how strength training changed the way i see fitness, food and my body

Emily Field 00:00:00  Have you ever found yourself stuck in a fitness rut, doing the same workouts, chasing the same weight loss goals, and feeling like you’re spinning your wheels? I know I have. In this episode, I’m going to tell a little story time. I’m going to take you back about ten years. When I was in my mid 20s, after the structure of college, I felt lost about how it was supposed to work out. Now that I was an adult out in the world for years, I thought fitness is about burning calories and making the number on the scale smaller, or at least maintaining it within a very tight range. But everything changed when I stepped into a CrossFit gym for the first time. Here in episode 45, I’m sharing how strength training completely shifted my mindset around fitness and food, how CrossFit transformed the way I saw my body, and how you can experience that shift too. We’ll also talk about the real reasons so many women struggle to embrace muscle building, and how to break free from that cycle.

Emily Field 00:00:49  We talk a lot about macros here on this podcast, but what good is tracking your protein if you’re afraid to get strong? Let’s get into it. Welcome to Macros Made Easy, the podcast that takes the confusion out of tracking macros. I’m your host, Emily Field, a registered dietitian that specializes in a macros approach. In each episode, I help you learn how to eat in a way that supports your health, body composition, and athletic performance goals. We’ll cover the basics of macronutrients how to track for various goals, the role of macros in your health, and how to make sustainable changes to your habits. I’ve helped hundreds of people experience more food freedom and flexibility while navigating their nutrition. So whether you’ve tried macros and it just didn’t stick or you just heard the word macros yesterday, I can’t wait to help you too. If you’ve ever felt like you were doing everything right when it came to fitness logging hours on the treadmill, sweating through spin classes, tracking every calorie burned, but still not seeing the results you wanted.

Emily Field 00:01:45  I can tell you I’ve also been there for years. I believe that exercise meant cardio, that fitness meant smaller, that my workouts were only successful if I left the gym drenched in sweat and completely exhausted, I was stuck in what I would call my cardio queen era endless stair stepping, running and elliptical sessions all in the pursuit of a smaller version of myself. And honestly, it felt like a full time job. I planned my workouts, made sure I burn enough calories, and felt guilty if I missed a day. I wasn’t training for strength. I wasn’t moving for joy. I was exercising to shrink myself or when I really look back at it, really just to maintain what I thought was my ideal weight. Why? Because that’s what we as women are taught from an early age. The fitness industry feeds us messaging that workouts should be about burning, not building, that we should focus on toning a word that’s really just code for don’t get too strong that lifting weights will make us bulky, but cardio will make us lean and feminine.

Emily Field 00:02:45  And like so many women, I internalized all of it. But here’s the thing: all that cardio and calorie burning didn’t make me feel empowered. It made me feel weak, exhausted, and stuck in a never ending cycle of over exercising and under fueling. My body wasn’t changing the way I wanted, and instead of questioning the goal. I doubled down on the method. Maybe I need to run more. Maybe I need to eat less. During this time, I signed up for random races and various lengths just to keep me on track with going to the gym and burning lots of calories. Spoiler that didn’t work, and maybe you’ve been there too. So if you’re in that same place, putting in the effort, following all the rules, and not seeing the progress you want, maybe it’s time to ask a different question. Maybe the problem isn’t that you’re not working hard enough, but that you’re working towards the wrong thing. And the next part of this episode, I will share how strength training and CrossFit specifically completely rewired my mindset around fitness, food, and what it really means to be strong.

Emily Field 00:03:42  Stay with me because the shift changed everything. If you’ve ever walked into a gym where you didn’t feel like you belonged, where you weren’t sure what to do, felt intimidated by the people around you and wondered if you’d made a huge mistake, then you’ll definitely understand exactly how I felt the first time I stepped into a CrossFit gym. The funny thing is, I wasn’t even there for me. I had set up a meeting with the owner to pitch my nutrition coaching services. I was prepared, like overly prepared. I had my pitch memorized, ready to sell them on why their members needed my help, but that meeting turned into something completely unexpected. We sat in this cold, dark basement, literally a couch and a makeshift table, and I swear I think it was just like a ping pong table. I was there with my CrossFit enthusiast friend who convinced me I was going to love his gym jive with the owner, and somehow this would be my way in. I left that meeting not with a new business deal per se, but with a curiosity I hadn’t felt in years, because what I saw at the gym wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced before.

