Why Work With a Fitness and Nutrition Coach After 40?

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

I've been seeing a chiropractor for maybe the last eight weeks, because I've been experiencing extreme pain in my shoulders. It's my responsibility, in agreement with this partnership that I have with my chiropractor, to go and do specific stability exercises that are going to help reform that soft tissue. He's doing his part. I had to do my part, right? It's a two-way street. And there have been many times where I've walked into his office and he's like, have you done your exercises? And I full out bluntly say no.

The coach can't move you forward in macro adjustments or progressive overload with certain exercises and workouts if you haven't addressed point A. And if you're just lying to yourself and not being fully honest, it's only going to make things harder moving forward. If I was to walk into the office and be like, yeah, I'm doing it, and then he was to give me harder exercises, he's going to see it right then and there when I'm doing these exercises that it is so hard for me, because I didn't build upon the foundation of the exercises that we agreed upon doing first.

What is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode 153, where we're going to talk about a topic that was inspired when I met with my coaching team. I feel like we've talked about this before on the podcast; I can't remember exactly what episode it was.

Oh, and by the way, I know I promised an episode on sleep, and I was going to talk about that today, but we already recorded an episode on sleep. If you guys want to go back and listen to it, it was a solid episode. It gives you some tips and tricks on how to optimize your sleep to get faster muscle gains and fat loss. That can really be the missing pillar if you're not seeing the results that you want, but you're nailing your nutrition and hitting the workouts, and you feel like there's more you could get. It could be the factor of not getting efficient, good quality sleep. I talk about all of that in episode 25. So if you're interested in learning all the things on sleep, go to episode 25.

But today, what I want to talk about is why I think it is so important to work with a coach. Stay with me. There are so many of you guys out there that maybe want to try this on your own. And honestly, shout out to you guys that are inside of the WarriorBabe Facebook community, that aren't yet inside of our WarriorBabe programs, that are listening to this podcast and achieving incredible, amazing results. You guys are go-getters. You guys are like the 1% that will listen to this and actually apply the things that are being taught.

There's a woman listening to this podcast who shared inside the WarriorBabe community. By the way, the WarriorBabe community is a free community, guys, so come on in. It's on Facebook. She just shared that she has been listening to the podcast through and through for a couple months now, and she's lost 18 pounds. Shout out to you, babe. That's freaking incredible that you applied the things from this podcast. That's a testament that all of this information I'm sharing with you, you can apply to yourself and see some incredible results.

It just takes the really dedicated individual, the one that wants it, the disciplined person that truly wants to change, to apply this. And then there's the others. I would say they're like the 95 to 99%, and honestly, this was me at the beginning of my journey. I didn't have the right tools or the right resources to do this the right way. That's why I love giving this podcast to you guys. I love pouring into you guys and telling you the right way to do things, because at the beginning of my journey, this podcast is what I wish I had.

So I'm giving this to you knowing that it's helping 1, 10, 20, 50 of you guys that are listening to it. Maybe all of you guys, I don't know. I appreciate all of the love that this podcast is getting. But anyway, I give this to you because I hope you'll walk away actually implementing the things. But then there's the 95 to 99 percent of women that are inside of WarriorBabe, that are a part of our programs, and me at the beginning of my journey. I hired a coach because with the things I was trying to do myself, again, I didn't have the right tools or the right resources. I wish I had the understanding then that I have now. And that's why I'm sharing all this with you guys.

Anyway, by the way, I shared this on my Instagram story, so if you follow me on Instagram you saw it. Three days ago, I stopped my obscene amount of caffeine intake, and I've resorted to giving myself less than half of what I was consuming. And I'm experiencing the effects. No joke, you guys. Just to be completely transparent, I must have hit record on this podcast probably 15 times before I was just like, you know what, we're here. We're in it. This is what we're talking about today. It's like 4:30 in the afternoon. I had a full-packed day of meetings and being with the team on the back side of WarriorBabe, and I am experiencing the crash of not having my normal caffeine. So bear with me in this podcast. Please stay with me. There's going to be valuable information that comes from it.

