98: Find Your Fit Method with Zlata Sushchik

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Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast.

I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss.

Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author.

Each week I'll bring you a guest.

Or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the Earn your happy podcast and I just want to take a minute to say thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who tunes in every single week, who shares, who takes, who uploads on social media. I love seeing what episodes and guests that you love and what you got out of it. So thank you guys so much. And if you feel moved, I would love if you would rate and review the podcast. So if you'd go over to itunes, subscribe, give it a five star rating and review it, that is how I am going to be able to continue to get awesome guests on here. And it, it is all up to you. So that would mean the world to me if you'd head on over and subscribe, rate and review the podcast. I'm so grateful for you. So today I have on the show someone who's been on the show before and she contacted me because she has a new book out and I'm so excited to share it with you and I know how much of our heart and soul went into this book. We've had coffee and really talked about just how she wanted to put this out into the world, why and share every single method, every single step that really, truly made her feel successful in her life. So, you guys, I have Zelata Sushik on the show again. She's a lifestyle coach, a sports nutritionist, and founder of her online fitness coaching company, Sexy Fit. So I can't wait for you to listen into everything that she shares so that you can reach all of your new year goals as well. So let's get started. Zelata, I'm so incredibly excited to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Oh my goodness gracious, Lori, I am thrilled to be here.

I what some people don't know about you is that you are one of the most caring, generous people that I have ever met. Along with One of the most just bold and committed people to people's transformations. So I'm thrilled to have you back now that I've gotten to really know you. You have a lot of great coffee talks with you and you have a book.

I do.

I'm so excited.

Thank you. I love this intro. Lori, can I take you everywhere with me, where we go and you can just introduce me, please?

How do we figure that out?

Beautiful, Beautiful. I can walk around with you two, be like 10x cover model, the most amazing person I ever seen on stage. Please welcome Lori Hartner.

I'm telling you, it's all about the intros, you guys.

It is all about the intros.

So true. I'm pretty impressed by me See self confidence already oozing. If you want some of that, we're going to talk about it. So, Zlata, can you share with us a little bit about your history, how you got here and yes, Zolata, if you recognize her name, she has been on a previous show. So I'm going to refer you back to looking up that podcast when you decide that you completely fall in love with her. But could you take us back and just tell us a little bit about your past, how you got here, and really how you wound up doing what you're doing right now.

Oh, my gosh, Lori, thank you so much for linking the old podcast, too. And I am going to make this intro as brief as I possibly can because there's quite a backstory. And even if you heard me on the podcast before, a lot of the stories and a lot of my intro has changed a little bit because so much of the truth, the raw, real truth, came out as the process of writing a book. So I am originally from Moscow, Russia. I moved to the States when I was 16 years old. And I have been, you know, I've lived in Alaska for a couple of years and Now I'm in SoCal in San Diego, which I truly love. And when I moved to the States, I did not speak English, which is an interesting thing now that I'm a writer. Holy moly. I'm a podcaster. I talk to people all the time. And I'm actually a coach, so it's kind of crazy. And I got introduced to health and fitness when I was in high school. And this is a story. I held back one of those stories when I moved because I didn't grow up with much. Like, I didn't have a bed growing up. My sister and I had to alternate beds and I had one of those flower Folding cots. Like, it had a flower pattern on it. It was really funny. It wasn't funny at the time, and now it's not funny either. But hey, life. And a lot of the American sweets and the American candy was always associated with me, with abundance and love from parents and love for my dad specifically. And when I moved to the States, I was so alone and I was so sad. That was my getaway. And seven months into it, eight months into it, when I was in dance class and I was terrible at dance, I should say. And when I was in dance class, a teacher asked me to leave because, quote, unquote, my gut was disgusting. And I needed to find a shirt very quickly in order for me to return to class. And this girl ended up saving me. And, you know, of course she's like the tall, beautiful cheerleader who is, like, slaying it at dance. And here I am, step one, too. Just like, not. Not being very successful. But that spiked a huge interest in fitness. That spiked a huge interest in bodybuilding for me because that became my new reality, that became my new community, that became my new way of life. But eventually it became my obsession in a way and sort of took over a lot of who I was. And I realized through writing the book what fitness became for me. It became a way for me to control situations, being really certain in the outcome. My biggest competitive years were when I was graduating from high school, when a boy broke up with me and when I was graduating from college. Those are my huge competitive years. I've done, like 26 shows to date. Yeah, that was a lot. And here we are now with Sexy Fit, which came out of me coming out of recovery from my obsessive fitness career, where I developed an eating disorder I didn't tell anybody about until the book came out. And, you know, the transformation from my best friend who I saw just was like, insane. And that's where Sexy Fit came from. That's where how the method got put together. And we have this amazing community, thousands of people listening. And I'm so grateful for where we are now and what I was able to create out of my challenges and out of me falling flat on my face. And, yeah, happy to be here today. I hope that was a short enough intro.

