401: What 10 Years of Tracking Macros Taught Me About Using the Tool Right

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 401.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and I am so excited to be here today. Many of you know, two episodes ago, I talked about what I want to do with the podcast, and I said that I would be releasing every other week-ish episodes. And I just have to report that when I took that pressure off of myself, to have to come up with an episode every week, I have been amazed at how much I want to podcast. Like the creativity feels like it's back. The excitement around recording feels like it's back. And it's just wild, the difference between feeling like you have to do something and having that pressure on yourself. And then when you remove that pressure, how much you naturally… I naturally want to do it, if that makes sense, which I think is such a great lesson. I'm going to get into the topic of this episode, but I just want to pause here because I think this is such a great lesson because a lot of times we tell ourselves we should do things. I should work out. I should eat healthy. I should track my macros. And then it's almost like there's this resistance to it. And I really believe that part of that is the fact that you think that you should do that, which is like this external pressure, this external force. And we want to be autonomous. We don't want to be forced into doing things. But one of the reasons we do it with ourselves is because we feel like if we remove that pressure, then we won't do it. If I don't tell myself I should go to the gym, then I won't do it. And I just have not seen that as the case. I've seen that when you move from a should framework to a want to framework, it's not, I should go to the gym. It's, I want to go to the gym because I want to feel more energy, or I want to go to the gym because I'll be around for my grandkids. Like moving out of that should into the want to and removing that pressure actually makes it easier to do. Anyway, that was a side tangent. It was an extra lesson for you. No charge. But that is my experience that I've had with the podcast is I actually want to sit down and record now because I feel less pressure of like, I have to do this every week. And that's been amazing. 

A 10-Year Milestone and Reflection 03:01

Okay. So what's the topic today? There has been this really fun trend on Instagram lately, and it is like a 10 year trend. It is everybody's posting videos and pictures of them back in 2016, right? So we're 10 years ago and kind of talking about how, what life was like 10 years ago, what you were doing 10 years ago, how you've changed in the last 10 years. And that's been a really fun trend. What's really extra fun about it for me is that it coincides with a milestone for me and for Biceps After Babies because this month, actually this month when I'm recording, I'm recording the end of January. This is going to come out in February, but in January of this year, Biceps After Babies turned 10 years old. And that means that I've been coaching clients for 10 years. I've been tracking macros and using that as a tool for 10 years. And that is kind of crazy. It is wild to me that it's been a 10 year journey so far. And I have learned a ton in the last 10 years. I've learned a ton about macro counting. I've learned a ton about coaching clients. I've learned a ton about how to create transformations in myself and in other women. Over the last decade, I have coached over 10,000 women. That's a lot. It's a lot of women that I've been able to help and serve. And I want to share some of the lessons that I've learned about what actually makes people successful. Because it's not usually the things that people think of.

So if you're at the beginning of a fitness journey or you're at the beginning of your macro counting journey, what you think is going to make you successful is likely wrong. And I can say that because I've worked with lots and lots of women and I hear what they say they think they need to do to be successful. And it's usually the wrong focus. So some of these things that I talk about might surprise you. Some might challenge your thinking a little bit, but all of them are going to help you in your own fitness journey, in your own macro tracking journey. As I share these things that I've learned over the last 10 years after coaching 10,000 clients. Okay. So we're going to dive right into this and kind of rapid fire them a little bit. I say that now, but I probably will spend more time on this than I think because I get really excited to talk about these topics.

