybody is so ambitious, they’re definitely going to be the two pounds a week person.

Right? Okay. First of all, in order to kind of safely be the two pounds a week person in the first place, you have to be starting at like, 100, 7180 pounds at least. You know, if you’re starting at 100, 6151, hundred 40. If you are the two pounds a week person, guess what? You’re losing muscle.

Giacomo:

Yeah, at that point, no doubt.

Dani:

So you’re not even just losing fat, but let’s say, you know, you’re not. You’re making sure you don’t lose muscle. Well, then it can’t be two pounds a week. And the smaller you are along your trajectory, the longer it’s gonna take to lose a pound because you’re smaller, you know, and because of that, among other factors, which we could talk about, too, estimate yourself

conservatively at the one pound a week mark. So if you want to lose 30 pounds, that’s going to take probably 30 weeks, which is what is that 30 dividers just over seven months?

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Yeah, I think. And even then it’s still going to be challenging to, like, maintain it at that point because a pound a week for 30 weeks, it’s a lot.

Giacomo:

You know, the other nice strategy when you’re starting to get a little burnt out on the goal, meaning things are moving slower and perhaps you’re having a hard time sticking to it, is you can take a little break, if you will, in between, where you give your body a chance to be a little less pissed off at you for trying to change it so much. Because even though it’s clearly better for your health and it’s a good thing and you’re motivated and you have the willpower, your body is going to be

stressed out because it’s constantly in a state of change. So it’s good stress, but there’s only so much of it that you can tolerate without feeling like crap. And maybe it’s not worth it to feel like crap for six months straight. Maybe you take a month in between and you give yourself a chance to just level out for a minute and put some more muscle on and keep and learn.

Also learn what it feels like to maintain your improved body composition that you already have without getting to your end goal, and then you get back at it. So instead of six months, you’re looking at seven as an example, right?

Dani:

Like building in diet breaks, correct. Kind of what you’re talking about. But even if you are like, no, I don’t want to build in a diet break, you’re going to have a hard time finding somebody who is able to flawlessly diet for seven months or seven and a half months, I think, is what that comes out to be. Because guess what? Seven and a half months is a long time.

You might have a vacation in there. You definitely are going to have holidays and birthdays in there. You may very well get sick a couple of times in there and that puts you out for a week. You might just have an off week just because you’re having an off week. Like when we set these goals, we’re always imagining it’s our best selves accomplishing these goals.

But in reality, it’s going to be your most average self that is working towards these goals. It’s not going to be your worst self, it’s not going to be your best self. By definition, you are going to be your average self most of the time. And that is who you need to be writing these goals for. And imagine pursuing these goals.

Giacomo:

Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of tricky when you’re thinking that you could do something and you’re looking at it as your process is slowing down or this or that or whatever, but in reality, you wind up just getting hard on yourself and you shoot yourself in the foot.

Dani:

But I mean, I think even talking about this, like, okay, give yourself twice as much time as you think it’s going to take. We always recommend that people set time bound goals. Yeah, I keep. I’m forcing myself to yawn because it makes my eyes water, and my eyes are mad dry right now.

Giacomo:

Same, actually.

Dani:

So if you see me yawning, I am actually tired, but I’m mostly doing it to make my eyes water so I can blink, blink, blink, and they will be able to see a little bit better.

Giacomo:

I wish I could see the scenery right now. It’s actually really beautiful.

Dani:

Freaking gorgeous.

Giacomo:

Lakes and mountains. Sun is out.

Dani:

Can you open my water and hand me a sepitis down by?

Giacomo:

Yeah, sure.

Dani:

Okay. So what I was saying is, like, we’re talking about the best case scenario where somebody actually took the time to define their goal, sit down, write it out, and come up with a timeframe for that

goal. And the fact of the matter is, most people don’t do that. They just say, for example, I want to lose weight. I want to look fitter. And that is where that goal definition ends. Way to fill in the gap there, babe.

