When More Is Not Better

“You either need to start eating more, or cut back on your exercise.”

When I told this to one client who wanted to lose fat and build more muscle, she told me she hard a hard time wrapping her head around that idea. Isn’t the goal to push harder and eat less when you want to lose weight and build muscle?

More exercise is only better if we can meet the demands of more. If more is leaving us always sore, prone to injuries, in constant pain and feeling “heavy” all the time, irritable and anxious or unable to mark improvement in our workouts and in making body composition changes, we may be doing too much. Or, I could also share the perspective that if you may not be over training, but you may be under recovering.

When we consider the balance of movement and recovery, we have to remember that if we are exercising more, our recovery needs to be even more intentional and meet the demands of what we’re asking our body to do, otherwise, we send our body into a stress response that can prevent us from feeling our best and meeting fitness goals like weight loss and strength gains.

On average, most of us benefit best from training 3-5 days per week of moderate to intense workouts. You can certainly exercise 7 days per week but likely some of those days should be mobility focused or lower intensity.

If you’re participating in the BUILD program in the BBH Online Studio, you’ve already noticed that even though we schedule out 6 days of workouts for you each week, we want you to focus on meeting the 3 priority days workouts first! If you’re recovering well from those 3 workouts, you’re invited to complete our supplementary workouts. Always included are mobility focused workouts and recovery focused workouts. Every single workout shouldn’t crush you.

If you’re hitting these recommendations and not seeing results and notice your body is always exhausted, you likely need to prioritize recovery better to meet the demands of your moderate/intense workouts with these tips:

  • Fuel Better: Often when I have clients track their nutrition to help troubleshoot why they aren’t seeing results from all of their hard work, I find a lack of nutrients and proper hydration. Not enough protein is a big culprit for a lot of women but also lack of energy from very low-carb diets with frequent exercising contribute to lack of results.

  • Sleep Better: Ya’ll, I cannot stress the importance of this one for better recovery. Get on a schedule. Go to bed earlier. And try to keep the routine at least most weekends too.

  • Consider your program: Stop over doing it! If you’re training 6-7 days per week and doing a heavy full body workout or HIIT workouts every single workout, you may want to consider varying your workouts to include recovery based workouts, lower intensity cardio and mobility focused workouts between heavy days to give your muscles more time to recover.

  • Supplement: Many times, lack of important minerals from for example an insufficiently nutrient dense diet can lead to deficiencies that aid in better muscle tissue repair. Start with a basic multi-vitamin if you haven’t already!

If you feel like you need more guidance, it’s not too late to join the BUILD program on the BBH Online studio. As a member of the BBH Online studio, you can expect the availability of more personalized coaching just by reaching out to your BBH trainers any time you have a question.

What I’ve Learned About Correcting Movement, Balancing Hormones & Improving Your Fitness

I’ve always tried my best to commit to a growth mindset. In an industry where science is still being uncovered, we must accept that we don’t know it all. I’ve continued to evolve my training practices around the latest science but also around daily discoveries I make with each individual client. 

I want to share a few things I was confronted with this year that really challenged what I know about correcting movement, balancing hormones, and improving your fitness.

Is Corrective Exercise Overrated? 

I have been a self proclaimed “form police” type of trainer. I’ve always believed one of my biggest responsibilities as a trainer is to fix my clients muscle imbalances through corrective exercises. There’s a very big message in our industry claiming that we are broken and we need to be fixed or else we’ll get injured. Well, that’s not necessarily true and that messaging with clients only instills fear of movement. It can prevent many from even getting started on their fitness journey. In reality, we are not as fragile as we may believe.

I recently dove into numerous published studies around movement dysfunction and their relationship to injuries. Excuse me while I grossly summarize these findings for the sake of this article- I’ve cited sources below for reference if you are interested. 

In these prospective design approaches where we look at the outcome (injury) first to hypothesize a causation (why it happened), we see that joint dysfunctions was not the likely cause for injury. Clients rehabbing from injuries got stronger and became pain free over time simply by following a gym strength training program EVEN THOUGH they showed no change in the way they moved. So they got better, but still moved the same way.

