Balanced Vibes Podcast - Healthy Fitness, Food and Mindset

With this 4-part mini series, I share with you little bit about my health and fitness journey and how I've ended up where I am today. You'll see throughout this series, why I'm not your usual coach who just tells you to go hard or go home. I prioritize health just as much as I prioritize your physique goals, and  because of that, I consider myself a very responsible coach.

This is the last episode of the Get To Know Me 4-part mini series. I hope you have enjoyed them! In this final episode, everything comes together as I will tell you exactly what I did to find that happy middle place, where my eating and training are finally normal, healthy and balanced, and I feel and look athletic and strong.

If you missed the first three parts of this series, check them out here:

Becoming A Track Athlete & Finding Love For Fitness: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-1-becoming-a-track-athlete-developing-a-love-for-fitness-balanced-vibes-ep-109/

Too Much Of A Good Thing. How I Made Myself Unhealthy By Overtraining: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-2-too-much-of-a-good-thing-how-i-made-myself-unhealthy-by-overtraining-balanced-vibes-ep-110/

Healing My Body… But Going Overboard With Food: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-3-healing-my-body-from-stress-but-going-overboard-with-food-balanced-vibes-ep-111/

Finding The True Middle Ground with Food & Training

As you remember from last time, I had healed my body by eating and resting a lot more, but I had way overshot my weight quite a bit and no longer felt comfortable in it.

Despite a lot of people saying that just eating what feels right to you, will get you in the shape you need to be in, it didn't feel right to me. The final, pivotal moment when I decided that I want to lose body fat was when I was shopping for a dress for our friends wedding, and had to go up another size! I had gone from size 4 to 12. Granted, it's not natural for my body to be a size 4 where I was in my overtraining days, but I didn't feel like the 12 was right for me either.

Eventually, I got really tired of being tired and out of shape. I had even developed high fasting blood glucose levels, which contributed to another set of hormonal imbalances!

After some hesitation, I reached out to my friend and macro coach, to see if she could tell me more about macros and put together initial numbers for me.

I wasn't sure how stressful tracking would be and if I can do it, but I wanted to give it a try and it went really, really well.

Tracking didn't stress me out, I wasn't trying to be perfectionistic about it, I had developed a lot of self acceptance over the past few years of going through the weight fluctuations. I had a solid mental foundation!

In addition to macros, I started lifting what I call the Big Girl Weights. I no longer did long exhausting cardio and HIT training that had been too much for me.

I transformed my body. This time, in a healthy way.

I was fueling myself with great food, I was still having a glass of wine if I wanted to, I trained hard but also rested 3-4 days a week — and I had took my health and athleticism back.

With this 4-part mini series, I share with you little bit about my health and fitness journey and how I've ended up where I am today. You'll see throughout this series, why I'm not your usual coach who just tells you to go hard or go home. I prioritize health just as much as I prioritize your physique goals, and  because of that, I consider myself a very responsible coach.

I hope this series is interesting for you to listen to, and I always like to hear your story, too! So please send me a DM on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kerstenkimura/) or leave a reply under this post on my blog.

If you missed the first two parts of this series, check it out here:

Becoming A Track Athlete & Finding Love For Fitness: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-1-becoming-a-track-athlete-developing-a-love-for-fitness-balanced-vibes-ep-109/

Too Much Of A Good Thing. How I Made Myself Unhealthy By Overtraining: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-2-too-much-of-a-good-thing-how-i-made-myself-unhealthy-by-overtraining-balanced-vibes-ep-110/

 

Healing My Body From Stress By Eating More & Gaining Weight

In the last episode, I shared with you how I recovered from years of stress caused by overtraining and under eating. It was a wonderful and much needed period in my life, but I wasn't able to still find true balance with my eating.

After years of putting my body through all that stress and battling with hormone imbalances, I had a great conversation with my acupuncturist Ron. He quickly figured that overtraining and different dietary approaches I had tried over the years (low fat, fasting, then unintentional low carb…) were the reasons why my hormones were flat and why I was so tired. He advised me to take some time off from rest and eat more, to recover.

So I did, and it saved me. I started feeling energized again, my periods normalized, I felt a lot better.

But, I had stopped paying any attention to my food intake. I was eating and eating and while some of the weight I gained was necessary, I overshot it big time.

Fast forward 3 years and I no longer felt comfortable in my body; I had completely lost the muscle tone and athleticism that I once had.

