Ep.95 Becoming MindStrong: The Truth About Nutrition, Fitness, and the Bullsh*t That's Holding You Back

Ever feel like midlife health and fitness is a puzzle with missing pieces? This week, we've got the missing link in Rachel Freiman, the brainpower behind Mindstrong Fitness, who joins us to piece together the truth about wellness during life's halftime show. Rachel's transition from musician to fitness aficionado isn't just inspiring—it's a masterclass in how the fusion of education, science, and mindset shifts can overhaul our approach to health. We tackle the tough topics, like the nuances of women's fitness during menopause, and dispel the smoke and mirrors of industry myths that have clouded our judgment for far too long.

Navigating nutrition can feel like decoding a foreign language, but our conversation with Rachel turns complex nutritional science into understandable bites. We get into the nitty-gritty of metabolism, the pitfalls of calorie cutting, and why tracking your food intake isn't about restriction but about crafting a nutrition plan that evolves with you. Rachel doesn't just hand over the keys to intuitive eating; she maps out the journey from where you are now to where your body thrives, and it’s a trip worth taking. Her insights on macros and the role they play in not just your diet, but your overall fitness and wellness, will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about eating right.

Wrapping up, we get an exclusive look at the powerhouse that is the Mind Strong Fitness programs—where the rubber meets the road in the form of neuroscience, nutrition, and a supportive online coaching system designed for real, lasting change. Rachel's dedication to transforming lives shines through as she shares success stories and the underlying principles that make her programs so effective. And for those hungry for more, Rachel's book, podcast, and social media presence serve as a buffet of resources, ready to fortify your journey to becoming the healthiest, most empowered version of yourself. So, tune in, fuel up on knowledge, and get ready to become mind strong.
You can find Rachel and MindStrong Fitness at:
https://www.mindstrongfitnesscoaching.com/
https://www.instagram.com/getmindstrong/
https://www.facebook.com/GetMindStrong

Podcast
Becoming MindStrong is available on all podcast platforms

Rachel's book is available on Amazon
Becoming MindStrong: The Truth About Health, Fitness, and the Bullsh*t Holding You Back

I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:08

Health, wellness, fitness relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Fohlen, and this is Asking for a Friend. Welcome to the show, everyone. True to my word, I promise to bring you diversity of thought, expert advice and inspiration, and I think we've all gotten the message.

Michele Folan: 0:39

Deprivation diets and extreme cardio are not the secret sauce for women in this stage of life. Rachel Freiman is the CEO of Mindstrong Fitness, a lover of lifting heavy things up and down and a coach passionate about helping others unleash their strongest, most empowered selves through education and mindset training. Rachel has more than 15 years of classroom instruction and certifications in personal training, sports, nutrition and behavior modification. She studied the neuroscience of nutrition under the renowned Dr Nicole Avina, visiting professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, and Rachel is the author of the bestselling book Becoming Mindstrong the Truth About Health, fitness and the Bullshit that's Holding you Back. She developed Mindstrong Fitness with an inside-out approach I talk about that all the time to focus on both physical and mental attributes in building healthy, sustainable habits. And when Rachel's not in the gym, she enjoys exploring the world, snuggling with her puppy Charlie, who I see back on the sofa there behind her eating and thinking about the next time she'll be eating. Welcome to the show, rachel.

Rachel Freiman: 2:01

Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.

Michele Folan: 2:05

Yeah, Rachel and I talked a little bit before we started to record, and I love bringing people on the show that have had a different path to their own fitness journeys. You are really passionate about fitness, which is why I follow you, and I'm curious what your own journey was to improving your health. What did that look like?

Speaker 3: 2:32

Yeah, there's a saying that I love that says often the thing you struggle with the most is the thing you become most passionate about, teaching right, and that just summarizes my own journey so beautifully. I was a musician for almost my entire life, starting from a young age until adulthood, and eventually I went on to teach music. I was a middle school music teacher, so my own health and fitness journey was purely for myself. When I started trying to eat healthy and go to the gym, I had no idea what I was doing. I was 98% of women out there trying every diet in the books, spending hours in the gym and not seeing results, and I was just so freaking frustrated. And because I have a very education-based brain, I'm a very data-driven person I started studying. I was like this doesn't make sense. The answer can't be to find which diet works for me. There has to be a biology, psychology-based approach to this. And the more I started studying, the more just appalled I was at how much BS is in this industry, that every shake system, every frozen meal point system, they're all doing the same thing. They're just doing it in a kind of very sneaky way where there's this veil over it so you don't understand it. So the teacher in me was like why isn't anyone teaching this? Why don't women understand that you could take a program and learn how to knit? You could take a program and learn how to surf. Why is nobody educating in the world of nutrition? And the answer is I mean, we know the answer. It's big business If you teach a woman to fish instead of a giver one. Now she doesn't need you anymore.

