Carrie Vilas Fit

|| TRAINING ||

Bootcamp/HIIT classes have been all the rage for many years now. They’re often a combination of weights + plyos + cardio that are designed to get the heart pumping and muscles burning.

They are a great way to challenge the body and burn calories in a short amount of time, but when done too often, this type of workout can actually hinder results.

Here’s what I see happen…

Many women confuse their bootcamp/hit classes with strength training, and although these classes may involve lifting weights, they are not true strength training workouts.

The mode in which these classes are conducted do not provide ample rest/recovery to truly make improvements in strength gains. Instead, I classify these classes as CARDIO.

The short-term hormonal response is effective… with the combination of increased cortisol, testosterone and hgh, BUT when overdone, and cortisol is chronically elevated, the body will begin to resist and fat loss will stall.

Clients who come to me who are primarily doing hit have a few things in common:
👉🏻They are addicted to the high intensity workout and are afraid to change.
👉🏻They mistake these classes for strength training, thus tend to overdo it in terms of sessions per week.
👉🏻They feel frustrated that their bodies aren’t changing despite showing up consistently.
👉🏻They are constantly battling hunger and cravings and running on low energy.

I did an entire email detailing all the specifics to this topic that I just can’t include in one small post, and I’m happy to share with you if you comment below.

The main takeaways are this:
👉🏻If you’re feeling stuck and not getting results from your bootcamp/hiit, it’s likely you’re overdoing it.
👉🏻Focus instead on 3-4 days a week of strength training that implements progressive overload.
👉🏻Stop doing workouts that throw in 20 random movements just to get you breathless.
👉🏻If you enjoy bootcamp/hiit style workouts, so the lowest effective dose.
👉🏻Add in more movement to your day and take the focus away from calorie burn.

If you’re stuck with your workouts, I’d love to help!
I offer training protocols for home and gym workouts. DM me for details!

Restrictive dieting that doesn’t produce fat loss is frustrating! So let’s get to the bottom of it!

So many women have fallen into the “1200 calorie diet trap,” and left feeling frustrated and not seeing results.

If you can relate, YOU’RE NOT ALONE!

First of all, I’m not sure where the 1,200 calorie number even came from, but it’s a common calorie count women seeing fat loss aim for.

There are so many problems with this!
❌There’s no “one-size-fits-all” calorie count for women. We are all built differently and have different calorie needs based on genetics and activity level!
❌1200 calories is likely NOT ENOUGH to sustain your metabolic needs. Too few calories will leave you lacking energy, motivation and ultimately feeling intense hunger that eventually you’ll give into.

Not say that there aren’t women eating this many calories who can’t lose weight, but the majority of women claiming to eat 1200 calories simply are inaccurate with their estimations.

For the other women who are truly stuck, metabolic adaptation has occurred due to years of under-eating. This means if you’re maintaining on 1200 calories, it takes less to actually get fat loss results. Again, this is the exception, but it can happen!

For fat loss, my main goal with clients is to get them consuming as many calories possible while still losing weight. It’s not about restriction! It’s about creating a sustainable way to lose fat and keep it off.

If you’re stuck feeling like you’re eating very few calories and not losing weight, I’d love to help you! DM me for details on coaching!

If you’re struggling to lose fat, listen up…

Fat loss isn’t easy. It takes consistency and patience! If you are feeling mentally stuck or frustrated, it’s time to take a deeper look into why you’re facing so much resistance.

Swipe the slides to find out what questions you should be asking yourself if you’re struggling with your own fat loss efforts.

If you’re ready to break through mindset barriers and start achieving results, let’s chat! DM me for more info on 1:1 coaching and how I can help you achieve your goals. 🙌🏻

JULY🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

As July comes to a close, we begin to close out summer break and prep for school. Looking back at photos of the month, we had a busy and fun month.

Baseball, volleyball and lake days pretty much sums up what we did all month! And a quick getaway with my amazing husband to celebrate 15 years of marriage.

And through it all, I’ve had the opportunity to continue to work with the most amazing clients! I always feel beyond blessed to get to be home with my kids and still help others achieve their goals! So grateful each and every day!

Looking forward to August and all the adventures to come.

There’s nothing worse than dieting and feeling like you’re in a deficit, yet not actually being in one!

Tracking macros is a great tool for health and fat loss, but if it’s not executed properly, you’ll remain stuck.

Often I hear from women who claim to be eating 1200 calories or less and not losing weight, yet when I work with them to start accurately tracking macros, they quickly realize they were over-consuming calories and not even realizing it!