So, as I'm saying, I had a coach at the beginning of my journey as well, because I wanted to get the right answers. I wanted the answers from the person that was the professional, the person whose whole life was around these concepts. They had the knowledge and the understanding, and could help me apply those aspects to my journey that I didn't have. And I wanted to accelerate my ability to get results. I feel like coaches can help you do that. When you invest in a program, you're investing in a person that has these tools, these resources, this knowledge, and is going to hand that off to you to go and apply it. The most important thing, though, is that you apply it.

What I'm going to talk about today are the benefits you can get from working with a coach. First and foremost, what I think is the most important thing you gain from working with somebody is that a coach will offer you an objective perspective. Hands down, I think this is one of the most important aspects. The coach will look at your situation from an objective standpoint.

At least in how we coach our coaches in WarriorBabe, we try our best not to have our coaches be emotionally invested in your issues. And I say that very wholeheartedly and with love. Because the second a coach gets emotionally invested with somebody that is frustrated, or that is giving excuses, or that is struggling some type of way along their journey, the coach can get pulled down into it. The coach needs to stay on an objective view. I like to say you're looking down at the situation from 30,000 feet up in the air, and you can have an objective stance. Then they can provide you unbiased feedback and insights that you may not have considered.

If a coach comes down with you and almost enables excuses, how is that going to help you along your journey? It is their job, our job, our responsibility, and what I looked for in the coach I was working with, to tell me the opposite of what I was feeling and the opposite of the excuses I was giving. Because I knew those excuses weren't going to get me anywhere. I knew I had to have somebody that would let me talk, let me air it out, let me word vomit what I'm feeling, and then just stay in their stance and hold strong, to be honest.

And then give the unbiased feedback, give the perspective they're seeing from their professional standpoint, that's going to move me and move the client forward and not have them stuck in this subjective experience, right? It's important for the coach to have an objective perspective outside of your subjective reality, because excuses are excuses are excuses. They're just holding people back from achieving what they can truly achieve in the long run. So it's a coach's responsibility to have that objectivity and to say flat out, let's just call it what it is.

Another aspect that I think is super beneficial about working with a coach is: trust us now and believe us later. Why I say that is because women coming into a program are coming in from the experiences they've had before, and those experiences didn't turn out the best. That's why they're here at WarriorBabe. That's why they're here trying the program. And they kind of come in not trusting the program out of the gate. They have all this reserve and all of this apprehension about actually following through with the things the coach is telling them to do.

So what I want you to understand with trust us now and believe us later is that our job as coaches, and the job of the coaches coaching you inside of WarriorBabe, is not to make you fat. Why I say it that way is that so many people come into WarriorBabe thinking that by us having them eat carbs, or eat more, they'll gain. A lot of women come to us under-eating, so we have to retrain their metabolism to eat more food. If someone's eating only 1200 calories and they need to eat 1500 calories, the concept of eating more food always freaks people out, because of the programs they've come from. Or they've tried programs, experienced weight loss, and all of a sudden gained that weight back, and they think eating more food did that, along with other factors.

So when people have a hard time trusting us out of the gate, I need you to understand, for the purposes of continuing to listen to this podcast, following me on socials, following WarriorBabe, and maybe even being a part of the WarriorBabe program in the future or the VIP:

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We would be doing you a disservice if we were making you fat. That is not a part of what we do. I don't know how to say it any better than that. We would not be doing our job if that was what was happening. So hopefully that brings a little bit of ease to any of you listeners that are already a WarriorBabe or thinking about joining WarriorBabe: when we want you to eat more food, trust us now and believe us later.

Please come into the program and drop all of the things you were involved with before, the aspects of the dieting programs you tried before. Drop everything out of the gate and come in with an open, refreshed mind. Just be open to receive what we're giving you. The more open you are to receive, coming into the WarriorBabe program or into a program in general, and the more you drop the baggage from other things, the faster you'll implement, try, and see, and then take the feedback of that try, good or bad, and assess it.

