WBFF Pro Bree Lind on staying fit like a pro (even while pregnant!)

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger if you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger if you’re a girl.

Now these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere you can buy books online, like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes Noble, Kobo, and so forth.

And if you’re into audio books like me, you can actually get one of my books for free. One of my audio books for free with a 30 day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books. That’s [00:01:00] www. muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books. And you can see how to do this.

Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you’re going to like what I’m doing with my supplement company, Legion. Now, as you probably know, I’m not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing.

And I’ve always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And basically I had been complaining about this. for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products and not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted.

So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they’re a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored to all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient. And we also cite all supporting studies.

So you can go dive in and. Check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at [00:02:00] clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don’t take enough, then you’re not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research.

And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you’re buying. All our formulations are 100 percent transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more about my supplements at www. legionathletics, that’s L E G I O N, athletics. com. And if you like what and you want to buy something, use the coupon code PODCAST, P O D C A S T, and you’ll save 10 percent on your order.

All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let’s get to the show.[00:03:00] 

Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscle for life. com doing another podcast. And on this podcast, I have Brie Lynn Lynn, sorry. L I N D B R E L I N D. com. And she’s a former WBFF pro and a fitness model. She’s 29 years old, doing a lot of good things, helping people get fit in amazing shape herself. So contacted her and she’s on the show.

Hey Brie. 

Bree Lind: Hi, how are you? 

Mike Matthews: Good. Good. Thanks. Thanks for coming on. So tell me and tell the listeners what’s your story? How did you what motivated you get fit? How did you go from where you started to where you are today in terms of your fitness level? 

Bree Lind: I was about 24 years old.

I’d been working in the bar industry for six years and the late nights get to you after a while, your nutrition isn’t exactly probably where it should be. And around that age, I guess I started noticing I was putting on weight not intentionally. And so I decided to start [00:04:00] working out.

And then that being said, I just hired a personal trainer and he has suggested that I, as a goal, sign up for a show. 

And I thought that was a great idea. So I did that, met with him literally like I signed up for a show three months from then. So that was my first experience with contest prep.

Yeah, it was, 

Mike Matthews: that’s like a trial by fire. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. I’m always been the kind of person like all or nothing It was good. Like I, I enjoyed it. I found that it kept me focused. The only problem that I had with it at that time was, I didn’t really have the background in fitness. So I basically dieted down all my body fat and I just ended up really skinny.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. We, you lose muscle in the process. 

Bree Lind: Sorry. 

Mike Matthews: You lost muscle in the process. Just like too much. Yeah. I didn’t 

Bree Lind: really have enough. I didn’t really have a lot. So I just ended up but I loved it. Like I loved being on stage and I’ve always been a really goal oriented person. That being said, I did that show and then I finished it and was like, okay when’s the next one?

And then of course your goals [00:05:00] changed, I decided to take a year to train and set myself up. So a year later, I competed again. I was yo yoing back and forth, like I was finding that the people who I had coaching me at that time Really weren’t that knowledgeable in the nutrition part of it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah And so I hear about it. I hear I get emailed about it every week or two I get emailed usually from girls that are either have been competing or want to compete and they’re running, hey, my coach told me to do this and a lot of times it is just the Basically, my coach told me to starve myself and do two hours of cardio a day.

Should I do that? 

Bree Lind: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s the same thing that happened to me. I There was a certain trainer here where i’m from calgary And basically everybody in this federation went to this guy and I thought I didn’t really know much about it So I thought okay he must be good and So I went for my initial consultation with him and paid what it was an outrageous amount of money and ended up showing up and I was put into a group training situation where I wasn’t really [00:06:00] getting any one on one.

So then I had already paid for it, so I just, stayed in that. And then when it came down to die down for the show, he Basically put me on like a chicken and asparagus diet eight times a day for a month, and I lost all the muscle I worked for that entire year, so 

Mike Matthews: Ridiculous. 

Bree Lind: Yeah, and it’s everybody else’s story, and I was super frustrated, but ended up competing again, and then I placed top ten, I think, that time, and then I was like 

Mike Matthews: Even despite the horrible diet.

Bree Lind: Sorry. 