Well, I love it. And you guys, if you want, you know, the really much more in depth version, definitely go listen to that podcast. But, yes, I think that's enough to get us to where we need to go. And, you know, some of my favorite things about you is the time that we've spent just bonding over our vulnerability and sharing stories of the failures, of the trials, of the things that didn't work, of the things that we used to force ourselves to do in order to feel like we were enough, smart enough, good enough for this industry, for ourselves, for our friends, for our parents, for whatever that was. So I'm so excited to read your book. So we're going to jump right in. Why this book? Why? Why now?

Why this book? Oh, boy. Why this book? One of the things that I set out to do last year, I said that I want, you know, I saw the transformation in my clients, I saw the transformation in my coaching programs, and I said, how can I be more impactful? We're influencing thousands of people on the podcast. We're influencing hundreds. But I believe this can be bigger. And I felt as we could do this through this book where I compiled all of the tools and tricks and strategies and everything. Book actually originally came out in the summertime, and it had none of my story because I wasn't willing to tell everything that I needed to tell, and it bombed. It wasn't very good because it was just basically very raw, like, rah, rah, rah, go do this. And then I said, okay, I'm not being very impactful because I'm not being courageous enough and vulnerable enough with my peeps. And this is a rewrite. So this is version 2.0. And the reason that it's set for now is because I had a huge setback in the original publishing date of October 3rd. My business almost fell apart, but I was like, no, no, I have faith. And the reason January is because it's a beautiful time to create a new transformation in our life, you know, And.

I really actually love, love the timing and the birth of this book because I did get to just be partially alongside of you for a tiny bit of that when you felt like, you know, things were kind of imploding in your business. And I think that's such a beautiful thing that you just shared with for people, because I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of future authors and a lot of people who want to be getting out there that think that the road is supposed to just be like that hockey stick growth, right the entire time. And really, they forget to tell you about those moments of the failures, of the explosions of the, oh, my God, I need to do something drastically different. And it's just feedback. It's all just feedback. Right. So let's jump in. I'm so excited because we Were chatting a little bit before this and I'm like dying to get my hands on this book. You talk about five steps to shifting your lifestyle. And also the premise of this book. Why don't we jump in there?

Oh, I love that. You know, I have to kind of comment on what you said about the hockey stick. I must say that this book made no sense. Like how much pain and how much struggle and how much craziness this book brought. It made absolutely no sense. This book is a calling. This book is a message. And this book is a message of faith. And I must say, not all business decisions are simply logical business decisions. There are a lot of business decisions that we make, especially as women, based on a feeling and a calling. And this is one of those things. And I will tell you that this is the most growth I've ever experienced in my life and I'm so grateful for it. So I thank you. Thank you for sharing a little bit of that and the whole hockey stick myth. It just doesn't exist.

Amen.

So. And the premises came out of the tough times that this book has caused. So, so great. I'm so excited for your question.

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What is, what is the, you know, foundational reasons reasoning around the steps that you created?

