#24 - How To Sculpt Your Body
Hey, Hey ladies. We are back. I'm so excited for today's podcast, you guys. It is gorgeous day outside. I'm sitting in my office and in front of me, there is a large window that looks out onto a green space, a creek with trails. And I was sitting here listening to the sounds as I was prepping for this podcast. And I could hear the birds and the animals up there and it's so nice. I just want to be outside. So we're going to get this podcast done. And then we're going to go play outside. It's too nice to be inside. And it's February. What love living on the west coast? Okay.
Episode number 24, how to sculpt your body. This is such a passionate subject for me. This is literally why I got into personal training in the first place. And it's what I do on a daily basis with my Lady Sculpt membership. I'd say I'm a master at body Sculpt especially on female bodies. Pretty good on the men too, but don't specialize in it. Don't do a lot of it anymore, but I do have a couple of male clients that I enjoy working with just because it's fun. It's fun to play around with different body types. I love the art of sculpting the human body. To me, it is such a cool science combined with effort combined with knowledge. Oh so much fun. When I get a new client and they send me before photos, even like before people become clients. When someone sends me photos. I have this, I think it's like a magical power. But what happens is I look at the photo. I look at that person's body and I can see the potential, the possibilities that what that body could look like with a little bit of work, I can see what it will look like after three months of. Of conditioning of pulling body fat off. I can see what it will look like after building certain areas. And it's super fun. So what I usually ask women to do when they want to hire me as I have them send me their photos, and then I have them send me a photo of their dream body, what they'd like to look like on stage or what they'd like to look like at the beach next summer. And it gives me an idea of what they want their sculpted body to look like. So how much muscle they want to add, how lean they'd like to be, where they'd like muscle to go. And from there. You guys, we make magic happen. That's what we do. Over here in Lady Sculpt. It's so fun. The way that I kind of describe it to people or to my clients is nutrition is like the chain saw. Like when let's say you were carving a totem pole. Right. The first thing you do is you'd go in with the chainsaw and you take off all of the excess, all of the big chunks of wood. It's not super detailed or, or fine tuning work. It's just getting rid of the excess. Nutrition does that. So the transformation program, my weight loss program, this is what we do. We just take all the access off. We just take all the extra weight away from the body. And then, you come in with muscle building with weight training, with customized programming for sculpting out your body and it's kind of like an artist taking a chisel to that totem pole and making it look refined and detailed and exactly how you want to make it look, so fun. Nutrition definitely aids in the sculpting and muscle building process as well. But the muscle building process is much easier to do once the excess is gone, in my opinion. Right now, again, not every trainer will agree with me here. That's totally fine. This is just my method.
So, how do you sculpt your body? How do you go about. You know, taking your body from where it is now to the body that you want. What I'm going to tell you first is you can do this for yourself. Take a picture of your current physique. And don't judge it. It's fine. It's your human body at this point in your life. And it's beautiful exactly how it is. But there's nothing wrong with wanting to make it better. And then find a photo of what your dream body looks like, find a photo of something you aspire to, and you can go all in and have like your dream photo, or you can have like a progressive goal where, you know, I think this body is achievable by this year and maybe that one next year, and maybe that one the year after, etc.
What I really suggest you do when you're looking for dream body photos or goal body photos is find bodies of people that are similar builed to you. Like if you're five foot or two, don't pick a six foot runway models, physique. Right. It's going to be difficult to make your body look like that. That's, you know, find someone else who's five foot two that has a body. You like, if you're big chested, maybe you want to find a goal body that also is someone who is big chested. If you are naturally a little, hippier again, find a goal body that has that body type that still looks the way you want it to look. Okay. I want you guys to, do that for yourselves, have your before and have your after in your mind so that you know what you're aiming towards, you know, where your finish line is. Right. And then you want to come up with a strategy. I've created a three-step process to coming up with a strategy. Now, you guys are so used to my lake three-step processes, right?
So step one, you want to remove the excess, you want to come in with that chainsaw and get rid of anything extra. So what this might look like is getting to your goal weight And if you don't know what that is, a rule of thumb that I like to use is five feet tall, a hundred to 110 pounds depending on how muscular you are. Every inch over five feet tall, add five pounds. So if you're muscular five foot four, your goal might be 130 pounds. Right. If you're very thin, low muscled, five foot nine, your goal might be like 145 to 150 pounds that would be the weight that I would tell someone that they would want to compete at. So it's a hundred percent, okay. Let's say if you're 5/9, 145 to 160, it just gives you an idea. So five feet tall, a hundred to 110 pounds, add five pounds for every inch after that. So I'm 5/11. So my goal weight might be anywhere from 155 to 170. My body really likes to sit around 180. And at 180, I feel pretty good, but it's not a sculpted look for me. You can not see the definition in my apps, but when I get down to that 165, 170 space, I look sculpted y'all. It's a great place to be. And then I compete around 155. So that gives you a bit of an idea.