Speaker 3: 4:06

So I set out to do something different. I had no intention of starting a nutrition or fitness company again. It was just for me. But it became this burning passion where the teacher in me could not shut up about it and I was like I need to shout this from the rooftops. So I wound up starting a company to do exactly that. I always joke we have the worst sales pitch in the world because you only need us once, because once you know the score of nutrition, that's it. You have it for life. So it was very much. I don't ever want a single woman to struggle of what's true, what's not. Can I eat late at night? Can carbs make me fat? All this BS in the industry. I just want to lay it out there and say here's the truth, not according to Rachel's laws of health and fitness, but according to biology, according to psychology, according to neuroscience. Here's how it works and that's exactly what we did.

Michele Folan: 4:54

Yeah, I love that. And you even said I read somewhere that you trained for almost a year with no results. And think of how many people have been on multiple diets over years and years and years. And then we throw midlife and hormones and all kinds of other stuff on top of that and we're walking around in this body that we don't recognize. So for those clients of yours, what is the first step for them?

Speaker 3: 5:26

Yeah. So just to validate what you're saying, that is absolutely true. It was almost a year and a half. I was going to the gym for an hour to an hour and a half a day and nothing was happening. To say I was frustrated is the understatement of the year. Now, my saving grace is that I got into this when I was about 30. If that had started now I'm in my 40s now it wouldn't have just been a plateau. I would have been gaining weight, because as our body starts shifting, it gets a little tougher, right. So that's what happens.

Speaker 3: 5:55

Most women who come to us are like I feel like I'm doing everything right, I'm eating healthy the majority of the time, I'm getting my steps in and I just I've hit menopause, I'm premenopausal, I'm postmenopausal and my body has just plateaued. And the thing that we need to understand, first and foremost, is that there are changes in your body that are normal. They're supposed to happen. Human beings, we are designed for things to change as we get older and there's parts that are not so normal. But the changes that a lot of us experience, we tend to think oh well, I hit 40, I hit 45, and now my metabolism is just shot to hell. And the reality is, when you look at the stats, our metabolism doesn't really change much between the ages of 20 to 60. And at that point, when it does start declining, it's as little as 1% a year. And that can be boggling to women because they're like don't tell me, I'm crazy. I know my body's changing. And the answer is yes, your body is changing, but the reason that that's happening is because you've had more decades under your belt of putting your body on a roller coaster. By age 20, we haven't had that many years of restrictive dieting. By age 50, we've had decades upon decades of under eating and over eating, and under eating and over eating.

Speaker 3: 7:06

So, to answer your question, the first step that we suggest everyone takes is we need some data. My favorite analogy is let's say I was a financial advisor and you came to me and you're like listen, Rachel, I am in a world of debt right now and my goal is to be wealthy. Well, I have two options. I could tell you number one oh, just spend less and save more. And I would hope your answer would be like screw you, doctor Obvious, that doesn't help me at all, right? If I could do that, I wouldn't be here or I could tell you, you know what we're going to push on. The bruise a little bit Like this isn't going to feel good upfront, but it's important. Let's print out bills, let's print out mortgages. Let's see how much debt there is. Let's come up with an action plan of how to pay some of it off while we save.

Speaker 3: 7:47

So we have black and white data of what we need to do, and this is what we have to do with nutrition. When we're talking about firing up your metabolism, when we're talking about balancing your hormones, when we're talking about weight loss, nutrition is 90% of the game. So the first thing we have everyone do I don't care where you come to us, if you're going to work one to one with us, if you're going to do a self-paced program, whatever you're going to do the first thing we have women do is spend five days eating as they normally eat and just tracking their food. It doesn't have to be exact, it doesn't have to be this meticulous thing, but, just like that financial advisor, we need to know where your body's at, which is point A, before we can start taking the steps to get it where it was designed to be. So it's a very toe in the water baby step. That gives us all the data we need to move forward.