There are three premises and we kind of briefly chatted about them before we started the podcast. And I believe that they're fundamental premises for any shift really that we're trying to create. And the reason I made them as premises, not as steps or not as chapters is because premise is something that we don't necessarily need to argue with, we don't necessarily need proof for. And if we're having any kind of difficulty in any of the five steps that we're going to talk about, then go back to the premises. So premise number one is that we live life by design and we choose our way into the life that we live. And if we're not happy with the life that we live, then we need to know that life didn't choose us. We chose life. And everything that we have created, our problems and our celebrations have been a direct impact of the choice that we made, whether we felt like we were on the back seat of the bus and we weren't the bus driver, or we were driving that bus and where we are now as a result of that destination. So that is the very first premise. And I believe we live in a mindset of. In the victimhood mindset at times. And I've done this too, where I'm like, well, it just sort of happened. You know, it's like I didn't have a choice. And it's like I always had a choice. And I made my choice into this choice, whether I was aware or not. So that is the first premise.

Could you get more specific on that? An example of maybe where you've made that choice or you've chosen to be a victim in something?

Oh, totally. In 2014, I left competing. In 2013 and 2014, I started having anxiety and one of those anxiety things. Things situations where it would land me for, like, bed rest for a week. And then in 2014, my 2014 resolution was that I'm going to beat anxiety. And it didn't happen. So it was also my 2015 resolution. And I was fighting a very silent battle because I felt like I was, you know, a fitness professional. I don't need and I need to know better. But the thing is, I started downloading all these programs and learning from people, and one email came through, and the very first line said, you chose your way into anxiety. And I was like, what are you talking about? I was so angry. I go, no, this happened to me. This just happens to me. And then I was like, if a client told me that being 50, 60, 100 pounds overweight just happened to them, I would look at them and say, no, no, those were choices along the way that you made and that that have caused this. And no guilt, no judgment, but we're here because of the choices. And I realized that I was choosing anxiety because it was easier to run away from certain problems and say, ooh, I have anxiety. Sorry, you know, and that was my observation within myself. And there were certain things that I wasn't looking after or over or journaling about or resolving that have caused me to have this anxiety and that have caused me to feel the way I felt.

So is that how you dealt with it? You did a lot of journaling, you did a lot of Questioning yourself, what was it and what do you still work on that's getting you through that?

Thank you for that question. I have not had anxiety in almost a year. I don't know if I beat it in the future, but I know I beat it yesterday and today. So very present moment experiences that I don't have it anymore. And first thing, I made a choice not to have anxiety. The second thing was, yes, journaling my way into how I felt and what were the things that were happening. So I noticed if I sleep less than six hours or less than seven hours, really, I feel very anxious. If I don't make a to do list in the morning, I feel very anxious. If mid afternoon, I don't check in with myself for how I feel, do I feel overwhelmed, rushed? What's happening, then I will not feel so good. And I noticed that what I ate had a lot to do with it because my energy levels were low. And how I worked out had a lot to do with it as well. So I journaled every little thing. And then when I was like, huh, I see patterns. Hello. And I just. It just brought more awareness to what I was doing to get myself to those places.

Oh, man, that's so powerful. A lot of times we try to run from that, right? We're like, no, no, I don't. You don't even want to know. And you don't know that you don't want to know. But that's the beautiful part is, is just acknowledging, oh, my gosh, totally. Here's where it comes. This is what it's doing. Hello, you.

Hello, you. Totally. And then there's a layer of depth to it, right? Because if we have anxiety or stress, we're living too far in the future and we have crazy expectations. Like, I had crazy expectations of myself because I wanted to build this. This is so absurd. I wanted to build a million dollar business in two years. And there was no rhyme or reason why. There was no feeling connected to it and what I was doing, the impact that I was making wasn't getting me to that number. And I was frustrated for no reason. But I realized it wasn't my goal. It was something that I saw other people doing and that I made it my goal somehow. But making money was never at the foundation of this business. It was about creating impact and creating transformation for whoever joins your program and picks up your book. And I had to break up with that really fast and go, oh, my gosh, that is really causing me so much pain and blocking me from creating more good in the world. So another truth bomb and vulnerable share here.