So how does this change the way that I train? I still demand better form from clients, but I am less rigid about it. While we can still agree that major muscle imbalances can create problems over time, it appears that some degree of imbalance is totally safe. If the movement isn’t absolutely “perfect”. I’m less hung up on addressing it solely through corrective exercise before moving forward. I confidently lean more into the “where do you feel this exercise? Or “how does this exercise feel” question I always ask my clients. If the exercise is eliciting a muscle burn in the intended muscle group, we’re moving in the right direction. We can “correct” and strengthen at the same time. And what seems to be more important for becoming pain free, is to prioritize getting stronger using heavier load.

Sources: 

Swain et. al, 2020 PMID 31451200

Menezes Costa et. al, 2011 PMID 20655254

Alfonso et. al, 2021 PMID PMC C8067745

Pardos-Mainer et. al, 2021 PMID 33419178

Hormonal Health. 

For the past two years I’ve been on a more in depth journey to see if there was anything new I could discover around women and their hormonal health at every stage of life. I completed multiple online continuing education courses and soaked up information from experts in the field hoping to uncover some new truths.

The biggest truth remains unchanged, and that’s that our first line of defense for creating a more flexible metabolism and balancing our hormones to maintain a healthy weight, achieve weight loss, gain energy and to build muscle at any age, boils down to managing stress through diet and exercise (specifically strength training). 

That’s not to oversimplify the fact that our hormones fluctuate depending on our monthly cycles and reproductive age, but regardless of whatever stage we are in, a healthy diet and focus on strength training should be our first approach to encouraging a more flexible metabolism.

My mission in 2023 is to help women become more in sync with their own biofeedback so we can translate it into what their exercise and nutritional approach should look like. You may be eating too much, you may be eating too little. You may be over training, you may be under training. You may need more recovery. You may need to focus on a few lifestyle habits to combat insomnia and improve energy. In the new year, I’ll be focusing more on coming up with easy methods for interpreting our hormonal cues to be able to implement more effective training and nutritional strategies. 

Focus on PROTEIN and Improve Your Fitness.

I’ve wavered from not really paying much attention to protein (just paying attention to eating whole foods and keeping it healthy), to (after reading Proteinaholic) believing we get way too much protein and in the next year limiting animal protein to no more than one meal per day or less, and now swinging back around to the power of protein for faster recovery and more efficiently achieving body recomposition. 

Whether you choose to get your protein primarily from plants or from animal sources is your own choice but I do wholeheartedly believe that getting animal protein has incredible advantages. Animal protein is more bioavailable, it’s a lower total caloric whole food protein option, and holds unique micronutrients you can’t find as available in plants. 

If you have goals to lose weight more easily and build muscle for better metabolic health, then eating enough protein must be a priority for reaching those goals more easily. 

We’ve explored prescribing protein rich diets in our BBH Nutrition Corner for our online studio clients as well as encouraged clients in the studio to track protein and in every case where the client has been compliant consistently, we’ve witnessed them achieve body recomposition goals. They have lost fat AND built muscle at the same time which is typically no easy task! If you want to become MORE FIT in 2023, prioritize protein. Don’t know where to start? Well, I’d say reach out for a personalized evaluation. Or start by following our BUILD program featured for the next 3 months this year.

“The more you know. The more you realize you don’t know.” - Aristotle 

Keep on learning in 2023.

The Compulsive Entrepreneur

My self-employed dad operated his own publishing company, Friends Publishers. The Pamlico Scoop was his self-published human interest newspaper that circulated across eastern NC. Selling advertisements to pay for publishing and himself, he seemingly made just enough money to scrounge by and rarely had a little extra to spare. Dad’s self employed status gave him a flexible schedule which was good because he was also the only parent who drove. My mom refused to drive so it meant that my dad was the only chauffeur to seven other family members. His schedule became a bit more restricted around monthly deadlines. He would lock himself in his office, ask not to be bothered, and crank out the design, layout, and everything else it took to publish the next edition. He’d then send the pages off to the printer and spent the week post-print making drops at grocery stores, gas stations and businesses from Elizabeth City on down to New Bern.