Mike Matthews: You thought you placed top 10 despite the horrible diet or that was? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 

Bree Lind: and I think what it boiled down to was like I felt very comfortable on stage and I was always told by the judges I had excellent stage presence, so I just decided that, okay there was another show two months from then I took, I went with another coach and he changed my diet a bit where he had me on more of a high fat diet, still low carb, but it ended up working for my body.

And then I ended up winning that [00:07:00] show and winning a pro card. So that was super motivating, I think. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s awesome. 

Bree Lind: And then just from those experiences, like I just decided okay, I want to become a coach, but I want to take all these things that happened to me and make sure that I educate myself properly so that I would never train my clients the way that I’ve been trained, 

Mike Matthews: yeah. And what were the big changes in terms of like how you train now and how you diet now versus the starvation and do a bajillion hours of cardio a week? 

Bree Lind: It’s crazy. I eat probably 2200 calories a day. I had, I reversed. I did myself. So I’m, I basically went from having, under 50 grams of carbohydrates a day up to 300 on days that I train and maintain my body weight.

And I hardly do any cardio and I just lift. I get my cardio workouts from my weight. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because that’s I write about a lot of this kind of stuff on my website and I wrote an article recently on metabolic damage and how you get there and then how do you fix it? What’s a reverse diet and so forth.

And those are [00:08:00] the basic kind of recommendations of, and to whether it’s girls or guys is heavy weightlifting. Focus on compound lifts. You have to get stronger over time. And you have, depending on the rep ranges can change based on, guys versus girls and conditioning level, but you should always be including a heavy lifting in your routine.

And personally I like, I actually like cardio even as a part of maintenance. I enjoy it. I don’t know. It makes me feel good, but I always, I like high intensity cardio and I always keep, keep it to 20, 30 minutes. And even when I’m cutting I guess I, I stay relatively lean, maybe around 7 to 8 percent or so, just cause I have to for what I do.

But if I, need to get down to five or six, then I still not doing more than, for 20 to 30 minute hit sessions per week. And a lot of people when they first hear that, they’re like, they, that doesn’t compute like that’s not possible. How can you get that lean just doing what is really just about maybe, two hours of cardio or an hour and a half a week.

So I’m with you on that, on, on helping dispel that, that, that [00:09:00] myth that you have to eat very little and do a shitload of cardio to get lean. 

Bree Lind: I find that like it worked in the beginning for me and then all of a sudden, I just I started hovering at this one body weight and I just couldn’t get back down.

And I actually ended up after doing some research online and like talking to different girls that I know in the industry, I ended up hiring Lee Norton. And he was Yeah, he was the one that actually fixed me, which was amazing. That’s awesome. Yeah, and not to mention, I learned a ton from him.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: I did an interview with Lane. I’m going to be posting it up here soon. He’s a cool guy. He’s I’m in Tampa, Florida. He’s in the same area. 

Bree Lind: Yeah, he’s a great guy. Fixes people and he teaches them what’s right. The end of the day, I just, I was tired of, I was tired of not, Not being able to eat 

Mike Matthews: food, feeling like shit, having, no energy.

Yeah, all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. And 

Bree Lind: that’s, and this is how I coach my clients now. And it works [00:10:00] like I don’t like, I don’t ever have people updating me each week that they feel like garbage. 

Yeah. 

Bree Lind: They always have energy for their workouts, and this is the way that it should be, right?

Yeah. You want to do this and get, and it’s like a longterm thing. You don’t just want to get to stage and then, a month after stage feel like garbage because you put on however amount of weight, however much amount of weight, just by going back to a normal diet. Yeah. You also, you have that tendency.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. Cause you have that, you have the tendency also to overfeed, way overeat. And then as when your metabolism is really bottomed out like that, your body is. Basically primed to just get fatter. So when you combine that with, oh my God, I just want to eat food now. And you overdo that.

You’ll have, I know you’ve seen this before. People will end up, they’ll start at whatever body fat percentage they’ll diet down severely restrict calories, do it wrong. They’ll reach whatever body fat percentage they reach, and then they’ll start eating a ton again.

And then within a couple of months, they’re higher, their body fat is higher than even before they started dieting in the first place. 