Michele Folan: 8:33

Yeah, I know some clients are like I just want to get started, let's just go now. But this makes a lot of sense to me because you got to kind of see where the chinks in the armor are before you can reverse some of the habits that are holding them back. Okay, I love that.

Speaker 3: 8:50

It's so funny. You say that I was just doing an interview with one of our current clients and I remember her first week in the program we have a 12 week program. She was that person. She's like just give me my plan, I want to get started. And I was like, listen, I can do that for you and it's not going to work because our bodies and our minds are designed for homeostasis. They don't like massive change. So if I just arbitrarily say here, eat this, it's never going to last. And now, 12 weeks later, we're doing this interview and she's like I have seen the light, like I understand why this had to be so personalized to me and to meet my body where it is first, because, as you said, we need to see where those chinks in the armor are before we can start to take the steps to fix it.

Michele Folan: 9:31

Well, in regard to food, rachel, we've been taught the deprivation diet, the 900 calorie a day diet, the 1200 calorie a day diet, which we know is not sustainable. How do you kind of unlock that paradigm to get people to start thinking about food as fuel and food as good?

Speaker 3: 9:52

Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite topics. Some of my favorite before and after pictures on our website are of women in their 50s and 60s who came to us eating under 900 calories a day and still not losing weight. And then you see their before and after pictures, where they look like a different human and they're eating 1700 calories a day, and people look at that and they're like there's no way, because diet industry has taught us the less you eat, the more you lose, right? So there's two parts to this answer. Number one if we think about this from a biology standpoint right Again, I'm a very science show me the data person.

Speaker 3: 10:26

If your body, which is designed for survival, our bodies and our brains are designed biologically for survival. If your body thinks it's starving, if it doesn't know when it's going to get its next meal, if it doesn't have enough fuel because that's what calories are, as you said, calories are our fuel If it doesn't have enough fuel to get through the day, let alone add any kind of exercise in there which, by the way, exercise is icing on the cake you can do all this with nutrition alone. But if it doesn't think it's fuel to even get through the day. Why in the world would it release the stored energy that it has? That doesn't make sense from a survival standpoint. So if you've been on a 900 calorie diet for a prolonged period of time, your body is in survival mode and it is not going to release fat because it needs it to survive on a daily basis. So that's the first problem. Then it gets worse because our metabolism is a very trainable thing. Our metabolism gets trained based on how it's being fueled. So when you're on a 900 even 1200 calorie diet for a prolonged period of time, what you are literally telling your metabolism is hey, I don't have a lot of work for you to do, go on vacation. Like I don't need you to work so hard, go on vacation.

Speaker 3: 11:38

So at some point when we cave and we binge which we will, because humans are pleasure seeking creatures and we are not going to starve ourselves indefinitely but when we start eating more food most of us have experienced this we don't just gain back the 10 pounds we lost, we gain back 30 pounds.

Speaker 3: 11:54

And then we say why am I gaining back weight so rapidly? And the answer, said with love, but a harsh truth, is you literally told your metabolism to go on vacation, so it did so. The key and one of my favorite parts about what we do is that we're not only going to get you to lose weight, but we're going to get you to eat more food than you've ever eaten in your life. Because while we get you losing weight, where we have you on it's called a caloric deficit we have you on the high end of a deficit because we're literally retraining your metabolism to run as quickly as possible while losing weight, and that's like the number one thing we hear from people is I cannot believe how much food I'm eating while losing weight and we're like that's the magic. That's how you re-training metabolism at any age. Men are puzzler posts.

Michele Folan: 12:36

And they're not used to that. And, to be fair, even I know you say our metabolisms don't change like a whole lot from age 20 to 60. But our fat deposition does start to travel around. So you see, there in the midsection is what people see most often and we're still programmed, I guess, for when we were cave dwellers and there was famine and there were food shortages, and so your body just knows to shut things down.

Speaker 3: 13:08

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing, it's survival, it's in our best interest. The problem is, when we're not living in cave times anymore and there's food abundantly around us, but we're still treating our body that way, it's going to respond accordingly and that's why you know, if diet culture was right, that the less you eat, the more you lose, we wouldn't have thousands of women coming to us eating 900 calories saying why aren't I losing weight? And it's exactly as you said. It's biology 101.

Michele Folan: 13:33

That makes so much sense. So I do have a question for you. Is your program and your coaching macro based for nutrition?