Yeah, I love it. That's the best. Okay, so number two, the second premise.

The second premise is really something I learned recently and took on. Thank you to you. And Chris, by the way, is understanding that there are really two true powerful emotions that we come from. It's fear or love. And I believe that that transformation came recently and why the book never launched on October 3rd, something that I learned from Gabby Bernstein. And then I read the Course of Miracles, and then I read in everything, read from everything from Maryam Williamson. And then I really tuned into what my big mentors were saying. And when we come from a place of fear, when it comes to our lifestyle is we're coming from a place of too far in the past, basing on the experience that have caused us to fail and now have become our universal wisdoms of coming from fear to fail or fear to not be good enough, or they're coming from fear of not measuring up. So the comparison, the self judgment, the negative self talk, or the anxiety of living too far in the future, and we're unable to create a place where we're coming from love, compassion, acceptance, and really embracing ourselves, who we are, and understanding who we truly are and all the gifts that we bring into the world. And the book really became about cultivating that self. Love, peace through the mind, the accountability, the community, the food and the fitness. And coming from a place of love versus coming from a place of fear. Because nothing grows in the dark and nothing grows in a place of fear where we want a lasting transformation, lasting change. All of that comes from being in a place of love.

So number three, what is that one?

Number three is an interesting concept that I've been diving into for quite some time. And I couldn't figure out where it fit into the book. I was like, this could be a chapter. This could be a part of a chapter. But I realized it is too, a universal truth. And the faster we get on board with it, the more balanced we're going to feel. Lori, you know how many women tell us, I want to experience balance, right? Like, I want to feel more balanced.

What is that word?

What is that word? And I believe this is where it is when it comes to nutrition and fitness and everything really in life. And it's the universal truth of masculine and feminine, yin and yang, left brain, right brain, whatever you want to call it, but I'm going to call it masculine and feminine. And when we know how to dance the delicate dance between the masculine and the feminine that's when we're really able to get a grasp on our decision making. We're able to get a grasp on nutrition, we're able to get a grasp on fitness, we're able to get a grasp on what do we need to feel accountable in those steps or. Or what kind of people we need to surround ourselves with. And here's what I mean, here's what I mean. In regards to, like, nutrition and fitness, masculine is very much, I think, I do strategize. And the masculine really wants to know what is the strategy and the plan. And there's nothing wrong with that. And this is where the generation of meal plans, the generation of workout plans have really come from, because masculine loves to have a plan and loves to have everything figured out and think our way into a transformation. If we have too much masculine in our nutrition or fitness, we tend to over plan, or we tend to overanalyze all the food and get stuck in analysis paralysis, or we tend to really over track and over count and over obsess over every single calorie that we're putting in our body. That is how masculine energy manifests itself when it's too much of it in a balanced way. Masculine just likes to know what's happening. Does that make sense, Lori? Totally beautiful. So here's where the feminine comes in. The feminine comes in and it says, I feel. And it's very, you know, it's very. It's very loving, it's very kind, it's very compassionate, and it adds color to the black and white of the masculine, to the black and white of the meal plan, to the black and white of the fitness plan. A feminine is going to add more spices, more greens, more beauty. It's going to think about what kind of plate we're using, what kind of fork we're using, what kind of napkin we're gonna put on, and food as an experience, right? And when we have either suppressed feminine or disowned feminine or too much feminine, we tend to fall into what we call emotional eating or binge eating. We kind of found a label for that. It's just how we've disowned our feelings and our emotions and chose not to pay attention to them because we're so good at functioning in the masculine. You know what I mean? We're so good at wanting to know, know, know. But feminine, when it comes to nutrition and fitness, it's very intuitive and it wants to dance a dance between this is what feels good to me and this is what is, is Actually, good for me. And what has happened over time, Laurie is a. From a history background. A woman hasn't even ran, like, didn't even run a Boston Marathon until 1960 because she was deemed unfit. Like, woman cannot handle to run a marathon, please. It happens all the time now. So all of that, right? So all of the education that we have, we have had in the last 50, 60 years, more so now with women like you and I emerging and talking about a different element of health and fitness. But all of the education that we had was from men. Male coaches, male trainers, male researchers, male design. Males have designed plans and women have followed them. Well, guess what? A man doesn't. A man is a man. A man is very black and white, and we love them for that. And with the feministic movement rising, which we are living the outcome of feministic movement. So thank the Lord for that. But I believe that feminine has become perceived as weak. And we have perceived emotions as kind of like inconvenient things that we feel. And we tend to have plates spinning in a really good direction when we're in our masculine. But when it comes to feminine, we feel like a basket case. That was my experience. I felt like a basket case in my emotions, and I've hid them for years in over analyzing my food and using food, using, excuse me, using gym as therapy. And it turns out that food is food, fitness is fitness, and therapy is therapy, and feelings are feelings. You know what I mean? So that is the premise of the masculine, the feminine. That is the premise of love and fear and supremacy of choice. So.