Bree Lind: [00:11:00] Yes. 

Mike Matthews: Yet, yet the metabolism is still actually slow. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. So when I started working with him, he basically, he, we basically started from the bottom and built it up and I’ve, my body changed.

I started keeping my muscle I filled out like in a good way. So yeah, so that’s pretty much how I got into it. And it’s now been years it’s just become like my lifestyle. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Same here where you said my job. Yeah. Yeah. 

Bree Lind: I find a lot of, I find a lot of competitors end up being personal trainers.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’ve had that, same story from very similar people. They experienced the dark side of it and the bad side. And they’re like and then they figured out how to do it right. And then wanted to do that for other people. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Which is great. So you’re pregnant right now, right?

Bree Lind: I am. I’m about to have my baby in two weeks. 

Mike Matthews: Awesome. Congratulations. Boy or girl? 

Bree Lind: It’s a girl. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. I have a boy. [00:12:00] He’s one and a half. 

Bree Lind: It’s an amazing thing. It really is. And my pregnancy has been unbelievable. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. How has your, I’ve actually, there’s I’ve been emailed by quite a few women that are pregnant and, ask about training and stuff.

How has that gone for you? What have you been able to do? How have you worked it? 

Bree Lind: Like basically when I found out I was pregnant, my doctor just said whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing obviously I toned down the head, but I still do intervals on the stairs. So I just make sure that I can still breathe properly.

But to be honest with you, my training didn’t really change much until I started getting until I really started showing And then I just I just listen to my body if I’m squatting and I feel like, okay, maybe this is like a little bit too heavy, then I’ll drop the weight or I don’t do really heavy overhead pressing anymore.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Bree Lind: things like that But I still train six days a week and sometimes seven I for me working out is like a stress reliever I just even if I just go walk on the treadmill for 20 minutes, I just have to sweat. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah [00:13:00] Same thing and she had an awesome pregnancy like very sounds similar like very smooth the birth was very smooth, staying healthy is huge in terms of just not running into any real complications.

Bree Lind: It’s so true. Like it saved my ass, like literally gained probably 25 pounds, but it’s all baby. No, not at all. And yeah, so I’m just, 

Mike Matthews: you also get the hormone boost too. Or you just feel, you just get the, a lot of the good hormones when you’re pregnant. 

Bree Lind: Yeah.

Yeah. I think working out is really key to having a good pregnancy. And the thing is like in the first three months, I really didn’t feel like going, like I was exhausted and I, I would have rather had a nap, but I just like would, like I said, listen to my body. So if I thought, okay, maybe I’m tired right now, but I could go work out.

I’d go for a workout. If I felt like I was exhausted where my eyes were burning, I’d have a nap, and then by the time I got to my third or second trimester, it was like I just got the second wind of energy and, [00:14:00] since from then it’s just been smooth sailing and the way that I’m looking at labor is that’s, they call it, don’t call it labor for nothing.

So I basically feel like the last nine months I’ve been conditioning my body to go through labor. I’ve been training for it. Yeah. And then I’ve had that frame of mind since day one, so it’s like signing up for a marathon and not doing any training for it. It’s going to be really difficult on your body, but if you go into it well prepared, I think that it, I think it can be a pretty amazing thing.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, definitely. I know whether I’m sure the exercise, the, That’s what we had our kid with a midwife and midwife was saying that, she’s been doing if she delivered like 3000 babies and with basically no c section, she’s just like a Jedi midwife lady. And she was saying that a lot of women that come through that have exercised through their pregnancy, they always just have the smoother labors where it’s shorter.

Sometimes it can be more intense, but it’s over quicker and, just no real complications. And then also you’ll be able to bounce [00:15:00] back much quicker, which is going to be great as well. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And 

Bree Lind: the thing for me, like I’ve always been somebody who’s been really big on goal setting. And when I found out I was pregnant, actually, I’ve been engaged for almost two years and we had our wedding date already set.

So when I found out I was pregnant, I. I was literally counting down the months. I’m like, okay, I have one, two, three, four months to get into my wedding dress. I’m like, this is perfect because it’s going to keep me in check. Like after I have the baby, obviously I’m going to give myself time to heal, but I have that goal to be in my wedding dress and feel good.