Speaker 3: 13:42

It is macro based. So for those who are, I'll give a little brief overview. I won't go too deep. For those who aren't familiar with macros, if you pick up any item on the supermarket shelf and turn it over, there's a ton of information, right? Potassium, vitamin D, total calories, your three macros, of which we need the most. It's why they're called macronutrients. And, very simply, your macros are carbs, fat and protein. So every human's body is designed biologically to run on a certain balance, particular to that person, of carbs, fat and protein. So what we do again is we first and foremost find out what your body's used to, because our bodies, in our minds, hate massive change. So we're going to figure out point a, what your body's used to. Then we're going to figure out what your body actually needs, based on you and your lifestyle, what point C is. It's not point B, but point C. And what we do over the course of 12 weeks is we meet you closer to point A, so that there's not that drastic change, and we take you by the hand and we slowly walk you toward point C, what your body actually needs.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Now, for some people they hear that, like the word macro, tracking is a cringe word for a lot of people. They're like oh, I can't track my food, it sounds so tedious. I already ruminate about food. I don't want to think about it. To me, the ultimate goal is not necessarily to track your food forever. To me, the goal is really to eat intuitively, to listen to our body. But the problem is, until you've put in a little boot, I like to think of it as a boot camp. Right, we need to, number one, know what our body needs. Number two, be able to eyeball portion sizes a bit better and, most importantly, have done it in this boot camp period to where our brains and our bodies are actually communicating off intuition, not off habit. So for people who have have a visceral reaction to tracking, my answer is cool, we're not going to do it forever. We're just going to train your body to communicate with what it needs and then we're going to release it so you can actually start eating intuitively.

Michele Folan: 15:37

I started measuring my meat portions so I could understand what four ounces of meat meant to me. Right, and you know they always say oh, it's the palm of your hand is a good guide, and that's a good guide, but really eye-opening to actually weighing my food, I do recommend that. I think it's a good lesson.

Speaker 3: 16:00

I always tell people, just as an experiment even if you don't want to use a food scale as an experiment take a table, what you think is a tablespoon of peanut butter, then plop it on the food scale and go off the grams and your mind will be absolutely blown. And that's usually the answer. When people say I feel like I'm eating healthy but not losing weight, usually that comes down to portion sizes. Is what we think a portion is is not anywhere near what a portion actually is, but it's very trainable. You get used to it very quickly.

Michele Folan: 16:27

And then I'm sure you have to undo the two eggs, toast and avocado trend that that's not enough protein. Yes getting.

Speaker 3: 16:36

I will say that for every hundred women we work with, ninety, eight to ninety nine do not get enough protein. So then it becomes. That's. The other beauty of this method is you learn what's in your food. You start to naturally have thought processes like OK, well, today I'm a little high in fat but I'm low in protein. So maybe I have one egg and three egg whites, and just that simple sentence. Oh, I understand that eggs are a great source of protein, the yolk has a lot of fat, the whites have a lot of protein, and that's not something you have to practice or study. It just becomes an organic part of this process by learning what's in your food.

Michele Folan: 17:11

I know we're talking about macros and everything. Where or if does intermittent fasting fit into?

Speaker 3: 17:19

this that's a great question. So there's a very big difference, as you know, between eating for weight loss and eating for overall health, right? There is a world of whenever. I used to teach middle school so I would tell the kids that and they'd say so you could lose weight eating nothing but Krispy Kreme donuts, because I love Krispy Kreme donuts. And I tell them the answer is yes, If you're in a caloric deficit, in theory, you could eat nothing but donuts and lose weight. The problem is, you would die before you could show off your bikini body because there's no vitamins or minerals, there's not a lot of nutrition, right? So my point in that is there's a difference between eating for weight loss and eating for overall health.

Speaker 3: 17:54

Intermittent fasting is fantastic for overall health, as humans, we tend to overeat and our digestive systems are overworked, so when we give them some downtime, we're going to notice things like increased digestion and increased inner health, increased energy. But what intermittent fasting is not is a weight loss technique, because if we figure out your personal macro plan and for you personally, I'm just throwing out an arbitrary number you have to eat 1700 calories or less to lose weight From a weight loss perspective. I'm not talking about blood sugar. I'm not talking about overall health. From a weight loss perspective, it does not matter if you eat those 1700 calories in two meals a day, in 10 meals a day or in three meals a day. It doesn't matter if you skip breakfast, if you eat it at 11 pm. If you hit your caloric goals, your macro goals, you will lose weight.

