How to Get Stronger: In Praise of Strength Training

Will Big Announcement here at New Christian Impress, White Knights and Reviling Wives from David Edgerton and the Boniface option from Andrew Isker are both in stock and shipping now. Head to NewChristianImpress.com to order your copies, and hey, if you order both in the same order, you'll automatically get 15% off. And now on with the show. This episode is brought to you by Humble Love Magnesium Cream, Great for Sleep, Stress and Pain. Today we continue a new series we hope will be helpful to you in your pursuit of faith and fruitfulness in the duties God has put before you. In this series entitled, "On Being Human," we're working through four parts of what it means to be human. Four areas of life where a man or a woman can pursue excellence, fruitfulness, virtue and honor. The physical, the spiritual, the social, the vocational. In the physical, we're talking about the body, physical fitness, nutrition, appearance, and generally taking care of ourselves in such a way as to be able to do our duties in the body with joy. In the spiritual, we're talking about personal piety and virtue. Spiritual disciplines in the whole soul pursuit of the life of faith. In the social, we're talking about social graces, emotional aptitude, friendliness, hospitality and more. The art and science of being a normal and likable person who is not super weird and awkward. And in the vocational, we're talking about achievement, about pursuing excellence in work, whatever it is that God has put in front of you. In the last episode in this series, we began to consider the first category, the physical, talking about the body. We presented and defended a thesis that Christians ought to exercise discipline in seeking bodily strength, health, and beauty for God's glory in the good of their people. Now that's all well and good to say, but the much bigger question is a simple, "How? How do we seek bodily strength, health and beauty, particularly in the midst of a rich, full Christian life?" After all, most of us have many duties in front of us from day to day and week to week. In this episode of BrightHearth, we'll be focusing in on the first part of that challenge, strength. How, and I mean very practically how, can we grow in physical strength, will address different stages of life and circumstances along the way. For example, how a homemaker and mother can navigate strength training in the midst of babies and toddlers. Before we get into it, let me share a few motivating points of interest to show you why we would take an entire episode of BrightHearth to talk about something that might seem, for lack of a better word, so "unspiritual." Don't forget what we talked about last episode on that front. There is nothing spiritual about being physically weak and unable to do your duties before God and man due to neglect, laziness, or bad habits. There is nothing spiritual about aging before your time through a lack of discipline, leaving you with a body that can't play with your own grandkids or walk up a flight of stairs without a coronary event. The connection between physical strength and overall longevity and health is very strong. Strength training, like lifting weights or doing resistance exercises, isn't just about building muscle. It's a powerful way to add years to your life and improve how you feel every day. Studies show that even a moderate amount of resistance training, such as 30 to 60 minutes per week, can lower your risk of dying from any cause up to 27%. At heart disease deaths, by about 19% and reduce cancer mortality by around 14%. When combined with cardio activities like walking or running, these benefits skyrocket. Slashing overall death risk by as much as 40%. This means that regularly challenging your muscles doesn't just make you stronger, it actively fights against the leading causes of early death, helping you live a longer life. But even beyond this benefit, strength training improves heart health, lowers the risk of diabetes, helps control blood sugar, improves bone density with age, helps maintain a healthy body composition, increases your metabolism, sharpens your mental clarity, and a whole lot of other things and not only extend life, but make it more enjoyable. So do you want to be around to serve your family, provide for your wife and leave an inheritance to your children, see your grandchildren worshiping God in the sanctuary with you, then you need to get resistance training into your schedule. As our brother Paul teaches us in Colossians 3-23-24, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive an inheritance as your reward, you are serving the Lord Christ. Passages like these should urge us onward, not only to spiritual virtues, but bodily virtues as well. A strong body, cultivated with discipline, is a tremendous servant of the well-ordered spirit. A strong body helps us work heartily for God's glory and good of our people. So join us in this episode of BrightHearth as we talk all about the pursuit of strength for the service of God. Well, welcome back to BrightHearth, everybody. We are glad to be here on this fine, fine, I mean, I don't know if it's early fall, but not yet. Close? Not yet, almost there. Well, for the listeners it is. It's fall for sure. It's October 13th for the listeners when this episode releases. For us it's more like an undisclosed time in September. How are you doing this morning? My girl. Good. How are you? Doing good. How do you like reading cold opens? It's great. It's great. It's great. I'm really good at it. Halfway through Mexico's. This is long. Sorry, babe. I'll read the next one. I wanted to give you the opportunity for people to hear your chipper voice first instead of. I really don't mind it, but it's actually harder to do than a lot of people might think it is, but at least I'm not in front of a camera. So. Oh, man. You throw in the teleprompter situation like hot and cause. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. It took a while to figure out how to. Anytime Evan has a camera around me, I'm like, what's that for? Why is that here? What are you doing with that? What's that down? Evan. Stop it. Get out of here. I mean, well, I'm excited for this episode and the few couple episodes in a row here that we're going to be doing on the body. I think this is just such a neglected aspect of piety. It's a neglected aspect of productive Christian home making and how to actually build a productive Christian house. One thing that struck me thinking about this episode ahead of time and preparing and reading different studies and things like that and PubMed and was just how important it is to think of this topic rightly from the beginning as I always talk about wanting intergenerational legacy. And how am I going to do that if I set myself up to be crippled and maybe dead by the time I'm 60, right? That's like one of the worst things I could do to be helpful to my generations. And that was a new thought for me. I know we've thought about longevity before, but just like connecting those thoughts of, man, we talk all the time about how the goal is to equip the next generation to see them prosper, flourish, help set them up. And if I steal 20 to 30 years of my own strength from them because of inactivity or laziness or bad habits, then I'm sinning against them by omission. So that was a new thought. And I understand that there are all sorts of caveats and asterisks that people might have. Someone might die at 60, not because they didn't strength train for some other reason. So I'm not, this isn't like a guaranteed outcome sort of thing. We're talking about habits in this episode. Before we jump into the main topic, a little bit of housekeeping. We do have some, some big news here on BrightHearth. And that is that we're going to be going back to weekly episodes. We're going to be going back to weekly episodes starting on Monday, November 10th, 2025. So if you're listening to this in 2027, then tell us what's going on in America, please. Because I don't, is it still there? But you might have, you know, you're like, of course, I've been listening to this thing for years now. But we had been biweekly for some time, our recording and production schedule was really difficult. We're trying to record in the evenings and kind of like after kids were in bed, we've tried a couple different slots. But we have jimmied around the schedule. I don't know. That's the right word. And we figured out a really reliable time slot and a way to get back to our, what we really prefer, which is a weekly recording schedule for BrightHearth. And so that's again, just a few weeks from now, there'll be this episode here on October 13th. Then we'll have the next one on October 27th, where we're going to be talking about this one's on strength training. We'll be talking about weight loss and body composition, weight management more on the 27th. And then two more weeks to November 10th, that Monday, and then it'll be the 10th, 17th, 24th and onward going back to weekly episodes. And a couple other notes about this, we, because of this new production schedule as well, we are also going to be able to release