I didn't hate myself — never! In fact, I learned a lot self acceptance through all this, and I'm grateful. I also started a spiritual practice, got familiar with mediation, plant medicine, started to really like myself a lot more.

But I felt uncomfortable in my physical body, and I wanted to change that. But this time, in a healthy way, without repeating the old mistakes. That's exactly what I did, and I'm going to share with you in the next episode, how that happened.

You can listen to the episode on Balanced Vibes podcast on most podcast platforms!

 

With this 4-part mini series, I share with you little bit about my health and fitness journey and how I've ended up where I am today. You'll see throughout this series, why I'm not your usual coach who just tells you to go hard or go home. I prioritize health just as much as I prioritize your physique goals, and  because of that, I consider myself a very responsible coach.

I hope this series is interesting for you to listen to, and I always like to hear your story, too! So please send me a DM on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kerstenkimura/) or leave a reply under this post on my blog.

If you missed the first part of this series, check it out here:

Becoming A Track Athlete & Finding Love For Fitness: https://urbanjane.co/blog/get-to-know-me-part-1-becoming-a-track-athlete-developing-a-love-for-fitness-balanced-vibes-ep-109/

 

Too Much Of A Good Thing. How I Made Myself Unhealthy By Overtraining

In the last episode, I talked about how I had always been an athlete and enjoyed track and field and basketball. I love both of them to this day!

But, after high school and first years of college, a few things happened…

Once I started college, I gained a lot of weight. I was homesick, so I ate chocolate every single night. I had stopped my track practice and gotten my first car, so I moved a lot less. Working at a restaurant in weekends meant that all the good food was available all the time.

After gaining about 30lbs, I decided: That's enough.

I joined Weight Watchers to drop that weight and I did — all of it plus more in 5 months. I got really, really skinny, because I was an over achiever — I ran 6 days a week and under ate severely. As a result, I didn't only lose fat but also muscle, the most valuable, healthy tissue in our bodies that we should always try to preserve!

I was so thin, yet completely obsessed with the scale.

I caused myself a host of hormonal imbalances, sleep issues and binge eating habits. Luckily, there was a way out, and we get there in the next episode.

You can listen to the episode on Balanced Vibes podcast on most podcast platforms!

“If you have a body, you are an athlete”

– Bill Bowerman, cofounder of Nike

With this 4-part mini series, I share with you little bit about my health and fitness journey and how I've ended up where I am today. You'll see throughout this series, why I'm not your usual coach who just tells you to go hard or go home. I prioritize health just as much as I prioritize your physique goals, and  because of that, I consider myself a very responsible coach.

I hope this series is interesting for you to listen to, and I always like to hear your story, too! So please send me a DM on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kerstenkimura/) or leave a reply under this post on my blog.

Becoming A Track Athlete & Developing A Love For Fitness

Yes, I consider myself an athlete and you should, too. I believe in Bill Bowerman's famous quote — If you have a body, you're an athlete. So when I call myself an athlete, I don't mean an olympic level athlete, although, as you'll learn from this episode, this was certainly my dream…

I have been active most of my life. I got started with track and field at the age of 9. Couple of years later I started basketball too.

My mom and grandparents really wanted me to take piano classes, which I did… But soon realized that I don't like it the tiniest bit. All I ever dreamed of was becoming the best track athlete in the world 🙂

Well, that didn't happen. Although I was the hardest worker in our training group and could have out trained anyone, I wasn't naturally gifted enough to make the big dreams I had come true.

But those years of hard work and dedication definitely shaped my forever love for fitness.

You can listen to the episode on Balanced Vibes podcast on most podcast platforms!

The #1 tool that you need to start losing body fat and doubling your energy: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

In this podcast, I'm answering three listener questions.

I'm Eating Healthy, Why Am I Not Losing Body Fat?

You may have heard that all you have to do to lose body fat is to eat healthy. Of course, for your hormonal health, it is important to eat healthy foods. But from fat loss perspective, it's not only about the quality of the foods that we're having — it's also about the quantity!

That way, the first reason why you may not be losing fat is this: You're still eating too many calories.

Healthy foods have calories too.

A good example is nuts and nut butters. Most people would argue that these are healthy foods, but they are very high in calories and if we don't have a good portion control, these calories absolutely add up.

The second reason why you may not he losing fat even though you're eating healthy, is this:

Maybe the food you thought was healthy, isn't that healthy after all?

Couple of key words to look out for:

“High in protein”, “Keto”, “Low fat” .