I love it. I actually really love that visual that you just painted for me in my mind of, you know, the masculine is kind of the plan, and the feminine says, how do I feel about this, though, and what's working for me? And looking back on my just history of really trying to figure out what does work for me and where I'm at right now in my life and the still figuring it out phase until the day I die.

It's okay, That's. That's life. It's a feminine thing.

It totally is. It's always questioning. It's. It's creating structure and then questioning how it feels on. So. And we're, you know, these different structures and these different plans are going to be different at every phase of our life because we're ever evolving. And I love, love, love that concept. It just was, you know, because that's kind of where I started to learn. So when people out there who maybe, you know, maybe were talking to you and you have tried a million different plans. But the thing is that when you feel like you don't stick to it 100%, you feel like you're. When really that is the other part of you, the other 50% that needs to come in and say, this is a beautiful plan. How can we arrange this to work a little bit better for you where it feels really good, where, yeah, your energy, where it's something that you're, you know, you're satisfied doing this. So I love that. Thank you for that visual.

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So you're so welcome, man. So good. So let's move into key steps that you use in the book.

Oh, thank you. I love the steps.

Are you a step person? Are you like a. I need this clear, like step one, step two.

Most of the time, I'm very, very right. Brain bullets, steps, outlines to do, lists. And that's just my personality. And I noticed that a lot of the times that's how we want it served. You know what I mean? I want to, especially in the masculine because we're so like, dun, dun, dun. We just want to see. What I love about these steps is that I didn't make them up myself. Here's what happened, Lori. When I started coaching, I coached very much how I used to be coached when I was a competitor. But guess what? An average woman who has never competed in her life is not going to be able to stick to anything rigid. So I kept asking, what do you want? What's missing? What do you want? What's missing? And first, you know, first a food piece came together, then the fitness piece came together and then the mind followed, then the accountability followed, and then the community followed and they all became beautiful pieces of a method that has been created by women asking for this. And it has taught me as a coach, as a trainer, to learn more and to explore more and to package things up in a way where it's accessible for every woman out there. So that's a little piece of that. These are not the steps that I took from competitive stage and packaged them up to a woman who's listening to this podcast with three kids and a job and a husband and a house. And all this, it has been by, has been created by that very woman. So five steps. First and foremost, we gotta train our mind. Oh boy. Our mind is fantastic. At messing with us.

Yes.

And what I wanted to do in this particular section of the book is really clear away the obstacles that are holding us back from creating the body that we've always wanted, from the creating the relationship with ourselves that we have always wanted. I talk about what are our stories and how to break up with those stories. I talk about limiting beliefs and how to break up with those limiting beliefs and how to actually use them to your advantage. I talk about creating the emotional intelligence because many of us just say, I'm so fat. And we don't know what that means, but I am so fat, excuse my language here became a catch all phrase for how we feel. I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. I feel sad. I feel hurt. Hurt. I'm fat. You know what I mean?