So 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’m sure you’ll be totally fine. Yeah. Cool. So next question here. So beyond just like looking good, what do you feel are the biggest benefits of being fit? 

Bree Lind: Like they say, healthy body, healthy mind, right? I just feel like when you’re physically fit it just makes everything in life just fall into place.

If you have you feel good about yourself I just find for me, like I’m easier to cope with stressful situations. Yeah. I feel [00:16:00] like everything’s balanced for me, personally. At the times in my life where I didn’t wasn’t working out or wasn’t taking care of myself.

I felt very stressed out I felt depressed. I felt you know, like I wasn’t good at making decisions because I wasn’t really happy with myself as a whole So I just feel like 

Mike Matthews: yeah, there’s a big there’s a lot to that Just in how you view yourself and where things are going. A lot of that is of course, it’s just our own Viewpoints of ourselves and to what to some, you know to some people what makes them happy, what they see as progress is, and is motivating may not be to you or to somebody else or to, to some people, the type of ideas that or the you could say standards that you might hold yourself to might seem ridiculous to other people.

But I think it’s a, definitely a point of everybody is when you feel like you are improving, even if it’s just a physical improvement. It definitely changes your overall outlook. It changes your mood it gives you not only physical energy, but it gives you that mental or you could say even [00:17:00] spiritual energy to pursue goals and other areas of your life and to have the confidence that that you can put in the work and make things happen.

Bree Lind: Yes, a hundred percent. It does. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. That’s a point I always talk a lot about of just, there’s a, there’s definitely a parallel there between working out and life in that. So you have, you’re in the beginning here of let’s say it’s, if it’s fitness and you go, okay your body looks a certain way or whatever.

And you have this goal and you get excited for this goal. I want to look this way or I want to be able to, lift this much weight or whatever you’re getting excited about. But then you have to go do that work every day. And some days are more exciting than others. I enjoy working out.

It’s an activity I just like to do, but some days I like it more than others. Some days workouts are great. Some days workouts are not so great. And it’s more good than it is bad, of course, but you still show up every day and you put in the work and you learn to, you learn to enjoy the process.

And I think that, that’s a skill almost that you can learn via working out that then when you go, [00:18:00] if you’re going to be starting a business or like in your case, where you, that’s what you’re doing is running your own business and you’re running a career. It’s a very similar thing where you show up every day and you know the things that you have to do.

And some days you’re super into it. Some days you’re not so into it, but you just, you just keep on doing work. Yeah. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And I, and there’s definitely, I think there’s also that physical release too, where it’s nice to just go. Move around heavy stuff and exhaust the body . 

Bree Lind: Oh, I totally agree.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So what is your you mentioned that you’re working out six or seven times a week. What is your routine look like? Like in terms of you say you’re not doing a lot of cardio, but what kind of weight lifting? What are your, what are the basic kind of principles that you follow?

Bree Lind: So like right now. And for the last nine months I do a split with I do two leg days a week. 

Mike Matthews: Okay. 

Bree Lind: And as I said, I can’t really go super heavy, but I still try to, push myself to where I find it somewhat challenging. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So before your pregnancy, were you into heavy or like what was it like then?

Bree Lind: I love squatting. I, as soon [00:19:00] as I learned how to squat properly and I started noticing development in my glutes, I became obsessed with it. I’m not joking. I would squat three times a week if I could, but, so basically what I do is I try to do five to six days of weight. I’ll do a really high intense lightweight, high rep workout, like a thousand rep workout.

Where I’ll combine two body parts like legs and shoulders, or usually those workouts are an upper and a lower body. I’ll do that once a week with legs and then I’ll have a day where I go in and do legs with a little bit of a heavier weight. So like 

Mike Matthews: that, that power hypertrophy 

Bree Lind: and then I just go with the flow, to be honest with you if I feel like, okay I did this one day and then the next day, maybe I’ll do an interval of stairs, something on the stair master. If I have energy, I’ll go, do an upper pick up, pick an upper body part and do a really high high rep, low weight workout.