Eyeballing portion sizes, choosing not to log splurges, dining out too often, snacking, and having extra BLTs are all common reasons people don’t get results.

If you’re going to track, TRACK ACCURATELY AND TRACK EVERYTHING! The meals and days you don’t want to track are the most important ones!!!

If you are ready to get “unstuck,” I’d love to help!

Comment “COACHING” below and I’ll send you my BACK-TO-SCHOOL 1:1 COACHING SPECIAL! There’s no better time than now to start working toward your health and fat loss goals.

A few simple fat loss tips sprinkled in the chaos of social media…

Information overload often occurs when you start looking to social media for tips and strategies for fat loss. Today I thought I’d remind you that it doesn’t have to be complicated!

In fact, a few simple strategies implemented consistently will produce change! You don’t need a fancy named diet, a detox, a supplement or injection… you just need to focus on the basics and get really good at those things before anything else!

So pick 1 or 2 things to start focusing on, and don’t strive for perfection… just get consistently good! Change will happen, you’ll gain confidence, which in turn creates momentum to keep going!

Today’s hard truth… your current circumstances are the result of years of patterns and behaviors, not just a few weeks, so you can’t expect to achieve your goal health and weight with a few weeks of dieting.

I often see women get frustrated when they don’t see major progress in just a few short weeks, and the reality is, CHANGING BEHAVIORS IS CHALLENGING AND TAKES TIME!

Where you’re at today is due to the automated behaviors you do daily. Those habits take time to change. There will be ups and downs along the journey, but it will likely taken several months to create new automated patterns that produce lasting change.

My advice is this…
SET A LONG-TERM GOAL, then STOP focusing on the goal and focus on your daily behaviors. FOCUS ON CONTROLLING WHAT YOU CAN EACH DAY and take the focus off the scale.

I guarantee if you start changing what you do daily, your body will change!

rimenopauseweightloss

DO YOU TRACK MACROS FOR FAT LOSS?

You don’t have to track macros to lose fat, BUT you have to implement some strategies to create a calorie deficit, so I’ve provided a handful here.

I strongly believe the tracking macros is one of the BEST strategies for fat loss. I often use a budget analogy with my clients…

If you’re trying to limit monthly spending, you wouldn’t guess what you’re spending every month and not check price tags and hope you don’t overspend.

Instead, you would create a monthly budget and have set limits on specific line items and you’d be more intentional about where you spend your money and how much things actually cost. It’s common sense spending!

Same is true for macro tracking. It’s simply budgeting and tracking food intake to ensure you hit your goals each day and not just hope for the best.

I understand some people are just resistant to tracking, and that’s ok! You can still lose weight without tracking, it just takes implanting other accountability strategies.

I’ve provided 6 strategies you can start using today to get home calories in check!

If you struggle with losing weight, if you’ve never tracked macros and want to learn, or you need help figuring out what your macros should even be, DM me to chat about coaching options. I can send you all the details or schedule a call!

This is why fad diets and overly-restrictive diets that produce fast results lead to re-gaining the weight.

Learning a whole new way of eating and living is essential to creating lasting change.

Yes, losing weight comes down to achieving a calorie deficit, but honestly it’s so much more!

Lasting weight loss comes from completely changing your life. You can’t expect to create a “new you” if you’re dragging the “old you” along. You MUST let go of old behaviors and create new ones that that will last.

These new behaviors go beyond just what you eat. Every part of your day influences what you eat and how you care for your body. Creating a plan that will lead to weight loss, but also one you can maintain when you’ve reached your goal weight is key for lasting results.

The quick fixes don’t teach habit change, which is why they only work short-term. Taking the time to slowly change habits is the only way to successfully create lifelong change.

If you struggle with keeping the weight off, let’s chat! I’m currently working on onboarding clients for August and would love to chat about your goals! DM me for details on coaching and we can even schedule a call to talk more. My goal is always to help you reach your full potential!

Is your snacking leading to over-eating? Chances are, YES… if you’re snacking, you’re likely not fueling yourself properly at meal-time, which leads you to hunger throughout the day, causing you to over-eat calories.

I often get asked what my favorite snacks are, and while I believe this is a great question, I think it’s more important to assess why you are needing to rely on snacks in the first place.

Snacks aren’t bad, but they are usually not very satiating and easy to overeat. This means less calories for main meals, and this exact cycle is what keeps you depending on snacks.

The best lie is of advice I can give is this:
HAVE LARGER MEALS!