Macro Tracking Is a Tool, Not a Diet 05:31

Okay. Number one is macro accounting is a tool, not a diet. And I think this is really, really important to distinguish because a lot of times people approach macro accounting like it's a diet and it makes sense. Listen, it's like, I get it. If you've had a lot of experience dieting in the past, you've had a lot of experience going in, somebody telling you what to eat, you have to follow that. And then you follow it for a while and then you fall off the wagon. And then you come back and you want somebody else to tell you what to eat, or you want a meal plan to follow, or you want the structure to someone just to tell you what to do to be successful. That's a pattern that you have become very, very familiar with. And it's very easy to bring that same pattern into macro counting. And what that looks like is, Amber, just tell me what my macros are. Just give me a meal plan and I'll follow it and I'll be successful. I get the allure. I get it. But it does not work. It may work in the, “in the short term”, but it will never work in the longterm. Because if you're just following what somebody else says for a period of time, one, you don't actually learn the things that you need to learn to be able to make that longterm. And two, when you're left, when that structure leaves, you flounder. And I see this a lot with clients who are coming from a dieting history where they have yo-yoed back and forth. When they're on a diet, they're on a diet and they're adherent and they're good and they see progress, but then they cannot maintain it longterm. And so then they swing off and now they're way off a diet. And then they think the solution is that to get back on a diet. And then they swing the other way. That's a very common pattern. Macro counting can be that way.

And I will say, this is also what makes it tricky. A lot of people teach macro counting that way. I'm going to give you your macros. You follow them. That's it. Just follow them. Oh, you didn't follow them? Oh, well, that's a you problem. You just need to be more consistent. You need to be more motivated. You just need to follow the plan. You're the problem. That's what they say. It's not true. You're not the problem. The problem is, is that you are utilizing this tool as a diet and you're bringing that diet mentality into it. So one of the biggest things that I have learned is when we view macro counting as a tool, that changes everything. It's a tool to help you for periods of time. It's not a tool that you need to use for the rest of your life. I'm really big on promoting that. I think macro counting really teaches you a lot about your food. It teaches you a lot about nutrition that a lot of people don't know or understand. It teaches you a lot about portion sizes. It teaches you a lot about balance. It teaches you a lot about moderation. And you don't have to continue to use the tool forever for those lessons to stay with you. So I pick up macro counting when I need it and I put it down when I don't. But those lessons that I have learned from tracking macros don't ever leave me. They stay with me. And that is the difference between using macro counting as a diet, something you do for a while, and then you don't actually ever learn anything long-term versus a tool that is teaching you something. That's a very big difference.

The First Step Is Not Setting Your Macros 08:51

Okay. Lesson number two. The first step in your macro tracking journey or macro counting journey is not to set your macros. Listen. I know. I know. I know. I know. It's what everybody thinks. It's like, I want to track macros. Okay. I got to set my macros. That's step number one. I am here to tell you it's not. Now, I have a free guide to help you set your macros. So you can download that. I understand that that is what people think that they need, but I've seen it over and over again. The first step in your macro counting journey is not to set your macros. It is to master the skill of tracking, to learn how to track your food without counting macros so that when we layer on tracking, like actually hitting goals and targets, we're not trying to do two things at once. What I see a lot of people do is they try to master the skill of tracking while also master the skill of hitting numbers. And then they get really overwhelmed and they're not successful. And every single day they're just failing over and over and nobody wants to stick with something that you're failing at. Okay. So trust me on this. The first step is not to set your macros. It is to learn how to track your food. And I really encourage my clients to track just your normal intake. You're not hitting anything. You're just gathering data. 

Now, if you want help with that first step of learning how to track your food, how to make it simple, how to do it at under five minutes a day, because I'm really big on that. This has to be fast. If you're spending 15 minutes a day in your app, you're going to not do it very long. We got to make it quick. We got to make it fast. We got to make it easy as possible so that this is a skill that you can continue to utilize moving forward. If you want help with that, I have created a five-day tracking bootcamp where I walk you through one video a day that teaches you how to track and teaches you how to do it fast and how to do it in a way that you will continue, that feels like it fits into your lifestyle. That doesn't feel like you have to be perfect in order for you to be successful. If you want access to that five-day bootcamp, I will give you a code. Actually, I'll give you a link that will give you $20 off. It's a discount just for listening to the podcast. Thanks for being here. If you go to bicepsafterbabies.com/trackingbootcamp, you'll see my macro tracking made simple. It's a five-day video course that will walk you through the basics of tracking so that you can get the first skill down pat, and then you can move to the next step, which is setting your numbers. 