Although a pauper entrepreneur, my dad’s entrepreneurial lifestyle obviously made its’ impact. The apple wouldn’t fall far from the tree. Over time, I would discover that I was a compulsive entrepreneur. 

At 12, I wasn’t old enough yet to get a job so I needed to figure out a way to make money if I wanted to buy new clothes or go on field trips with my friends. Earning an allowance from my parents wasn’t an option. A lemonade stand became my very first business venture.

My childhood home stood on one of the busiest street corners in little Washington. It was prime location to set up shop with the best lemonade stand in town. My sisters and I promoted the stand with plenty of signs and word of mouth. We were excited to make a couple hundred dollars that summer selling lemonade in two different sizes and then expanding our offerings from just lemonade to a few baked goods as well. When summer ended, I traded in that business venture for one I could work year round. I cleaned houses and babysat and when I was finally legal working age, I got a job at my best friend's family’s dry cleaners. 

Fast forward to adulthood. I created three business all before turning 27- Broadway Babysitters Inc, a babysitting agency, Body By Hannah, LLC, my personal training business and Gotham Versatile Training Inc., a community of independent trainers and trainees and fitness facility management. All three businesses were successes.

I’ve described my entrepreneurial style as “jump into the deep end and figure out how to stay afloat”. And that’s still true to some extent. But, If I could go back, I wouldn't do things the same way. Although I learned by doing, I could have saved myself a lot of headache and heartache by seeking out mentors, finding the right resources earlier on, and hiring help I should have hired. 

The entrepreneurship blog series ahead will explore some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way and share the struggles I still face as a business owner. The successes, the failures, and the jaw dropping stories in between will hopefully help other entrepreneurs find their way a little bit easier and find incredible success of their own. 

If you’re thinking about starting a business or have started a small business and wish to grow, subscribe here to get exclusive content I’ll be sharing only to those interested! I’m not trying to spam those totally uninterested in this topic!

The story behind my first business, Broadway Babysitters Inc., coming soon!!……

(Un) Faithful: Good Grief

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I was working to accept the life I thought was real, wasn’t real. 

Desperately trying to make sense out of my husband’s betrayal, I needed to understand how it was possible that he actually loved me AND could do this to us.

The women I considered friends that had also deceived and betrayed me haunted me. 

How could I accept my new reality? I was married to a self proclaimed sex addict and his recovery program would now be a part of our life. 

Conflicting emotions hijacked my thoughts and ran in a loop. I couldn’t get them to stop. 

Read the first part of the story HERE

Read the second entry HERE

Lamentation: the passionate expression of grief or sorrow; weeping. 

In college, I was in a stage production of Euripides Greek tragedy, The Trojan Women. I was one of the four women in the play who lamented over the corpse of Hector throughout the entire play. All I actually remember from rehearsing and the production is that I softly sobbed, wailed, or whimpered for two hours straight and that lamenting was completely exhausting. This was the first time I experienced how rehearsing a theatrical production could affect your real life. The emotional toll of even pretending to lament took on my soul was very real. I became depressed and couldn’t wait for the show to wrap. 

Over the next couple of years, it would take me over sporadically- at home in bed, in the shower, during my neighborhood walks or while I was driving down the street. Lamenting forced me to express my grief. It was the kind of weeping that when you let all the air out, your face stays frozen in a tortuous way, trying its best to let out more sound, but it can’t, because you are completely out of air. Automatically you’re forced to gasp in more air only to let it out again in the same desperate sob. 

A Prescription for Sorrow 

STRONG BODY, STRONG MIND

My healthy habits around diet and exercise weren’t a complete match for grief. But, I’m confident it helped to cope with the stress and helped me stay more resilient as I walked through trying to figure it all out. I was addicted to the 20 minute post-workout, very real feeling of “I’m going to be okay/it’s all going to be okay” even though I knew that the feeling would too quickly fade. I did struggle with losing my appetite and lost weight I didn’t have to lose. I was very aware of it, and became intentional about nourishing my body with healthy foods the best I felt I could. My Yoga Teacher Training I was still immersed in was truly a blessing of timing. The patient, thoughtful practice I was learning kept my mind in a more rational and present place MOST of the time. 