When people diet, the first thing they often do is overly restrict meal calories, which leads to all day hunger. I have my clients build hearty meals to increase satiety and limit grazing through the day.

So instead of relying on snacks all day, take a look at your meals.
👉🏻Are you getting 20-30+ grams of protein?
👉🏻Are you getting close to 10 grams of fiber per meal?
👉🏻Are you incorporating health fats?

If you’re too focused on keeping calories super low during meal time, you’ll end up overeating at other times. So start by building a better plate that will satisfy your hunger for hours.

Do you struggle with snacking throughout the day? Remember it’s ok to have a snack, they aren’t bad, but if you’re relying on snacks throughout the day, you’re likely under eating at main meals.

If you’re feeling defeated in your fat loss journey because you just can’t get it all right, I have good news… YOU DON’T HAVE TO GET IT ALL FIGURED OUT IN ONE DAY!

Too often I see women start a fat loss journey and feel like they have to nail it all starting on day 1! They have this idea that it’s all going to “click” and transformation will take place.

If you start a diet with the belief that you have to figure it all out from day 1, you will remain stuck in a self-sabotage cycle, because the reality is, CHANGE TAKES TIME and you’ll tackle that change ONE HABIT AT A TIME!

You don’t need change it all on day one! You do need to change something and continue that change. So pick 1-2 behaviors you can realistically tackle. Get some WINS and that will create motivation to continue to change.

You may feel it’s insignificant to just add an extra hour of sleep, a couple thousand extra steps, or cut a couple hundred calories, but if you think about how much progress you’ll make in a year from now, not just in a few weeks, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish!

So make today you change something because if nothing changes, nothing changes! You’ve got this!

Change requires discomfort, but so does staying the same, even if you are unhappy with where you’re at and want to change!

For many years in my late teens and twenties, I was what you might call a “CARDIO QUEEN.”👸. I was stuck in a cycle of over-exercising, in the form of cardio, and even though I didn’t like the overall results, I kept doing the same thing over-and-over, because the thought of doing something different with an unknown result scared the 💩out of me.

It took a years of internal work to gain the confidence to make a change. That change was hard. It was scary. It was uncomfortable! BUT, I kept showing up and finally realized that I was the one keeping me stuck!

My fear to change because of the unknown, even though I wasn’t happy where I was, was keeping me trapped in a pattern I couldn’t break. I was exhausted, my body was never fully recovering, I was always dealing with overuse injuries, and my physique wasn’t where I wanted it to be, yet I was trapped because I didn’t want to face the discomfort of change and the unknown.

I see this often with my new clients who finally come to me for change. They are stuck in eating or exercise patterns that aren’t serving them, yet they struggle to change out of fear or cannot handle the discomfort of what comes along with change.

Changing your diet is HARD, but so is eating in a way that makes you feel like 💩 every night you lay your head down to go to sleep. Tracking food is hard, but eating mindlessly and feeling guilty and ashamed and “starting over” every week feels awful too!

So you have to decide… the DISCOMFORT of staying the same or the DISCOMFORT of change?

Both are hard, but I promise doing the hard work now makes your future that much easier and enjoyable.

If you’re struggling to change, I’m currently onboarding clients for August and would love to set up a call to chat about hour goals and how I can help. DM me to get a free call!

This may not be my most popular post, but it needs to be addressed…ALCOHOL.

During my undergrad, I took an entire semester in Alcohol and alcoholism. It was then that I learned all the ways alcohol affects our overall health/wellbeing.

I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t consume alcohol, that is for you to decide. I will say this: If you are struggling with your health/fat loss efforts, and you drink, it’s probably time to take a hard look at your usage.

Despite what many people believe, there is no safe or healthy amount of alcohol. You have to decide for yourself what amount, if any, makes sense for your lifestyle and your goals.

I can say that, as I have gone into perimenopause, I have drastically reduced the amount of alcohol I consume because it just doesn’t process the same. If I choose alcohol, I’m choosing poor sleep, low energy, and many other not so pleasant effects.