these episodes much earlier for our patrons. So if you're a supporter on patreon.com/brightHearth, then you're going to continue getting the episodes, main episodes out free as usual, but you're also going to be getting them about a week early, every single week. And then also we'll be doing weekly in the kitchen episodes, connected to each episode sometimes or not always connected to the main episode, but often some practical application or expansion of the main point in the episode or further discussion. And we'll be releasing those as well on patreon the day after the main episode came out. So there'll be a, every Monday, get a main, main episode early and add free. And then the following, the day after that Tuesday, we'll be releasing in the kitchen episodes. Recent episodes there include things like having, how to have hard conversations with a friend, to how to dress for your husband. Like there have been, they're very practical is what I'm getting at. For example, in the kitchen that will release for patrons the day after this episode comes out on their feed, is going to be looking at some of the different strength training programs that Lexi in particular has done, a lot of them geared towards women. And these have been programs she's even paid for and talk specifically about which ones might be worth it, what she got from different ones. And some of her favorite resources more practically and particularly there. So if you like BrightHearth and you want to support the show and what we do at new Christian press. That's a great way to do it. Just chip in a few bucks a month on Patreon and it helps us continue to pay all of our employees, all the hands that touch the show. Keep it going devote the time to it that we really believe is necessary for these important subjects. And hey, it is October, but Christmas is coming up and not only could you buy some of Lexi's books, another way to promote or support the show for Christmas gifts this year, but you can actually gift somebody a Patreon membership. They added this last year. That's cool. Yeah, that's cool. So if you go to the main page like patreon.com/brightHearth, there is a little button. I think it's right below the tears. You'll see it and it's like gift a membership and you can give somebody up to a year. You can pick a month to a year and send them a, you know, pick which tier you want to gift to them. So keep that on your list if you're looking for Christmas gifts. Also if you're listening to this on December 23rd and you did not get somebody a gift, you think they would like that. It's great because it's digital. It's instant. So there, you don't have to wait for shipping and you could be like, you know, I was thinking long in the past about thoughtfully thinking about you. And I decided to get you this membership there. You get all the past in the kitchen episodes, all the, this is making me feel really behind on Christmas. I feel so ahead because I've done nothing, but it's September. So I mean like, when do you start thinking about Christmas December 12th probably? Oh my goodness. December 13th. And then my first thought is panic, panic and then I think, oh, but I have a wife. And then my panic subsides. And I think I just have to get a gift for my wife because I have a wife. She is the gift that gets the gifts for everybody else. Husbands, tell us in the comments if you're like me. Yeah, but Christmas, well, Christmas for me starts right after Thanksgiving, which means I'm behind already because I have a lot of things giving advent, yeah, yeah, yeah, excellent. If you're like us, you're intentional with how you care for your family. What they eat, read, even how they rest. But most people don't realize chronic magnesium deficiency is common. That's why we use humble loves magnesium cream made by a husband and wife team. It's crafted with real nourishing ingredients, no synthetics ever. Hope for the whole family, gentle for kids and strong enough to bring deep relief. Make it part of your daily routine by visiting the humble life store dot com. That's the humble life store dot com and use code ncp 15. That's all caps ncp one five for 15% off your first jar. When you have a busy house, the immediate demands of activities, events and never ending to do lists can overshadow critical long term decisions. Life insurance, financial planning, education savings and retirement are continually backburnered. Joe Garracy and his team from backwards planning financial will help you maximize financial tools, management and strategies. So you can focus on your home and have confidence for your financial future. Visit backwardsplanningfinancial.com. That is backwardsplanningfinancial.com or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to develop a plan for the future. Look bright heart listeners, my lawyers have told me that I'm not allowed to guarantee that using indigo sundry soap company products will make you more attractive, but I am guaranteeing that that is true. If you're looking for premium handmade soaps without the seed oils or other nasty hormone disruptors, then you need to check out our partners at indigo sundry soap company. You can find them at indigo sundry soap.com and hey, if you use code BrightHearth, all caps BrightHearth, you get 10% off your order. So check it out and subscribe to one of their regular deliveries today. A good morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. You read your Bible, review your to-do list and drink a great cup of coffee. So why would you want bad tasting mass-produced coffee? Lux Coffee is a Christian-owned coffee roaster that offers intentionally sourced single-origin coffee beans. If you believe that convenience is the death of quality, that's why they spend their time roasting small batches of beans to make sure that every cup of coffee tastes delicious. Start your day with coffee that is crafted for the new Christendom. You can go to luxcoffee.co and use code ncp15 that's all caps ncp15 for 15% off your hand-crafted coffee. And of course that link is in the description below. Sorry, we can talk about that some other time. Two last notes on housekeeping. If you're going to get some copies of Lexi's book for gifts this Christmas, make sure you buy them all at once because you'll get, if you use that bulk 15, all caps bulk 1, 5 discount code. You get 15% off and it's free shipping. So just pro tip there on how to be as cost effective on buying those as possible. Okay. And last thing, I just want to shout out a haunted cause. Most thing we're doing right now because it's October 13th. Oh, yeah. Wednesday in October, we are releasing a special version of haunted cosmos. We've never done before called graveyard shift. So the first a 15th, there's already two of them out. The next one will come out two days from when this episode drops and their interviews actually, in this case with listeners with, but people we know locally and their stories, like they're own some, we've got people who grew up in families where witchcraft was being practiced, in criticism with Roman Catholic witchcraft, even like really weird stuff. We've got people who were deep in a psychedelics until they listened to the episode of haunted cosmos on psychedelics and then they were like, oh, this is bad. So we interviewed those people. They told their stories. It's a really great series. The best place to see it, we did film it. So you can go over to our YouTube channel, haunted cosmos YouTube channel and catch those episodes or they're in the podcast feed there for haunted cosmos. Make 'em out. I think they're really exciting because we were able to do a lot of pastoral, like some of the main pastoral themes of haunted cosmos came out a lot more because we're talking at an actual Christian here and it's dealt with these things. So there you go. So like I said, this episode, it's all about bodily strength. We're not going to talk about weight loss really in this episode. I know they, I know they, the one tends to serve the other, but they are two different things, but they are connected. We'll talk about how they're connected. But don't think we're forgetting in this episode that, that element of the body. We will get to it next, next episode. This episode is all about strength training. So if you remember the thesis we introduced, it's that Christians ought to exercise discipline in actively seeking bodily strength, health and even beauty for the glory of God and the good of their people. We defended that thesis last episode, talked about some principles for it. But today we're going to be just applying it. How do we seek specifically that first thing, bodily strength? We are not experts here. This is not the advice of a physical trainer or a doctor. If you, before you go embark on some crazy program, you know, make sure that you're doing it in a safe way. But I do think it's actually helpful that we are pretty ordinary on this front because this isn't our whole thing. Like we're not coming at this from someone who, this is their main hobby or livelihood. And so this is more of an episode where it's like, hey, we're an ordinary married couple talking about how not to be fat or flimsy. Right. Would you agree with that? Yes. Pretty ordinary. Pretty ordinary. You think? That was one like she was supposed to say, no, babe, you're elite. Oh, well, I'm thinking of myself and I'll skill you. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm crushed. I'm crushed. I'm crushed. She was supposed to say, you're the stronger. You're the stronger. We all know I'm not naturally athletic. My friends have been trying to get me to play tennis for weeks. And I have played. But you finally told me like the other week, you're like, it's okay that you don't like tennis. I prefer that you're this way. You are free to not have to play tennis. You be you. I like, I'm into you. I'm not into like some version of you where you are. I know. That was helpful for you to say. Love tennis or something. Because of that, I feel extra like clumsy and not. Yeah. Anyways. But I do feel like because I believe so much in these things, I do think it's important and I have actually had to stretch in the way I think about this, which is, I've had to like it the way I want to like it, not the way like some other Instagrammer might like it, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I think it's worth noting too that like someone might think, oh, you know, Lexi, you're so beautiful, you're, you're, you've, you've probably never struggled with weight at all. But I want you to hear as we talk about these things that it's not as if we have just drifted through life on these issues. These are things that both of us in different ways have had to devote focused attention to. Yeah. And be really intent like disciplined about it, especially being pregnant so many times back. Yes. Like it is so easy to let go of the rope. I've not always strength trained, but I have always exercised. Yeah. And thought a lot about food. Yes. Yeah. For me, I am even more naturally inclined to be a fat person. I think then like I am just naturally, it would be easy for me. I'll put it that way to be very unhealthy and fat. If I, and I've, I've been, I've weighed more than I want to. Before we'll talk about that, weight loss episode, things like that. And so again, we're just normal people. It is a little bit annoying sometimes when you're like, welcome to the show. My name is eight pack McGee and I have been lifting since I was six months old. I have a $70,000 gym in my basement, and that's not us. We have a rag tag collection of second hand weightlifting equipment that we have cobbled together over the last couple of years. This is the first time we've ever had a garage to put in. I was going to say I started strength training before we had an actual quote, quote, "gym." So if that's your excuse, gotcha. So in this episode, we want you to see ordinary people can do this. You don't have to have a million dollars. You don't have to have a huge amount of space. It is about discipline and, and the right information, exercise, executed with discipline, consistently. Okay. So last week, we did talk about some of these ditches of laziness and vanity when it comes to the body. I just want to start again by asking, how can we begin any effort to gain physical strength within awareness of those ditches, of laziness on the one side, vanity on the other. You don't want to be in either of those ditches, any just 30 second tips that you'd say on that. This is really weird, but I actually find it more helpful to learn this from men for that reason because I'm not tempted to compare my body to his body. Oh, like a male strength trainer. Yes. So I have noticed that I actually don't, I mean, the term healthy mama gals, I follow them as female most closely, but they're not strength trainers. So I'm not looking at them regularly. But when I have tried to follow women on this, that is something that I'm like, I can't get frustrated. But I'm like, well, it's because you have two kids and they're basically adults and you have more time than I do to dedicate to this. So I've had to be really careful of like, no, I actually do find it more helpful to talk to my husband to learn from male YouTubers to talk to the men around me about this because I'm not tempted in that same way, either towards vanity or like despair and frustration. Yeah, totally. Does that make sense? Yeah, I get to actually get that 100%. I think that ladies can have, there's a particular kind of comparison trap that is very, it's tempting or it's easy to fall into with ladies. Well, and two, there's one strength trainer that comes to mind, I don't think she's a Christian, but like she's in her 40s and had two kids over 10 years ago, she didn't use her body the same way I did. So it actually, in that sense, isn't helpful for me. Like it is learning from, you know, the trimelthy mom and gals, or women in my group too. We have a fabulous group of strength training women at our church. Totally. So, and they're very helpful and they understand what the body is for. So that's something I've had to be careful of, like, I need to remember, they don't view this the same way that I do. Yeah. I think it's very helpful when you're thinking about laziness or vanity in the body and strength training to think, to constantly be coming back to the fundamental, what is this for? Yes. And that's the guard, because it helps you direct all the different aspects of what it's for rightly, because it'd be easy to say, well, strength training and weight loss these things, they're not for beauty or sexiness. That's actually not true. There is one, and a category where they are, like it's good for you to want to be beautiful or handsome if you're a man for your spouse, but then direct it that way. If you're trying to show off how much more beautiful you've become because of strength training to the internet, you're directing that to the wrong thing. Now, if you're saying to your, your husband like, ooh, did you notice, you know, my, I don't know, my obliques today, babe, great, whatever. Do that all day. I'm going to stop going down this road, say something that will be clipped out by people who don't like me. Oh, dear. But also then in general, like one of the main things is the body, I have duties of the body that requires strength and longevity. So why am I doing this? If I find myself posting, like, thirst traps of myself on Instagram, then I'm probably misunderstanding what this is for. Oh, my goodness. People do that. I forget that people do that. They do. Not bright-heart listeners, right, guys? If I see any of you do this, first of all, I won't unfollow you because I don't want to see that. But secondly, shame on you. Stop it. Get some help, okay? And laziness, on the other hand, I'm thinking, what is my body for? Oh, I don't need to do this. It's, no, I want to be around for my kids. So we talked about some of the benefits of strength and resistance training in that cold open. That strikes you about these benefits. Are there any other statistics or studies or points that you would want to make Lexi on that front? Yes. So the reason I got so much more serious about it this last pregnancy was 1, I'm over 30. So I am in that category of starting to lose bone density and muscle mass. And 2, I realized when you are in pregnancy, whether or not you're 30, you are actively in that state. So even as a 22 year old, 23 year old, you are actively in a bone density and muscle loss category. So to me, that was kind of a wake up call of like, oh, there's been years of this in my 20s that I haven't been doing this. I was doing other things that were maybe even counterproductive to it. So I have a lot of ground to make up for. And I saw that in my sixth pregnancy, where I had probably some of the most major health issues of my life that I'm realizing now it's kind of my own fault in some ways, not all of it. I mean, there was, there was an extent that you helped me realize like this really is out of your control. Yeah. But it was a wake up call to of like, I was putting extra stress on my heart for x, y, z reasons that I could easily correct. I mean, easily, let's not say that. It's hard to be on blood pressure meds and be pregnant and it's hard to wait lift. You're both hard. Three plus times a week. So for me, that was a really like I wanted to actually contend for that and not be in a state of loss and pregnancy because I don't actually believe that's what it is. I don't want to promote the view that pregnancy is always stress on the body. I do believe it can be a form of flourishing and health. And I want women to see you can keep having kids for that reason. So I got really serious about it. But also, I just didn't want to be in pain my whole pregnancy. Right. I don't want to be inflamed. I didn't want to have excess weight. I did not want to have, honestly, I didn't want to have a painful labor. So I had to really, really, really dig in and discipline myself this last pregnancy. And I feel like summer posted this a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you saw it. She was like, something about the results are in whether or not you like it. Strength training really can give you a better pregnancy and labor. Yeah. It's the whole, it's the classic. Choose your heart. Yes. Do you