So that’s just the way I’ve been training now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And when you were going through, because obviously [00:20:00] maintaining a physique is much it’s different than building one. Is that, I’m assuming you probably trained a little bit differently when you were starting out, going, okay, I need to add.

30 pounds of muscle on my body or 20 pounds of muscle. How am I going to do that? 

Bree Lind: Yeah. And I think when I started out, I was just leaving that up to the people I was working with, but it wasn’t working for me because I wasn’t eating properly to build muscle. So I was almost yo yoing.

I would start to see a little bit of muscle and then I would diet down for a show and I would lose everything. 

Right. 

Bree Lind: And this happened to me so many times, so I think I have noticed the biggest changes in my upper body since I found out I was pregnant. And as soon as I found out I was pregnant and I started eating normally all of a sudden my shoulders started filling out and I just noticed all this change that, you know, honestly, like now after I have the baby, I will always be eating properly to make sure that, I’m getting the benefit of what I’m doing in the gym because, I, and the thing too, from competing, it gave me this, I had almost body dysmorphia.

Like I [00:21:00] would look in the mirror and I would think, Oh my goodness, I’m gaining a little bit of body fat. This is terrible. I need to diet more, I being pregnant has been the best thing that ever happened to me because I’ve like literally taken a step back and been like, Oh my goodness. Like I look at pictures of myself and I remember taking, Transcribed by https: otter.

ai I would take pictures weekly to just see where I was changing. And I remember I would look at them and they would stress me out. And I would be like, Oh my goodness, I look fat. And then now that I actually am like in a situation where I’m, I’ve had to put on weight, I look back at these pictures and I’m like, I looked fantastic.

What the hell was wrong with me? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s great. That’s that’s something that is, I’ll get asked about that as well on, or people will write me that are going through that a little bit. And it does seem to be more with people that are competing than more than the casual I say casual than people that aren’t competing basically.

But yeah, I guess I can relate to that to some degree. I haven’t competed. I probably could, I don’t know exactly how well I would do, [00:22:00] just because there’s a lot of drugs in this game, and there, you can’t, if if you’re not on the drugs, you’re not gonna look like the guys that are, period, it’s just the way it is but know how that is, like, when you, if you get super lean, you just want to stay there, so then if you can pinch a little bit more, I’d rather oh or if I’m intentionally like, okay, I’m done, I did all the, I did the photoshoots that I have to do.

I’m going to start eating more now. And I’m going to even with the reverse dieting. You’re not at least, I haven’t been able to figure out how to stay 5 percent and actually be able to eat a lot of food and be strong in the gym. I’ve even had that, where you’re just like, yeah, okay.

It’s time to get fatter. Essentially, it doesn’t make it necessarily like thrilling. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Whatever. 

Bree Lind: I find when you get that lean too, you always compare yourself to that, 

Mike Matthews: yeah, that becomes the like how am I now compared to then? 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I can. 

Bree Lind: And I feel like that’s where the kind of the mind part of it comes to, right?

I feel like the next time that I do a show, I’m going to have to be telling myself like [00:23:00] this is not, this is not realistic for me to look like this all the time. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. 

Bree Lind: Maybe 10 pounds off, yes, but. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. And that’s how I’ve just come to accept it. I’m happy to stay lean and look good and be four to six weeks from really lean or whatever and be able to just go back and forth between that.

And be able to enjoy food as well. Like you I don’t eat an obscene amount of food. I’ve never had a crazy fast metabolism, my I’m eating on my training days about 3, 200 calories and then I’m in a slight deficit on my off days around 2, 100 or so. So that’s enjoyable for me.

Like I get to eat quite a bit of food. I get, I go out to a restaurant once a week and I save up some calories on Friday. My wife and I will go somewhere and, I don’t gorge, but I’m not counting macro. I don’t care. I’m just eating whatever I feel like eating. You know what I mean? 

Bree Lind: Is that what you, do you follow the IIF plan?

Mike Matthews: Yeah, but I do, I’m not really into flexible dieting is definitely the way to go and it’s been around, since the seventies, but I’m not. [00:24:00] into the whole like, eat junk food, get shredded type of Oh, 

Bree Lind: me neither. 

Mike Matthews: You know what I mean? I think that’s a stupid use of it because people Like, we eat food We don’t just eat food for protein, carbs, and fats.