Emily Field 00:04:46  It wasn’t a room full of women killing themselves on treadmills or doing endless crunches. These women were lifting. They were swinging kettlebells, pressing barbells overhead, pulling themselves up on the rig. They were sweating, but they weren’t chasing sweat. They were pushing, but not for the sake of burning calories. And for the first time, I realized I had never really trained for strength before. I had spent years exercising to control my body, but never to empower it. So I intended my first couple of classes. And let me tell you, I have never felt more awkward in my life. I compare this time to, you know, being a baby deer who’s learning to walk for the first time. I didn’t know the movements. I didn’t know the names of the lifts. I was convinced I was the most uncoordinated, out-of-shape person in that room. It was absolutely humbling. But I kept coming back because every time I showed up, I learned something new. I started to get better. And that tiny bit of progress, whether it was lifting five more pounds or finally not tripping over the jump rope, it became addicting.

Emily Field 00:05:45  I was willing to be vulnerable enough to be a beginner, and that changed everything. Somewhere along the way, my entire relationship with fitness shifted. I stopped focusing on how I looked and started focusing on what I could do. Instead of chasing calorie burns, I started chasing performance. I wasn’t working out to shrink. I was working out to grow. And here’s the kicker CrossFit gyms don’t have mirrors. At least the one that I went to. There was no way for me to check and recheck my body, pick apart my flaws, or analyze whether my waist looks smaller. That day. I had to feel my body instead of constantly assessing it. And let me tell you, that was one of the most freeing shifts I have ever experienced. If you’ve been stuck in the same workouts for years, frustrated with your progress, and constantly fixated on what your body looks like instead of what it can do, maybe it’s time to try something different. Strength training isn’t just about getting fit, it’s about realizing what you’re truly capable of.

Emily Field 00:06:40  That, my friend, is a form of self-care, an underutilized form of self-care. Where else in your life do you have the opportunity to experiment, to play, to try and fail in a controlled, albeit fun, environment. In the next part of this episode, I’ll share how stepping into that gym awkward, intimidated, and completely out of my comfort zone became the catalyst for so much more than just a new workout routine. So stay with me. So when I first started strength training, I thought the biggest change would be in my workouts. How I moved, how I trained, how I felt in the gym. And while that was huge, I didn’t realize how much it would completely reshape my relationship with food. For years, food was something I tried to control. I was trying to eat less or cut back or be, quote good. From the years of training, I had to become a dietitian. I had very, you know, distinct rules around what is good and what is bad.

Emily Field 00:07:34  I saw nutrition as a math problem, calories in and calories out, and the goal was to shrink or maintain, at least not to change. It was just to stay the same. But when I started lifting, I had to face a truth I had spent years avoiding. I was massively under eating for what I wanted my body to do. At first, I couldn’t figure out why I felt so exhausted, why my lips felt heavier than they should, why I was hitting a wall in my training. And then it clicked. I wasn’t fueling my body. I was still trying to deprive it. See, when you’re only focused on shrinking, you think less food is always better. But strength training demands something different. It asks, what can your body do? What can you build? How can you support performance, recovery, and strength? I realized I had to start eating for my workouts instead of in spite of them. I had to stop treating food like an enemy and start treating it like fuel.