want the difficulty of discipline consistently over a period of time? Or do you want the heart of physical dysfunction, difficult pregnancies, increasingly difficult pregnancies as you get older, an early death, like which heart do you want? So for me, it was the pain and it was just the overall, like, I need to promote bone density and muscle for health long term. Yeah. And it's really helpful to have, like, instead of 50 things you're focusing on to be healthy, like a few. When it's funny, too, because I mean, I still was very strict with my diet. But this was the least amount of grass fed meat I had eaten. This was the least amount of organic food I had eaten. This was the most amount of egg whites I have ever eaten in my life because that is not naturally how they came out of the chicken. Why would I ever do that? I mean, you watched me closer than anyone else. I feel like my seventh pregnancy was maybe one of my top best pregnancies, considering how much I have to do. Yep. Absolutely. And it was definitely like, it's easy to focus on one thing and say, okay, I will talk about food and nutrition more the next one, but there's some things there. There's some tips that are like, if you just do this, it will be so much better. But with strength training, with physical health, if you just think, what can I do? Okay. I can make one decision. I'm going to strength train. I'm going to make a simple program that literally chat GPT can make for me if I need it, with telling it, what equipment I have, make out a whole body strength training program for me, that I can do this many times a week in this amount of time. And then I'm just doing that. And I know that if I do that, it will do things like, it will increase my bone. It will help me not lose bone density. It will help me have some of the highest predictors of health and longevity, like grip strength. And muscle size in your leg, something else that's really cool about strength training and pregnancy and labor. I have really long hard labor typically. And I found a study from the Mama State Fitbook that was talking about regular strength training actually helps the baby's oxygen levels be so high that they can better survive long stressful labor and that was such a motivator for me to be like, because it can be dangerous for babies to be in labor for a long time. But to be like, okay, I have a reason I am helping my baby get strong to go through another hard labor because they're working too. So that was just so cool and helpful to me to see that. Yes. Yeah. So this is one thing that's like the more you look at it in terms of the studies, the anecdotes from friends. Like whatever you want to look at, pretty much all of it is going to say everybody should be resistance training who it all can. Okay, before we talk more about different situations or stations of life or circumstances and we are going to do that, I wanted to just lay out some basics of resistance training. The basics, everyone needs to know about this subject. Like what does it actually mean to do effective resistance training? And there's five parts of it that if you do all five of these, you will get stronger. The benefits will flow, they just will. And the first is consistency in regular workouts. So people who are doing elite bodybuilding and these kinds of things, I mean, they're every day they're doing this stuff. But when I say consistency, I actually don't mean two to three times a week is consistent. If you did this two to three times a week for 30 minutes each time, that would get you to that 60 to 90 minutes a week mark, which is where you see a lot of the benefits really kick in. And more than that's great. If you can do four or five, I mean, that's even better. But for a lot of us, we're like, all right, I didn't get the four or five this week, but I am not going to let the week go by without getting two or three. Really good. So the first one is consistency. Better to do that, it would be better for you to get two resistance training workouts in a week for a year, then to get a week where you did five and then four weeks off. Yes. And then seven and then two months off and consistency is huge. Okay. So that's number one. Number two is it's regular resistance workouts that cover all the major muscle groups of the body. So you're not neglecting any major aspect. But this doesn't mean that you have to figure out 75 different lifts to target your eyelash muscles. Right. Yeah. There are work. There are compound movements. There are lifts. You can do. There are body weight lifts. That will get all major muscle groups involved and so you want to get all major muscle groups. Number two. Number three, and this is very important, progressive overload by gradually increasing weight or intensity. Can you pause for a second? Yeah. Name the major muscle groups. And I'm just saying this for somebody like, no, I don't, I, I literally, I'm talking about this. I'm not even wanting people to need to get into like the medical names. I'm just thinking when I say major muscle groups, I mean, your legs, your legs, your body, your core, your arms, your chest, your shoulders, your back, basically every, all of the main big, big muscles in your body that you use to do things like if you're gripping something or lifting something up or picking something off the ground or if you were to jump or the big muscles in your body. Yes. I'm only saying that because somebody who doesn't know might be like, don't even know what that means. What are the major muscle groups? Explain those to me. Keep going. Sorry. And we'll talk some more about practically how to do that. Most of overload is really important though, and at that number three, progressive overload means that you are bringing your muscle groups, not necessarily to failure every time and failure is like where you couldn't perform another wrap of that exercise. Like if you were doing pushups, for example, everyone pretty much knows what a pushup is. Failure would be, I have done all the pushups I can do. And if I try to do another one, I physically cannot, right? progressive overload is getting close to where that muscle couldn't perform the activity. Sometimes it's like within a wrap or two of what I could do all the way up to, I can't do another one of those. What's a wrap? A wrap is just one repetition, one movement. So one pushup is a repetition of a pushup. So doing 10 pushups is 10 reps. 10 reps. Exactly. A set is a group of reps. So if someone says I do three sets of five of something, that means they did, let's say pushups. They did five pushups. That was one set. Then they rested for a minute or two. Then they did another set of five pushups. That's two sets. Rest of a minute or two did three. So a lot of workouts are based on, programs are based on sets of repetitions at a certain intensity. Progressive overload can happen by lifting something that is heavier, like more weight. For example, if you were doing girl pushups where you had your knees on the ground instead of your toes. And it's okay. Women cannot lift as much as men in a lot of these things. They might have to start. Like all of these things. Yeah. A woman might not be able to do a full strict one pull-up to start. So Lexi has been doing them with, with bands that help, they basically make it as if you weighed a little bit less. So you can get to the point. You can get to progressive overload by lifting heavier things or doing more of them, more set, more reps, or more intensity. So if you did one push-up, let's say you did five push-ups, but you rested for a minute between each push-up, that would be a very low intensity way of doing five push-ups. But let's say you did five push-ups as fast as you can. That actually does more. There's more intensity. So progressive overload is very important. You're trying to get to where your muscle genuinely has done so much work that your body, the Lord designed our bodies to do this. Now your body's mechanism for growing muscle is triggered. It goes, "Oh, this body needs to do this, apparently, a lot of the time. It's never needed to do that before. That's why that muscle will be really small." Apparently, we're the kind of body that has to run fast and jump high and lift something. So I'm going to trigger muscle growth and God like built our bodies to do that. Our bodies adapt to what we do with them. So if you sit all the time, your body will be like, "All we really need to be able to do is sit." But if you start walking every day and you start walking a mile and then two miles and three miles and then five miles, your body goes, "We need to be able to walk five miles." And it will adapt. It will start putting muscle on. So progressive overload is just a fancy way of saying, "Tell your body that you want to be able to do this, lift more, be stronger, and it will. If you feed it right and rest and recover, we'll get there. It will." So progressive overload, increasing the weight of a set, the intensity of a set, the number of repetitions. The fourth is just safety and proper form. So when you do a lift or an exercise, you're making sure that you look at somebody reputable how to perform that motion in a way