Giacomo:

Ha. I was wondering where you were going with. That was a trip. You’re going to finish this up.

Dani:

So if you did not set a goal, like set a time frame or a pace that you want these changes to be happening at, it is really easy to just look at the scale week to week and think that it’s happening too slow.

Giacomo:

Yeah. So are you suggesting to focus on other goals, including goals outside of your pictures and your measurements?

Dani:

Not really. Mostly I’m encouraging people to come up with a timeframe first and foremost.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

I think a lot of people think they’re going slower than they actually are because. Well, for a bunch of reasons.

Giacomo:

So you’re thinking about, like, how progress.

Dani:

Gets masked, how progress gets measured. Really? Like, how are we measuring progress? What’s the

number one way people measure progress?

Giacomo:

Oh, the scale. Hands down, what’s the number way we measure progress?

Dani:

I mean, there’s so many ways. It depends on the goal, really.

Giacomo:

Visual.

Dani:

Visual. But also, you know, sometimes it’s performance measurements.

Giacomo:

And what’s a safe cue that we give clients to measure their progress? How their clothes fit. Exactly. So there are different ways to do this that are undeniable while you’re still learning how to measure progress in every kind of way, as opposed to getting hung up on the scale, which honestly, no one is immune to that. And unfortunately, it’s an easy trigger.

And unfortunately, with your body being made up of 80% water, that number can fluctuate wildly. I’ll use myself as an example right now. This past three weeks, I’ve been so stressed out that my body is, like, doing backflips. I’m wildly uncomfortable, and I’m swinging up and down by, like, four to seven pounds legit, without actually. I mean, I probably put on a little bit of weight, but I didn’t put on four to seven pounds worth.

And it’s just jumping up and jumping down, jumping up and down. And I’ll tell you why. It stresses me out a little bit. But I’ve been at this long enough to know, like, the majority, that, like, 75% of that, probably more, is just body weight fluctuating. But if I was, if I was, if I did not know how to analyze progress outside using the scale weight, I’d probably be in a

pickle right now feeling like crap and worried. And who even knows? Like, me eight years ago, for example, or 15 years ago, it would not be good. I would be feeling pretty awful.

Dani:

Yeah. If you mean if you can go buy your clothes fit, that’s great. The reality is, again, most people are going to go by the scale. They just are. And if your goal is weight loss, the scale has to move at some point. We love to say, oh, the scale doesn’t matter, because the scale is way less important than people think it is. Way less important than people think it is. But if your goal, let’s say you weigh 200 pounds and you want to weigh 150 pounds, the scale’s got to move eventually.

Giacomo:

It’s got to go down.

Dani:

So some of the mistakes I see people make with the scale, one, they’re weighing themselves once a week. And I know this is controversial take, because some people think stepping on the scale every day is, like, disordered.

Giacomo:

Yeah. But you could wind up seeing how your body weight fluctuates. You could understand better, as opposed to investing so much stock on the number that you see on it. Once a week, you can get an idea of how your body weight trends, and then you can start to make inferences and even realize why your body weight is changing for any number of reasons.

Dani:

So there’s a couple things that I usually recommend with my clients. One, if they are comfortable with it, I recommend that they weigh themselves every day and record that weight. Don’t just look at it and try to store it in your head. Record that weight every day. And I really like the app happy scale. It’s free, which, you know, you can’t say that about many apps anymore, and you just plug your weight in every day. And the cool thing about it. One, it gives you a rolling average of the

last seven days, which is amazing, because that is more important than the daily weigh in, right? So let’s say I weigh myself on day one, and I’m 150 pounds, and then I don’t weigh myself for another week. And on day seven, now, I’m 152 and a half pounds. I’m like, what the hell? I just gained a pound and a half. I’ve been working so hard, and I gained a pound and a half. But what I didn’t see was maybe on day three, I was 149 pounds.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

And on day four, I was 148.7.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

And then I had a big meal the day before day seven, and now I’m 152 and a half. And I’m thinking all I did was gain two and a half pounds, when in reality, I actually hit a new low. So there’s two things I have people look at. One is that rolling average. And we’ll look at the change from last week’s rolling average to this week’s rolling average, because it can look like nothing is happening.