And then come up with a new game plan if you need to, working very closely with your coach. That leads me into the next one I want to talk about. But trust us now, believe us later. Trust us now with the things we want you to be doing and applying in your life, for the better and good of you getting the results that you want and that we want you to get. And then believe us later. Believe us when you're doing all these things you thought were going to blow you up, or you thought were against the norm, or you thought weren't even fathomable, like eating 1800 calories and losing weight. Trust us now on the things we want you to implement, and believe us later. Believe us when maybe you had to reassess some things out of the gate with your coach. Believe us when you're getting the results. Believe us that all of the things we want you to implement are what we professionals want you to experience, which is the results you want: decreasing body fat, gaining more muscle, being more toned, feeling confident in your skin. Okay?

Which leads me into this: once you're trying and implementing these things with your coach, you do have improved communication when you're working with a coach. A coach can help you improve your communication skills, which can benefit you personally and professionally. But I do have to throw in a but there. It is up to you to communicate with your coach how you're feeling, what you're thinking, your fears, your wants, your desires.

When a coach tells you they want you to eat more food, voice how you feel. This is where we will have an objective perspective on your situation and recognize what are stories, what are beliefs, what are false narratives, so we can give this objective perspective and help you rewrite the narrative. But you have to communicate. You have to be willing and open to have this type of dialogue with your coach, because we're not mind readers.

I will tell you that. I can't read what you are thinking. We don't know what we don't know. So you have to share the thoughts. And when you share the thoughts, oh my gosh. Seriously, one of the huge benefits I loved about working with the coach I worked with is that my communication improved all around. I was open and honest with the coach I was working with, who got me to be a three-time champ and go pro, and then beat the pros.

My words and mind are crashing because of this coffee. Anyway, because of my improved communication and being able to communicate with my coach at that time in my life when I was doing bodybuilding, winning three shows, getting my pro status, then getting on the pro stage and beating the pros, my ability to communicate got better and better and better. And not just with my coach, but for me personally and professionally as well. So that's another great aspect of it.

Obviously, the other component that comes with working with a coach is accountability. A coach can help you stay accountable and motivated. You're not always going to be motivated, but when you have somebody watching you that you have to show up for on a weekly basis, you have to give them the check-ins, you have to give them the photos. What we do inside of WarriorBabe is you fill out a biofeedback form. When you have to submit these things on a weekly basis, that is your accountability to stay the course.

And then it's the coach's ability to give you support, encouragement, nudges, and some tough love to help you stay on track. Like I said at the beginning, some of you are absolutely crushing it alone. That's amazing. You have some type of discipline, determination, and internal motivation that a lot of people don't have. Most people need the extra accountability. They need the push. They need somebody telling them what to do.

That's where working with a coach gives you an obscene amount of accountability. It also gives you a more personalized approach, right? For those of you listening to the podcast and seeing amazing results, imagine being able to turn it up a notch and work with a coach one-on-one and develop a more personalized approach that takes into account the exact goals you're going after. The coach gets to see your physique, the challenges you have, your lifestyle demands, how you manage your time, and your ability to focus wholeheartedly on meal prepping and tracking macros, learning that skill set, and sticking to a weekly workout routine that, over the course of six months to a year, is going to give you the results you want. Imagine having that accountability and that type of personalized approach. That's what I wholeheartedly believe in, through and through, on top of the other benefits I already mentioned.

Having the accountability and the personalized approach is what can accelerate your results and also accelerate your learning, when you have a professional telling you all the things that are specific to you and then holding you accountable to following through. Our coaches here at WarriorBabe talk about this every single week: what are you telling the clients that they need to hear but don't want to hear? That's your accountability. I love having that discussion in our team meeting, because it gives the other coaches permission to be direct, to give tough love, to give encouragement, to say the things the clients don't want to hear but need to hear. That is how you create amazing transformations. I always tell any of the coaches dealing with hard, challenging clients: dude, you stay in an objective stance, you stay strong, you stay firm, you give tough love, and you say what they need to hear. Those will be your best transformations. The best, hands down.

