BONUS: 5 Pounds Stronger

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hello everyone. I’m so excited today to welcome you to this bonus episode where I’m going to talk about becoming 5 pounds stronger.

Here’s the story. I went in to the doctor. I was having some memory issues; I was worried about them so I decided to get a full work up on my entire body. By the way, memory issues are fine, no cognitive decline, all is well. Note, I’m going to tell that story another day.

But this story today is I went in to get the full body work up and I went and did a body composition scan. They did a scan of my body, they determined that I was 19% body fat. I weigh 140 pounds. And they wanted me to put on eight pounds of muscle, which I thought sounded terrible.

But I told them I would put on 5 pounds of muscle. And that’s a lot of work, that’s a lot of weight training, that’s a lot of eating a lot of protein. I know how to do it and I’m going to do it, and I’m going to take you along for the ride if you’re interested.

I am going to document my entire process of putting on 5 pounds of muscle on this body of mine. And I’m going to work out six days a week, I’m going to lift very heavy weights, I am going to run and do cardio, and I’m going to eat all the proteins, and I’m going to share the whole adventure with you.

If you’re interested in going behind the scenes with me and my boyfriend will be videoing it, and I will be talking about all the components that go into this process. It was funny, I was talking to one of my friends about this and he was like, “Well yeah, what are you going to do when you don’t feel like it? Or what are you going to do when you’re too tired?”

And I told him, I said, “Hey, there’s something you need to know about me. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. And when I make a commitment to do something, I do it.” And so I want to share that whole process with you, starting April 20th, which is today if you’re listening to this on the podcast, and I’m going to July 20th.

My birthday, 49th birthday will be July 26th. I will have 5 extra pounds on this body of pure muscle at that time. It’s like a 90-day challenge. Do you want to come with me? Do you guys want to put on muscle?

Even if you don’t want to put on muscle, you can go through this process with me, doing any major goal that you have. Here’s the deal, here’s my goal; I’m going to put on 5 pounds of muscle, I’m going to increase my health commitment, I’m going to have a mental discipline practice that will get me into the gym every day and doing this work every day, and I’m going to demonstrate my planning and follow-through process that I use to get anything done.

The way I’m going to track it is I’m going to do an almost daily video diary. I don’t want to commit to daily just in case I don’t - I’m going to be traveling and I won’t have video camera, I won’t have somebody to video me. But I’m going to try and do it every single day.

I’m going to do weights 45 minutes, three times a week, I’m going to do HIIT cardio 20 minutes, three times a week, or the Peloton or the ride, which would be 45 minutes. I’m going to do a very specific food protocol and I’m going to keep notes on my weights, the heaviness of the weights, what I’m lifting, what my increases are. I will share all of it with you.

If you’re interested in putting on muscle and you want to follow my exact protocol with me, I will have a PDF of exactly what I’m doing. You can do it exactly with me for 90 days. If you just want to follow along for the motivation and the mental discipline, you can pick any goal that you want and follow along with me daily.

I will promise to be very inspiring. Everything will be calendared so you will be able to see how I do my calendar. And you’ll be able to kind of follow along with my process of how I schedule things every week. I’ll talk about that on there and how I follow through on that even when I don’t feel like it.

I have travel coming up, I’ll show you how I work out when I travel, how I focus on making sure by planning ahead that I’ll have weights and the food that I need, all those sorts of things.

I’ll talk about mental discipline and how I anticipate obstacles and I overcome them ahead of time for my future self. I’m also going to - over this 90 days, I’m going to do some workouts with my friends, with my kids, with trainers, with my loved ones. We’re going to video all of it.

I’m hoping to get my friend Alex, who’s huge, big bodybuilder, hoping to work out with him, hoping to work out with my friend Ryan. Of course, I’ll be working out with Rahul. I want to work out with Tonya Leigh. I want to work out with my friend Monika.

I want to bring people into my gym. I have an amazing gym at the penthouse, a couple floors above me that has an incredible view of Austin. So I’ll be doing all the videos from there. But I’m also going to do videos from my home and in between workouts and when I’m sore and when I’m struggling and when I’m eating and all of it.

I want to show you what it’s like when someone’s had mental training like I have had and is still a human being, how I accomplish consistent big goals for myself as I go through this process. This will all be tracked in Scholars.

Now, I just decided. It’s actually a funny story. I was in Las Vegas this weekend with some friends, enjoying time in Las Vegas. And I was writing in my journal and I was thinking about how I need to put on all this muscle. And I told one of my friends that I was there with, I said to him, I’m like, okay hey, he’s going with me also for my birthday.

So I said to him, “Hey, in 90 days where do you want to be? I need to put on 5 pounds of muscle. Where do you want to be?” And he’s like, “I want to have abs.” He wants to put on muscle too but he wants to have the abs showing.

So he and I were going to just do a challenge together and I said, “Hey, I know that my Scholars would love to follow along this process and I know that many of them would like to do it with me.” So game on. Let’s go.

I will tell you every detail and then I’m also going to do a call once a week, just a 30-minute call once a week for those of you following along who want some extra support, some extra coaching, you want to ask me questions, we’re going to add all of those calls to Scholars for the next 90 days.

Might even do a couple of those calls on the weekends, depending on my schedule so you can kind of have a peek into what’s going on inside my brain, what’s going on inside my life, what’s going on with my body. I’m going to do some before and after pictures, I’m going to do a scan halfway through and see if I’m moving closer to my goal.

I’ll probably put on 5 pounds of muscle, lose 5 pounds of fat, stay around - I feel best around 140 and 150 so anywhere within there I would be happy with my weight. But more importantly than putting on the weight, the reason why I want to do it is for my health and for my bone density.

And the reason why I say I’m totally dreading doing it is because when I was younger, I used to lift weights a lot and I used to pound myself in the gym because I hated my body. And so I have PTSD, I’m not even exaggerating, from that, a mild form of - I have a visceral reaction to working out with weights because my association with it is so negative and so emotionally violent, literally, from my experience of all that self-loathing.

And so although I want to do it for my bone density and I want to increase the muscle in my body for my health, I also kind of want to overcome that emotional trauma that I created for myself as a younger person, as it applies to lifting weights.

So I’m going to go and clean it all up, get past it emotionally, and show y’all how I use my mental discipline but also my self-care and my love for myself to overcome any negative uncomfortable feelings.

One of the things that I really want to share with so many of you is the difference between desires that we want right now and desires that we want long-term, and how the brain is always going to win if you don’t manage it because you’re always going to want the desire, the false desire that you can get right now versus the long-term uncomfortable now desire that you get.

So the example is do you sit on the couch or do you go to the gym? Do you sleep in or do you go to the gym? Do you watch Netflix or do you go to the gym, or you go workout, or you push yourself as hard as you possibly can.

Those moments, seeing me go through them real-time will be I think very educational for you all. So that’s why I want to share 5 Pounds Stronger with you. It’s a new program, we’re putting it into Scholars, I just Slacked my team yesterday from the plane asking them to set this all up, so it should be live by the time you’re listening to this.

So if you join Scholars and you go in there and you click on 5 Pounds Stronger, you will be able to access the first video. And the first video will be me explaining exactly what I’m about to do in 90 days. My exact lifting program, my food protocol, and it will start with my first video of working out tomorrow.

Haven’t lifted weights in a long time. I’m going to be sore. I’m all-in. Come with me. Let’s do this. 5 pounds stronger in 90 days. Join Scholars. See you then. Bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.