Thank Jesus for wine. Not exactly the healthiest way to cope, I took the Proverbs advice to give “wine unto those that be of heavy heart” quite seriously and drank way too much of it most weeks. (Prov. 31:6)

THERAPY 

During the first few months of therapy I mostly listened to the therapist and my husband dig down to discover “the why”. Learning why he sought affirmation from women and used sex to cope, I hoped,  would bring a level of understanding. I hoped creating the simple awareness around “the why” alongside his new transparency would convince me he was now on a new path and we could move forward. As we uncovered and discovered, I was truly heartbroken for my husband and the stories he shared that seemed to be responsible for his own human brokenness. But then there were also therapy sessions where I held back screaming at him, “A lot of people have dealt with a lot more shit in their past than this and turn out to be decent human beings that don’t hurt other people!”  

What I shared with the therapist in our remaining minutes was how stuck I continued to feel. I asked for tools I could use to get past the triggers I’d experience through the week that were holding me hostage. 

“Triggered”. God. Who was I!? I now said things like “triggered”, and asked my husband questions like, “How was your SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) meeting?” and celebrated with him how many days sober he claimed. 

We stopped going to church because I was triggered. One of the “other women” sang in the choir there. When we heard she left the church and tried going back, it was all I could do to sit through a service without sobbing through it. After attending a wedding together, I refused to attend another until I knew I was ready. The vows were too painful for me to witness. I was triggered anytime we were around another young girl in a crop top or if anything slightly sexual was in a movie or on tv.  

The trouble of knowing the women your husband had sexual encounters with, is that your brain can paint a VERY clear picture of what probably happened. I couldn’t stop the stories my brain insisted on creating or from putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I had nightmares constantly over the next year and a half. Many included the other women just being present in the dream as I begged them to leave. In more disturbing dreams, I became violent with them. I’d twist their arm and just keep twisting it as hard as I could or I’d pull the hair out of their head, but they would just laugh and carry on like we were best of friends. I tried to commit suicide in one dream. Cutting myself deeper and deeper with a knife, I was frustrated that I could see the blood and feel the pain, but I was still here. So deeply disturbed by this, I shared this dream with the therapist hoping he’d tell me that this was totally normal and that it didn’t mean I REALLY wanted to die.

SELF, LESS

With my job as a personal trainer, coach, and studio manager, I get to pour into others each and every day. The more intentional I am about this, the happier I am. My business and the work involved gave me a place to forget the pain and the struggle for periods throughout the day. I cannot even begin to express how important this aspect of my life was for getting through the grief.

In the two months after my husband's confession, I had put a pause on finding a new building that would help me expand the fitness studio and allow for more growth. But as some of the shock of his revelation started to settle and we were deep into repair mode, I chose to press on. It gave me purpose byond trying to figure out how to repair myself and my marriage. I signed a lease on a new building and over the next year, while my personal life felt like it was falling apart, Body By Hannah grew by 100%, exactly. I found joy in pouring into my clients. I found joy in watching my trainer’s grow. I found joy in witnessing the impact our little fitness studio had in the community. The most powerful prescription for treating grief was “self, less; others, more”.

The Magic of Ibiza 

Just over a year and a half into our battle, I left for the tiny Spanish island, Ibiza, where I was instructing at a fitness retreat. I arrived a week earlier than the retreat I would instruct to attend another retreat on the island. I was eager to have some time by myself and hopefully figure out a way to move forward. I was still feeling completely, embarrassingly stuck. My therapist encouraged me week after week to “get off the fence, and jump in” and I swore that’s what I was doing!  

One of the visualization activities on my retreat was to write a letter to our future self. These letters were to be mailed to us a year from the date we wrote them. In my letter I painted a picture with words of a happy restored married. Our marriage was better than ever. 