that's designed to limit or reduce injury. So an example would be your mom always told you, your parents always told you, your dad probably, when you went to move, you were lifting all the boxes into the truck, don't lift with your back, lift with your legs. That's just good form. It's good form. So. My father told me pain is weakness, leaving the body. I used to run with my dad. I do remember you saying that. So that's for just proper form and safety. And then five is also very, very important, easy to miss is adequate rest for recovery and nutrition. So if you do a bunch of exercises and your body really is saying, oh, we need to build this muscle. And then you don't give it any food that would build a muscle. It can't. It won't. It can't. Actually, you will take away from your muscle in bone density. So this is the tricky part is that if you're committed to the strength training, you have to be committed to the protein or it's you have to. And in the next episode, we're calling it weight loss, body composition. We're going to talk a lot about nutrition in that episode. And so don't think we're forgetting that, but know that that is huge. And also sleep. If you don't sleep, it's hard to build muscle, which is why if you're a young, like a new new mom or there's a new baby in the house, sometimes it is good. Well, it is good in those seasons to reduce the intensity till your body is ready to focus on it. And you can sleep rest, but at the same time, you do want to start when you can. You don't want to just let it say, like, well, I need a year off of strength. No. Can I talk about this? Yeah. Go ahead. Conversation I had with Tate about this. Sure. I don't know if he realized how crazy it was. I mean, I figured that's what he was going to say, but Tate is a friend of ours at the church who is a physical trainer as a gym. Um, I, you always hear people talk about diastasis, right? Like, if you talk to the average mom who may not be a strength training, she'll be like, oh, I'm trying to heal my dr, which is the ab separation diastasis recti diastasis recti. Diastasis recti. Okay. I think I have my book over here. Man, we're learning, which is just like you can have like a one, two, three, four finger separation between your ab walls. Some people have it. Some people don't. And this happens in pregnancy. It can happen in pregnancy. Correct. If you're not, if your posture is not correct, if you're putting too much, um, pressure on your abs, a lot of the reason people kind of say sometimes like coming out of the 90s where like abs, the core was a huge emphasis. When you're constantly working the core in pregnancy, it can separate those. Okay. Sometimes it can be bad enough that you need corrective surgery, but you can also heal it with ab work. Um, but you hear there's like a big emphasis on it. And I think we kind of over corrected where a lot of women have been like, oh, can exercise, I'm 16 months, both part, I'm still he, still healing diastasis. Almost 16 months. Okay. I thought you were going to say 16 days in first. I was like, that'd be pretty quick. No. But yeah, you're right. Okay. So in the name of healing their core, one of their muscle groups, they are continuing to neglect all of the other ones. Okay. Yeah. So I've personally not had a huge, huge problem with this though I have had to realize, I do need to focus on my core for x, y, z reasons. Okay. Yep. So I did that. I did, which I'll talk about that in the kitchen. I think. Yeah. I had a diastasis program, but here's the thing guys. The diastasis program was like two weeks. Right. I started it. You can start two days postpartum. I started it. I think two weeks postpartum and I just did it over and over again until six weeks. Then I had this conversation with Tate because this is the first time I'm lifting barbell postpartum. Yeah. And I asked him, thinking maybe he's going to say, you should probably wait a few months. Yeah. He said, I actually think women are too cautious with this. Since you were strength training until you delivered, you're probably good to start. Just don't increase your weight for at least two weeks. Be careful when you're starting and your body can tell you too. And I did. I hemorrhaged very badly in the in the birth in the birth. I hemorrhaged very badly and I did have some issues with dizziness, yeah, a lot of issues with dizziness that I had to be careful with. Yeah. Otherwise, he was spot on. So be don't what I'm saying is as a woman, don't let yourself off the hook and say, Oh, I'm strength training by still focusing on your diastasis. If you are legitimately still having to work on that, a year postpartum and nothing else, what you're doing is not working. You have to realize that and I and I still incorporate core mindfulness diastasis exercises even while doing everything else. But if that is really your excuse, it's not working. You have to find something else to get back to training the entire body. Yeah. And you might even benefit from going to a physical therapist or getting seen by a trainer who is knowledgeable in these things. So if there's something like that where you feel you're like, I just feel like I can't do this or I have a problem, this is important enough, strength training and resistance training for health and longevity. You should consider that to be very important and go try to find somebody who has the expertise that you need in your particular situation. Don't just think, I'll wait another year. Go try to figure it out. No, no, yeah. Go figure it out. So adequate rest recovery and nutrition is the fifth aspect. So consistency, progressive overload, hitting all major muscle groups with good form for safety and then adequate rest recovery and nutrition. Wives, you know your husband would fight for your family without hesitation. And every night needs armor and in today's world that means ballistic protection made for the modern defender. Armored Republic makes real armor for real men, law-abiding citizens, fathers, husbands, protectors. 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Like you don't need a PhD in exercise science to figure these things out. They're pretty straightforward. I need to get a reasonable program, execute it two to three times at least a week. I need to sleep and eat well to support it. I need to make sure I have good form. I'm not trying to ego lift and like if a friend who's been lifting for five years can bench 360 pounds, I'm not going to try to get there in four months. That's not realistic and you have good form and focus on. I'm competing against myself first, myself from a month ago, myself from a year ago, myself from two years ago. And you'll hear like expert strength trainers and I don't fully understand why but like the compound benefits seem to be multiple years down the road of this. Yeah, this is not something that you will feel better a week after you start. You'll feel much better a month after you start. You'll be a completely different physical person six months to 12 months from when you start. But a lot of even the best benefits of strength training, they're long benefits. Yes. They're not just a week in. Let's talk about the different types of resistance training, what they cost to get started, what kind of equipment you need because this is really where it gets into the meat of the practical. If you do none of this or maybe you do a little bit, what can we do? Okay. Lexi mentioned barbell training. That's the first one. Barbell training is you get a barbell, which is a steel bar that has grips in the middle and then it also has a spot on either end that you can put weighted plates. And you're just lifting that up and down in different ways. You can do a barbell program. This is what you think of when you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, going to the gym, doing bench press, doing overhead press, deadlift, a lot of these traditional barbell training. Barbell training is great. It's what I recommend if you have the space. It is very simple in a lot of ways. You could learn, literally you could learn to get started. The bench press, the overhead press, the squat, the deadlift, those kind of exercises. Can I say because I didn't start barbell until I was halfway through my pregnancy. I had been strength training other ways that you'll talk about, but the three lifts you had me do, which I did the entire rest of my pregnancy was squats, deadlifts, and rows, and rows. And that's it. That was it. That's it. And the thing is, a lot of those are big movements. So they're not movements that I've joke about eyelash muscles. Body builders who are going to go on stage and do all themselves up, super gay and do that. They're like, they could name all the muscles in their pinky. So they will be like, I need to get this one muscle, this particular size. For most of us, we're just talking about the major big muscle groups. I want my arms, my legs, my core, my back, my shoulders, my chest to be straight. And once you get there, you can move beyond that because you know, you've been teaching me. It is helpful for the stabilizing muscles. And flexibility is another really big one where if your muscles are