Discovering the Power of Macros Through Personal Experience 11:41

For the next lesson, I want to frame this out a little bit. I want to go back to when I started my business. You may or may not know my origin story, which is that in 2016, I set a New Year's resolution in January 2016 that I wanted to get a six-pack. I had had four kids by that time. My youngest was two. I was working out a ton at the gym. I was teaching fitness classes, group fitness classes. I felt like I spent a lot of time at the gym, but my body never really changed. It didn't really look like I spent a lot of time at the gym. I wanted that to change for 2016. I had found macro counting as I was perusing on Pinterest. Back then, it was called IIFYM, If It Fits Your Macros. It made sense to me from a science perspective. I have a background as a nurse. I took a lot of science classes. I've read a lot of research papers. As I read through this, it made a lot of sense from a nutritional point of view. I wanted to try it out and see if I could get a six-pack. I got started tracking macros. I was floored, floored at how fast my body responded when I aligned my nutrition with my goals. By golly, I got that six-pack. As I started to see it working, I realized that this was something awesome. It was something where previously I had had to cut out food groups.

Back in the day, if I wanted to lose weight, I would tell myself I had to eat clean that week. I couldn't eat any pizza. I couldn't eat any processed food. I couldn't eat any candy. I, like most of you, swung back and forth where I would do that Monday through Thursday. Then Friday would come and it would all just fall apart. Then I would tell myself I was going to get back on track after the weekend was over. Then Monday would come and then I would be back on the wagon. I would try again. I was on that cycle for so many years of trying to tell myself, no, just don't eat the bad foods, Amber. If you just didn't eat the bad foods, then you'd be able to be successful. When I started tracking macros, it flipped that on its head. During this time period, I had candy that was built into my plan. I ate ice cream every single night during my cut where I got a six pack. I wasn't cutting out food groups. I didn't have to not eat carbs or not eat pizza. I could figure out ways to make it fit into my macros. That was revolutionary to me.

The Birth of Biceps After Babies 14:16

So anyway, all this to say, this tool that I had found was freaking working. It was also working and I was not miserable. I actually enjoyed what I was doing. I was like, you know what the world needs? They need to hear about this because this is rocking my world and this is going to rock some other people's world. So I thought, okay, what do I need to do? Well, I'm going to start an Instagram account. I just got to share what I am doing and what's working so other people can learn. That is how Biceps After Babies was created. It was not created as a business. It was created as just an account, a personal account for me to share what was working for me. That's the origin. And very quickly people started following along. People started DMing me questions and then the first person slipped into my DMs and asked me if I would be their coach. I had no idea that I was going to coach, but someone was there in my DMs. They wanted my help. I felt like I could help them. And so I said, yes. And that is when Biceps After Babies, the business was created and that is my first time coaching. And I learned a lot from that first client and from those first couple of clients.

So this next lesson applies to that because as I started getting clients and I had the success with macro counting myself, and so I had some idea how I was going to be able to help other people get results. I had this idea that, okay, cool. You come to me. I give you some macros. I can do that. I got you. I'm going to give you a workout plan and bada bing, bada boom, you're going to have a six pack. This was like my naive idea about how coaching works. Boy, did I learn very quickly that that was not enough, right? I thought macro counting was just about the macros and that if I gave you the right macros, then you would be successful. And what I learned really quickly was that what was preventing a lot of people from seeing the results that they want was not just their nutrition or just having the right macros. It was moving to lesson number four, a lot of the mental blocks that are actually stopping people. So what do I mean by that? I mean, just because you have the most perfect macros in the world, if you don't stick to them, obviously they're not going to work. And so I got really curious because I had these clients who I would give them a great plan and yet they wouldn't follow it. They would know what to eat and yet they wouldn't do it. They would get started and then they would fall off.