But when you actually look at the change in the rolling average, maybe you’re down 0.7 pounds. People seem to think that’s zero. People seem to think something below one is zero. It’s not zero. If you lost 0.7 pounds every single week, religiously, at the end of the year, you’d be down over 30 pounds.

Giacomo:

Yeah, that’s major.

Dani:

0.7 pounds ain’t nothing, you know, as an example.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

So that’s one thing. The rolling average. I have them look at that. And then the other thing I have them look for is, did we hit a new low? Did we hit a new low? We hit a new low. That’s usually a pretty good sign that things are trending in a direction. It doesn’t matter what day it happened on. If we hit a new low, usually that’s a good sign.

Giacomo:

Three weeks. Are we still thinking three weeks is the trend? Cause I think your body weight could be doing back clips for more than three weeks. I.

Dani:

What do you mean by three weeks?

Giacomo:

Well, in other words, let’s just say someone’s super watery. They could be watery for more than three weeks at a time.

Dani:

Yeah.

Giacomo:

And still not see, and the progress can still be masked. I, you know, from my personal experience, I think within two months time, you have to see a trend on the way down not to see. You shouldn’t see one sooner.

Dani:

I think you should see one sooner.

Giacomo:

You should see one sooner. But in. But in some rare circumstances, if under periods of, like, extreme stress, you could see progress being masked for, like, upwards of, like, one to two months in some extreme, rare circumstances, I don’t know.

Dani:

I think it would be a very extreme circumstance.

Giacomo:

They’re out there. They happen.

Dani:

So somebody would already have. Have to be really, really lean in their starting place.

Giacomo:

Fair enough.

Dani:

Or in my opinion, if something isn’t changing in two months, the plan needs to change.

Giacomo:

Well, not that it’s not body weight specifically. Yeah, gotcha.

Dani:

If the goal is weight loss. Yeah.

Giacomo:

Yes. So, like, yeah, gotcha.

Dani:

You know, if someone’s goal is just, like, to look better or feel better or, like, the way they look better or achieve a certain shape, the scale doesn’t need to change all the time. Again, if part of the goal is weight loss, then it has to change eventually. But if your weight is kind of staying the same, but your waist measurement is going down, your navel measurement is going down, things like your bicep measurement or your calf measurement are either staying the same or going up.

You are gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. Even if the scale doesn’t move, you are achieving something that is really hard to achieve. And you should just ride that train for as long as you can before you start actively pursuing the downward spike on the scale again.

Giacomo:

And obviously, you can also tell when you see yourself getting stronger at the gym, when you’re lifting

more weight, you’re doing more reps, et cetera, et cetera.

Dani:

Right. Your body has to be changing in order for those things to happen.

Giacomo:

You know, we are at a standstill right now for a little while. Not an accident, thankfully. I’m pretty sure it’s construction, judging by the signs.

Dani:

But everybody and their brothers trying to get out of Vermont today.

Giacomo:

That, too. Everyone saw what they needed to see yesterday with the eclipse, and it’s time to head home.

Dani:

Yeah. So what are some other ways that people can feel like they’re taking too long to get to their goal? Let’s talk about muscle building, because I know fat loss is the one most people are interested in, but muscle building is the slowest. All right. And the phone is overheated. That is recording us, so we had to take a little break. Cool. Off the car.

Giacomo:

We actually have this kind of wacky setup right now. Cause we came up with this idea on a whim, so we don’t really have the proper equipment. You have your phone taped up to the dashboard.

Dani:

But if you guys like it, then I will get the proper equipment. What we were talking about is muscle building and how it is an insanely, insanely slow process and that people can feel like is taking forever, because it probably is. And if people are frustrated with the speed at which they are losing fat, holy crap, are they going to be frustrated with the rate that they are gaining muscle?