I do still drink alcohol, but I am very intentional about my use, and this is exactly how I coach my clients. If you choose to consume alcohol on your own health/fat loss journey, these are things I suggest:
👉🏻Be INTENTIONAL! Don’t just have a drink because everyone else is. Yes, it may be hard in social settings to say no if you’re used to always saying yes, but I promise once the moment passes it gets much easier. The hardest moment is the moment of saying no.
👉🏻SET LIMITS! I coach my clients to go into settings knowing if they will or will not consume alcohol, and if they choose to consume alcohol, we work towards being intentional on the number of drinks consumed. Giving yourself a 1-2 drink limit is a great way to get your alcohol use better managed.
👉🏻BE MINDFUL! Ask yourself if having a drink will truly enhance an experience for you. Oftentimes, we drink out of habit or because everyone else is. There may be times that you feel having a drink would make an experience better and that’s ok! Make the goal to not drink out of habit and instead be mindful of your choice.

If you’re consuming alcohol regularly, yet you’re struggling with health/fat loss, you need to assess what’s most important to you. Because alcohol is more than calories!

Motivation is something you can create, and it comes through gaining confidence in your ability to change.

If you continue to break promises to yourself, you will remain stuck in the cycle of self sabotage. This mindset tells you that you are incapable of change. It tells you that you are who you are, and there’s no getting better. This mindset keeps you small, and it keeps you trapped in the current patterns that you are in.

If you want to change your body and change your health, you have to start believing in yourself! This happens by simply making promises and keeping promises to yourself day after day. Each day that you keep promises to yourself, you are rewriting the story in your brain.

This is when you will start to believe that you do have the ability to achieve your goals. And every time you keep a promise, it makes it easier to keep the next one. These small changes added up overtime lead to big breakthroughs!

Let today be the day that you start making promises and keeping promises to yourself! Stop relying on motivation to just show up, and start creating your own!

What promise will you keep today?

If you’re trapped in the “all-or-nothing” mindset, keep reading…

There is a “gray area” of space that exists between these 2 extremes, and to live in this space takes cognitive flexibility. You have to release yourself from rigid rules and the perfectionist mindset because that way of thinking is keeping you stuck.

Being “on” or “off” a diet is the trap. Learning that you can have a cookie or the pasta and still be successful is critical to success. When you are an “allow-nothing” thinker, you likely have one cookie and say, “Eff it, I’ll have the whole box and start over on Monday.” Then Monday comes, you buckle down into super restrictive eating, which again leads to a weekend binge.

When you learn to get comfortable in the “gray area” you realize I can have one cookie and still be “on track.” You allow yourself flexibility to make choices that are imperfect, but you don’t go to extremes.

When you can live in this space, magic happens! Do you struggle with “all-or-nothing” mindset??

Stress doesn’t have calories, but will 100% affect your health and fat loss and here’s how…

😋Stress can intensify hunger and cravings making it hard to stick to healthy meals that align with your goals. Plus, if you’re stressed, you’re likely notnplanning ahead, which leads to poor choices in the moment.
🐢Chronically elevated cortisol suppresses thyroid function. This ultimately drives your metabolic rate down, which means you burn less calories overall. Less calories expended each day will make reaching a calorie deficit even harder.
🥱Stress will negatively impact your energy, making you feel more sluggish and tired throughout the day. This likely means you’ll move less overall to conserve energy and possibly even skip your workouts (or have oooe workout performance).
🛌Stress interferes with sleep. And poor sleep adds to stress, which compounds the problem. If you’re anxious at bedtime or have a spike in cortisol in the middle of the night, you will ultimately have poor quality sleep. This will lead to increased hunger and cravings along with depleted energy.
🙇‍♀️Stress can be all-consuming, making it hard to focus and stick to your goals.

When I talk about big dial movers for fat loss STRESS MANAGEMENT is always on that list. Stress in acute amounts is absolutely normal and healthy, but when stress isn’t managed and cortisol is chronically elevated, it leads to a multitude of negative health outcomes.

Stress management for everyone looks different, but ultimately comes down to managing time and practicing self-care of some form.

What techniques do you use to manage your own stress?

With all the noise on social media around health and fat loss, thought it would be good to remind you of some KEY TRUTHS that will help you along the way!

Too often we get stuck in old belief patterns, and those beliefs can keep us stuck. When you embrace a few simple truths, it can make the journey to better health and fat loss more enjoyable and sustainable.

This list couldn’t gone on, but I wanted to capture what I felt were most notable. What things have you learned on your own journey? I’d love to hear from you!

I strongly believe intentionality is a key part of successful fat loss. Here’s why and how you can practice being more intentional yourself…

Our bodies are products of our daily habits. These habits don’t take effort or thought. They are our automated responses to stimulus, whatever it may be.