The Real Work Is Mental, Not Nutritional 16:55

And I had to be really honest with myself and realize, hey, there is more to this than just giving someone with the right macros. And I realized there's a whole relationship that people have with tracking that we have to address. There's your relationship with your body that we can't ignore. There are your beliefs about success and failure and about what's worked and what hasn't worked in the past that we have to address. There is your inner confidence and whether or not you think you can even do this. There is emotional eating, like so many things that were under the surface that I very quickly realized this was about way more than just how many carbs and fat and protein that you're eating. And so as I saw this with my clients very, very early on, I realized if I'm going to be a good coach, if I'm not going to be one of those coaches that just get someone results for like the eight weeks that they're with me, and then they go back to their old life and they are back to their old habits, I didn't want that to be the type of coach that I was. I wanted people to work with me and for that to create long-term change and sustainable change. And I wanted it to transform them in the long run. That was the kind of coach I wanted to be. I realized in order to do that, I had to learn to address the mental side of transformation. And that's a lot trickier, I will say, because it's not visible.

And you have to be a good coach to be able to get down to the roots of what's actually keeping someone stuck, what's actually preventing them from executing, what's actually preventing them from the consistency that they say that they want when their behaviors and their desires do not line up. And that is what I have mastered and continue to work on mastering over the last 10 years, is not just giving people better numbers, but helping them to tackle what actually will make them successful long-term, which is the internal work. That is what differs me from so many of the other coaches out there. I can give you great macros. I can teach you all the science. I can teach you about nutrition. I can help you eat healthier foods and have a plan that will help you to be successful. But if you don't pair that with the mindset work, if you don't pair that with the blocks that you have that are preventing you from executing that plan, you're not going to be successful. And that's what I'm really good at helping people to be able to do. My clients will tell you that I am a master at getting to the root of what's keeping them stuck and then helping them to unblock it so that they can actually take the action that they want to create the results that they want. 

Fit Macros Into Your Life, Not the Other Way Around 19:30

All right. Number five lesson, you cannot fit your life into macro counting. You have to fit macros into your life. So one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people making is the rigidity in which they view macro tracking. I actually just asked this question on Instagram of like, if you're not tracking, why? And one of the women said she had her protein at a certain goal and she was like never hitting it. And so every day it was like a failure and a failure and a failure. It was like she couldn't be successful. And ultimately, and I get it, why would you keep doing something if it's just reminding you that you're a loser every day? That was what it felt like to her. It was like every day I'm failing every single day. What I would respond to her and what I'm telling you now is that's the backwards way to think about it. Because what if instead of setting the goal for, I don't know, I don't know what her protein goal is, but instead of setting it for 130 grams of protein, if it's easy for her, let's say it's easy for her to eat 60 grams of protein, but it's really hard for her to hit 130. And so every day she's failing because she's only hitting like 100 grams of protein. What if instead of being rigid on the goal, what if we shifted it? And we said, your goal now is to eat 100 grams of protein. Because that's 40 more grams than you were eating previously. Now she opens up the app and she feels successful because she is successful, right? She's eating, she's successful at eating 40 more grams of protein than she used to be. 

Okay. This is what I mean.Like we can't make our life fit into macrocutting. We have to make it fit into our life. A fantastic book that, that takes this concept and really explores it is called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan. And he really points out that how we feel about anything that's going on or any goals that we're setting really depends on whether we are focusing on the gap or the gain. So the gap would be when we're focusing on where we want to be versus where we are. And we notice that there's a, there's a disconnect, right? I want to be further than I am. I want to be hitting 120, 30 grams of protein and only hitting 100. If we focus on the gap, we feel terrible about ourselves. But if we focus on the gain, what I'm doing now versus what I was doing, well now that's a totally different experience. And we realize how far we've come. So this is just an example of making macro counting fit your life instead of being so rigid with, this is what it has to look like. Cause now guess what? She just quit and she's not going to get results because you can't get results when you quit. So even if she's “only hitting” a hundred grams of protein, that's 40 more than she used to be if she does that consistently, she's making progress and she's going to keep doing it. And then we can continue to layer on habits. 