Speaker 3: 18:46

So I always tell people if you want to do it. If someone tells me they want to do intermittent fasting, my first question is why? What's the inspiration behind it? And if it's because of how it makes them feel fantastic all day long, let's go. If it's because I think it's necessary to lose weight, the answer is absolutely not. And I take it one step further that to me that becomes a slippery slope, because anytime we start viewing food as the longer I go without eating, the better, that becomes a slippery slope to disordered eating. So health perspective yes. Weight loss absolutely not.

Michele Folan: 19:18

Where does exercise fit into all this, then too? You ask really good questions, because this is the one. Well, you've done this, while Because you said it's yeah, I know, but it's you just say 90% nutrition, which I agree Because I love your inside out approach. I think that is fabulous, but we should be lifting weights and doing all that right, and so when you're coaching someone, when do you start focusing? Then, okay, let's talk about your movement.

Speaker 3: 19:48

Yeah what we tell when people come to us and they say I feel overwhelmed, I don't know where to start. My nutrition is a mess. I've never worked out before. It sounds overwhelming. We I don't want to use the word allow, but our very strong suggestion is let's not even think about workouts, Because I am a huge fan of baby steps and momentum.

Speaker 3: 20:06

Humans are pleasure seeking creatures. So as we get our nutrition in check, as we start to see and feel results, as our energy goes up, we're not going to say I feel incredible, let me not do anything else Right. We're going to say I feel incredible, what else can I do? And then we don't jump into a four day a week workout routine. We take a baby step, we do a game it's called do the bare minimum and we feel into the bare minimum we can commit to that week. The thing with workouts is this nutrition. As I said, 90% of this game hands down.

Speaker 3: 20:33

You will see results with nutrition alone and there's a truth of the human body Again, human biology 101 that the more lean muscle mass you have on your body, the faster your metabolism runs. The quickest way to build lean muscle mass is by pushing your muscles to do what they can't yet do, which happens from resistance training or weight training. So to me, if I'm going to spend an hour in the gym, I'm going to do 40 minutes weight training, maybe 20 minutes cardio. Right Cardio is great for your heart, for your respiratory system, for burning some calories, but weight training you're going to get stronger bones, you're going to get stronger muscles and, from a weight loss perspective, that's how you're going to help fire up your metabolism and support everything you're doing. From the nutrition piece.

Michele Folan: 21:17

I love that. It makes so much sense, because here's what happens, I think, a lot of times is women may not have access to a gym or they haven't worked out and they get so intimidated around that piece of things. Right, it's like easing into something and getting them comfortable with their bodies and having that energy and you're really making a lot of sense. I'm loving this discussion.

Speaker 3: 21:46

To go back to what I said before about the thing you struggle with the most, when I first started, I would buy these apps and I would buy these programs. And it would say, okay, today's leg day you're going to do Bulgarian split squats and lunges and squats. And I was like, if I knew how to do these things, I wouldn't have bought your program. Right, I need someone to teach me. That became within our program. The way that we handle workouts is that every workout has a video tutorial of me, not only teaching you correct form, but also common mistakes to watch out for. And it's because of exactly what you just said that I know. When I was new, first of all, I had no idea what the heck I was doing, and then, if I would find a video and try to copy it, I'd look around the gym and be like, well, that person's doing it differently. I must be wrong, because I knew and I'm not confident in this yet and then I would learn incorrect form because I'm trying to copy someone who's doing it wrong?

Speaker 3: 22:36

So all of this just stems from this like I don't want any woman to have to struggle the way that I did, like I used to get injured all the time in the gym from that method, and it's all about to me. Like I will never consider myself a coach or a personal trainer. I'm an educator. I'm here to make this as streamlined and simple as possible, because that's what I wish I had when I was getting into it.

Michele Folan: 22:58

Yeah, exactly, do you remember P90X? Yes, yes, I do. All right, I had the P90X DVDs, right and plyometrics, and it was a lot of jumping and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to pee in my pants because I can't do this. I mean, it was so defeating and so and I found the reason why I brought that up I found the P90X DVDs in the basement.

Speaker 3: 23:25

I'm going to chuck them because I think they're no, it's going to ask if you're going to try them and see how it feels now.

Michele Folan: 23:30

No, it's Satan in a box. I hate it Horrible. I do want to ask about recovery. This is something I've not asked anyone before, but what are your thoughts about recovery days, non-workout days, their importance and what you recommend?