Totally.

And I talk about creating a lasting foundation for our success through getting motivated, through our story and our reasons, and for how we can set heart center goals that we can actually carry out. Not one of those goals like I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. I think it's a great goal, but it's missing a lot of different movement pieces. And I really wanted to teach this. In this particular step, I wanted to get our mind prepared to do what's necessary in the next steps. So the food, the food freedom. The food freedom is really about overcoming emotional eating. It's about breaking free from the dieting rollercoaster and the meal plans and the obsession with downloading the next best thing and, and spotting the nutrition plants that don't work for you. And really it's about experiencing the complete food freedom your way. I do teach on a macronutrient approach, but a lot differently than I see it being done anywhere. I'm very much about whole foods and appreciating them and understanding how they can work for you, but I'm also the girl who's gonna eat pizza and have a glass of wine and really enjoy both. And I believe. Yeah, you're like, yes, yes.

Sorry, that just came out of my mouth.

Yes. And I believe we have been so obsessed with dieting and deprivation and no to this, and no to this. And I call it no dairy, no gluten, no life, which I do like. Lactose and gluten allergies are totally relevant and a thing, but I realized that a lot of them have been used to kind of spear our way into the next best diet quote, unquote. I want to overcome that. I don't want that to be present for you anymore. No more food fear. No more food anxiety. Your diet, your way. And I included over 50 beautiful, delicious, easy recipes that you can make, most under 10 minutes. And you can make them on a budget because I don't have a million dollars in my pocket quite yet, and I wanted to make that accessible for every woman. How are we doing, Lori?

Are we good?

So far?

I'm good. I have a question for you around food freedom. That's coming up for me because food is such an interesting thing, right? Like with. We want to. If. If there's an alcoholic, you quit liquor. If there's, you know, someone who wants to quit smoking, you stop using a cigarette. And if you're binge eating, you can't stop eating food. So this was something for me that was like. Like, really in my face because I was, you know, a former binge eater. And for me, it was like, okay, how do I allow myself this freedom of food and allow myself these triggers, you know, in. In portion control? I didn't quite understand it because I was so black and white. So for those people out there who fear food, because there is massive fear around it, right? Especially with everybody preying on, don't eat this, don't eat that. This is bad for you. This is now out. Now you should be whatever. You should be.

Be.

Should be. Where do we start with that?

Where do we start with that? That's a really, really, really great question. And it starts with the mind, because we have to understand, what is food to you, what is food to Lori? What is food to Zlara, what is food to my neighbor? And in many different occasions, we're gonna say, it's a best friend. It's a companion. It always gets me. It understands me, loves me. It will always be there for me. And as long as we have that emotional attachment to food and we are unaware of what our emotions are around that food, we will always go to food to mend that particular emotion. And if we're using food for any purpose other than to be black and white here, other than fuel, then there is a piece of emotional eating that is not allowing us to create the food freedom because it's blocking us from creating the beautiful relationship with food as fuel, as nurture, and as something as a way for us to nurture our temple, because our body is truly our temple, which, you know, as a recovering fitness competitor. Recovering. I had a serious episode of bulimia. I didn't tell anybody about when I was competing. And for me, food freedom was, like, the furthest thing away from the truth. So I get it. So we start from the mind and understanding what is the emotion. Then we go to, okay, I need some sort of structure. For me, it was like, okay, I need some sort of structure. And I found my peace in macros because I could figure out what works. What does my body need for my height, my weight, my age? And then within those macros, I was able to choose freely. And I saw how it was working for my body. I was like, this is great. And then when I established that foundation and when I created that structure, that worked for me in my mind, which took me. But I say 12 weeks on macros is plenty. And then I started exercising intuitive eating within that structure that I knew worked for me and just further inquired more about, hey, what do you want? Body? How are you feeling about this? Is this good? Is this not good? And that's how I know I can't eat certain things, right? Not because I don't want to. Just don't make me feel good. Like any kind of legumes, it's just not happening.