The Three Questions That Should Start Every Fitness Journey 22:46

Okay. Number six, I am going to give you the three most important questions to ask yourself when you are starting your fitness journey. Okay. You ready? Question number one, what is your goal? Like, why are you doing this? What is the outcome you want to create now for a lot of people? That is a pretty easy question to answer. If I was your coach, I would probably challenge you to get a little bit more specific. Cause usually people are like, I want to lose weight and that's fine. But can we get more specific? What is it actually that you're wanting to do? And what do you actually want to create? But whatever. Okay. That's number one. 

Now these next two are like the follow-up questions that everybody misses that are game changers.Question number two, what are you willing to do to get that result? What are you willing to do to get that result? And I want you to be specific. I'm willing to drink more water. I'm willing to go to the gym more. I'm willing to track my food. I'm willing to eat more vegetables. I'm willing to spend more on groceries. I don't know, but get really specific on the things that you are actually willing to change in your life. Okay. That's number two.

Number three. And this is as important of a question, maybe even more important of a question. What am I not willing to do? What am I not willing to do to create that outcome? And we all have this. Everybody has a boundary about what you're willing to do and what you aren't willing to do. What's not worth it to you. And I want you to get really clear on what that is. Maybe you're not willing to lift weights. Own that. I'm not willing to lift weights right now. I'm not willing to increase my budget for food. I'm not willing to go to the gym. I'm not willing to change my sleeping habits. I'm not willing to get up earlier. I'm not, I don't know, whatever it is, you have limits. Just be really clear about them.

Once you've answered these questions, you now have what you're willing to do and what you aren't willing to do. And this helps us create your plan. Something that you're bought into, that you are willing to take action on, that does not include things you aren't willing to take action on. Because you see the mistake that a lot of people make is instead of asking themselves this question, what am I willing to do? They ask themselves a terrible question, or they ask somebody else a terrible question. And that question is, what should I do to lose weight? It's a terrible question. Because now you're focused on not things that you're willing to do, but you have added that pressure of things that you're supposed to do, that you should do. And now you're forcing yourself to do things that maybe conflict with your values or what it is that you are willing or not willing to do. So stop it. The question is not, what should I do to lose weight? The question is, what am I willing to do and what am I not willing to do? And that's where we start. We start with the things you're willing to do, and we leave out the things that you're not willing to do. It's a game changer. 

Success Does Not Always Look Like Success 25:39

Lesson number seven is that success does not always look like success. It does not always look like moving forward. Sometimes real progress can feel like you're moving backwards. Like it looks like you're moving backwards, but you're actually making progress. And this is true in both business and health. I've seen it in both contexts. But a really good example of this is, I was driving home recently from Northern California. My parents live in Northern California. My family lives up there. I have a lot of family up there. And so we were driving back from Northern California, and you have to come down on the 5. And there can be all sorts of things, especially as you're going through LA, where it's just crazy. There's traffic and whatever. So very often as we're coming down, and this is what happened this last time we were driving, we were driving and planning to go through LA. And all of a sudden, Siri comes up and wants to reroute us. And she wants to reroute us, “the long way”. Like it has us backtracking and it has us going way further, way more distance than we would be if we just stayed on the 5. But in that moment, because you've driven enough and you've followed Siri enough, you know that, and we knew that even though it looked like it was backwards, we were actually gonna have to get off and backtrack and get on another freeway.

It looked like we were going backwards, that in reality, it was going to get us there faster than staying on the “right path”, looking like we're moving forward. And I see that so many times in people's journeys, where they will come to me and feel like they failed or they slid backwards, when in reality, that is part of the process. You needed for that to happen so that you could learn this lesson that is present. And the problem when we label something a failure is we don't learn the lesson. We just label it as a failure. I failed. I tried macro counting in the past and I failed and I wasn't successful and that's the end of it. Rather than saying, what can I learn from this? What am I understanding more about myself now? What worked and what didn't work? How can I change this moving forward so that I can be more successful? If you haven't listened to my episode last week or two weeks ago, I should say about my goals, you can really hear how I put this into practice with my own goals of how I looked at what worked and what didn't work previously. Because I set a goal for this year that I have previously failed multiple, multiple times in the past. But success doesn't always look like you moving forward. It may appear like you're moving backward, but that doesn't mean that it isn't propelling you to where it is that you want to go. 