Emily Field 00:08:27  So I shifted from thinking about how little I could eat to how well I could eat more carbs before a workout, more protein after enough food throughout the day to actually support muscle growth. And let me tell you, the difference was night and day. I had more energy. My recovery improved. I actually felt strong. Now let’s talk about protein because this one was a struggle. Like a lot of women, I grew up with very pervasive diet culture, where protein was never really emphasized. Carbs and fats were certainly demonized. But protein, it wasn’t really something I thought much about. So when I started tracking my macros for the first time, I was shocked about how little protein I was actually eating. I had to make some serious changes, because if you’re lifting protein is a non-negotiable, it’s what helps you recover, rebuild, and actually see the muscle that you’re working hard for. So some of the changes that I made right away were, you know, I was swapping out my old diet breakfast for something like 30g of protein eggs with turkey sausage, cottage cheese.

Emily Field 00:09:29  I started adding a more substantial snack to my day. I was doing Greek yogurt, maybe a protein shake or some beef jerky with a protein bar instead of just grabbing a low calorie regular granola bar. And then I just made sure that every single meal had a solid, hearty protein source. That was chicken, beef, fish. It could be tofu, something like that. Whatever. It just had to be there. And what do you know? I wasn’t starving all the time anymore. I wasn’t constantly thinking about food because I was actually satisfied. The biggest transformation in my nutrition wasn’t just about eating more, it was about changing why I ate before. Food was always tied to guilt, or I was kind of wrestling with this either being good or bad with my food choices. It was all about willpower, control, and probably underneath taking up less space. But once I started fueling for performance, food became functional. It wasn’t a moral dilemma anymore. It was just a tool, a way to support my training, to feel good, to recover faster, to lift heavier.

Emily Field 00:10:34  And do you know how freeing that was? I was no longer obsessing over my body shrinking or trying to stay the same. I was focusing on what it could do. And the irony. When I finally started fueling my body, my physique changed in ways I had never been able to achieve through restriction alone. If you’ve been stuck in the mindset of eating less constantly under fueling and wondering why you’re not making progress, it might be time to rethink the goal. Because strength requires fuel. And when you start eating to support your body instead of fight against it, everything changes. In the next part of this episode, I’ll share how this shift in nutrition and the confidence I built through strength training didn’t just change my workouts, but changed how I approached my entire life. So stay with me. We’ve talked about my journey, how I went from over exercising and under fueling to finally discovering what my body was actually capable of. But now let’s talk about you. Because this isn’t just about my story. It’s about why this shift from shrinking to growing, from restriction to fueling, from burning calories to building strength matters for you, too.

Emily Field 00:11:39  If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s this you are not meant to shrink. You are meant to grow. For so long, we’ve been told that fitness is about making ourselves smaller, that the goal of working out is to burn off food, that tracking macros is just another tool for weight loss. But what if I told you that your workouts could be about building, not just burning? What if tracking macros wasn’t just about cutting calories, but about fueling your body like an athlete? What if you stop measuring success by the number on the scale and started measuring it by what your body can do? Because let me tell you, when you shift your focus from shrinking to growing, from depriving to fueling, from just moving to training, everything changes. So I want you to check in with yourself right now and ask yourself these three questions. Number one, are you stuck in the burn calories mindset or are you training to build in that same vein? Are you choosing workouts because they quote torch fat or because they actually make you stronger? Are you exercising as punishment or as a way to level up instead.

Emily Field 00:12:45  Number two, are you eating in a way that supports muscle or are you stuck in restriction? You know, are you giving your body enough protein and a fuel, enough energy to recover and get stronger? Or are you still afraid to eat because you think less is always better? Number three are you focusing too much on how you look instead of what you can do? Are you constantly body checking, picking apart every floor, or are you paying attention to the real winds? Lifting heavier, feeling energized. Moving with confidence. If you’ve never trained for strength before, let this be your sign. Pick up the heavier weight. Fuel your body like an athlete. See what happens when you stop fighting against yourself and start working with your body instead. Because you deserve more than a lifetime of chasing a smaller body. You deserve to feel strong, capable, and fueled for the life you want to live. And if you’re not sure where to start, and if you’re realizing that your nutrition needs a shift, that your workouts need new focus, and that you’re done with the endless cycle of dieting.