If you need help with figuring out where you want to be. Send me an email [email protected]. Send me your photo. Send me your stats, your height, your current weight. Even your age and I'll give you some advice. I'll send you back some stuff. Okay. So first off step one, you're going to remove the excess body fat. So this means taking your body close to within your goal weight. So within, you know, 10 pounds of your goal, weight, maybe 15 pounds, your goal weight, you should be comfortably sitting in between 16% and 20% body fat. That's usually a pretty good place to be able to see, what we're working with, what your muscle structure looks like. 16% to 20% body fat, you may be seeing some abs definition. You definitely still have, you know, like some around your waistline. And maybe around your thighs and that it's fine, ladies. We are not designed to be excessively lean all of the time. We are designed to be able to produce humans. Which means we need some storage, some extra fat on our body. But it's okay as long as your body's functioning, the way it is supposed to. As long as your having menstrual cycles every month, your body is in a comfortable place. If you're losing your menstrual cycles, it means that your body is a bit stressed out. It means it, isn't sure if it's got enough nutrients to reproduce. Right, our bodies are so smart. So you want to keep your body in a healthy state. You want to make sure that your menstrual cycles are regular. And that you're staying at a healthy body fat for you. Most women can sit between 16% and 20% quite comfortably and be very healthy there. For my girls out there who maybe are trying to get pregnant, a perfect fertile window is a little bit over 20%. So anywhere from 20% to 24%, 27%, I was told 24% to 27% is a perfect window for me personally. I wasn't very comfortable there. So I'd say 20% to 27%, as long as you're eating high density nutrition. You should be good to go. But we're not really talking prenatal for sculpting. So we're going to focus on the 16% to 20%. You can do this by having a coach pinch you, you can go get a DEXA scan. You can stand on a body fat analysis scale, whatever you want.
So first, your first step in sculpting your body is to remove the excess, get rid of the extra body fat so you can see, what you are sculpting. So that first step in your strategy may take you a year. That's okay. It's just step one. So maybe your first goal photo is just the removal of that access. If you have 40 pounds to lose, to get to your goal weight. It might take, you know, might take some time. That's totally fine. The thing I love about sculpting your body is, it is a life long process. You never arrive at a place that you can stop working on it. Right. Once you even get to where you want to be, you got to maintain that. Take some work still. I want you really to focus on this journey as not arriving somewhere. I want you to commit to it for the rest of your life. I know it's daunting, hey. But it's you taking care of your vessel, the vessel you were given for this life, why would you not want to take care of it for the rest of its life? Right. I want to look bad ass when I'm 80. Join me. Okay. So step one, remove the excess.
Step two, this kind of comes into context with that whole taking the photo subjectively, look at your body from a place of love or have a coach do it. Decide what you want and make a wishlist. So step two is about taking a photo of you at your goal weight or close to it. And in that photo ladies, when you're taking progress photos, don't slouch and stand sloppily and look crazy sad. Stand up tall, tuck your things in, like pose. If you know how to comp prep poser, if you know how to do a little post, do a little post. You want to look the best you can possibly. Even in your before photos, it's going to give you a much better idea of where you're at right now and where you're going now, if you're trying to make like a before and after photo. For like a transformation challenge or for something specific. And you want to like slouch a little bit in your before photo go for it. But when you're doing photos for yourself for your sculpted body, There's no point in making your progress photos look as terrible as possible. We want to create confidence. We want to empower ourselves. We want to make ourselves look as amazing as possible in all of the photos. Right. So, take a photo of yourself and subjectively look at it. And what I mean by this is look at that photo and don't put yourself down. Don't be like, oh, I wish I wasn't as chubby. I wish I didn't have love handles. Well, my inner thighs are fat. Like get rid of all of that. And instead, I want you to look at your photos and be like, okay, My thighs could use a little bit of toning and I want to lift my glutes a little bit to create that nice round dairy air, right. I want to whittle in my waist a little bit to create a nice V taper. I'm going to cap my shoulders to make my arms look a little bit more defined. I want to put some muscle into my triceps to tighten up the back of my arms and I want to really develop my back so that it looks muscular and fit. Look at your body and decide what you want to do for it. Not what is terrible about it. Okay, can you do that for me? Positivity my friends. So make a wishlist from there. So maybe it's, you know, capping my shoulder is more armed definition. I want to see, you know, vertical lines in my abdomen, or I want to see, a full six pack. I want to work on my glute medes, I want to increase the size of my glute maxes. I want to see more hamstring development. I want more of an arch through my hamstrings glutes. I have athletes right now in Lady Sculpt who are specifically working on sculpting their glute hamstring tie-in, we call it the shark fin, the way the glute max comes down to a point and meets the hamstring muscle, is a really important part of sculpting, a competition, especially a bikini athletes physique. So I have girls in lady sculpt that are doing programs specifically for developing those muscles to create that exact definition look. So write down everything you want.
