Fitness made me fat and here’s how I ACTUALLY got fit (7 mistakes)

Summary

In her journey to achieving her dream body, creator Katarina shares the mistakes she made while trying to get fit. Despite exercising diligently, tracking her macros, and eating clean, she struggled to see the results she desired. Over the years, Katarina implemented numerous diets and fitness regimes, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, she discovered that the key to her success was addressing underlying health issues, regulating her nervous system, adjusting her exercise routines, and adopting a more intuitive eating approach. Through these changes, she finally attained her dream physique without obsessing over dieting or exercising excessively.

Highlights

• Katarina spent 12 years trying to get her dream body, making many mistakes along the way. 😅
• She tried various diets and workouts, including becoming vegan, but saw no results. 🍽️
• Her personal trainer taught her to stop overtraining and focus on recovery. 🏋️‍♀️
• Katarina found that eating intuitively and managing stress were key to her success. 🌱
• She discovered the importance of regulating her nervous system to aid fat loss. 📉
• Fixing her thyroid and iron levels were crucial steps in her fitness journey. ❤️
• Adopting a more intuitive approach to eating and exercising helped her achieve long-desired results. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Intuitive eating over obsessive dieting 📉
• Importance of rest and recuperation 😴
• Pilates and walking over high-intensity workouts 🚶‍♀️
• Regulating the nervous system for better results 🧘‍♀️
• Importance of iron and thyroid health 🩺
• Acknowledging the difference between male and female fitness advice 🚻
• Balancing fitness with life priorities ⚖️

Overview

Katarina begins her story by detailing her initial struggles with weight loss despite following conventional fitness advice. She engaged in various intense workouts and restricted diets but did not achieve the toned body she dreamed of. This led to frustration and a mindset that perhaps she was genetically predisposed to not lose weight easily.

Upon consulting with a personal trainer, Katarina underwent a significant mental and physical shift. She learned that excessive exercise and caloric deficit were detrimental to her metabolism and overall health. This revelation helped her reshape her approach to fitness by incorporating less intense workouts and focusing on rest and recovery.