Speaker 3: 23:46

Yeah. So from a science perspective, for me, when I understand the why of something, I'm more apt to stick with it right. So, when we understand how muscle growth actually works, when you're in the gym and you're pushing your muscles to do what they can't yet do, so you're lifting weights that are just a bit heavier than you're used to and you're getting fatigued, what's happening in that moment is your muscles aren't actually growing. This sounds painful. It's not as painful as it sounds, but you're actually creating little tiny tears in your muscle fibers. It's when you go home and you eat which, by the way, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day the meal you eat after your workout is, for exactly the reason we're talking about right now, when you're done, creating those tiny tears in your muscle fibers and you go home and you eat and you hydrate and you sleep, which becomes infinitely important when you're especially if you're weight training and you take days to rest your body. During those rest periods, those tiny tears in your muscle fibers are healing and as they heal, that's how muscle growth occurs.

Speaker 3: 24:48

So if you think about people who are like no days off, right, like I'm going to go hardcore, well, that's a horrible idea because, number one, your muscles can't grow if there's never any recovery time for them to heal.

Speaker 3: 24:59

And number two, now you're just cutting open and open wound over and over again If you're trying to push a muscle that those tears haven't healed from. That's how injuries going to occur. So I think the slippery slope with recovery days is sometimes we give ourselves a little too much grace. It's like well, I worked out once this week, so now I'll come back to it in a month. We don't need that much recovery time. But it is really important that you're taking if you're someone who loves to work out that you're taking at least one rest day a week. If you're new to working out, I don't ever suggest you jump in with five to six days. I'm a huge fan of, like I said, baby steps and momentum, but whatever your workout routine looks like, sleep, hydration, nutrition and at least one rest day is absolutely key or you're going to injure yourself and not see the results you could be.

Michele Folan: 25:47

And then that meal or whatever we eat after we work out, should that have higher amounts of protein.

Rachel Freiman: 25:53

I'm a big fan of it if you can swing it.

Speaker 3: 25:55

So I always tell people everything I teach is a fan of flowing with human nature, and for some people it's just not a reality of their life that after their workout they can sit down and have a full meal. Some people are getting it in the morning on the way to work. Some people are doing it last thing at night and coming to go into bed. At the very least, when you're done with a workout, I try to have a protein shake and some kind of like fruit or dried fruit. I get some healthy, simple sugars in my body and a decent amount of protein.

Speaker 3: 26:23

In an ideal world, post-workout would be one of your most balanced meals of the day. So a good combination of a decent amount of protein and then some carbs and fat with it. Again, at the end of the day, if you're hitting your macros, you'll see results. But if we're thinking of this from a recovery standpoint that you have just depleted your body right, we talked about calories being your energy. We talked about tears in your muscle fibers what your body is looking for in that moment is okay. Like I just put in work for you, I just depleted myself. I need you to refuel me. So a good meal balanced with carbs, fat and protein is the best thing you can do when possible.

Michele Folan: 27:00

I like your idea that dried fruit too, because that's you get a lot of fiber in that too Sometimes you see bodybuilders who are eating like lucky charms after a workout.

Speaker 3: 27:08

The reason they do that is because our bodies can process simple sugars really fast, so it's a good way to get energy back in quickly. The problem I love lucky charms and it's not the most nutritious thing in the world. So fruit this is also, by the way, the reason that fruit gets a bad rep sometimes, because it is technically a simple carb, it's a simple sugar, but it's nutritious. Right, it's not the same as lucky charms. So to me, fruit is kind of the hack of like. How do we get those quick fix carbs in but in a more nutritious way? So I'll do a protein shake, some dried fruit, just because it's easy to throw in the car and then call it a day, and then when I get home I'll have my full meal.

Michele Folan: 27:46

Okay, got it.

Rachel Freiman: 27:47

Chocolate milk, People do it. I'm not a huge fan, but people do it Right. Just thought I'd ask. I see people doing chocolate milk sometimes.

Michele Folan: 27:54

That's why Same idea same concept. Tell me a little bit about your podcast. So who are your guests? What's your like? A little bit about your platform.