We eat food for micronutrients as well. So 

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: But yeah, it’s very much so of dieting is just a numbers game. I talk about that in my books. I’m always, in all my articles that Eat foods you like. It’s actually a big part, as if you want to make your diet work, make it create your meal plans with food that you like to eat.

Now, if all you like to eat is Pop Tarts and white bread okay, you’re, you have a problem, but If I talk about in an article I wrote on vitamins and minerals, the different types of vitamin minerals the body needs and why I gave like a pretty extensive list it was based on a study done.

I think it was actually commissioned by Dole or something like that, but of the most nutritious like nutrient dense foods, and there’s a lot of great stuff on there. Superfoods. Yeah. All kinds of tasty stuff that have plenty of nutrition. So absolutely. That. Dieting is just ultimately about, energy and energy out.

And then, of course, how you break that [00:25:00] down into protein, carbs and fats does matter. But eat foods that you like. So then, and then also, when it comes to going out to dinner, going out to a restaurant and stuff, I think, having that, that cheat meal or whatever is important also just for the psychological boost, 

Bree Lind: yeah, I always know when I need a cheat meal, like my body will tell me, okay, it’s time to have a burger and fries. Doesn’t happen all the time, but it does. Yeah, I’ve had 

Mike Matthews: that. Yeah. And yeah, totally. And I usually just almost, it’s almost just on a schedule now. Once a week I’m going to go out to a restaurant, I’m going to eat something.

I’m just going to eat, whatever I feel like eating. And otherwise I’m following a plan, but it’s every day, every meal I’m looking forward to it because I’m eating something that I like to eat as opposed to that you, you said that, earlier the, was it chicken and asparagus or whatever there was.

A guy he was competing. He’s trying to win his card in physique, and his coach was having him on orange roughy and asparagus every day, eight, eight meals a day of orange roughy, which is like grouper. It’s a fish. 

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So it’s like steamed fish and steamed vegetables eight times a day. 

Oh, God.

[00:26:00] Why? And I was asking him, I was 

Mike Matthews: like, why? Why are you even doing that? He wouldn’t listen to me though. I’m like, you realize that you can eat carbs, you can eat food you like. It doesn’t matter, man. It’s all 

Bree Lind: My hair actually started falling out and my, I had like terrible skin. It was the worst I’ve ever looked.

I actually looked anorexic. 

Yeah. There’s some pictures 

Bree Lind: on my website of that show. 

Oh, yeah? 

Bree Lind: Yeah. And it was the skinniest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m close to 5’11 and I was 129 pounds. Wow. Yeah, it was, my bones were sticking out and it wasn’t cute. 

Mike Matthews: So what do you feel are the three biggest fitness lessons that you’ve learned over the years?

Bree Lind: Fitness lessons. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Bree Lind: To listen to your body. A hundred percent. If something isn’t right, your body’s going to tell you don’t do something because somebody tells you that it’s good. That’s what are you what’s an 

Mike Matthews: example of that? So people can relate to how that would feel or how they might know.

Bree Lind: I think that would go back [00:27:00] to the dieting part of things like, when I was put on that chicken and asparagus diet eight times a day, like I couldn’t even see straight. I felt like garbage. I couldn’t work properly. I couldn’t think. I didn’t sleep and just because I had somebody coaching me that I was paying them to help me, I just kept doing it.

So I think, if I could go back in time, I would have been like, this isn’t right. This isn’t normal. And not to mention. I think, 

Mike Matthews: I think generally speaking, I think, I’m sure you would agree with this, that when you’re dieting now, getting down to super lean in my experience, the last, I guess the last few weeks, I wouldn’t say they were They weren’t grueling by any means, but my energy levels were lower and I was a little bit weaker in the gym.

I felt fine generally. I wasn’t, I didn’t reach the point of like depression and where I’m feeling all messed up. I just wasn’t, I was like ready to eat more food and have energy in the gym. But for that’s really though I’m talking like, yeah, getting as a guy getting down to that five. And I think, 

Bree Lind: I [00:28:00] think when you’re doing a show, that’s like normal to feel like that.