Katarina emphasizes the importance of a regulated nervous system, intuitive eating, and mindfulness in exercising. She highlights how addressing these areas, along with improving her iron and thyroid health, were critical in her fitness transformation. Her journey underlines the need for a holistic approach to health rather than fixating on traditional dieting and fitness norms.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction & Struggles The chapter 'Introduction & Struggles' begins with the author addressing common problems faced by individuals trying to lose fat. Despite maintaining a strict regimen including clean eating, macro tracking, and regular exercise, the author shares their personal experience of struggling to achieve their dream body for 12 years. This narrative sets the stage for exploring the unexpected mistakes that can hinder fat loss, such as engaging in what is perceived as healthy behavior which may actually thwart progress. The author also recounts experimenting with various diets and exercise routines, including high-intensity training and long-distance running, yet not seeing the desired results in terms of body toning. This chapter aims to debunk common misconceptions about fat loss and provide insights from the author's journey.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Mistake 1: Over-Focus on Diet & Exercise In the first chapter titled 'Mistake 1: Over-Focus on Diet & Exercise,' the speaker discusses their personal journey towards achieving their dream body. They emphasize that despite various attempts, success only came when they rectified certain mistakes. The key takeaway is that weight loss can be achieved without strict dieting or continuous exercise. The speaker suggests that there are seven critical mistakes, which when corrected, naturally led to weight loss for them. They strongly advise viewers to watch the full video to understand how these mistakes relate and recommend not skipping parts for the most effective results.
• 03:30 - 06:30: Turning Point and Change in Approach In this chapter, titled 'Turning Point and Change in Approach,' the narrator shares their fitness journey. They describe how they have always dreamed of having a fit and toned body. Initially, they began working out, running, going to the gym, and eating healthy, which brought some results, but not the desired ones. To refine their approach, they conducted extensive research on how to get toned and achieve abs. The consensus from their research was to 'eat clean and exercise.' The chapter closes with the narrator adopting this newfound advice as they continue their fitness journey.
• 06:30 - 09:30: Mistake 2: Calorie Deficit & Metabolism Issues In this chapter, the author discusses the difficulties of achieving desired results despite adhering to a strict health and fitness regimen. This includes consuming only clean, whole foods and maintaining a rigorous workout schedule comprising cycling, cardio, and intense workouts. The author expresses frustration that their efforts did not yield the expected body composition changes, which led to further reading and comparison with idealized body images on social media platforms. This reflects on common misconceptions in dieting and fitness, particularly focusing on calorie deficits and metabolism issues. Even with meticulous calorie counting and dedication to a healthy lifestyle, achieving the desired physique can remain elusive, pointing to more complex underlying issues than simple calorie calculations.
• 09:30 - 14:30: Mistake 3: Overtraining & Importance of Rest The chapter discusses the common mistake of overtraining and emphasizes the importance of rest. The narrator shares a personal experience of failing to understand why their fitness efforts weren't yielding results and deciding to intensify workouts and diet. They experimented with various sports, believing that intensity or the type of sport might be the key to achieving desired fitness results. Despite these efforts, they realized that overtraining without adequate rest might be counterproductive. The chapter underscores the balance needed between exercise and rest for effective fitness outcomes.
• 14:30 - 19:30: Mistake 4: Nervous System Regulation The chapter discusses the speaker's journey in experimenting with different diets, starting with the belief that dietary changes could be the key to their issues. They initially try becoming vegan, thinking it would resolve their problems. Despite this effort, they do not achieve the desired results and, instead, experience negative side effects such as hair thinning, insomnia, and a decline in academic performance. The chapter highlights the trial-and-error process with various diets and fat loss strategies, ultimately illustrating the challenges of relying solely on diet for health improvements.
• 19:30 - 23:30: Mistake 5: Thyroid Issues & Health Recovery The narrator recounts their struggle with achieving desired fitness results despite their hard work and clean eating habits. Feeling frustrated and devastated, they questioned if their body was inherently unable to get toned. In a desperate move, they hired a personal trainer, which led to a transformative change in their understanding of fitness, although initially, they were resistant to the trainer's guidance and advice.
• 23:30 - 26:30: Mistake 6: Misleading Fitness Advice for Women In this chapter titled "Mistake 6: Misleading Fitness Advice for Women," the narrator reflects on past misconceptions about fitness and health, particularly those specific to women. The narrator acknowledges a period where, despite maintaining a seemingly healthy lifestyle through clean eating and regular movement, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what true health entails. This chapter emphasizes that health transcends diet and exercise; it's about achieving holistic wellness. It points out the mistake of focusing solely on superficial aspects of fitness, such as dieting strictly to lose weight, instead of considering the broader picture of overall bodily health. The real crux is hinted to be discussed further in the chapter, aiming to provide clarity on breaking free from misleading fitness advice that hinders progress.
• 26:30 - 28:00: Mistake 7: More to Life Than Fitness The core message of the chapter "Mistake 7: More to Life Than Fitness" is that achieving physical fitness should be seen as a byproduct of maintaining a healthy system overall. The author emphasizes focusing on overall health rather than isolated metrics like calorie deficit or exercise alone, which, in their experience, was counterproductive at times. They highlight how prioritizing systemic health was the key to achieving their fat loss and fitness goals, overruling previous practices that were not as effective.
• 28:00 - 29:30: Conclusion & Call to Action The conclusion focuses on addressing common misconceptions about fat loss, particularly the idea that eating significantly less will always result in losing fat. The author shares personal experience to explain how prolonged calorie deficit can damage metabolism, and the solution is not simply eating more. This chapter resolves with insights into achieving sustainable fat loss.