You may see these words on many food packages, but they don't mean that the food is healthy. For example, many protein bars have the word keto on them, and they taste good so you end up eating more than you needed — and you still end up with calorie excess. Therefore, no fat loss.

The third question to ask yourself is this:

What happens in weekends?

You may be eating really well and stay within your normal calorie range Monday through Friday, but what happens Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday? A lot of people eat more, eat out, have a few drinks which can most certainly ramp up the appetite. If the sleep isn't great either, we may want to eat a lot more the next day, reach for all the carb-y stuff that adds up quickly, and end our week with a big calorie excess.

This is an easy reason why the fat isn't coming off.

Let's move on to the second question that I got from one of my readers.

Why Am I Always Sore After Strength Training? Can I Build Muscle Without Strength Training?

The person who asked me this question told me that she's very sore and completely exhausted every time she works out, and was wondering if there's another way to build muscle.

Instead of quitting strength training, let's figure out why she's getting so sore and fatigued. Because the truth is — you can't build muscle without resistance training. Yes, resistance training comes in many forms, and can be done with TRX, bodyweight, or barbells, but it's still resistance training, and it's needed to sculpt the body.

Here are the questions we should answer:

Are you pushing too hard?

Don't go into every workout trying to hit your PR. Some days are for going lighter. If you push yourself to the max every single workout, all your body does is trying to recover. When does the growth happen? There's no time for it if the body is constantly in the recovery mode.

Are you sleeping, resting and recovering enough?

The other reason for poor recovery is… Well, poor recovery! What I mean by this: Not enough sleep and downtime. Sleep is crucial for muscle building. A study that compared 2 groups of people, those who slept just 5.5 hours and those who slept 8, found that the latter group was able to build 60% more muscle.

So get your zzzzz in!

Are you eating enough?

That is, in general — are you getting enough calories for your activity, but also more specifically, are you getting enough food before and after working out? Or are you playing the “let's see how long I can go without food” game? (I used to do it and it was silly! This is not how you build muscle, at all!

What Is Muscle Toning

Muscle toning is the same thing as building or growing muscle. They are just different names for the same thing. It seems like women use the words “muscle toning” a lot more than men… I have never heard a man talk about muscle toning 🙂

But for a lot of women, saying I'm working out to grow or build my muscles, is intimidating because they associate muscle building with being manly.

This is not the case. Muscle building and toning are the same thing, and they are what give you the good shape.

You Think That You Want To Lose Weight. But Do You Really?

Growing or building muscle doesn't make any woman manly, but it does give the nice shape and curves that they want.

But this is where a lot of women get confused.

They believe that they want to lose weight, but do they really? Let's say that you weigh 160 lbs but have aesthetically really good looking physique, with strong curves, lean muscles, and great shape. Versus weighing 150 lbs and have nearly no muscle definition and shape — which one would you choose?

Look, there are no better and worse bodies. This is not what I'm talking about at all. But there are bodies that differ in their composition. You can have a lean and fit looking body when you weigh more than what you “thought” you should weigh. And that's because you have a good muscle tone.

So, assuming that you want to focus on muscle toning, and don't care so much about the weight, what do we need to do?

Progressive Overload for Muscle Toning

 

Today's episode is all about ways to train to tone your muscles better. But before we get there, remember that also your nutrition matters! The most important thing is to increase our protein intake, to get that muscle toning or muscle building effect. I have created two guides for you that help:

Your Ultimate Protein Guide: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

Your Calorie, Protein and Workout Blueprint: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/lean-ladies-blueprint/

In this podcast, I'm sharing with you 8 tips that you can try to help with muscle growth.

8 Muscle Toning Secrets For Women

To be able to tone or build muscle, we need to progressively overload our body with resistance training. Progressive overload basically means doing better over time. That can be in terms of weight, reps, sets, etc.

Progressive overload is what makes the muscle grow and strengthen and gives it the toned look.

Here are the 8 ways how you can apply the progressive overload to your muscles:

Lift Heavier Weights

If you're today doing squats with 100 lbs, maybe 3 weeks from now it's time to try 10 extra pounds. If you can lift that weight for the same amount of reps that you did with 100 lbs, you've progressively overloaded the body.

Lifting heavier weights is the one thing that most women don't pay attention to. They tend to often stick with light weights and do high number of reps, and keep it the same month after month, year after year. They are capable for so much more, but just don't know that. But this is important!