A couple of other things I feel are super beneficial when you work with a coach. One is improved time management. A coach can help you develop strategies to manage your time more effectively. I can't tell you how many times I hear clients come to coaches with squirrel brain, right? And also the excuse of, I can't fit in my workout this week because of this and this and this.

I'll never forget, and you're probably going to hear it this week, we're going to share an interview with one of the clients I used to coach back in the day who had two sets of twins, both under the age of four at the time. She lost 80 pounds during COVID. She was a doctor in an ER, and she made the time to get her workouts done. At one point she was doing workouts outside on her kids' jungle gym with a TRX band.

Where there's a will, there's a way. And I helped her make sure she got her workouts done. So when you're working with a coach, they're able to take into account the daily demands of your responsibilities with life, family, and work, and they can hold you accountable to blocking out the time you set for your workout, and sticking to it.

So those are some amazing benefits of working with a coach. The objective perspective, the improved communication, trust us now and believe us later, the accountability, the personalized approach, the time management, and the increased confidence. Working with a coach helps you build your confidence and your ability to actually do the things you say you're going to do, especially out of the gate.

When you haven't tracked macros before, or you haven't done specific strength training exercises, your coach is telling you that you have to do these things, but you actually following through on doing them is how you build confidence.

Hey, I just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you're enjoying it, and there's so much more to come. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons, and it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too.

So when you are experiencing challenges, or you need to take certain actions to help you achieve your goals, a coach can help you take on these challenges and pursue your goals, to get the results you want with greater conviction. Working with a coach just makes sense, in my opinion. Even coaches have coaches. For the longest time when I was coaching clients, I still had a coach, because of all of these reasons. Most importantly, it helps me stay on track, stay committed, and follow through.

Now, as I mentioned in previous episodes, I've developed an obscene amount of discipline, and I'm 10 years into my journey, so I've been able to follow through on my own, because I feel some type of way about myself if I don't, and that keeps me motivated to keep going. But if you're just starting out on your journey and you need help with all of these things, working with a coach gives you the ability to accelerate the behavior changes you have to make in order to get the results you want, along with the habits. And most importantly, the tactical things, like just following through on doing the things. The coach has the knowledge and the skill set to tell you all the things you need to do to achieve your goals.

Okay, so thanks for bearing with me on this podcast. I'm experiencing a major crash right now because of not having this caffeine, but I hope that made sense. I really hope you see the benefits of working with a coach. I think it's really freaking important, and then listening to your coach, and then taking extreme ownership, which I could spiral on now and go on a rant about.

There was an awesome coaching call our coaches did inside the community yesterday on the buckets of how we're intrinsically motivated on certain things. I may be saying that completely wrong, but one of them was a bucket on extreme ownership. There's a component of this that you get from working with a coach, but there's also a component you have to bring as a human when you're working with a coach. You have to be open, you have to be transparent, you have to be honest, but most importantly, you have to take extreme ownership along your journey if you want to accelerate your results. Because if you're not being honest with yourself, you're most likely not being honest with your coach.

And there's going to be a major block in your ability to communicate, in your coach's ability to communicate, and in your ability to go execute on the things you need to execute on. Because this has happened to me many times: clients will tell me they are tracking the macros on a weekly basis, and then I can go on their logs in MyFitnessPal and see that's not happening. Or after week four of knowing that where they're at with their calorie intake should be facilitating results, at week four or week five, when I'm not seeing the type of change I need to see, I will, and have, wholeheartedly said: you need to be straight up and honest with not only me but yourself right now. Are you following the macros we set consistently? It's okay if you missed a day or two, but have you been consistent the majority of the time? And I have had people flat out tell me no. I've had to confront that situation head on.