And then step three, my friends, is get to work. Muscle build, find a program, maybe it's finding a coach, maybe it's jumping into Lady Sculpt and being like, Lylas I want to do this and this and this and this what program is best for me. We have programs in Lady Sculpt, like the glutes that are designed specifically to work your glute deltoid. We have programs in Lady Sculpt, Like the build that are designed to build a perfect female physique. We have programs called the core, which is designed to specifically tighten whittle and tone, develop that core look. There's programs coming to Lady Sculpt, like the leg leaner, the hamstring glute, which is that exact shark fin combination of gluten hamstrings. We have the arms coming in. There are so many programs in lady sculpt designed to help you create and sculpt your body exactly the way you want it to look, so fun. I love designing programs to sculpt bodies. To me, it's so much more fun than designing performance-based programs. And what I mean by performance-based is like being able to run faster or lift heavier or, you know, do something specific performance wise. For me as a personal trainer and as a nutritional coach, I've always loved the art of program creation for sculpting. We call it a synthetic muscle development, to make the body look a certain way. And over here, we're proud of our vanity, you all. There's nothing wrong with wanting to look amazing. I completely support, wanting to look amazing. I also love empowering women to feel strong and capable and powerful in their own bodies. But most women find it really hard, to be like, Hey, I want to lose weight to look good. I want to look good in a bikini. There is no shame, ladies in wanting to look good, but do it for you. Want to look amazing for you. For other people think you look amazing. That's all right, too. But it's most important that you think you look amazing. You're the most important. Your opinion trumps all other opinions. You with me? All right. So step three, get to work, build that muscle and have patience. Muscle building takes time and energy. To sculpted body may take three to five years plus, right. I've been lifting weights since I was 14 years old. For all who have missed the first few episodes. I'll fill you in. I've been lifting for 25 years. Long time and I still have to work at this. I still have to work at managing my nutrition consumption to match my training, to maintain the sculpted physique that I want, a purposeful, conscious physique that I am proud of. Okay, once you've gone through step one, removing the access. Step two, subjectively looking at your body from a place of love and making a wishlist. And step three, getting to work, building the muscle and having patients with it. You're going to go back and you're going to repeat step two and step three for the rest of your life as many times as needed. I'd like to do this every three to six months. So I have the women in Lady Sculpt to take progress photos every four weeks. So at the end of each phase of each workout that they do. However I like to go in and assess the body and look at what has changed and what we still want to work on about every three to six months, usually three to six months is enough time to see change. When you're losing weight, you can see a lot of change in the body, month to month as that weight comes off, because it's pretty easy to lose, eight pounds a month. And that's a big difference. But when you're sculpting your body, a good goal is like a one pound of lean muscle mass per month which is not a lot. Right. So after three to six months, we may actually start to see that muscle development, especially if you're holding your weight steady, because if you've gained three to six pounds of muscle, you've also lost three to six pounds of body fat and that change is really cool to look at. If you go into my Instagram, you can see a transformation photo that I posted back last summer that was after I did four months of the shift. And I lost 11 pounds of body fat, but increased my lean muscle mass by nine pounds. So my overall body weight was only down two pounds. And you can see the difference. You can see the sculpted effects of that transformation.
All right, ladies. I want to encourage you to sit down and come up with a strategy, decide how much weight you need to lose to get rid of the excess and comp up with a strategy to lose that weight. And then subjectively look at your body from a place of love. And decide what you want, find a goal photo. You can do this before step one, if you want to. And then step three, get to work, build that muscle. I have patients and don't give up. Take massive action. Massive action just means that you are going to work on this until you achieve it. And then you're going to keep working on it. Massive action means you won't give up. Even if you have a bad weekend, even if you have a bad week, even if you have a busy month. Even if you get pregnant and have a beautiful baby and take nine months of maternity leave. You always come back because that sculpted body goal, you always come back to that taking care of yourself, of putting yourself in a priority position, putting your health, your body, your strength and loving the way you look as a priority, so important. I'm so excited that I got a chance to talk to you ladies today about sculpting your bodies. If you have questions about this, or if you want to know more about this, email me [email protected]. Love, love, love talking about the subject. If you're wanting to sculpt your body, come join us in Lady Sculpt. I will see you guys next week. Have a fantastic rest of the week, ladies. Bye for now.