Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I build Evolo. Evolo is science-back strength training designed to help you build muscle, improve body composition, and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym. You can try Evolo now for two weeks free if you visit evolofitness.com. Welcome to the Dr. Shannon Show, body recomposition capsule. There's so much fitness advice out there, and quite frankly, much of it isn't true. So in this 10 episode series, we're covering all the science-based tools for body recomposition. You may have heard me cover many of these topics before, and some things will be brand new. I wanted to create one organized capsule of information that will give you all the important concepts for improving your body composition, because we know improving your body composition isn't just external. It has incredible benefits for your health, energy, mood, and longevity. I'm your host, Shannon Richie. Welcome to the show. So body recomposition, what is it? Body recomposition means losing fat while building muscle. And although it seems like a purely aesthetic thing, it's kind of that quote unquote toned look, it is the furthest from that. Most women are very undermuscled, and this is a problem. It costs our metabolic health, our mental health, and more. Most women are taught to focus on the wrong things to get fit, and it's not their fault. Fitness marketing has led us to prioritize all the wrong things like endless cardio, super light weights, all in an attempt to get long and lean and toned and sculpted, or whatever the marketing term is. And this does a few things. Number one, it doesn't work because exercise can't really quote unquote tone. Toning implies fat loss and muscle growth. Cardio and most super light weight methods don't cause much fat loss or muscle growth. Number two, we prioritize doing more or harder workouts in the pursuit of fitness. This creates systemic stress that is really hard for women to cope with because that systemic stress from their workouts on top of their already stressful life causes burnout, joint pain, and ultimately it's hard to stay consistent with. So they end up feeling those compounding effects of burnout, or maybe they have fertility struggles, or joint pain, or high stress hormones that make them hungrier, and maybe make them eat more and gain weight. So more is not better, the right stimulus is better. And then number three, because we are fed all these things, our mental health is suffering. We feel guilty for never doing quote unquote enough, or we feel guilty for taking recovery days, or we feel guilty for not exercising on vacation. But if you can build a bank of muscle, the beauty is you can take time off. It's like investing your money. You have a nest egg to fall back on so that when you take time off, life happens, or if you're on vacation, you don't see much change in your overall fitness level. This is exactly what I recently experienced postpartum. So I took about five, six weeks off exercise after I had my second baby, and I'm now four months postpartum, and I feel incredible. My strength is back to what it was before I delivered. And I really just didn't feel like it took me very long to get back to lifting what I was lifting pre-pregnancy because I spent my pregnancy and before focused on building as much muscle as possible. So we need to shift from endless cardio and more and more and more and quote unquote, toning workouts that are super lightweight to investing in our muscle. And I wanna scream this from the rooftops because on one hand, people don't believe me that all we do as instructors is the avila workouts. We're not doing extra on top of it, but it's because we have all been so consistent for years. And that has resulted in a body composition that gets easier to maintain, a body that doesn't feel broken down, a body that is ready for pregnancies or life or sickness or whatever it is, energy levels that support our ability to work hard and spend time on the things that we really enjoy like our family and friends. So it doesn't need to be aggressive, it just needs to be consistent. But the price of not prioritizing your muscle is steep. You will have a harder time maintaining your body composition goals, your metabolic health will suffer, muscle even has protective benefits against mental disease like Alzheimer's. If you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s, if you are not prioritizing muscle health now, it will get increasingly harder as you approach menopause. It's not a, oh, I'll just figure it out when I get there. You need to start taking action now so you aren't in a hole when you arrive. And all this sounds very urgent and fear-mongering and that's not my intention. My intention is to inspire you to start now and that it doesn't need to be extreme. You don't need to spend even an hour a day on strength training. You don't need to do exercises you hate. You don't need to lift super heavy barbells. You have options, you have flexibility. But what's important is that you are stimulating your muscles properly and consistently. It doesn't need to be perfect. Rarely do I have a week where I do every single workout on my five-time a week track as planned. Sometimes I'm only on the four-time a week track or sometimes I'm doing one to two sets and skipping to the cool down. But the fact that