Fitness made me fat and here’s how I ACTUALLY got fit (7 mistakes) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 if you're exercising tracking your macros eating clean and still not losing fat you need to hear this it took me 12 years to get my dream body and in this video I'm going to share with you the mistakes I made that I thought were healthy but we're actually sabotaging my fat loss and hear me out I was doing everything right i ate clean i tracked my macros i exercised but still I wasn't getting toned i tried every possible fat loss diet out there i tried every possible form of exercise from heat to running 10 km on an empty stomach first
• 00:30 - 01:00 thing in the morning but nothing worked until I finally cracked the code that got me in my dream body once I fixed these seven mistakes I was making fat literally melted off my body without dieting or exercise and the best part is that anyone can do this these mistakes are timestamped below but I really recommend you watching this entire video from the beginning to an end because these mistakes build on each other and skipping parts of this video might leave you missing some important details that could be the missing part of the puzzle in getting your dream body much quicker
• 01:00 - 01:30 than I did so here's the thing my entire life I dreamed of a fit and toned body basically I wanted to look like this so I started working out and learning about nutrition i started running going to the gym and eating healthy in the beginning I saw some results but not exactly what I wanted i started to look for more advice i read articles and blog posts on how to get toned and get abs all the research I did concluded into this one advice eat clean and exercise so I did i would go for a fasted 10 km run first
• 01:30 - 02:00 thing in the morning after which I would drink a berry smoothie for breakfast in the evenings I would bike 7 km to the gym do a 30-minute cardio session there followed by 1 hour intense workout and then bike back home i calculated calories of each cucumber and carrot and I ate only clean whole foods basically I did everything by the book but yet it didn't work i wasn't getting the results I wanted in fact my body composition was getting even worse i spent evenings reading how can I get toned all these Insta bloggers I followed and these Pinterest girls had such perfect bodies
• 02:00 - 02:30 and I could not understand what was I doing wrong i started thinking could it be that I'm just not trying hard enough maybe I didn't sport enough and ate too much so I doubled down i worked out even harder and ate even cleaner i started experimenting different types of sports thinking that maybe the type of the sport I'm doing has something to do with it maybe heat is the answer to getting rid of my muffin top and getting my way snatched or maybe cycling or skating didn't do a difference then I thought
• 02:30 - 03:00 okay then it must be something about diet i started experimenting with different diets and then I found about becoming vegan i was so sure that that is the answer so that's how I became vegan however I still didn't see the apps I wanted in fact I started to get order side effects my hair started thinning i couldn't sleep at nights and my school performance started to go down i literally tried every diet out there every fat loss hack every possible form
• 03:00 - 03:30 of sport and nothing worked i was so frustrated so devastated why wasn't it working for me where are my abs why I'm not getting toned when I am working this hard and eating this clean i even started to think that maybe my body is just built this way and I can never achieve the results I'm after out of desperation I hired personal trainer which changed everything I had learned about fitness but at first I couldn't accept her advice i even questioned her
• 03:30 - 04:00 professionalism but turns out I was making the biggest mistake possible the one that kept me stuck for years we'll get to that soon but first let me tell you where I went wrong what I was doing back then was far from being healthy although yes I ate clean and I moved my body but being healthy is so much more than just what you eat and losing fat and getting toned goes far beyond just eating a salad for lunch to get in shape your body has to be healthy as a whole and once that's achieved losing fat
• 04:00 - 04:30 happens effortlessly being in shape being fit is a byproduct of a healthy system healthy body so focusing on your entire health is the key to losing fat and I'll continue telling what did I do to achieve this state where my body just melted in few months into something that I worked so hard for over a decade which brings me to my second mistake that was sabotaging my fat loss you know how they say that calorie deficit and exercise give you abs well that advice ruined my
• 04:30 - 05:00 body and this is actually the most common mistake people do myself included and I know this is hard to comprehend in your head when logically thinking if you don't eat much you should be losing fat right in theory this works but on practice it is not that simple let me explain my problem was that I was on a calorie deficit for way too long which ended up wrecking my metabolism and to recover to fix that I had to start eating more but eating more isn't what did the trick fat loss wise here is what
• 05:00 - 05:30 did after I had recovered psychologically from starving my body and I had learned that eating more is fine I started to think about food all the time what will I eat for breakfast lunch snack dinner will the division of macros be good the food weight and calorie and macro calculating apps were part of my daily tasks i ate as every gym person does oats eggs chicken and broccoli rice etc i felt constantly full and sluggish i started to blame dairy
• 05:30 - 06:00 for making me feel sluggish or maybe it's the wheat or something else now in addition to not being able to lose fat I also started to notice that the food I'm eating isn't making me feel good although it is maybe something that my personal trainer said me to do but what I knew for sure is that I wasn't feeling good i realized that I cannot continue living this way i don't want to be this obsessed about food for the rest of my life and I don't want to feel this way full and sluggish and for God's sake I