I don’t think, I don’t 

Mike Matthews: think it’s, there’s any way around that. But for the average person that’s dieting if it’s a guy getting down to seven, 8 percent or if it’s a girl getting down to 15, 16%, you should feel totally fine. Like throughout the entire diet, you should not be dealing with many hunger issues.

You shouldn’t be. fantasizing or salivating over the idea of eating some carbs. You should be sleeping fine. Your workouts actually shouldn’t be that bad. I have a lot of people that especially people that are newer to weightlifting that they’ll spend two to three months cutting cause they’ll come, let’s say it’s guys at 20 something percent body fat and they need to, get rid of a lot of that to see where they’re at.

And they’ll cut for two to three months and get down to the 10 percent range and actually make strength gains the entire time. And it’s like they never, it’s like they never even restricted their calories, so that’s a little bit ideal, but I think has your experience been with proper guiding that you generally actually just feel fine When you’re doing it, right?[00:29:00] 

Bree Lind: Yeah, and I think I think it’s normal to just feel okay I’m tired or whatever around that time but to feel like something’s not right. I think is Is a little bit excessive, so I definitely would tell people like, listen to yourself, listen to your body.

It’s normal to not feel great, but To not feel like healthy, I think is, 

Mike Matthews: is a big. You shouldn’t feel like you have a disease. 

Bree Lind: No. No, definitely not. And right, and then the thing that all goes back to is like fat loss is totally hormonal too, right? When you’re dieting down like that, and I mean you feel that bad.

You’re not just, you’re messing with some serious things. 

Definitely. 

Bree Lind: Yeah and then, sorry, I’ve, what was the question again? Yeah, so what it was, so that, 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, so that’s one big lesson. Is there another big lesson that you’ve learned? 

Bree Lind: I would think for, I would think Yeah, like for women go in and lift heavy.

I was scared to do that in the beginning and like that, this misconception most women have you’re going to get bulky. You absolutely will [00:30:00] not. Just mixing it up. You don’t need to lift heavy six days a week, but definitely don’t be scared to get in there and push yourself a little bit.

Mike Matthews: Totally. Talk about that as well, that it’s just women don’t have the hormones to get big and bulky. They just don’t. And the girls that, of course the when you, many women, they associate, they immediately associate heavy weightlifting with the massive bodybuilder girls.

And those girls, one, are on so many drugs, and two, have been lifting for a very long time as well. It’s just, it’s impossible to naturally have a physique anywhere, even in the vicinity of that. And the only time where weightlifting wouldn’t benefit a woman, I think, is if a woman is overweight, and doesn’t do anything to correct that.

Then, yes, if you add muscle, it’s just gonna make her look a little bit more overweight. 

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So the name of the game is to get lean and then, what, when you’re at that baseline of of being lean, then when you add muscle, it just adds curves. It [00:31:00] just, it makes girls look great.

Bree Lind: Yeah. And then I guess the third thing that I would say is the advice that I would give somebody that’s looking to maybe do a show or something is take some time in the beginning to Put some muscle on then that was a mistake that I made as I, I kept competing and I kept going around in circles because I would get a little bit of muscle and I would die down and you are always going to lose some when you die down.

If I could go back and. In time and do things a little bit differently. I think I would have taken two or three years and I would have really trained hard And just make sure 

Mike Matthews: you’re eating enough food and such. 

Bree Lind: Exactly. Yeah, and find a good coach Find somebody that has some credentials and somebody that Has results.

Has a good track record. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly that has real results that they can show with their own bodies and with others And, it’s actually super at that point, cause that applies to people that aren’t competing as well. I’ve run into it mostly with guys, but what’ll happen is, so they’ll, I had a guy recently who was he [00:32:00] finished his first year of weightlifting.

And in terms of what he was doing was great, focusing on heavy weightlifting compound weightlifting and, but he had gained, I want to say, cause he had DEXA scan both before and after it was something like 15 or 16 pounds in his first year. That’s not bad, he should be able to do more than that should be able to do between 20 and 25.

And then when he was just going over what happened, what he did. What? It turned out that he was basically his first six months were in a mild calorie deficit because he didn’t want to cut really hard. This wasn’t a client. Somebody that I don’t really have time to do one on one, but I’m always like available via email and I answer people’s questions and I just help out.