really big when you're old, but you have zero flexibility and you fall, you're going to snap that muscle. Yeah. It is good to go beyond that, but these are the basics. Yeah. And the basics will work all those smaller stabilizing muscles. But then if those become the limiting factor, then you can do some targeted exercises on those. Yes. Barbell training. Our point isn't to give you a program here. No. It's just to say, that's a great one. How much does it cost? And I'm basically trying to get you to the point where from this episode, you could say, it sounds like I should try this one. And then you go and either get a program that will work you through that a basic beginner program. Go get a trainer for a little bit and figure out how to do it. Barbell training to get started compared to some of the other ones can be a little pricey and take some space. But I mean, like, how much would you give to live 20 years longer? Do you want to spend $60,000 a year on health when you're 60, which people do? So barbell training is like for about $500 to $750, you could get into it with a couple weights, a barbell, a bench, you go on KSL, Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, whatever you want. People give up on this all the time and sell their stuff. We are into our barbell equipment at this point now. And I had to buy more weights because I was getting to the point where I could lift all the weights that we owned on the heavier lifts like deadlift. We're into it about $1,200 in our setup and that's like a big squat rack with a pull-up bar. It has, you know, bench press squat, you can do it all with this setup. We got it used and then we got like the Amazon or Walmart bumper plates kind of thing. So that's one. The next one down on the list is dumbbell training. Dumbbells are those, you know, like you could hold them with one hand and they have a weight on each side and a handle in the middle. Dumbbell training is great. We did add dumbbells, a dumbbell set. I got it used again. It was about $500, I think, for our set. And you can expect to spend about $1 per pound of weight in most of these things that you're buying. Generally, that's a good price. Premium stuff is more, but used things. It almost never gets cheaper than that because like that's just the raw materials are expensive. Rubber and steel. One thing about dumbbell training that is awesome, then I've really have come to enjoy it, is that it really helps to isolate some of those stabilizing muscles and things. Like if you are doing a barbell overhead press, you're using both hands on the same bar. And most people can lift more that way than if you put, let's say you split the amount of weight you were lifting with both hands and half and you held that weight in a dumbbell in each hand. It's harder because your weak arm can't help your strong arm. You can't help your weak arm. We do both barbell and dumbbell. Yeah. You actually had me switch recently when you saw I was doing overhead military press. And one of my arms was shaking and the other wasn't and you said, "Oh, that's weaker. You need to switch to dumbbell to help get that." Yeah, do some dumbbells. Throw those in. So I've been doing that now. Yeah. You can do with dumbbells. You could train just with dumbbells and you could do everything you need. But can I say a caveat here for women, I see women never get beyond like eight pounds of dumbbells. Yes. That means you have to be getting heavy ones, 25, 35, 40. Yeah. We'll talk about that in the. I just wanted to say. The lies people believe about. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. So that's dumbbell. Another one to full service gym. This is just, you know, from the $10 a month to the $1,000 a month luxury gym. You go to your local gym, they've got all the stuff we just talked about and then they've got a bunch of machines, cable machines and they've got a machine for everything, a lot of them. Unless it's like a specific barbell gym or like an old school pitfalls of hose everywhere. I've never been to a gym so I don't know. Full of hose. You got us to 100%. I didn't like it. I. You have to go there and back. I have to go. You end up spending over two or three years, the amount that it would cost. The person who should do this is the person who's like, "I literally have. I have one room in a college dorm and my roommate sleeps in my same bed and can't. I will wake him up and we have opposite schedules and I don't know. Where you just can't do anything else, you want to just get started and maybe even see what you like. Can I figure out barbells? They're going to have all the equipment so you could try that. Full service gyms, they are great but you will spend the same amount of money over time. And you just have to understand that gym culture is going to be a thing. Tates kind of trying to solve this problem. And there are Christians doing that. Where he's got hours for women and hours for men. It's pretty cool. I love that. There are benefits of working with other people. Yes, they're for sure. Huge benefits. Okay. Another type that you can do, bodyweight training. There are people who do bodyweight calisthenics with no further equipment who are jacked, who are very strong, very fit, and they just do calisthenics, pull-ups, push-ups, everything like this. Is it because they're just pushing themselves on their reps so much? Yes. Okay. So it seems like that would take a lot more time, right? Probably. It's funny because one of the most, okay, who's that, the guy who played Spider-Man, the white, could Tom Holland or something like that? You're asking. I know. I don't even, I don't know how I know this because we're not big movies. Movie people. But whoever played one of the recent, he's like this skinny white kid. He's actually really fit if you see him, well, I don't, don't go looking up with a shirt off, whatever. I happen to stumble. This sounds so gay. I've seen him with his shirt off. Let me just stop there. Okay. All right. Keep going. He does a lot of crossfit style workouts and crossfit is a lot of bodyweight. So one of the things that he said is like his best workout is a Cindy, which is the qualifier for the new Christian press games was a Cindy, plus a deadlift. A Cindy is, you set a 20 minute timer. And then you'd see how many sets of the following things that you can do. A set is five pull ups, 10 push ups and 15 squats, bodyweight squats. Say, say it one more time, five pull ups, 10 push ups and 15 bodyweight air squats is what they're called. So that's what you do that over and over again for 20 minutes, see how many sets you get through. Yeah. And one set is all three of those. Okay. By the way, almost like almost at the elite professional crossfit, like he could win competitions doing that. Okay. Tate, I think can do like 22, I did 15. Okay. I started. I was able to do 12 and I worked up to like 15 or 16, which is when you think about it, 15, that means that you've done 75 pull ups in 20 minutes, full pull ups, like that. That's a lot. That is progressive overload because you are going literally in my case, in every case, you're going into you cannot perform another pull up just with your bodyweight. So bodyweight training is the place where you could start today if you have no equipment and you could absolutely get a killer workout that pushed you to your limit. And some of the benefits are like it's it's much more difficult to injure yourself than with a heavy. I don't want people to be scared of injury, but bodyweight is a great starting point. This is where I started six weeks postpartum after my sixth, maybe. Yeah. And a lot of women will find like there are certain exercises they can't perform one rep of if they're just starting like a pull up, but there are ways to assist or do different movements to get you to where you could set a goal. Strengthen. Yeah. I want to be able to do one strict pull up within this time period and then maybe I want to do two. So bodyweight training is amazing. It is resistance training like people because your body is the weight. God gave you a weight. It's your own body. There are other things like resistance fans, kettlebells are a great form. They're similar to dumbbells in some ways, but like Joe Rogan is jacked and the main workout he does from what I understand is just with 175 or 70 pound kettlebell and he is jacked. Yeah. You need to deadlift 500 pounds because you can get progressive overload with other ways. I got into kettlebells for a long time too. And then there's like weird stuff like strongman functional training where you're like lifting rocks and doing different like functional all great. You can get into any of these for between zero dollars to a couple thousand dollars and then you have everything you'll ever need. And then over time if you're like, I want to add this thing, you're going to get into it and you'll discover a whole world and it could become a hobby for you and that's great too. But what I want people to understand, the stay at home mom, the guy who just doesn't lift, he's you know, he's never done it before. You can do this with very little cost to no cost. There is no limiting factor. If you are