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Tough Cookie Talks
By Jenna JozefowskiHealth & Fitness
Tough Cookie Talks episodes
- Badassery As A Core Value--A Conversation With My Longtime Client Steph
Today is my first EVER guest interview on the podcast! And who better to bring on but one of my first ever personal training clients--or at least one of the first people who ever decided they wanted to work with me specifically because of my unconventional approach to fitness. Grab a cup of coffee (and your headphones LOL) and join Steph and I we reminisce about our journey working together on a more personal level. My hope is that you'll see yourself reflected in Steph's story, feel a little less alone, and excited for what could be possible for you too!
On this episode we talk about:
- The story of how Steph and I met and how we were actually BOTH a little intimidated to work together at first.
- How Steph went from being a self-proclaimed chronic dieting and body hater, to giving up exercise altogether, to rebuilding her relationship with movement into something super badass.
- Some of the surprising ways strength training changed her life for the better.
- How lifting weights has helped Steph be a more confident hiker.
- Some of the toughest pills to swallow when it comes to improving your relationship with exercise.
- The evolution of Tough Love Strength Club and how clients like Steph have helped shape that growth.
- The power of mindset coaching in addition to personal training.
- Why Steph has gone from working with me 1:1, to Tough Love Strength Club, to not working together at all, and then decided to come back!
- And lots of other random fun stuff!
Connect with me:
Tough Love Strength Club-FAQ & application
Tough Love Strength Club-get on the waitlist
Follow & tag me on Instagram
59 min - How To Measure Your Fitness Progress Without Using Your Weight/Measurements/Progress Photos
Giving up the pursuit of shrinking yourself does NOT mean letting yourself go. It does mean letting go of some habits that weren’t as healthy as you might have thought. So how the heck do you measure your progress if you're not using things like your weight, measurements, or before/after photos? Or maybe the more important question: Do you even need to be tracking your fitness progress at all? I'm covering this from both angles today!
On this episode we talk about:
- The pendulum swing that so many of us go through when it comes to changing our relationship with exercise and how not all tracking is necessarily a bad thing.
- Some important questions to ask yourself to know if you're in a good mental space to be tracking fitness related stuff.
- 8+ things than you can use to measure your progress that aren't that based in arbitrary numbers or obsessing over how your look if you DO decide that tracking is for you.
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog posts that inspired this episode:
"Should You Be Tracking Your Fitness Progress?"
"8 Ways To Measure Your Fitness Progress That Have Nothing To Do With Weight"
38 min - What You Need To Know Before You Try To DIY Strength Training
Are personal trainers a waste of $$$?
My answer: Maybe. And also maybe not.
Depending on where you're coming from, it could either be the best investment you ever make or the most expensive/unnecessary way to do fitness. Truly. But yanno what's worse than spending an astronomical of money on fitness related products and services? Spending a small amount of money on fitness related things that don't actually help you get where you wanna go. Over and over again.
Here's the most important thing I want you to know:
If you’ve ever signed up for some kind of DIY fitness offer (meaning one that doesn’t include coaching) and never actually used it, you’re not lazy or unmotivated, and there’s nothing wrong with you. What you probably needed was a different kind of support.
What kind of support do you actually need when it comes to your fitness though?
On this episode we talk about:
- Why I sometimes actively discourage people from signing up for my DIY strength training program.
- How decide if you'd do best with 1:1 personal training, a group program, or you're ready to start lifting on your own.
- The things your personal trainer should be teaching you so that they're not just training you to be dependent on them forever.
- How to stop wasting time and money on fitness services that aren’t serving you and get yourself in a program that makes a meaningful difference in your life.
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog post that inspired this podcast episode
27 min - My Take On Tough Love
My brand of "tough love" is not the fitspo-gym-bro kind of tough love.
But sometimes these words get a bad rap. Especially in the anti-diet/body positive/HAES community. I’ll never forget the time I was listening to a podcast episode with a non-diet dietitian I respect, who proceeded to bash the very words that were plastered all over my website. Ooops. Guess she won’t be interviewing me on her podcast anytime soon? Good thing I have my own now. LOL.
I get it though. Those words might rub you the wrong way. Especially if you’ve had a bad experience with a #fitspo #doyouevenliftbro #toughlove #noexcuses #teamnodaysoff kind of trainer.
On this episode we'll talk about:
- How some personal trainers hide behind the words "tough love" as an excuse to be an asshole.
- Why doing hard things in the gym isn't inherently diet culture.
- How the ideas of challenge and compassion can play in to create wonderful coaching environment.
- Why too much grace and not enough grit can sometimes keep you stuck.
- What tough love actually looks like in action when we work together.
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog post that inspired this podcast episode:
My Take On "Tough Love"
24 min - The Problem With Aesthetic Fitness Goals & What To Do Instead
I'm pretty vocal about the fact that I don't coach intentional fat loss. And yet, not a day goes by in my work work that I don’t hear someone make mention of:
1. Their “goal weight”.
2. Trying to get “toned”.
3. Wanting to get rid of “this” (insert “problem” body part).
4. The fact that they feel like they can’t wear a bikini, sports bra, tank top, or some other article of clothing.
5. How “bad” they are for eating XXX food.
My thoughts on this? OF COURSE YOU FEEL THIS WAY!
This might come as a surprise to some. The truth is, if I had more time (and was more witty) in the moments I heard these things, I’d go on a rant about how weight loss is not inherently good, and how "fit" and "strong" don't have one specific look. The other truth is, I empathize with my clients, students, family and friends who wish they could change their bodies. I hear you. I see you. We live in a society that respects and rewards you when you look a certain way. So no, I don’t exactly blame you for having an aesthetic goal or wanting to change your body. AND before you go all-in with pursuing it, there are a few questions you might want to ask yourself.