• 06:00 - 06:30 just want to lose fat why does it have to be this complicated so I realized I cannot continue living this way either so I decided to just it so to say i decided to relax stop everything I was doing and let go and suddenly I had cracked the freaking code so here's the thing i started getting the results I wanted once I stopped obsessing over food i stopped starving myself but I also stopped stuffing myself i stopped calculating calories i stopped weighing
• 06:30 - 07:00 my food or tracking macros i stopped limiting foods and instead I started just eating normal food still healthy yes but just normal home-cooked meals my eating became intuitive i only eat when I'm hungry and not because my diet plan saves me that I have to eat at 3 p.m a snack although I'm still full as from the lunch I ate it's really simple if I crave for something I eat it if I'm full I stop eating i don't follow a certain diet or avoid certain foods unless I have to because of an allergy
• 07:00 - 07:30 intolerance or other health reasons i do avoid anything that's artificial or processed or it's just not good for your health it's also very simple if it's natural I eat it if it's not I most likely don't however I do still sometimes eat a candy bar or chocolate or chips the key here is being balanced and I really strongly believe that intuitive eating is the answer coming from a person who has literally tried it all these are the food habits that have done the biggest change for me but it is
• 07:30 - 08:00 not only the food habits alone that allowed me to lose fat and getting toned which brings me to my third mistake that was ruining my fat loss now that I think back it's almost ironic how I run 10 km every morning and got fatter but here's why working out made me fatter because I overtrained meaning it was in flight or fight mode and in this state it is not possible to lose fat no matter what you do it's not possible so what you got to do is you need to rest you need to eat more and you need to rest and my
• 08:00 - 08:30 personal trainer demanded me to stop exercising and instead focus on recovering my body which can take even few years to recover and indeed for me it took five years to fully recover but it was definitely worth it after recovery I finally saw the results I had been chasing for over a decade but not in a way that you might think here's the thing what I had to learn the hard way is that in order to lose fat you actually have to exercise quite little
• 08:30 - 09:00 which again goes against the common advice move more eat less and you'll lose fat three times 1 hour a week is more than enough i started to see the biggest results when I switched from hours at the gym to 40 to one hour max and even better when I switched gym to Pilates not a reformer or anything just simple home piladas it's the best thing I've ever done for my body because when I used to train at the gym I always had this problem that my tights used to be quite uh thick and I always hold into
• 09:00 - 09:30 water weight and once I switched to pilates I've never had this problem with muscular legs or water weight ever since further I replaced 10 km runs with 1 hour walks which also was a big game changer in getting toned and losing fat so going from high intensity to low intensity exercise is what did the trick for me to start losing fat and getting toned exercise-wise but there was something even more important I had to fix first which brings me to my fourth
• 09:30 - 10:00 mistake that was ruining my fat loss and if you don't fix this you could be wasting years same way as I did i mean imagine spending over a decade working on your dream body without seeing any results that was me and the worst part was that I did not understand why but now I finally know what was the problem so here's the thing everything I did in the beginning of my health journey was wrecking my nervous system overeating underex exercising etc and only when my nervous system was regulated I started
• 10:00 - 10:30 to see results not because of eating healthy or exercising but because I had a regulated nervous system the thing is you can sport all you want but if your nervous system is not at rest you will not see the results you're after cuz the truth is that you don't even need to be on a diet or exercise in order to lose fat all you need is a regulated nervous system then the fat will literally melt off your body while you're laying on your couch eating chocolate so here's what I did to regulate my nervous system in addition to what I already mentioned eating more and exercising less there
• 10:30 - 11:00 are three more things that I did to regulate my nervous system that allowed me to get toned and lose fat finally one I ended a toxic emotionally abusive relationship i was 4 years in a relationship that was really challenging and it wasn't going good at all it was toxic and emotionally abusive and only once I ended it and I am now in a peaceful and a calm relationship where we support each other my body composition has changed so much so get yourself a man that will calm your
• 11:00 - 11:30 nervous system and not f it up the second thing I did to regulate my nervous system which I still underestimate to this day and this might be an obvious one but I feel like I need to say this because once I fixed this I saw how big impact it had and it's sleeping enough just like our pup is right now doing here he knows what's good and the last thing I did to regulate my nervous system is purpose and self-actualization related but I started doing things I like doing i started prioritize work life balance aka study life balance slowing down
• 11:30 - 12:00 following my heart enjoying life a little bit more so the key word is avoiding stress and I know it's impossible to eliminate it from your life completely but listening to your body will do a lot for you and what I mean is that if you're stressed maybe doing a highintensity workout is not a good idea that's not what your body will appreciate right now but instead it would appreciate Pilates or yoga followed by a deep breath session or having a walk in nature and I know it's a hard pill to swallow cuz it goes it