In another activity, we were guided through a session of intense breathwork. Breathwork techniques are used to reduce stress, calm your mind, energize your body, bring clarity and inspiration, and allow you to go deeper into yourself. This particular session was very intense. Individual experience with breathwork is unique and varies. You may be moved to emotional tears, laughter, or you may just leave feeling energized.
Halfway through my own practice, I felt my fingers curl like I was clutching something tightly in my hands. As much as I tried, I couldn’t release my fingers. It was uncomfortable and frustrated me as I tried to extend my fingers out to stretch. My throat began to tighten up so intensely that I got scared.  I quit the practice early and laid there with tears streaming down the side of my temples. 

As a group we reflected on our unique experiences. When I shared mine, the instructor asked me if there was something I was having a hard time letting go of and said that it was interesting that my throat chakra seemed to seize up. She asked if there was maybe something I was having a hard time expressing or wasn’t saying that I needed to say?

My week at the camp was emotional and intense. But exploring that tiny magical island was the best therapy I could have asked for. I completely fell in love with Ibiza like I have no other place I’ve ever been. 

When I got back, I explained to our therapist in a one on one session that being away for those two weeks was the happiest and most care free I’ve felt in the past year and a half. He just shrugged and said, “Well that’s because you haven’t had your problem staring you in the face every day.” As our session went on and I explained for the zillionth time that I still felt very stuck with how to move forward in my marriage, he encouraged me to “try something different”. He was aware that up until this point I wouldn’t even let my mind consider the possibility of divorce because I thought it would make healing harder. He wanted me to picture myself in a life without my husband and in our next session we’d reflect. I hesitantly agreed to do this. On the drive home, for the first time in 18 months, I allowed myself to picture what my life would look like without my marriage. Immediately, an overwhelming sense of peace filled my every cell and I was giddy. I had the clarity I had been desperately seeking and it was crystal clear. That night, I told my husband our marriage was over. 

I didn’t know what lay ahead, but I knew what it was time to leave behind. Subconsciously I had kept tabs of the instinctual deception I sensed over the years. I responded by building up a concrete fortress around my heart to protect it and this fortress wasn’t cracking. The damage done was too great. I couldn’t find it in me to trust again the person who vowed to keep me the safest. I still didn’t trust his great self development, the new transparency, or that his recovery journey was genuine. It was time to let go of my fear of losing my person and our family. I needed to let go of my fear of being seen as a failure and the fear of being judged by others. It was time to walk away with peace that God is always faithful- knowing that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

(Un) Faithful: Gut Intuition

“Intuition literally means learning from within. Most of us were not taught how to use this sense, but all of us know well that “gut” feeling. Learn to trust your inner feelings and it will become stronger. Avoid going against your better judgement or being talked into things that just don’t make sense”
— Doe Zantamata

Read the first part of the story HERE

Let’s Go Back

I had to have had some clue, right? The scale of my husbands infidelity seemed so grande that surely I hadn’t been completely duped.

One of the biggest challenges I faced for being able to move forward was with myself. Part of my healing had to be the ability to trust my husband again, but how could I do that? Because now, I’d lost complete trust in myself! I questioned my ability to know what was real, what wasn’t real- what was TRUTH, and what wasn’t. To say I felt completely lost, is an understatement.

So, I started analyzing every part of our relationship…..from the beginning. 

As fiercely independent as I am, I am a sucker for love and have always dreamed of being a wife. It was at a New Orleans themed bar in the theatre district of Manhattan where I first met this handsome guy with piercing blue eyes and a cute dimple on his chin. He was playing the trumpet and singing. His incredible talent attracted me first. We flirted and danced between musical sets and although I wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, I was definitely intrigued by this guy. 

After that night, he travelled back upstate where he was spending the summer teaching at a music camp. Our relationship budded over long conversations on the phone. It was such a stark contrast to what dating had been like in NY in my early 20’s. He was super intelligent, had a playful sense of humor and actively practiced his faith. He directed a choir at a Catholic church in Harlem, had such a big heart for working with children and was passionate about social justice. He was a very working and successful performing artist. He really had so many wonderful qualities. We began dating.