What I can say to you guys is, if you're not being honest in the situation, you're not being honest with yourself, and you're most likely not being honest with your coach. You have to take extreme ownership. When you take extreme ownership, you take extreme responsibility for your actions and you stop blaming outside external circumstances. You stop blaming the program. You stop blaming and giving energy to excuses. You stop the victim mentality, and you take ownership that actually you're just not following through with the things the coach is telling you that you need to do.

Perfect example, actually. I've recently been going to a chiropractor. This could be an entire freaking episode, but this thought just gave me tons of energy. I'm going to be honest, transparent, and vulnerable with you, because I want you guys to be able to do the same thing. I've been seeing a chiropractor for maybe the last eight weeks, and I'm probably going to take this into another episode, but I've been experiencing extreme pain in my shoulders, to the point where I haven't been able to progress.

So we've been specifically working on adjusting, and then he goes into soft tissue muscle massage on specific areas of my traps and rhomboids that are super weak and need that type of soft tissue pressure to correct what's going on. And then it's my responsibility, in agreement with this partnership I have with my chiropractor, and this is the same thing you have with your coach, to go and do specific stability exercises that are going to help reform that soft tissue and make it stronger.

He's doing his part. I have to do my part, right? It's a two-way street. And there have been many times where I walked into his office and he's like, have you done your exercises? And I full out bluntly say no, I have not been doing them. And he's like, you know what? I totally appreciate that full, open honesty. It helps me understand where we're at in the process and what we need to continue to pay attention to. I'm not going to move us forward into exercises that are going to be so much more challenging for you, because you haven't actually done point A.

And I'm just like, this is the same thing for you guys. The coach can't move you forward in macro adjustments or progressive overload with certain exercises and workouts if you haven't addressed point A. And if you're just lying to yourself and not being fully honest, it's only going to make things harder moving forward.

If I was to walk into the office and be like, yeah, I'm doing my exercises, and then he was to give me harder exercises, one, I could injure myself. Two, he's going to see it right then and there when I'm doing these exercises that it is so hard for me, because I didn't build upon the foundation of the exercises we agreed upon doing first, which is more like band work and dead bugs to keep my core stability, and all of the foundational things I have to get in alignment before I can solely focus on my shoulders. If I don't address my core and the stability in my core first, I'm going to overcompensate in other areas when I'm trying to focus on my shoulders.

Okay, so same goes for you guys. Take extreme ownership. Walk into a meeting with your coach and say, yeah, I haven't been doing these things. Do you know how much easier that makes it for you and for the partnership? It's so much easier. And I can say that because I see it firsthand now working with my chiropractor. He's like, thank you. Okay, we have to stay here before we can build upon things. Same thing goes for you guys.

So just be open, be honest, take extreme freaking ownership. It is in your control. It is all you. You sign up for the program and you invest in somebody to tell you to do the things, so do the things. But if you're not doing the things, take extreme ownership and tell your coach. Then you can collaboratively work together on the game plan set forth.

Your journey honestly becomes so much more enjoyable when you can be fully transparent, vulnerable, and honest with the person you're working with, because it can help you get to where you want to be faster. If you're somebody that's saying, yes, yes, yes, I'm doing all the things, and you're not seeing the results, there's a disconnect there. There's a big disconnect. And you're just going to spend more time not getting to where you want to be, because you're not being honest.

So all that to say, guys, I hope you appreciate this podcast. I enjoyed it, as much as I may feel like I'm all over the place with my talking because of the caffeine. Anyway, I feel like it was a great podcast, especially the end, where it wraps it all together. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you guys so much for listening. Please, if you could take a couple minutes after this episode today and leave a review of what you think about the episodes. If you've been a listener for some time now and you haven't left a review, I'd appreciate it so much. We don't run ads on this podcast platform, as you guys see, so it's all word of mouth at this point to get this podcast to other women that need to hear it, to get it to other listeners, and to get it on the top charts so people can see it and say, oh, what's this? I want to learn about this, and click into it. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.