• 12:00 - 12:30 really goes against the common advice eat less and sport more to lose fat but nope girls it's not true all you need is a calm regulated nervous system because not having a calm nervous system can cause you even more problems which will deepen the fat loss problem even more which brings me to my fifth mistake that was ruining my fat loss and this is the most important had I not fixed this I would have never lost fat or seen my body getting toned and this could be your case too my healthy lifestyle that
• 12:30 - 13:00 I was practicing back in the days did a big damage on my overall health and one of the biggest complications it caused was a malfunctioning turoid aka hypothyroidism which was the biggest blocker standing in my way to losing fat hypothyroidism means that your thyroid is not working quick enough healthy function of a thyroid is so crucial because it plays a big role in metabolism basically it controls it and if the thyroid is slow no amount of exercise or dieting will do a difference
• 13:00 - 13:30 this was my case so if you cannot lose weight no matter what you're doing there might be underlying health issues that needs to be resolved first once I fixed my thyroid my body started to function normal again if I went on a calorie deficit I would actually see results which was so rewarding when you've been struggling with this for over a decade but here's the thing what fixed my thyroid was what I did during those years recovering eating more sporting less prioritizing rest avoiding stress
• 13:30 - 14:00 and calming down my nervous system i did not use medications to fix it and one more thing that played the biggest part in fixing my thyroid was fixing my iron levels and even more importantly feritin levels because iron plays a big part in thyroid function and due to all the dieting I did during those years my iron levels and even more importantly feritin levels were totally empty i started taking pills and after 3 months oh my
• 14:00 - 14:30 god I saw so crazy results my hair started to grow i started to have so much energy i felt so much better and next time I went to do my blood tests my thyroid was fixed now my body was functioning normal and I could see results I was after so here's what I meant when I said in the beginning that it's not about the food you eat or how much you exercise it's about your health as a whole getting my dream body had nothing to do with pushing harder at the gym or cutting more calories it was
• 14:30 - 15:00 about actually getting healthy of course you still need to eat healthy of course you need to eat less and move more in order to lose fat but if you overdo it it goes against you working hard is not the answer don't fight your body but work with it this is a major mindset shift that I had to go through that was really hard for me at first switching from that work harder to more slower and intuitive approach which brings me to my sixth mistake that was ruining my fat loss the fitness advice I followed literally ruined my body because most of
• 15:00 - 15:30 the fitness advice out there is for men and it does not work for women we got to understand that the male and female bodies are built different and a lot of the fitness advice out there is from the male perspective so no wonder it wasn't working and got my body completely wrecked women need to be more intuitive with everything listen to our bodies do we feel strong today or do we need something more soothing some days you also need to eat more than others and avoiding certain foods can be seriously damaging your health for example
• 15:30 - 16:00 avoiding saturated fats is the biggest mistake a woman can do i used to avoid them like the plague but that seriously ruined my health here is why we need fats healthy but also saturated fats for our hormones to work well i used to avoid eating cheese butter milk and I felt so bad and so weak my face was full of painful pimples my hair was super weak and hormones totally out of balance but when I incorporated products containing saturated fats again back
• 16:00 - 16:30 into my diet I've never been healthier felt better or looked better if you are a healthy individual like you don't have diabetes or any other health complications you don't get fat from certain foods there is no special diet to lose weight and you cannot lose weight in one place specific place only that all is just created by the fitness industry i also want to mention that body types are different and that's normal this is genetics you cannot fight this another thing that the women also
• 16:30 - 17:00 need to understand and accept is that your body composition will change during the month a week before my period I cannot wear certain pants of mine and with years I've learned it's okay i didn't get fat because of the chocolate bar I ate yesterday evening it's my periods this is just something we need to learn to live with and instead of punish our bodies we need to learn to nourish them because when we do this is also when we start to feel our best look our best and also perform at our best which brings me to my seventh mistake
• 17:00 - 17:30 that was ruining my fat loss there is more to life than just being in shape and when something starts to be such of an obsession that it starts to affect other parts of your life it should be a red flag for you like for me because of my obsession my school performance started to go down and when I fixed my habits and started to take care of myself I started to notice big changes in my performance not only that I got my dream body but I also started to feel more energetic and my brain efficiency improved insanely much i started
• 17:30 - 18:00 learning new things super easy and quick i could stay productive for 8 to 10 hours a day without having dips in energy however I simply couldn't fit everything into this one video so to learn more about improving your productivity watch this video [Music]