Giacomo:

You get instantly rewarded with a really nice pump and a lot of muscle inside of the first six months, and then it’s a slow crawl to get more. And then you watch other people who have the body that you want for all kinds of reasons in certain ways, and you start to compare yourself to them, thinking, well, that’s what I want to look like. But everyone’s starting from a different point when they are lifting as far as their body’s shape is concerned.

And there’s only so much you can do to change that so fast. And there’s only so much muscle that you can put on so fast, right? And this is something that we used to say very often, and I haven’t thought about it or said it for a while, but whatever you want to do in one year, unlike fat loss, when it comes to muscle changing the way that you look, when it comes to the way that you look,

whatever you want to accomplish in one year, that’s a five year look. For example. Whatever you want to accomplish in two to five years, that’s closer to, like a seven to ten year.

Dani:

And it’s not a five year of sitting around doing nothing. It’s five years of consistent hard work. Building muscle is a game of diminishing returns. In the first year of deliberately trying to build muscle, you’ll probably build a good bit. We have to be thinking about it like that. And because when we’re gaining muscle, we’re usually not super lean. That’s part of what is required to gain muscle, is that you not be incredibly lean.

And when you’re not incredibly lean, it’s really hard to see with your eyes whether or not you are gaining muscle. So it’s kind of like you just have to believe that it’s happening. And if there ever was a time you need to trust the process, this is it, because you can’t see what’s happening. So how can you tell if you’re gaining muscle?

Giacomo:

Well, you can throw some fat loss phases into the mix so that you can see what you look like. While you’re focusing on gaining muscle, you can focus on how strong you’re getting. You can, like said, trust that when you’re doing things consistently for a long period of time, that things will be changing.

Dani:

Of all of that, I say the gym, like, how much are you lifting? Are you actively getting stronger? Because that’s only going to happen if you’re building muscle. Remember, strength and muscle tissue are a very chicken and egg scenario, right? Do we have muscle because we’re strong or are we strong because we have muscle?

We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But if you’re getting stronger, you are building muscle, and that is the number one way to tell. So if you’re like, I don’t know if this is working. I don’t know if I’m building

muscle or not. Are you getting stronger? If yes, then yes.

Giacomo:

And this is the hardest part because this is when the reward is no longer there. You’re not seeing the change that you want to see, and the things that you have to focus on are just not really exciting. Oh, are you getting in protein three times a day a decent amount? Are you eating nutritiously? Are you sleeping well? Are you staying hydrated?

Dani:

Yeah, all the factors really matter here. I mean, they always matter. But again, because building muscle is a literal game of inches, all of the variables have to be correct. And I think people get this backwards. They think fat loss is go time and muscle building is the time to kick up your feet.

Giacomo:

No.

Dani:

And muscle building might be the time to kick up your feet a little bit in terms of having, like, rigid control over every calorie that you eat. Like, you can kind of chill out on that a little bit. You do have to make sure you’re eating enough. But if anything, your training, your sleep, your stress, all of that actually has to be better than in a fat loss phase.

Giacomo:

Right? Because you need all that energy to perform and you need all that energy to recover. Fat loss is literally just basically cashing the chips in for the hand that you dealt yourself and how you played your cards. You’re just seeing what you got. The work is already done, but if you haven’t done the work, you got nothing to show for it when you’re, after you’re done with a fat loss phase. So, I mean, the hardest work should be when you’re not cutting.

Dani:

Yes, the hardest work in the gym, for sure. But again, you know, if people are upset that it’s taking longer than they thought. I. Then a lot of times people stop putting in the effort because they can’t see. They’re not. They’re not seeing the proof that what they’re doing is working, so they start putting in less effort. But this is not the time to put in less effort.

This is the time to put in all of the effort that you can. You have the energy to do so when you’re not in a calorie deficit. So do it right, like the time is going. You know, it’s a famous quote for a reason. The time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well be doing everything you can to try to achieve that particular goal.