physically able, like you're not physically handicapped to getting started with this, even if you're 50 or 20, doesn't matter, you can get into it. Let's talk a little bit about stages of life. How have you, Lexi, approached you touched on a little bit? Resistance training through different stages of life are the things you've learned that you wish you knew earlier, lifting with kids, like things like that. Well, I think specifically, I've always exercised strength training was an area where it seemed so vast and I didn't like the gym rat culture that it was really intimidating to me. And when I do something, I like to research it a lot and get to the bottom and then decide how to do it and go from there, but I do feel like for a couple of years, I let that prevent me from getting started. I really had to get to a place after a hard pregnancy of like, I don't understand this, but doing something is genuinely better than nothing. So I did start with a program at that point and I have, I've just been really happy and content with, after another month of this, I'll have another month of information under my belt and just being okay with that and then also allowing each season of life to be an educating season of life. Yeah. So I think a lot of people can do that where they just get intimidated, don't fully understand it, won't even start with just one basic YouTube video, so they do nothing at all rather than something. Yeah. So does that answer your question? Yeah. No, that's super great. I think different stages of life can be excuses for us. Yeah. We say, oh, I'm in the little kid years when we have more time and energy. I'll do it. Oh, I'm in a really hard season of work when I'm out of it, I'll start doing this. Ah, you know, I'm really stressed because of this family scenario. I'm just, you know, it helps you deal with stress, you know, it helps you be better at work, you know, helps you with your head being physically strong. Yeah. And we say this to each other all the time, it's like, man, it's such a bummer that you feel better when you work out. You feel way better when you work out than when you don't. Are you not getting along with your spouse? Work out. Like you'll, because seriously, like fit, cheerful, it's so much easier to be cheerful when you have, when your body is working the way that it's supposed to. Yeah. You've probably seen those little Instagram reels that it's the people talking about how our muscles are actual anti factories of antidepressants if we're working them out. Yeah. For real. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about some lies that people tell themselves about resistance training. We're kind of getting into it now, but this will be the last main thing we do here. The first one I want to say is just people can tend to convince themselves that a very light workout without progressive overload is going to be a huge help. It's just not. You really do actually like people will, you remember that video, babe, of the 1950s, like ladies, Jim, where they got in the machines and it would like jiggle them around. And it was like scientific workout. Yeah. That's hogwash. We convinced ourselves of all sorts of work rounds where we're like, how can I do it in a way that's not hard? Well, the point is that you're actually trying to make it hard artificially. Like sitting is easy. You are working out as artificial. You don't actually need to lift that steel plate off the ground ten times. It's not accomplishing anything for you in the world out there. You're just lifting it off the ground and putting it back down, right? But the point of the exercise is actually to make it hard. So if my heart rate isn't elevated from a workout, a workout, if my muscles, if I have a two pound dumbbell in my hand and I do ten reps with it as a lady and go, oh, I'm a lady. It's not, it's supposed to be lady workouts. Well, ladies can't lift as much as man God made the world that way. But a lady, maybe a man could take a 45 pound dumbbell and do 12 bicep curls with it and it would be hard for him. She can't do that, but she should be picking up the weight that is hard for her to do five to 12 times. Yeah. So a good rule of thumb a lot of times is like, when you're deciding, let's say you're looking at a racket dumbbells and you're going to do like a bicep curl where you're just you're flexing your bicep, you're lifting it up from straight arm up to, you know, about your chest area, right? Your shoulder. Yeah. How much should I lift? Well, how much weight could you perform five to 12 repetitions of before it'd be come pretty difficult? And then you need to rest before you could do a lot more. Yeah. And this needs to be where the curiosity part of it. Don't let give up and be like, I can't figure it this out. This is taking too much time. I only have half an hour and it took 10 minutes just to figure out what weight I got. Well, guess what? Next time you automatically know, you know, those 10 minutes gained back, so chill out and keep going. Write it down. Get a program. Get some help. Have somebody do some thinking ahead for you, some learning, and then go down. But a light workout without progressive overload, there can be benefits to things like walking and other things. But those aren't really resistance training. We're talking about the type of workout where you can't just say I'm going to do five push-ups, Brian said body weight was good, that's enough. If that's not very hard for you, you're wanting to find the edges of what your body can perform with a movement. And then doing that, multiple sets until you are sweating and winded and it's difficult and you're like, I don't think I could do more than a couple more of those, even if someone put a gun to my head. That is when you're getting the most benefit from a lift. Do it safely, but that's where you're really getting the benefit in resistance training. Another one, people think. But I'll be cringe because I don't know anything. You think like I'm going to look like an idiot. Oh. Like if you're going to the gym and working out for us, people just feel embarrassed to like do something new. Oh, yeah, yeah. Cool. You know what? The bridge that will get you from where you are to where you want to be is the walking across the bridge of being cringe. Cool. Through that awkward period. Just be cringe. Like we're all cringe. It's okay. I love being cringe. I'm right. I'm like, what do you think? My whole life is just a series of walking from one cringy thing to another. Yeah. It's great. If you're not willing to do that, you're lacking in virtue, usually. Yeah. Sorry. It is what it is. Here's another one. Lifting weight sometimes means I can eat like garbage and I will just be perfectly fit and healthy. We'll talk about a more next episode, but no, what do you mean? People think like I worked out twice this week. I can eat 1500 extra calories per day and I will be skinny. No, no, no, no. No, you'll gain weight. You'll be fat. Like you might be a little stronger, but lifting weight doesn't magically mean that you exercise isn't generally the first thing you need to do to lose weight or body comfort. Like we'll talk about a next episode. For ladies, if I lift, I'll look like a man. This is what I thought. I can't. I can really laugh at myself when I think about this. You thought this one? Yes, because I only thought of strength trainers. I hadn't even looked at the world enough to realize there's normal looking women out there who do this five times a week. I had only thought of it in terms of like competitive level. Yeah. So I, that's what I thought. Yeah. And women still think, women think that if they lift weights, barbell things, they see men doing more in culture that they will look like those lady bodybuilders who are huge. Yes. Okay. You need to understand ladies that and it's, it's not silly for you to think this because it makes sense that you would have that thought connected. But women who look like that, all of them are on fate hormones. They're on testosterone. They're doing stacks of steroids. Yes. Or maybe there's the occasional woman, she's still not going to look like that, but she might just have be an elite genetic outlier where she's able to put on big, big, just don't worry about it. Yes. You will look feminine and trim. I laugh about it because of how strict I am now, how much I am able to work out and I still, it's still very hard to gain muscle. Lexie could work out for, I could stop lifting for two years and Lexie could work out that whole time. I could probably still deadlift more than twice what she could deadlift because the male and female body are not built for the same thing. So women's bodies are built for strength, men's are built for strength, but they're built for different types of strength for different types of activities. And the other thing, something that was encouraging to me about this was thinking of it in terms of physique. You actually can build muscles in places that make you more feminine looking was something I did not understand before. I only thought this is all going to be make me look like a man instead of okay, but how can you go at this from a