True Confidence Isn't About Control 28:23

Okay, number eight, true confidence isn't about control. True confidence is in trusting that you can figure it out. So a lot of people come to me and they say, I want to feel more confident. And what they try to do is they try to create confidence by controlling the future. Right? If I can control my food, if I can control my body, if I can control my results, then I'll be confident. But my friend, that is backwards. Because real confidence can never be built on, I know exactly what will happen because the truth is you don't. None of us do. None of us predict the future. Your brain likes to pretend like it can. It cannot. And this was really a poignant lesson that I learned. Well, I would say relearned last year when I woke up one morning and I checked on Instagram and one of my very dear friends had very suddenly lost her husband. And it sent me for a tailspin for a little while because these were friends that we had known for a long time. He had no ailments and one day he was there and the next day he was gone. Nobody can predict that.

And we get into trouble when we think that that is what creates confidence is our ability to be able to predict the future. Real confidence isn't I know exactly what will happen. Real confidence is I know I can figure it out. I trust myself to figure it out no matter what happens. That is real confidence. And I've had to really work on this myself of like my relationship with the future is not about controlling it. For me, that's been a modus operandi in the past. It's like if I can just predict the future, if I can just think ahead enough into the future, if I can just control the future and make it to be the way that I want, then I can feel happy now. That doesn't actually work. I've tried. I've tried really hard and it doesn't actually work because it's not about controlling the future. It's about building confidence in yourself that no matter what happens, I can handle it because I always have and I always will. And I will figure it out. And if a bad thing happens, I'll figure it out and I'll troubleshoot and I'll make it happen. This is what, again, I'm referencing the last podcast, but this is what a lot of my work has been in coming back to the present of reminding myself that a lot of times I go into the future and worry about things that may happen because I have this idea that if I worry about it enough, then I can prevent it from happening. But in reality, I can't. And I've had to remind myself to just come back to the present of like, that's actually not a problem yet. If it becomes a problem in the present moment, I trust myself to be able to solve it. I will address it. I will fix it. I trust myself to be able to do that, but I cannot control everything and trying to spend my life controlling it is a recipe for disaster. So it is possible to be confident even when things don't turn out the way you planned. It is possible to be confident even when things go haywire because you trust in your confidence that you can figure it out. 

The Goal of Macro Tracking Is Trust, Not Control 31:49

Number nine, this is related to control, but a little bit different as well, but the true goal of macro counting isn't control. So I talk about a three-step framework with a lot of my clients in MACROS 101 because a lot of my clients in MACROS 101 come to me in what I would call a stage one with their relationship with food and their relationship with themselves, meaning they feel very out of control and chaotic when it comes to food. Like they don't feel like they can make good decisions. They swing back and forth between being on a diet and off a diet. They don't know how to hold themselves accountable for the food choices that they make. And they just feel like they're just very chaotic. There's no rhyme or reason or control to their food. And I teach the tool of macro counting. And what it can do is give people a feeling of control. For the first time, I understand what it is I'm supposed to be eating. I can track it. I can log it. I can make sure that I'm hitting my numbers. And for a lot of people that lights up that part of your brain that's like, yes, I want to try to control everything. And so there's some benefit to that. You move from this place of feeling like food is chaotic. You don't know what to do. You're not being consistent. You're not following through to this place of predictability and consistency and proving to yourself that you can follow through on something. And that can feel really good. So stage one is a feeling of chaos. Stage two is a feeling of control. And that feels like a really great step in the right direction. And it is. 