So I would have done something if would have known if we had contacted him earlier but basically he was like in a mild calorie deficit for, I think it was four to six months because he didn’t want to cut too much, but he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to bulk. And so what happened is he just, obviously for that time period, because you, the listener, if you’re familiar with my work and you already know this, but if you’re not, or you haven’t read about it, it’s that when you’re, when your body’s in a [00:33:00] calorie deficit, its ability to synthesize protein, which is related to muscle building, of course, is just impaired.

So your body is not, your body’s not able to build muscle effectively when you’re in a calorie deficit. My, my mentality with cutting is always to get it, you want it to be as quickly as possible without sacrificing muscle or health. Because you don’t want to spend, that every week that you spend in a calorie deficit, you’re more or less not going to build muscle unless you’re brand new to weightlifting.

You’re going backwards. Exactly. So that applies to people that aren’t competing as well where don’t drag out your cuts or don’t drag out your calorie deficits over long periods of time. If you need to also put on muscle because. You’re not going to do it effectively and because sometimes they’ll see bodybuilders that they’ll hear, Oh the bodybuilder, he cut for, he prepared, he took five months to prep for his contest.

What people aren’t realizing is like one, there’s the drugs involved in two. Sometimes people are just trying to maintain during that time period or whatever. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: [00:34:00] Yeah, that’s good. So now what are your plans from here? What are your future fitness goals and goals for your business and so forth?

Bree Lind: I can have my baby and that I’m going to get married. And then I’m thinking would like to do another show probably I’m gonna do the Alberta Bodybuilding Association show in July 2015, it’s a provincial, so it’s a second tier, so I’m just gonna go with the flow for me, I guess the most important thing right now is just is making sure that my daughter is is happy and healthy and once she’s born and if it’s in the cards for me, I absolutely want to compete again.

And if I have to take a few years, then, I will. But at the moment, I’m just training girls for their shows. And, just, that’s it for now. Cool. But I definitely do you 

Mike Matthews: just, do you work with people just competing? Or do you also work with, other people? I have 

Bree Lind: a ton of different clients, all different walks of life.

But yes, I do. I have, I think I have 10 girls doing shows this year. 

[00:35:00] Yeah, so I, I do I like it and I have, I have clients that are moms and they’re, I’m going to send, 

Mike Matthews: I’m going to send women your way then when I get, cause I’ll get. Women that will ask, pregnant, they’re pregnant and that’s what exactly should they be doing with weightlifting?

And I want to say, I’m not even sure. So I tell them like, it’s not really my specialty. My wife, when she was pregnant, she worked with someone that’s one of the things this person specialized in was, which exercises to stay away from, which exercises to do and just help her out.

So now I think that’s something 

Bree Lind: that I. I would love to like touch on is helping pregnant women even with just nutrition and 

Mike Matthews: yeah, that’s a big side. 

Bree Lind: Yeah, because I mean I’ve been able to get to maintain my physique through this entire month and I think once you live It’s much easier to give people advice, right?

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’ve you know, I’ve always just I’m not, I can’t say for sure. I’m sorry. It’s not like, all I know is what my wife did, but I don’t even know exactly, I don’t know all the details because I was at [00:36:00] work and she was doing her thing. And, it wasn’t necessarily like the topic of the day of what kind of workout she did.

You know what I mean? 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Cool. People can find you at Bree, B R E L I N D. com, right? Yeah. And then from there. On 

Bree Lind: Facebook as well. Yeah, exactly. I have an Instagram account. It’s my fiancé’s last name. It’s L I L B Hunter. Yeah, and I have Twitter, too, and I think that one is little B Hunter, too, so L I L B Hunter.

Mike Matthews: Okay, great. 

Bree Lind: Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Cool, so is there anything else you’d like to share with the listeners before we wrap up? No, 

Bree Lind: I think we covered everything, but this has been, it’s been nice to to talk about this stuff, 

Mike Matthews: yeah, totally. Yeah, thanks for coming on. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna, when I have pregnant women coming my way, I’m gonna send them your way.

Bree Lind: Thank you so [00:37:00] much.