On this podcast episode we talk through each of these questions to discover:
- What they might reveal to you about your desires and goals.
- How uncovering the answers might reveal some more true and lasting solutions.
- How in many cases when we're seeking aesthetic changes, those are just physical symbol of the feelings we want to achieve.
- How asking (and encouraging our clients to ask) these questions might actual get them closer to the root of their goals and in turn change the idea of what "results" actually look like.
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog post that inspired this podcast episode:
Have An Aesthetic Fitness Goal? 10 Important Questions To Ask Yourself
29 min - How To Know If You're In a Bad Relationship (With Exercise)
Some of us are in a baaaaddddd relationship with exercise, except it can be hard to see it that way in the moment. Working out is often seen as a virtue and many of us can take something that's supposed to be good for us and take it to a really unhealthy place. That’s just what fitness is right? It’s #noexcuses, before/after photos, and meal plans that always find a way to blame you if you don’t lose weight. It’s personal trainers who can’t possibly imagine that anyone would have a goal other than fat loss or make assumptions about your goals and ability based on how you look. “Coaches” who aren’t actually qualified or certified in anything other than selling you shakes and workout videos and trying to get you to join their “team”. Right? Wrong.
I could go on and on, and on this episode I’ll tell you allllll the things you need to look out for. First we'll talk about how this might show up in your own behaviors and attitudes towards exercise. Then I'll point out some unexpected red flags to look out for in the people, services, and products that we rely on to deliver fitness related products and services.
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog posts that inspired this podcast episode:
How To Know If You're In a Bad Relationship With Exercise
How To Know If Your Healthy Addiction To Exercise Is Actually Doing You More Harm Than Good
47 min - 13 Surprising Ways Strength Training Changed My Life
Strength training can be a HUGE game changer for comes to changing your relationship with exercise. This might come as a surprise, but for me, it was less about the movement itself, all about the change in mindset it brought about. Strength training changed the way I looked at working out and helped me see that it was ok to be more rather than less. Plus a whole lot of other things I didn't expect!
In this episode we talk about 13 of the most surprising ways strength training changed my life, including but not limited to:
- How gave me the courage to stand up for what I believe in and stand up to bullies.
- How it make me give fewer F!%#$ about how I looked.
- How it connected me with the most amazing people.
- Plus a whole lot more!
Connect with me:
Work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog post that inspired this podcast episode
28 min - 10 Mistakes To Avoid When You're Trying To Do Fitness Without Diet Culture
Navigating fitness when you’ve just started to realize why diet culture is harmful is HARD.
Many of us spent so much of our past lives drinking the wellness kool-aid (green juice? bulletproof coffee??) without question that when we finally came around to something different, we went all in with it. Failing to realize that we were falling into the same trap that got us into trouble the first time.
And because I spent FAR too many years accepting what was told to me without question (from both sides), I’d like to share with you some mistakes I made when I was first trying to do fitness without diet culture. Maybe I can save you from making them too?
In this episode we talk about:
- The importance of knowing what fitness advice is meant for you.
- My complicated thoughts on labels like "body positive" and "anti-diet".
- The dangers of creating an echo chamber in your social media feed.
- Why it's important to be open and curious about new ideas.
- The reason I'm NOT trying to convince my bestie since 8th grade not to diet.
- How to find "your people" to support you on your journey.
- My unpopular opinions on "joyful movement".
- Why the idea of all movement being "morally equivalent" can be misleading.
- How to avoid trading one measure of your worth for another.
How to connect with me:
How to work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram
Read the blog post that inspired this podcast episode
35 min - Redefining "Consistency": Why Strength Is Like A Savings Account
Introducing the concept of the "strength savings account" as a way to approach the idea of consistency when it comes to working out.
In this episode we talk about:
- How to not "lose all your fitness" when you take time off.
- How lowering your expectations of yourself in some circumstances may actually lead to exceeding your expectations at other times.
- Why approaching strength training with an all-or-nothing mindset is sort of like winning the lottery and then blowing it all on shit you don't need then wondering where your money went.
How to connect with me:
Visit my website and blog
How to work with me
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Follow & tag me on Instagram #strengthsavingsaccount
36 min - How To Fit Fitness Into Your Life When Life Is A Shitshow
So life is a shitshow right now. Can we all just agree on that? It’s easy to lose motivation to work out when everything feels hard. If you’re feeling like this thing that “used to be easy” or you “should be able to do” is now a struggle, you’re not alone. I have some ideas as to why this might be the case, and what you can do about it.
In this episode we talk about:
- Some of the common roadblocks that might be showing up for you and what to do about it.
- Why you don't need to "push through" OR "just rest" but rather work around and with the things that are getting in your way.
- A different way to think about consistency.
- Why motivation is overrated and what you need instead.
Links mentioned in this episode:
"How To Fit Fitness Into Your Life When Life Is A Shitshow" (blog post that inspired this episode)
How to connect with me:
Get on the waitlist for Tough Love Strength Club
Apply to work with me 1:1
Get my DIY program
Follow & tag me on Instagram
35 min
About Tough Cookie Talks
From the publisher's feed
Tough Cookie Talks is a podcast we'll explore the intersection of fitness & anti-diet culture and all the gray areas in between. We'll let go of "shoulds" and judgment and dig into tough…
conversations with curiosity.