But I always remind my clients that that is not the final destination. The final destination isn't just to control everything, to control your body, control your food, to control your outcomes, to control, control, control, control. The final destination is stage three. And stage three is trust. We want to get to a place where we can trust ourselves to make decisions. We can trust ourselves around food. We don't have to hyper control it. We can just trust and we can make decisions in the moment. And we don't have to always have a plan to be able to exit a situation and feel confident about what we did in that situation. So you're not tracking to control your body into submission. You're tracking to start to move in that direction of building trust with yourself. Trusting that you can make decisions. Trusting that you can figure out what works for you. Trusting that you can make food choices. Trusting that you can adjust when needed. So the tool of macro counting is a bridge. It is a tool to help you to learn, to feel more in control, and then one that you let go of to really build that trust with yourself. That is something that is very different in the way that I approach macro counting because I don't think that macro counting is the end all be all. I think it is a tool. I think it helps move you in a really great direction. It helps you to reduce the judgment that you have around food. It helps you to see food as morally neutral. It helps you to learn moderation. It helps you to learn to eat more nutritious food. There's so many benefits of macro accounting, but it is not the end destination. The end destination is to be able to trust yourself in whatever situation it comes to with food. That's the end goal. 

It Was Never Really About the Food 35:12

And then number 10, I have learned after 10 years of counting macros and teaching counting macros that it never was really about the food. It was never really about the macros. It was never really about the aesthetic goals. That all just becomes a context and that the real goal is growth. And that is what I help facilitate with my clients. The goals that you set, the tools that you learn, the things that you try that you fail are all just stimulus for growing into that next version of yourself. And listen, health and fitness is not the only area that does this. Well, first let me say side note. A lot of times people will ask me what it is that I do for a living. And I tell them and I tell them what I do, but I always want to caveat it with like, I teach macro counting and I help women to lose weight. But I want to say to them, but it's so much more than that. It's so much deeper than that. And the work that I do with my clients is not just in the physical. There's so much deeper work that we do because it's about the food, but it's not about the food. And that's what I feel like. It's about fitness, but it's not about fitness. No, okay. Came back to what I was saying before. I know. Sorry, I'm skipping around. 

Health and fitness is not the only context that does that. Parenting does that a lot, right? You're put in this pressure situation that forces you into growth if you choose it. Being in a committed relationship with another human being, right? A partnership, a marriage, whatever it is, that is a pressure that forces you into, or invites, I guess I shouldn't say forced. I should say invites you. It invites you into growth, trying to live with another human being. I, as an entrepreneur, will say that entrepreneurship does that for me as it, again, invites me into growth. It invites me to continue to elevate who I am showing up as. And if there is one thing that I am convinced that this life is about, it is about exploring who we are and growing as individuals. And I think that's how I see our time here, that I am here to learn. I am here to grow. I'm here to explore more about myself. I am here to support other people in their growth. And that is one of the cool things that I get to do on a day-to-day basis. And it's like this never-ending cycle where I get to support people on their growth journey, and by doing that, I myself grow. And it's this beautiful give-and-take cycle that I get to experience on a day-to-day and a week-to-week basis in what I do here at Biceps After Babies. 

Reflection on 10 Years of Growth and Looking Ahead 38:19

So, wow, the last 10 years have been quite a ride, and I'm here for 10 more. I don't know, what about you? I feel like I am a different version of the person that I was in 2016. I hope that you are too. Again, I think if we're not growing, we're dying. I don't know, someone said that. Someone wise said that. I've heard that somewhere. If you're not growing, you're dying. And I really believe that. So I think if you look back and think about who you were in 2016, my hope is that you've grown and that you're different and that you've learned things about yourself, about how to show up, how to get results, how to grow, how to experience life. And I hope that in another 10 years, I'll be able to look back on this version of myself and say, oh, that was so cute. I've learned so much since then. I've grown so much since then. But until then, we're just going to keep learning the lessons on a day-to-day basis.

I hope this episode has offered you something and that you're really excited about what it is that you're working on. And that if I can be of any help of creating that and helping you to get to that next level of yourself, that next version of yourself, I am here for that, my friend. And if you want to work with me closer, MACROS 101, baby, that is where we do all of this work. You can get on the waitlist at bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist. And I would love to be your coach. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.

Outro

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