5-Minute Mondays

Welcome to another 5-Minute Monday — your quick hit of motivation, movement, and mindset to kick off the week strong!

Whether you’re a busy professional, a fitness enthusiast, or just someone looking to feel better in their body, this series is designed to give you something practical and powerful in just five minutes.

Let’s dive into today’s topics and set the tone for an energized, focused week ahead.

Transcript

Hey, what’s up, guys? Welcome to my five minute Monday, where I go over topics that have come across my coaching desk this week, either online or in studio. Let’s waste no more time and get right into it.

Intermittent Fasting

The first topic that came across my desk was with a client, and she is currently trying the intermittent fasting protocol. She does train quite a bit. She was implementing the traditional intermittent fasting, which has been around for quite a while, which is 16 hours of fasting followed by eating all of your nutrition within that eight hour window.

She was finding that she was getting hangry, which is hungry plus angry. We’re going to go back to a more traditional four to five meals a day, space out every three to four hours and see if that works better for her. Okay to try any of these protocols that you see out there, but if you find that it’s not working for you, it’s also okay to try something else.

Hunger Cues

I wanted to mention hunger cues, because she was talking about emotionally having a hangry feeling she was not actually physically hungry.

And so here are a few signs of actual physical hunger, or hunger cues, not just hunger pains or feeling empty in the stomach, low blood sugar, which can also lead to lightheadedness, any kind of moody mood swings, like all of a sudden you’re good, and then all of a sudden you’re not good, and even clumsy, tired or feeling weak.

And of course, any brain fog, these kinds of things could be also signs of hunger.

I encourage you to track and monitor to see how you feel and with the gaps in your nutrition to see, okay, maybe I might need to be adding more calories here in order to keep my energy levels up.

Warmup, Mobility & Activation

Something that I had thought about, because frequently clients are like, Wow, it’s amazing that you’ve been around this long, and you can see the trends go cyclic and then come back around again, or they’re just rebranded.

And so this is one of those concepts where, when I was learning how to train people warm up, was always part of the equation, and then all of a sudden it turned into more of a word of mobility.

Mobility or warmup is movement that you’re going to be performing to get the body ready to perform more movement. So and it’s a good transition from what you were currently doing in your work day to your training focus.

I use that time kind of to transition the mindset as well into the training, and also kind of just have a quick little check in with yourself.

Like, how is my body feeling today? How are my joints feeling? How are my energy levels? You know, how do I want this training to go for the next you know, 30, 45, or 60 minutes, or whatever, warm up and mobility.

I use them kind of interchangeably. I don’t really see one specifically different than the other, although there can be differences between the two. And also, sometimes people will use the word activation, which basically is trying to increase blood flow to a muscle group or a muscle area, because you will be training that area for the day.

I always give my clients a little bit of mobility activation, or warm up with their movements in order to get them prepared to lift better and obviously get into their training faster.

Limiting Factors

Recently a client came to me, and she has quite a few limiting factors, getting back into her training and finding her new normal.

She was set in her schedule, all set when her kids were like babies, and now they’re into activities.

One limiting factor getting into your training and whatnot can be motherhood, because obviously there’s only so many hours in the day. She’s come to the realization that 5am is the best time for her to work out, and I think it’s the best time to work out because nobody’s gonna bother you or ask you questions at 5am just because you have a schedule set and everything is good, there’s always going to be an adjustment that happens the minute you get normalized within that schedule.

Being adaptable and not really sweating the small stuff is really the advice that I gave her, and do what you can with what you have and where you are, even if it’s less, as long as you keep up with the training, once your schedule kind of opens up a little bit more, your body is ready to level up.

And so that’s why I’m like, even if it’s less right now, even though mindset wise, you really want to be able to give more, just do what you can with the time that you have in the environment that you in within your lifestyle.

Then once you’re ready to add more to your schedule, you’re ready to do that, your body’s ready, and you’re ready to level up.

Check Ins

This last one was from the same client as well.

I always have really great conversations with my clients.

She is expressing her difficulties with getting back into her schedule and getting all the workouts in and whatnot at the level that she feels she would like to be doing them.

And then she says, Should we do a check in?

And I’m like, and I’m thinking about this, and I’m like, Okay, well, how am I going to explain this to her that, you know, she’s asking me, Is this a good idea?

And I’m like, Okay, I really don’t think this is a good idea for you right now, because you’ve already expressed that you know that you’re not doing all of the things that you need to do, in order to be where you want to be.

So checking you in (taking weight and measures) is just kind of adding, like, making you feel worse about the situation that you’re already in and not getting the results, because you currently can only give this much, and the results that you will want or require ask you to, like, level up a little bit further than that.

And so I was like, it’s like, trying on a really expensive wedding dress that you know that you can’t afford, but you’re going to try it on anyway. It’s just like, why are you putting yourself through that sure fun for the moment?

But I mean, it doesn’t really give you any beneficial information, and there’s nothing really to change because your plan works. It’s just you are lacking the time in which to implement it in the full way that you would like that.

No, it’s probably not a good idea for you to check in today and then, you know, just try to keep up with your workouts at that level. And then when you’re ready, we can work on this other part of it. But right now, I think the priority for her is just being able to get the workouts in and then the nutrition and all that is going to follow later.

That’s it for me. Thank you so much for watching. Feel free to check out my programs, coaching or even book an online consultation.

I’ll see you next time on another edition of the 5-Minute Monday.

Bye, guys.
Coach, A