So, if you have access to heavier weights, by all means, use heavier weights. Of course, as good as your form allows. Never do your exercises with broken form.

But what if you don't have heavier weights? You can try the following.

Do More Reps

If you always do 10 reps of a certain exercise, now challenge yourself and see if you can do 12. Even though 8-12 is the most classic rep range, all numbers of reps can help you build muscle. You may even want to try 20-30 reps if your weights are very light, or if you only have your own bodyweight to use.

Do More Sets

Want to lean out and do so in a truly healthy way? Get my FREE guide here and get started: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

Want To Get Lean? STOP Doing These Things (And Start Doing These Instead!) – Balanced Vibes Ep 105

It was early 2020 when I realized that I want to lose some body fat. During the previous few years, I had gained quite a bit of weight because I had to overcome my hormonal imbalances. I was healthy now, I didn't need more weight, and I wanted to feel better in my body.

Note, if you're currently very stressed out, overtrained, or have an eating disorder, this is not a post for you. Please see a specialist who can help you.

But for me, it was important that I started looking at my habits and behaviors differently when I wanted to see results.

Here are the things that I started doing, to lose fat:

✅Tracking macros, based on numbers that my friend and macro coach had calculated for me

✅Eating A LOT more protein – get the exact protein guide in my bio

✅Controlling my portion sizes more, and realizing that smaller amounts satisfied me perfectly

✅Asking myself if I actually wanted to eat that thing, or am I doing this out of a habit

✅Lifting a lot heavier – Big Girl Weights

Here are the things that I stopped doing, to lose fat:

⛔Snacking on random stuff throughout the day without paying any attention to what I was doing and also how much my body actually needed

⛔Going back for seconds when I wasn't actually hungry anymore

⛔Eating carb only snacks and meals

⛔Being ashamed for wanting to lose body fat

⛔Trying to lose fat by eating “intuitively”

Here's what happened as results of these changes:

👉I finally realized why I had kept gaining weight although I was eating “mostly healthy” – I was simply eating too much which I had not figured out without tracking

👉Less body fat, more muscle mass

👉Morning fasting glucose from 100+, to 75-85 regularly

👉So much stronger!!

👉Much more in tune with what my body needs and how it responds to certain foods and macros.

I had to stop guessing and start doing the RIGHT things for me.

Check out today's episode where I'm talking more about these things.

If you liked the episode, please leave a review on the podcast app and also give it a thumbs un on YouTube!

Want to lean out and do so in a truly healthy way? Get my FREE guide here and get started: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

Q&A: Increasing BMR, Progressive Overload vs Muscle Failure, Calories vs Protein For Fat Loss? – Balanced Vibes Ep 104

In today's episode, I'm answering three questions that I've gotten from my followers/listeners:

1) Is it possible to increase my BMR after I've slowed it down with a lot of dieting and restricting?

Yes! Absolutely. Your metabolism is flexible and changes based on what signals you're sending it. Are you starving? That's a signal to slow down. Are you increasing calories? That's a signal to speed up.

Your metabolism is always flexible and changing based on what you do.

2) What's the difference between progressive overload and going to failure, and is going to failure necessary to get results?

Progressive overload is a way of training where you increase either the weight, training volume, frequency, or time under tension so that it's MORE than what you did before. You're doing something that makes your body work harder than it did last week or last month.

Going to failure though is not the same thing as progressive overload. Going to failure means that you failed your last rep. This is not necessary for you to get results, and I don't encourage that because it will take a lot of time from your central nervous system to recover if that's how you train all the time.

You want to progressively overload — try adding more weight, volume etc to your last week or month — but you don't have to go to failure. Your last 2 reps should feel heavy but you should still be able to perform them.

3) Is it possible to lose fat by focusing on protein only without changing your calories?

It depends who we're talking to. If a person is in a caloric surplus (eating more than burning), then changing the macros alone and increasing protein alone won't help her lose weight. She needs to be in a caloric deficit, too.

If there's a person who's eating at maintenance (eating about the same amount as she's burning) but her protein is currently low, then this person can successfully change her body composition by simply starting to eat the right amount of protein.

How much is right for you? Find out HERE: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

 

Check out today's episode to get the answers!

If you liked the episode, please consider leaving a review on the podcast app and leave it a thumbs up on YouTube.

Do you know what your #1 tool is, to healthy and sustainable fat loss? 