Giacomo:

Yeah, I’m trying to think of ways. It’s hard. The motivation really does go away when you’re not cutting. It’s pretty exciting to see your body change and to see the lines and the shape and the muscle and all that when you’re cutting. It is really hard actually to do all the things right and do all the things well when you’re not in a cutting phase.

Dani:

I think making strength goals.

Giacomo:

Yes.

Dani:

Like, I want to be able to, you know, for example, a strength goal I have right now. I want to be able to overhead press the forties for sets of eight. So I’m working towards that right now.

Giacomo:

No, but there’s got to be more than that. Like what other goals can you set? Or what other things can you.

Dani:

When you’re building muscle, specifically outside of strengthen inches in certain areas, seeing inches going up. But even then, that’s not a guarantee. No, because you can gain fat in some areas. So I wouldn’t, you know, a lot of women want to grow their glutes. So they take glute measurements and they go up when they’re not dieting. And yeah, some of it’s muscle, but women store fat in their glutes.

Some of it’s fat. So that’s a hard one to look at. Things like your bicep measurement, you know, is much less likely to be a high percentage of fat. So you can look at that if that matters to you. But I really think setting strength goals is key. Setting consistency goals. I know it’s not sexy, but, you know, I want to achieve this. Many days in the gym, maybe think.

Giacomo:

About how the things that you do that will help you perform and recover, how they’ll help your life. So in other words, if you sleep better, you’ll feel better, you have more energy, you’ll be a healthier person, you focus on, like your basic health is more motivated, perhaps, and think about ways to stay better hydrated, ways to better manage your stress, ways to sleep better, and take the hyper focus off of your body, your body composition, your strength and all that.

And then start to think about personal growth and how it just makes you a healthier person in general. Oh, and as a side benefit, you’re going to be. The gains will be coming and you’ll be able to put in the work so that you’ll have something to show for when you do cut. Because I do feel like that even if you’re not an erotic type, a kind of person year round, that you wind up leaning on a certain degree of that just to be able to check the boxes off and be methodical when you’re cutting.

And some of that spills over into what you do when you’re not cutting. And I think it’s healthy to move away from that kind of line of thinking and that way of doing things. And the best time to do it is when you’re not cutting. So when you’re trying to focus on growth, as in muscle gain, it’s helpful to think about your health in general and what you could do to just clean up your habits and just be a healthier person, because that’s the kind of environment that you’ll need.

Also, just your mindset, right? Because, I mean, your brain only has so much energy that you want to devote to this. I mean, you’ll get burnt out over it. And I feel like a lot of people just wind up being on the quote unquote grind year round. And, I mean, I suppose you could do it, but is that really the healthiest way to do it?

Dani:

Or, like, what you’re just saying? People go so hard during their cut that by the time they’re done with their cut, all of their, like, willpower, motivation, dedication, like, all those reserves are completely depleted and they just end up going ham in the other direction and then they can’t get back. And that, I’ve been there like, that is so tough to get back to that place when you’ve burnt yourself out on it previously.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

So I think, you know something, you can practice again. I don’t know how sexy these goals are. Like, I don’t know how exciting these goals are for people, but practice going from, like, a death grip on your habits during a cut to loosening them, but deliberately and with intention, rather than just not doing anything because you no longer have, you just don’t have anything left.

You have got nothing left. To do it with. That’s not like, oh, look at me, I’m so good at not being neurotic now that I’m not in a build, it’s like, no, honey, you’re out of control right now. That can’t possibly feel good either. So, yeah, a lot of what you’re saying there, but muscle building, very slow process. So don’t, don’t be mad at yourself if your gains are coming slower than they did in the beginning.

If your progress in the gym, we talk about progress in the gym, you need to see progress. But, but, but if you’ve been training for like a couple years, that progress with your lifts is going to come so slowly, it’s going to drive you effing nuts that you’re not going to be hitting prs on your bicep curls very easily in like, year three. You’re not. That’s going to come once a year, maybe. You know, especially your isolations are going to be the first thing to slow down.

