How I Gained Almost 7 Pounds of Muscle and Lost Fat at the Same Time

In this episode, Cheryl McColgan shares her journey of strength training and body composition changes over the course of a year. She emphasizes the importance of tracking body composition, not just scale weight, and highlights the benefits of consistent strength training. She discusses her approach to strength training, including progressive overload and full-body workouts. She also mentions the use of supplements like creatine and the importance of proper nutrition. Throughout the year, Cheryl gained 6.5 pounds of lean mass and lost 2 pounds of fat, demonstrating the effectiveness of her approach. Takeaways: Consistency is key in strength training and body composition changes. Tracking body composition, not just scale weight, is important to understand progress. Progressive overload and full-body workouts can be effective in building muscle and losing fat. Proper nutrition, including adequate protein intake, is crucial for muscle growth. Supplements like creatine can support muscle growth. Gains in lean mass and fat loss can occur simultaneously with the right approach. Addressing foot health can improve overall strength training performance and reduce pain. Creatine and aminos I use Foot health tools from Dr. Emily New Sleep Technology Bia Body Pod at home body composition, 98% Correlated to DEXA Study on full body workout vs split training for fat loss https://youtu.be/T_ANk5OEF_g Show Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.748)Well, hello friends, welcome back. It has been a little bit, but I am excited to be back on the mic and have several interviews scheduled coming up over the next. few weeks, so it should be back to a more regular schedule going here into fall. I promise if I'm ever going to peace out for an extended amount of time again, I will definitely let you know. So don't worry if occasionally there's a week skipped or something like that. I used to put this out religiously every single week on Wednesday and it was a lot easier when I had some interns helping me produce the podcast. But now it's just little me again, all by myself. So and a few things have been going on in not only my life, but in the business. And so that has made things not as regular. But anyway, I have no intention of going away at least not right now. So I will let you know if that ever happens. But anyway, for today's solo episode, I have something to update you on that I've wanting to share for a while. And I've mentioned this before in the past. And that is my Dexa body scan. that I was keeping track of since I started lifting again. And so I've talked about this a little bit in the past, but I might as well share the history again with you before I get into what I've been doing over the last year to increase my strength. and how that's been going and what I've been doing and some lessons that you may want to take away from that process. But anyway, how it all started is that I've been active pretty much my whole life, was a runner for 17 years, played sports in both high school and college. so my first experience with weightlifting was way back in the eighth grade basketball, which at my age is kind of shocking that it Cheryl McColgan (01:58.306)even in my mind to lift some weights to have better sports performance because it definitely, especially in high schools then, you maybe the boys were in the weight room, but it was definitely not a thing for the girls teams. And I think the only reason that I had it in my head was just because I've always had such this personal interest in health and wellness and because I had watched my dad my whole life. He was a runner and he had always lifted weights. He's basically like Jack LaLanne. If you don't know that name at the younger people listening here, go Google Jack LaLanne, but he's very inspirational, was very ahead of his time in terms of being into health and wellness and lifting weights and being very fit.