For example, you go to a party and you’re offered a glass of wine, and without thought you say “yes.” Or after dinner the dessert menu comes and you follow along with everyone else and have the dessert without thinking about it. Or you’re at a restaurant and the waiter brings bread to the table, and without thinking, you immediately react and help yourself to some bread and butter.

When we REACT to our environment, we aren’t in control. We are allowing our circumstances to control us. We are giving in to the automated actions our body is used to because it’s the easy as comfortable way, even if it’s leaving us feeling discomfort in our own bodies.

When you act intentionally, you are in control. It may be a harder action because it takes thought and effort, but when you make and keep promises and act with intention, you are choosing a path that will help you ultimately feel your best and achieve your goals. Autopilot is the thing keeping you stuck, so you need intentionality to break the cycle!

Are you running on autopilot? Do you pause and allow yourself to be intentional around your choices or are you doing what’s easy in the moment?

To start practicing being mindful and intentional around your choice, start by setting intentions before you enter into certain situations. If it’s a social event where you know there will be alcohol, make the promise to yourself that you’ll only have 1 or 2 glasses, then keep the promise. Also give yourself 5-10 minutes before giving into a temptation or craving. Allowing a moment to pass will help you gain clarity and act with intention instead of simply giving in to the craving.

If you struggle with this, a coach can really help you stop clear goals to help you better navigate your choices. If you are ready to get help and break free of old patterns, I’d love to help! DM me and we can chat!

Focusing your efforts on the things that matter most is what will get you lasting results.

Too often, I see women seeking out hacks for fat loss and over complicating a very simple solution.

Instead of trying to find a quick fix, or obsessing about food ingredients, meal timing, etc., start mastering the basics that will make a difference!

These things aren’t “sexy,” but I promise you, these are the behaviors that will change you!!!

Start by mastering and embracing the BIG ROCKS!

The, “I’ll start again on Monday,” mindset is the exact mindset that is keeping you stuck.

I talk to so many women who live trapped in this way of thinking. Monday morning is dreadful because the weekend was a disaster, and the thought is, “I’ll just start my diet again on Monday.”

Then Monday comes, and feelings of guilt and shame rise ip because you blew it over the weekend, so you decide to overly restrict your diet to make up for the weekend. This over restriction leads right into the next weekend binge, and the cycle starts over.

One way to break the cycle is to STOP WAITING UNTIL MONDAY!

Even if you made poor choices yesterday, or maybe those choices started Thursday, you don’t have to “throw in the towel” until Monday. You can start today! And it starts with ONE SIMPLE ACTION.
👉🏻Go for a walk
👉🏻Hit the gym
👉🏻Drink a glass of water
👉🏻Eat a protein and fiber packed meal

One simple action will lead to the next! It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you have to just show up!

Mondays aren’t magical. You get a redo everyday, so start today! How will you show up for yourself today??

Get the ball rolling…

I’m sure you’ve heard that saying before, and it holds true when it comes to healthy behaviors in our day-to-day lives.

I often say, healthy begets healthy… do one healthy behavior, and it’s much more likely that others will follow.

Mornings are a great time to stack some healthy behaviors to get your own “ball rolling”.

I like to think that we have “batteries” that help us stay energized each day to continually make healthy choices that align with our goals.

👉🏻The WILLPOWER BATTERY
👉🏻The DECISION BATTERY
👉🏻The ENERGY BATTERY

These three batteries are tightly connected. We have the most energy and willpower at the beginning of our day. As the day goes on, with every small decision, with every ounce of effort we have to give, and every action we have to take , we slowly drain these batteries. This makes it more challenging at the end of the day to make choices that fully align with our goals.

If you start the day with healthy behaviors that energize you, make you feel better about yourself and set you up for success, you are keeping these batteries better charged throughout your day, making it much easier to continue making the choices that your future self will thank you for.

It’s essential to take advantage of your morning to stack healthy behaviors into your routine if you want to truly live a healthy lifestyle that will last.

If you wake up and immediately start scrolling social media, watching television, or plunging right into your emails, you are immediately letting the day take control of you. Instead, wake up 10 to 20 minutes earlier to do some simple self-care to make you feel better, leading you to do better throughout your day, which will ultimately spill into your week and the months to come.

Your morning rituals don’t need to be a list of 20 things that you’ve read on social media! You don’t need to guzzle lemon water, cold plunge, ground, meditate, and the list goes on! You simply need to choose at least 2-3 actions to set yourself set up for a healthy, energized, and productive day.

I’d love to hear a few of the rituals you do each morning to set yourself up for success👇🏻

I’ll share mine below.