I'm consistent, not perfect, is why I've been able to see and feel so good even after my second baby when my pregnancies were seven months apart. So the reason I'm doing this season and the reason I love body recomposition as a goal is because it really forces you to prioritize your muscle. Yes, fat loss can happen if you apply the right tools with diet, but it won't feel extreme. Now, the reason I don't recommend delaying trying to build muscle is because it's hard to do. It doesn't just take a few weeks. It takes months to years to build a significant amount of muscle. But even building a little bit will have an incredible effect and almost an immediate effect on your health. So body recomposition is a slower process, but to me, that's the only way it can be sustainable. You can't under eat or you won't build muscle. You can't over train or you'll get hurt. It means applying the right principles in moderation over and over and over and over. After a year of applying this information that you'll learn in this season, your body will look, feel and function completely different. You'll set yourself up for long-term success. Muscle will never be harder to build than it is the very first time you build it because what's really cool about muscle is once you build it, it comes back quicker the second time if you happen to lose it. Now, one question that I typically get about body recomposition is if it's possible if you are not new to training. Newbies will typically experience body recomposition faster, but it is absolutely possible to experience body recomposition if you are trained, if you're not new to exercise. I have personally body recompositioned twice and I obviously was not new to exercise when I did body recomposition. And I'm working on it for a third time after my second baby. I'm sharing more of that on my Instagram, so I'm sharing how my goal is building five pounds of muscle in 2026. And if I'm able to do that, that will be the most lean mass that I've ever had. So if you wanna learn more, you can go follow me on Instagram as Dr. Shannon D.B.T. So let's talk about broad breaststrokes on how you body recomposition. And we'll cover all of this in detail, but here are the basics. Number one, strength trained to build muscle. Number two, eat in a slight calorie deficit or even at maintenance and keep your protein high. Number three, stay overall active, but no need to overdo the cardio. And number four, prioritize rest and recovery. So body recomposition is a great goal and it's what we'll spend the next 10 episodes discussing. By the end of this season, you'll have a clear understanding of what to focus on and what not to focus on, so you see results without burning yourself out or wasting your time. In this podcast season, we'll discuss the following topics to help you recap. We'll go into detail in nice short snappy episodes. So the next episode will be all about the timeline of change, roughly what to expect for each month of this process. In the following episode, we'll talk about the intensity of strength training required to build muscle, so how heavy you need to lift. Then we'll talk about volume and frequency, how much and how often you should train. We'll talk about efficiency techniques of things to make your workouts shorter, like supersets and how to add cardio into your strength training sessions. Then we'll talk about nutrition for body recomposition. We'll talk about cardio, how much is enough or how much is too much. We'll talk about how to track your recovery, how and why to regulate your nervous system. All of the options to track your progress will be the second to last episode and the final episode will be all of the tools that I have to stay consistent. So each of these episodes will be about 10 to 15 minutes. They're intended for you to maybe listen again on your commute or on your walk and really easy to digest so that you can really understand how to start applying this information and you don't feel overwhelmed in just one giant mega episode. If you're not new and you've been a listener to the podcast or if you've been an Evela member for a while, I still recommend listening to these episodes because I'm offering new tips and kind of refreshed information that I've never talked about before. So make sure that you're still listening to each episode and even if it's just a refresher and things that you already know, it never hurts to refresh some of these concepts. So the idea is to give you a roadmap so you feel really successful with your fitness goals this year. One of my missions is to help educate you that although exercise, not all exercise is created equal, you do have options. It doesn't need to be overly extreme or grind you into the ground. It can be something that you actually like to do and that you can actually feel successful sustaining, not just in the short term, but forever. This isn't the type of content that you optimize by 0.0001%. It's the type of information that when applied, changes your whole life and the trajectory of your health. So come back tomorrow, we'll be discussing the timeline of change for body recomposition. I'll teach you what to expect during each month of this process and I'll share my personal timeline when I've done this now twice going on the third time. So I hope you'll join me in each of these episodes and we'll see you tomorrow.