physique? Yes. Perspective. And for me, that's been learning from women that are aging and how they strengthen that you actually can look more feminine. Yep. And not round, but feminine in the right places that God gave you to be totally what's funny is that the opposite is actually true. It's as we become more obese, that we become more androgynous. Yes. Yes. Yes. Very fat men have female characteristics. It's funny. They have huge man boobs. Yeah. They become a blob, hugely fat women are just a blob like so a fat man and a fat woman hugely fat. I mean, very obese. They become more and more. It's hard to tell the difference between them. It's actually people who are using their bodies the way God made them that become more and more, they, oh, that's a woman, that's a man. It's when people go the other way and they get into fake stuff like competitive. I don't mean bodybuildings all bad at all like strong man stuff is not bad bodybuildings not all bad. Not new Chris and the press said we had a strength competition. Now I wouldn't oil men up, put them in a thong and put them in a state. Yes. But it's when women get into those kinds of things that they have to take anabolic steroids to mimic the chemistry of them, not just a man, but a man on anabolic steroids. They're, I'm not exaggerating women in, in those worlds are artificially elevating their levels of things like testosterone to five to 10 times higher than what a normal healthy man has. So they're taking enormous, they're taking years off their life to do this and that sort of thing. You won't look like that if you just, you should resist and strain it will make you look more feminine or more masculine as a man, more feminine as a woman. It's actually getting obese. It makes us look undrogenous. Can I say something real quick that's unrelated? So we have a friend that has done regular competitions in various forms of strength training. And his wife was talking to me about like postpartum, sex drive. Yeah. And she was saying like, most women don't realize that if you actually get back to strength training, that's what normalizes your libido, very early postpartum. It helps a lot. Yeah. So just know that if that's something you struggle with, know that this, you could be taking all of the right hormones and using the right aphrodisiac oils, whatever. But if you're neglecting this, that could be the cure all for everything else. Well, I just wanted to throw that out there too. Yep. Let's end this episode with just a lie, but also just a tendency concerning lies. And that is that people will lie to pander to you, especially to sell you something in the area of nutrition, weight, etc. They'll try to tell you things like, it's not really your fault. It's all your hormones. It's the food system. It's this. So if you just buy my product, then you'll magically, you'll be fit and trim again. I'm sorry. It's just not decay. There is no route to physical fitness and longevity that doesn't pass through the intentional introduction of suffering to your life, like the pain of working out. Just think about it. Is that how Christian virtue is painted for us in scripture? Yeah. Well, no, why would you think that's automatically true? And it was helpful because there was another female strength trainer that I was following on Instagram that she was talking about, the way to get over the cortisol hump is weight lifting three times a week. Yeah. There's no other way to flesh it out of your system. If you're walking for hours on end out of a fear of elevating my cortisol, you're not going to get out of that. Yeah. It's we will. There are lots of lies and quackery related to nutrition and health because it's easy to people want something that removes the need for effort on their part. And so they will believe that they're a victim of something and that the solution's not going to require effort from them, but a product who wouldn't spend $40 on the off chance that maybe this pill really will make me lose 50 pounds immediately and be stronger. But that's just not the world God made that doesn't mean that there aren't real hormonal issues. Someone is somewhere yelling at me like, but I really have this or that. The point we're making isn't that there is no such thing as that. It's just that part of the solution even to that is still going to be good nutrition, recovery and some kind of resistance training, if at all possible. And I think part of the reason, just like with the inflammation in the body, you want to stress the muscle, stressing your body through the workout kind of helps funnel that cortisol, telling it's how to work to your benefit as opposed to against you. It's good for you. Yes. So the last thing we'll end the episode here, you just want to be careful again. Who are you comparing yourself to this? Don't pick the sexiest, fittest, strongest person in your whole life and be like, well, I'm going to feel like crap until I'm exactly as good as them. You're competing against yourself in these things. I'm not competing against my friend, Ryan Porman, who can bench like 360 pounds. I think he's on his way to a 405 pound bench press, which is by the way, shout out to Ryan, doing that all with cancer with cancer. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing guy. Go, godly man, if I compared myself every day to his weight lifting ability, every day I would wake up and be like, well, I mean, I'm basically worthless. But there's a way that as a man, I can go, let me motivate me, but really what am I comparing myself to? It's what could I bench press two months ago? Can I add 15 pounds? How much I use a smart scale that measures how many pounds of fat, how many pounds of muscle you have on different limbs and things like that? And I'm thinking, how can I add this many pounds of muscle this year and lose this many pounds of fat? Great. That's what I'm thinking about in my because I have goals for myself that aren't the same for everybody else, but I'm not competing against everybody around me, which gets you into the comparison thing, vanity, like it can be a stumbling block. It can be good, healthy competition as well, but I think especially for ladies, they need to just think, yeah, maybe there's a lady in the church that can really motivate you. Oh, she's in her 40s. She's had five kids and look, she's, she's fit. I can do it. But don't despair or become arrogant and proud. Just you're competing with yourself. Yes. Remember what your body's for. God's glory. It's to serve your people. And then you won't become, hopefully you won't become weird or dysfunctional or imbalanced. Anything you want to add before we close out? I do actually. Yeah. Because I think the cancer thing is really important. I think a lot of people don't realize how much immune of our immune system is in the muscle. And there's tons of studies coming out showing that people that strength train in cancer treatments both natural and conventional. They are the ones that are they do better. They do so much better. You can, there's two trim healthy mama episodes. You can go find with Arden R-A-R-D-E-N is one of their sons who defeated, I think it was stage four lymphoma, like he was about to die. And that was one of the biggest things for him. All their researches and those episodes, you can go look for it there. But I just want to say that if someone is going through cancer treatment, it is not too late to try, get somebody to help you start building back that immunity. Yeah. Ryan did such a good job. And this kind of stuff, it has, we just scratched the surface on health benefits. This is not quackery or pseudoscience. This is like very well done medical studies that are repeatable. It's just, I mean, like go figure, God made a world where if you do hard things, it goes better for you. Okay, guys, thanks for listening to this episode of BrightHearth. We'll talk more about body composition, weight loss, those kinds of things, nutrition in the next episode, but in the meantime, can I just say we would love to hear your questions on this topic or any topic that comes to mind related to our BrightHearth project here. You can do that in the podcast episode description. If you're on YouTube, you'll have to go to the podcast description. But there is a send us a text link where you can send us your question. And we'll probably do an episode here soon. Just on the questions we got related to these topics surrounding the body. So please send them in and we'll be taking those up. We can't respond to the text. The system doesn't allow us to, but we do get them in our inbox and we look through all of them. So please send those in. If you like what we do here, you can support BrightHearth at our Patreon, pick up a copy of Lexi's book, Wisdom on her tongue, all the links are in the description for that. And that helps us keep making this show possible. And also, leave us your most honest five star review, thumbs up, subscribe, all those different things. Help us continue to make this possible. Check out the great sponsors of these videos, good Christian family businesses that help as well. But we hope this episode was helpful to you and we'll see you next time on BrightHearth.