Emily Field 00:13:45  I have the resources to help. Number one, you can take my Macro Mastery quiz to find out exactly where you are in your macro journey, and what your next steps should be, and if you’re ready for real support. Number two, my coaching program is here to help you break free from restriction and actually build the body that you want. I’ve told you about how strength training changed my fitness, how it changed my nutrition, how it shifted my mindset from shrinking to growing from restriction to power. But there’s one part I haven’t quite shared yet. And that’s the most important part, because walking into that CrossFit gym for the first time didn’t just change how I trained. It changed everything. It changed who I became, the relationships I built, the path my life took. The person sitting here today speaking to you. And the truth is, I didn’t see any of it coming that first day. When I walked through the doors of the gym, I had no idea I was stepping into a completely different life.

Emily Field 00:14:38  I just thought I was trying to work out. I didn’t know that the guy who introduced me to CrossFit would years later become my husband. I didn’t know that the confidence I built underneath a barbell would give me the strength to leave a toxic relationship. I didn’t know that by surrounding myself with people who valued growth, discipline, and self-respect, my entire lifestyle would shift that. I’d start drinking less because I actually wanted to feel good, that I’d start prioritizing rest because I cared about how I performed, that I’d build friendships rooted in more than just socializing. They’d be built on shared struggles, mutual support, and the kind of camaraderie that only happens when you push your limits together. I didn’t know any of that. All I knew was that I wanted to be stronger, and that one desire just to be a little stronger, set off a chain reaction that touched every corner of my life. But here’s the craziest part that gym, the one I almost didn’t walk into. The owner saw something in me.

Emily Field 00:15:33  He gave me a chance to start working with people. No red tape, no over complicated systems. Just me helping people with their nutrition, learning, practicing, gaining experience. Some of those very first clients I ever coached came from that gym and word spread. People started referring their friends. The results spoke for themselves and before I knew it, I had a reputation not just as a nutrition coach, but someone who understood what it meant to fuel for strength, for performance, for the long game. And that that became the foundation of everything I do now without that first step, without the gym, without that shift in mindset, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be coaching women the way that I do today, helping them fuel for performance instead of punishment. I wouldn’t have the same deep understanding of why macros matter, not just for aesthetics, but for strength and function. And I definitely wouldn’t have the same passion for breaking women out of the cycle of over dieting and under eating. CrossFit didn’t just make me stronger, it gave me a mission.

Emily Field 00:16:32  It showed me firsthand what’s possible when women stop trying to make themselves smaller and start training to be stronger. And that’s exactly why I built this coaching business. If you’re listening to this right now and feeling a little fire inside of you, if something in your gut is saying, this is me. If you’ve spent years chasing smaller instead of chasing stronger, I want you to know something. This can absolutely be your shift too. And you don’t have to start CrossFit. You don’t even have to lift heavy weights today. But you do have to start questioning again. What if I trained to build instead of just burn? What if I fueled my body to perform instead of just shrink? What if I let go of the fear of getting stronger and just let it happen? Because if I had never stepped into that gym, I would have never discovered the life and career I have now. And if you never take your first step, whether it’s in a gym, in your nutrition, or in your mindset, you’ll never know what’s waiting for you.

Emily Field 00:17:28  On the other side, I find myself saying this to clients all the time. I’m going to show you a roadmap to strength training. I’m going to give you all the reasons why strength training is going to help you get to the goals that you have for yourself, for your health, for your body composition, for whatever athletic performance goal you might have for yourself. But that’s kind of just where it starts. That’s going to bleed into so many different areas of your life if you just let it. I don’t know the areas in which strength training is going to touch, but it will touch something and that’s a super powerful shift for most people. I love being able to open that door for them. Thank you so much for listening to the Macros Made Easy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the one you’re listening to right now to share it on your Instagram Stories, and tag me at Emily Fields so that more people can find this podcast and learn how to use a macros approach in a stress free way.

Emily Field 00:18:21  If you love the podcast, head over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. Remember, you can always find more free health and nutrition content on Instagram and on my website at emilyfieldRD.com. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.