Red Flags

He was very private with his phone and computer. Not even when we were married did I know his cell phone password (I know) and he always held his phone in a way where I couldn’t see it. There was an incident where I saw his computer browser history and even though we were dating it had Match.com on it and porn sites. When an ex girlfriends’ friend reached out to me claiming he was sending inappropriate messages, she attached facebook messages between the two. I pressed him on all of this. But, he was a master at having the perfect explanation or when appropriate, assuring me things would change. And quite possibly I was a master at denial.   

He was extremely charming, romantic, and would dote on me constantly. He had tons of friends who loved him. My friends loved him. Our relationship was mostly full of good times, adventure and what I felt was healthy challenges and growth. He was very communicative. He wrote me love letters. He showered me with attention and affection. He was very vocal over how proud he was of my accomplishments, how beautiful I was, etc. So to reason away these red flags was easier than it should have been. I was SURE he loved me. What I experienced day in and day out was this reality. So when anything uncomfortable came up, I pushed it away as me being “crazy” because it just didn’t make more sense than the way he treated our relationship daily. I really didn’t understand what it was to trust my instincts- to go with my gut.

We got married. 

Fast forward…...

Our third year into marriage we moved to Cleveland, TN. He took a job at a Christian University and I started to rebuild my personal training business from scratch again. I was excited to be changing up the pace from NYC and to really feel like we were building a life together. We bought our first house, we got cars, and I finally got a dog! We were making friends in the community and loved to entertain, so on many occasions we hosted dinners and hangs. We were adjusting well.

We were happy. 

<< BREAKING NEWS >>

“Ashley Madison, an online service that facilitates extramarital affairs, has been hacked. The breach has resulted in the leak of personal information attached to more than 30 million accounts, including those of 10,000 American government officials, a handful of celebrities, a few clergymen and, apparently, very few real female profiles”

I received a call that week from someone very close to my husband. She told me that out of curiosity, she looked up names on the database that had been leaked. In that database was my husband's name and Chattanooga, TN assigned to it. I felt sick. My face was hot. There had to be some mistake. 

I called my husband who was between lessons. Shaking, I filled him in on the call I had just received.

“Hannah, I’m cancelling the rest of my lessons and coming home so we can talk about this right now.” he responded. 

His explanation was that before we ever dated, he set up an online profile out of sheer curiosity but never actually met anyone on Ashley Madison. He didn’t know why it said Chattanooga. Even though I felt disgusted that he would even be curious about a website like AM, I chose once again to push away that gut feeling and believe his word. I mean, this was my husband who woke up with me at 5am in the morning even though he didn’t have to get up until 8, just to make me breakfast and spend time with me before our busy days. He wasn’t capable of something like this! 

In retrospect, I realized this instance was the ultimate turning point in my heart. Something was off. I began to feel more and more distant from my husband.  A hug from him made me recoil. Everything he said and did seemed like such a show. I began to work on figuring out why I felt like I was struggling to connect with him emotionally and physically.

I know…..you would think I’d obviously connect the red flags and my disconnect, but ya’ll, I just didn’t. I thought something was wrong with me. I picked up the Meaning of Marriage to read through for the second time and poured myself into making myself better and making the marriage better. I told him I was going to go to therapy to figure out why I was feeling so emotionally detached, and he encouraged me to go. Yeah, he encouraged me to go figure out what was wrong with me. 

After the bombshell of his confession, part of my reckoning was admitting I clearly saw these red flags early in our dating and I saw them in our marriage, but still questioned what I knew. The gut intuition was always speaking to me but I was persuaded away from them, against my better judgement. I realized that although I pushed these feelings down, they never actually disappeared. They lived in my subconscious and spent their time building up a wall between my heart and my husband, brick by brick…..for protection. For this marriage to be restored, I was going to have to allow God to tear down this wall of protection I’d built up and let Him restore trust in both my husband AND in myself.  

Over the next 18 months, this became my steadfast prayer as I poured myself into The Word, self help books, my yoga practice (where I learned to quiet the noise and listen), and sought guidance from trusted friends. I was completely determined to experience healing and save our marriage.

READ PART THREE

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