It's eating plenty of protein. Most women overlook this important macro, but this is really the key that you must have, if you want do lose body fat safely and effectively. Get my FREE guide here and get started: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

Stress Management, DUTCH Test And Fixing Hormonal Imbalances with Tina Haupert of Carrots'n'Cake

In today's episode, I'm joined by Tina Haupert, the women behind the Carrots'n'Cake blog. Tina is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner who also uses macro nutrition to help women find balance within their diets while achieving their body composition goals.

In this episode, Tina and I are talking about

* Tina's journey from simply documenting her own weight loss journey on the blog, to becoming a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and helping thousands of women with their health

* What are the most common issues related to weight loss, fat loss and hormonal imbalances that her clients struggle with

* What is the DUTCH test, what it can show, and how Tina uses it in her work with her clients

* The importance of blood sugar regulation in improving our overall health

* How our lifestyle can increase our cortisol and why this can become problematic

* The importance of liver detoxification for our hormonal balance

* Tina's personal story with extreme stress and chronic fatigue, sugar cravings and weight gain and how she overcame them.

Resources and How To Get In Touch With Tina:

Tina's Website: https://carrotsncake.com/

Tina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carrotsncake/

Tina's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carrotsncake/

Carrots ‘n' Cake Podcast: https://carrotsncake.com/category/podcast/ or type it into your favorite podcast app

The Everything Macro Diet Cookbook: https://amzn.to/3x39vCm

I hope you enjoyed this episode! Please tell me on Instagram if you listened to it, and share it with anyone who may find it useful.

Do you know what your #1 tool is, to healthy and sustainable fat loss? 

It's eating plenty of protein. Most women overlook this important macro, but this is really the key that you must have, if you want do lose body fat safely and effectively. Get my FREE guide here and get started: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-physique-formula/

What Happens After Fat Loss?

Most women know, of course, what fat loss means, and how to do it — eat less food, to put it really simply.

However, oftentimes they don't have any idea what they should do after the fat loss phase is over. The common mistake I see is staying in deficit for months or even years, and as a result, slowing down our metabolism and developing hormonal issues.

I have done several episodes on this topic. Check out videos HERE and HERE to learn more.

But what should happen after the fat loss phase?

What Happens After You've Lost Fat?

There are several phases that follow a fat loss phase:

Diet Break

Diet break is absolutely necessary if the goal is healthy fat loss — I'm not for quick fixes, I want you to maintain your results.

Losing fat is not a bad thing, but continuing to eat low calories is. With a strategic diet break, we can avoid metabolic adaptations and slowdown, as well as hormonal imbalances.

A diet break should be taken after 12-16 weeks of being in a deficit, and it should last 1-3 weeks, and it should be done strategically and still counting macros — not eating anything and everything in sight 🙂

Fat Loss

Then, we can do another fat loss phase, if we didn't previously reach our goal yet. This too can be 12 or max 16 weeks at length, but no more than that — even if you feel like you have more fat to lose, you need to stop there to keep the body healthy.

Reverse Diet

The next step should always be a reverse diet.

That means, gradually and slowly, increasing our calories until they are at a point where our energy intake and expenditure match. In other words, if, through your exercise and basal metabolic rate, your body burns about 2300 calories, this is how much you want to eat my the end of your reverse diet.

Sounds scary? It isn't. If you don't increase calories overnight but do it gradually, and continue lifting weights, you're going to experience a lot of positive things, like increased energy, improved strength, and more muscle.

Will you gain weight? You may, a few pounds. But this shouldn't be the focus. Your measurements stay close to where they were, and you maintain similar level of leanness.

Maintenance

Once you've gotten your calories up again, you have 2 options:

You can just stay there! You don't have to change anything different. You're maintaining. And this is where you should be most of your life. No, I don't mean you have to be tracking every day. But use the tools that you learned during tracking, keep the protein high and track more intuitively.

The other option is to do another fat loss phase if you want to, but here's the important part: You need to maintain at least as long as you were in a deficit. If you were in deficit for 24 weeks, this is how long you should maintain before trying to cut again.

Bulking

What? You want me to bulk? 

It's not a bad idea. I know that women are so scared of it because it sounds like a lot of food. But you know what, it's not a bad thing! Bulking is a great option if you want to put on muscle mass. It's a great thing to do to increase your metabolic rate, and may be very beneficial for your hormones.

We're not talking about eating 3500 calories if your maintenance is 2500. But we may add 100-150 calories to help you buil...