Your compound movements, your squats, your deadlifts, your hip thrusts, your bench, your pull ups, that’ll, those will be there for a while, but the lateral raises, the bicep curls, the tricep press downs, leg extensions, leg curls, those are going to start coming so much more slowly that you might think you’re stalling.

Giacomo:

And then the other thing is that as you start lifting more and more consistently and routinely, you’re going to become more technically aware of what you’re doing. You’ll be able to move a lot better and you’ll be focusing more on your movement patterns and you’ll be getting more of a sense. You’ll know exactly what you should be lifting and how much you should be lifting said weight on all of your exercises.

So it might seem like you’re not progressing because you’re not getting the same amount of reps or more, or you’re not putting up the same amount of weight or more. But in reality, it’s because you’re starting to really understand how you should be moving. Not just moving safely, not just moving well, but like really, really well. And that can be a little bit deflating.

Dani:

So deflating. I actually have a client going through that right now and she is feeling so deflated because she feels like she having to take a step back to take a step forward because she was making all of this progress. But when we, like, really, really looked at the form and I could tell like, okay, she gets it, she gets it. Now we can really start to hone in on getting as close to perfect with these movement patterns as we sanely can.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

But that sometimes means taking the weight down and losing some reps. But it’s still progress if you’re improving, improving the movement overall. But it’s very hard to quantify at that point.

Giacomo:

Exactly. Especially when you look at some situations where there actually is regression, because that is possible. This is something we don’t like to talk about, because it’s really hard when you want to promote lifting consistently over the course of years and decades, and training really hard and not giving up and not

stopping, no matter what, despite your best efforts. Progress isn’t linear just because you’ve inconsistent and you’ve been routine. You can regress for periods of time.

Dani:

Yeah.

Giacomo:

So, and that’s a difficult thing, too. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Dani:

There reaches a point where you can’t possibly be progressing in everything at the same time anymore. You know, in the beginning you can, and that’s why it’s so fun and feels so magical. But there comes a point where, like, if your squat is going up, yep. Consistently, your deadlift might, might not be moving, it might even be coming back down because you’re taxing yourself so heavily with the squats.

That’s just one example. You know, it happens in a lot of different areas, and it is frustrating, especially, you know, as a long time lifter. And people get frustrated. It’s not as rewarding to see your numbers stay the same or sometimes decrease here and there.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

And people quit. Yeah, because it’s not as fun. Nobody likes to do something they feel like they’re nothing doing a good job at.

Giacomo:

Yeah, it’s like, what’s the point? I’m working my butt off. I haven’t stopped for ten years straight, and I’m losing muscle right now. Why? Why? But that’s part of the, that’s part of the, the game is to figure out how your goals need to shift and how you need to accept that in order to attack one part of your body, another part

has to be compromised during a period of time until you figure out, like, how to get yourself in the overall shape that you want to get yourself in. It’s not as cut and dry as.

Dani:

Get bigger, get bigger, get bigger forever.

Giacomo:

Exact progress.

Dani:

Progress a lot more like finessing.

Giacomo:

Yes.

Dani:

Finessing of the details.

Giacomo:

Yes.

Dani:

And it’s also why I think natural bodybuilding. Natural bodybuilding is so much more complex than enhanced bodybuilding.

Giacomo:

Correct.

Dani:

Because in enhanced bodybuilding, you reach a point you can probably just like throw something at it, throw some chemical at it and bust through any plateau. You have to get really thoughtful with your programming in natural bodybuilding. And the other reason one might regress, you know, let’s say after ten years, is because you’re ten freaking years older, you know, like, none of us are getting any younger, right? And it’s silly to think that, especially if we were a

consistent lifter in our twenties, that we’re going to be like, crushing that lifter in our forties, you know, if you were lifting well when you were younger and you’re still lifting well, like, if you were doing everything right and you’re still doing everything right, the difference is you’re older, you know, and that doesn’t mean that your body can stop making progress, but it might mean you’re not making quite the same strength progress that you once were.

