All tagged muscle gain

Body Change: A Manifesto

Body Change: A Manifesto

Stephanie Ondrusek
fooooood, coaching, mindset

For a moment, consider that what we’re really doing when we “go on a diet” is utilizing a tool to get to a goal. It’s a means to an end.

Allowing for that, our goal is the goal (as in, the diet is not the goal; the dress or 400lb deadlift or feeling at peace is the goal.). And the tools we have (current pattern of eating) are not the right ones for the job (we can’t hammer a nail with a phone charger), so we’re looking to find the right tool for the job. Nothing over which to get too distracted; we just need to find the one that’s good enough for us to use consistently to get the job done. With me?

Gathering all this data, a year or so ago, after reading one from Dr. Brooke Kalanick (good resource for female hormones, particularly PCOS and Hashimoto’s, but also general mindset reading, if you’re into that.), I created my own body change manifesto. Rather than a bunch of rules, I wanted a way of approaching food that made me feel empowered, rather than defeated; that gave me permission to explore, rather than ascribing to any particular 12-week plan; that looked at me as a whole person, rather than just the foods I eat. Going back to the concept of active acceptance, knowing that we can choose to accept our bodies while still wanting them to change, our thoughts surrounding food become different: they become a declaration of independence, guidelines to our goals with a healthy dose of freedom. If you’d like to know what that would look like, mine is as follows:

[#WonderWomanLoading] 8w Program!

[#WonderWomanLoading] 8w Program!

Stephanie Ondrusek
coaching, programming, workouts

I’m honored to be a part of your journey to create a bigger, more fulfilled, more honest life. The day I decided to step into my purpose not as a shrinking violet, but as a loud, muscular, direct (nasty? ;) ) woman was the day my life changed forever. I went from wondering how I could keep everyone happy to making sure I was happy and adding value from my overflow, from maintaining a job where I wasn’t appreciated or effective to designing my work and my life, and from doing hours of cardio on the elliptical that made me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty butter knife to lifting heavy things and finding empowerment in the hard stuff.

This is available to all of us, so time to get steppin'.

#WonderWomanLoading

#WonderWomanLoading

Stephanie Ondrusek
mindset, general BAMFery

I say, “I lift heavy shit” all the time, and it’s true. But I don’t just mean a physical external load. We’ve all overcome quite a few things to get to where we are, and it’s all heavy. Having the mentality that we aren’t teeny tiny mice who are here by chance, but as a consequence of our strength, changes everything. We get to choose to take up the space we’re allotted and then create more. In the gym, in our relationships, in life. #WonderWomanLoading is the motto ‘round these parts.

Carbs are not the Devil, and Other Things Lifters Should Know About Nutrition

Carbs are not the Devil, and Other Things Lifters Should Know About Nutrition

Stephanie Ondrusek
fooooood, workouts

: I’m not big on calorie counting, mostly because it leads to being obsessed, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. I do, however, support calorie counting for a week or so if you’ve never done it, just to get an idea of what a certain amount of calories actually looks like. From there, we can gauge how full we feel on a certain (approximate) number of calories, manipulate/redistribute where those calories are coming from to support our fullness and energy, and not have to actually count much in the future. How can we know where to go if we don’t know where we are?

Anyway, back to the carb point: cutting calories at random, especially from one particular molecule (especially carbs, because our brains run on glucose, the building block of carbs), can actually lead to the exact thing we’re trying to avoid: fat storage and a slower metabolism. Carbs are necessary not just for our brains to work properly, but they also give us energy, so if you’re about to head into the gym to lift something heavy and you don’t want to pass out, maybe include something with carbs in it earlier in the day (or the night before, if you’re an early morning exerciser and completely worthless after 2p like me). 

In the context of lifting (and life, but more so if we’re lifting most days of the week), we also need a fair amount of protein and fat. Protein is the building block of muscle, and that’s the goal here, isn’t it? To lift stuff, increase the amount of stuff we can lift, and also look like we do that? Studies on how much protein, exactly, vary, but a safe place to start is 0.8-1.2g protein per 1kg of body weight. That usually keeps us in a range that will support our activity but not have us going hog-wild and way over our calorie targets.

Fat is also key…mostly for satiety (our perception of fullness between meals). And for the delicious factor. Limiting fat is a good idea – mostly because it has 9 calories per gram, where carbs and protein have 4 – but eliminating (or close to it) fat isn’t, because it does serve quite a few purposes in our bodies, as a source of energy, a support for certain essential vitamins to be absorbed (A, D, E, and K), and a structural component of our cell membranes. In an effort to not go waaaay over my ideal amount of food for the day, I’d rather put half an avocado on a salad than be hungry an hour after said salad and eat M&Ms. Priorities.