Speaker 3: 28:03

Yeah, so I've actually never had a guest on my podcast and that's something we're thinking of changing. Okay, we are going into our seventh season of the podcast, so it's been around for quite a while now. It's based off my book. So my book is called Becoming Mind Strong the Truth About Health, fitness and the BS that's holding you back, and my podcast is called the Becoming Mind Strong Podcast. So the platform so far has been me talking about all the topics I talk about in my book. My book is 70% mindset and 30% nutrition, so there's a lot of.

Speaker 3: 28:35

When I talk about mindset, it's very easy to think of rainbows and glitter and unicorns and standing in front of the mirror and saying mantras. But I'm a huge neuroscience nerd. I can nerd out all day on neuroscience. So we talk a lot about retraining our inner monologue, about consciously digging up stories that our brain's been wired for, but how to consciously rewire our brain to support this new lifestyle. So the majority of the podcast is based around that concept a lot of neuroscience, habit training. We actually, as of the time of this recording, we have a new special edition coming out that's called Mind Strong Fitnesses Five Days of Alignment, where we're going to take this one step further and talk about the quantum physics of energy and how manifestation is not, as I like to say, rainbows and glitter and unicorns, but it's actually science, it's quantum physics, it's about literal vibrations in the air, and we're working on that project right now. So we like to run the gamut from mindset to nutrition, to quantum physics.

Michele Folan: 29:33

Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I've had some really interesting guests talk about quantum physics, of things like hypnosis and Reiki and some of the other modalities out there that are helping us with mindset, so a great pathway to take. I think that's neat. In terms of your program, then I would love for you to explain kind of how it works, the timeframes, like is it remote, like where people can do virtual, how often are there check-ins, that kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 30:02

Absolutely so. My company, mind Strong Fitnesses, is purely online, so we work with women all over the world. We have developed so my program is called Mind Strong Ignite. We have a 12-week program called Mind Strong Ignite. We're going into our sixth year and in six years of doing this like again as a teacher, I am all about feedback. So we have spent six years just picking and choosing and tweaking and adjusting until we have developed what I believe to be Like. I always tell people I'm like. It works. The only question is you're going to invest in yourself or not? Because my promise to you is this works. It's math, it's science, it's biology, it's psychology. So what happens is, when people sign up with us, we have them fill out a pretty extensive onboarding form.

Speaker 3: 30:40

I have five incredible coaches that work for me, and what I'm looking for is I really want to hear their story. So are they menopausal or post? Do they have over 100 pounds to lose? Are they a busy mom that's taken care of a bunch of kids at home? And based off their story, I'm going to hand select which one of my coaches are going to be the best fit to support them.

Speaker 3: 30:58

The name of the game from there, as you just referenced, is accountability and support, because we are literally doing the neuroscience of unwiring decades of diet culture, beliefs. And this is the first time in most women's life we are wiping the slate clean and we are saying you know what? I haven't tried 150 diets in my life. I've tried 150 versions of one diet. That was all based on restriction. And this is the first time in my life that I'm approaching nutrition as a skill. And if we want to wire our brains, that takes accountability and support, because it's the consistency, it's the retelling of news stories, it's the retraining of habits. So our coaches work with them the way we talked about. We have them track their food. We figure out their macro plan. They talk them through what that looks like Over the course of 12 weeks. It is. This is not some cookie cutter. You type in a question for a bot. You and your coach and the whole Mind Strong team. We are holding your hands. So they have weekly email check-ins with their coach. They have bi-weekly zooms with their coach. They have access to them every day on an app called Boxer that lets them text or send voice memos. We come together as a community once a month for office hours that I get to lead. We call it our Ignite family because it absolutely is like. These women go on to become best friends, they become sisters.

Speaker 3: 32:14

The amount that we cry together in office hours of sharing successes and stories it is just this work sets my soul on fire, and it has nothing to do with the weight loss part. We always say the weight loss is a given. It's math and science. You follow your macro plan, you're going to lose weight. For us, it's about the life transformations we see happen, because energy can't be destroyed, right? I talked about quantum physics, science a little bit.

Speaker 3: 32:37

The amount of energy that we currently spend ruminating on I should eat this, I should eat this. My pants feel tight when we release that. It is not a coincidence that every single time, we watch these women step into their power and start their businesses, attract back the career their dreams, find their dream partners, and we just get to sit back and celebrate all this with them and it is one of the best parts of my life. I absolutely love what I get to do in this world. I could cry if I could go and I'll start crying. I love this Six years later. I love it as much as the day I started.