Giacomo:

Right? So the way that you have to measure things changes. And I, there are some things that you face as you get older that you didn’t have to face when you were younger. And sometimes you can get it wrong before you get it right, that you’re losing a little bit.

Dani:

And most of the time you do.

Giacomo:

Yeah. And competing, too. Like, let’s say that you wind up doing feats of strength, or you are trying to achieve a certain look, whether you’re going on stage or not, you can wind up going through extreme strength gain and fat loss phases and do things improperly until you learn how to do them the right way over time. And there’s the only way out is through, unfortunately, because you have to learn through experience.

Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, the right approach and the right coach, you can still get things wrong all the altogether. I mean, there is no such thing as a perfect science experiment, even if you’re following protocol to a t. And that can be wildly frustrating because most.

Dani:

Of the time, most people realize, like, oh, I’m getting older, I need to change the way I’m doing this because they got hurt or something. Nobody just wakes up one day and goes, you know what, I’m pretty sure I’m old now, and I should change the way I do my programming. Nobody does that. We all figure it out when certain things in our body are just not performing the same way they were when we were much younger. That’s how you learn, is because something is going to go wrong.

Giacomo:

Exactly.

Dani:

That sucks. But that’s, otherwise, why would somebody wake up and be like, you know what? I think maybe the big three are no longer for me because I reached this birthday.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Like, I don’t know. But anyways, this was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed doing this. Even if the phone, it is, like, hot as hell.

Giacomo:

You gotta figure that out. How are we gonna cause a podcast? I mean, it’s nice to podcast.

Dani:

We can’t run the acoustical.

Giacomo:

The audio has to be guys. So what do we do? Do we put, like, an ice box in the phone?

Dani:

Overheated already once.

Giacomo:

Yeah, we actually have something on top.

Dani:

Of it to shield it from the sun. Now, this is one hell of a setup we have in here, but we’ll figure it out. Let us know what you guys think. I mean, if the audio is annoying and you can’t deal with it, let us know, because we won’t do it again.

Giacomo:

And maybe you have specific requests on certain car rides that you want us to take for future episodes, or certain things you want us to talk about wherever riding. Or maybe you want us to have certain guests. Maybe we can have guests. And is that, oh, like one of.

Dani:

Those comedians and cars situations?

Giacomo:

Exactly what I was thinking.

Dani:

Meatheads in cars.

Giacomo:

Yeah, like, maybe we can do one of these when we get together for plant built at Mister America or the fit fest. Yeah, we.

Dani:

We shall see.

Giacomo:

I think so.

Dani:

Let us know what you guys think. Maybe we’ll just take the microphones on our trips anyway, because sometimes a really good conversation just starts.

Giacomo:

Like, wait a minute, I’m like, oh.

Dani:

Man, I wish we had made a podcast out of that.

Giacomo:

Exactly.

Dani:

And of course, once you say it, you can never remember exactly what you said again.

Giacomo:

Nope.

Dani:

So frustrating. But anyways, let us know what you guys think. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, email us coacheganproteins.com. if you’re interested in one on one coaching, that is exactly what we do. We have a muscle building webinar. We should have said this at the beginning. Coming up on Saturday, April 20, we’ll leave the link to sign up and register for that. It’s totally free. Giacomo’s hosting it.

Five keys to vegan muscle building. Follow us on social media. Vegan proteins. We have a YouTube channel, which, you know, if you’re looking at this, you’re already watching it. But if you’re listening to this on podcast, we have a lot more on our YouTube channel than comes out on the podcast. So check that out once again. My name is Dani. And I’m Giacomo, and we will talk to you soon. Bye.

Giacomo:

Up. Taking me for granted again. You.

Dani:

Our.