Michele Folan: 33:11

I had Joan McDonald on my show this week. She was 70 when she started working out. She's 77 now. I always tell people it's not too late. It's not too late, you have time to get this under control and to get your life back. It's really about how do you want the next 20, 30 years to look like? You're giving people that opportunity with education, which I think is fantastic.

Speaker 3: 33:40

One of the biggest things we hear is I can't believe I'm eating this much food and losing. Wait. The second biggest thing we hear is where was this 20 years ago? I always love the saying that says the best time to start was 20 years ago. The second best time to start is right now. We're either going to look back 20 years from now and say where was this 20 years ago, or we're going to start now and kiss our past selves on the mouth when we're like thank goodness that I took the leap 20 years ago, because look at me now.

Michele Folan: 34:05

Yeah, we can all look back and think, oh yeah, I wish I would have done this 20 years ago or whatever right. But you know what, maybe we wouldn't have been ready to take that on right and we're a little older, a little wiser and and ready for that challenge and I just that's why I like being my age now. I just would never, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 34:29

I would never want to go back to being 30 again, not on your life, so anyway, I'm a big believer in life unfolding the way that it's meant to, and when people come to us and they're like you know I've been following you for three years and, for some reason, this is the moment I'm ready, I'm like this is exactly when we're supposed to work together. Then life unfolds the way that it's meant to.

Michele Folan: 34:48

I had a clairvoyant on my show and she said nothing happens by accident. Yes, what is one of your own Pillars of self-care, rachel?

Speaker 3: 35:05

Oh I love these questions. It's interesting when I get asked this question. I think a lot of times people expect me to talk about nutrition or workouts, and it's absolutely not my Number one. It actually goes beautifully with what we were just talking about. My number one driving force in life is protecting my energy. Every decision that I make in life, whether it's Bringing someone into my business, whether it's a personal relationship, whether it's going out that night or staying in, I don't care if it's big or small. If this adds to my energy, if this elevates my energy, if it's a whole body, hell yes, then I am in.

Speaker 3: 35:42

If there's any feeling in my body that some, even if I can't logically explain it, this doesn't feel like a fit, this doesn't feel right, I should do a instead of B. I don't know logically why, but that is what my body is telling me. That's the choice that I'll always make. Learning it was a conscious practice that I did to learn to my, to learn to listen to my intuition, and what's happened as a result is that I physically felt my energy, my vibration. This is where we talked about quantum physics. I can feel my energy elevate and it's led to every decision-making Moment in my life. Is this a whole body hell yes. And if it's not a whole body hell yes, then it is a hands down no, and that is my number one pillar of self-care in every area of life.

Michele Folan: 36:25

This is a good one. That's a really good one. I like that.

Speaker 3: 36:30

It's very different every time I say that, people like, oh, I thought you're gonna talk about macro tracking. I'm like, no macro tracking to me. I always think of life as this pyramid right, like if the top of the pyramid is our aligns life, the life of our dreams when everything's in flow, and then the middle of it is our mindset work, rewiring our inner monologue to be our best coach instead of a jerk. To us, the foundation of the pyramid it doesn't, it crumbles without this is our physical health. So I teach physical health because you can't have the rest of the stuff without it, and I know a lot about it and I'm passionate about it.

Speaker 3: 36:59

But to me, like, that's not what life is about. It's not about wearing a t-shirt that says I lost 30 pounds or this is how much I weigh now. To me, life is about that tip of the pyramid, the align life. But to have that, we have to start with the physical health. So my answer is always gonna be that tip of the pyramid, because that's what I'm aiming for. That's the work that we're really doing together.

Michele Folan: 37:19

Yeah, I love that. I think that's just a great way to finish this up, I guess. Finally, where can people find you.

Speaker 3: 37:28

The best way to find us is on our main website, it's just mindstrongfitnesscom. It's kind of fun to poke around because we have Hundreds of before and after pictures and who doesn't love a good before and after picture and videos of people telling their transformations. I'm also really active on Instagram. My Instagram handles at get mindstrong. We reference my book becoming mindstrong the truth about health, fitness and the BS that's holding you back, and, of course, my podcast becoming mindstrong perfect, and I'll put all that in the show notes.

Michele Folan: 37:57

Rachel, this was Very fun. This was a blast. Thank you for having me. No, you're welcome. You're welcome anytime. Follow asking for a friend on social media outlets and provide a review and share this show wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews and sharing help us grow, you, you.