I love that. So it kind of goes. Goes back to that same masculine, feminine idea that. That you were talking about before and just having, you know, if you don't know how to build the framework of a home, but you're dying to decorate it, and you're dying to build, you know, a life inside of one. You kind of need somebody to give you an idea of what that could look like before you can even start thinking of, you know, does this feel good? What colors do I like? What do I love about it? I absolutely love that. Because structure can give you free freedom. But you have to understand when you have to let go of structure. So that is, like, beautiful.

So number three, three is simple fitness. And simple fitness is really, for me, you know, coming from the strict competitive background where I could spend, like two hours in the gym and you know how much cardio we've done, way too much cardio. And I think I lived in a treadmill in, like, 2015. And women were saying, saying, I don't have time for this nonsense. And they were also telling me, listen, I want to make my arms look better, to make my stomach look better, to make my butt look better. Don't you have something for that? And I kept getting really frustrated. I was like, you don't understand. Fitness is a beautiful thing. And they're like, okay, fitness is a beautiful thing. But. But I would like to work on specific target zones. And I'm like, this is BS that you have been sold, right? But I go, okay, I'm not doing anyone a favor because I cannot coach anybody because they obviously want spot training and I'm not giving it to them and they're going somewhere else. Who will promise them the spot training? That's not necessarily what they should be doing because there's a lot of dumb programming out there, Lori, you know, and. And like, I call them show up, get tired Workouts. Didn't talk about that in the book, just exclusively saved it for the podcast to talk a little smack about the fitness industry. And I created what's called a spot conditioning method to where we can focus on functionality and aesthetics and really create the body that we want based on not altering our body composition, but really working on those zones of our body that need to be complemented in our opinion and making it functional to where we do become a better woman that's ready for anything, like Hockey Sticks in the Car and Zombie Attack. We're ready for both.

I love it.

The book does include 3 week, 21 day jumpstart fitness plan as well. So I packed tons of value as far as nutrition as far as fitness goes, and that's the message I wanted to bring there. And the workouts are short. They're like 21 minutes long. So I know that any woman can find three times a week at 21 minutes. I know you can. I've seen women do it. Yes.

That is, like, perfect too. And that amount of time can be so effective. It's crazy effective. So number four is accountability. Huge.

Huge. Huge. Huge. Huge. Huge. There are a couple different steps in accountability we're talking about. About, you know, accountability is something that can truly help you Unleash your potential and stay motivated with simple strategies, simple accountability tips and tricks. I talk about measurements, I talk about, you know, body fat percentage and all of that stuff. But truly the most important gauge is how we feel, right? If I feel good, then I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing, doing and it's going to feel good to me. And the point of accountability here is not to reference the scale every five minutes, which by the way, we're not referencing the scale at all until, you know, in the second step we will. But in accountability, that's not a measure of success at all. In fact, I'm doing something that's called the scale Smash in my community where we smash our scales and we take a video of it and we're like forever free. So that is the accountability steps. Very, very powerful. I talk about coaching, how to find a coach if you're looking for one. So that was a big one for me.

That's huge for me too. And especially having a community to state your goals and have people who are super like minded within that, that's huge. For if you don't have that in other parts of your life, you have to create it somewhere else. So number five, power of community.

You wrote a book on that. You know all about the power of community.

Yeah, you're.

And here what I'm talk. It is a short chapter, but it's to the point where I'm like, listen, imagine you're driving a beautiful bus. In my mind it's like a hippie bus, right? Where we're like somebody's playing on a guitar and having a really good time and somebody is cooking in the back something really delicious. And all these people, we are, we're accepting of one another. We have the same desires in life. We love each other, we are accepting. And we're not coaching each other. We're literally in each other's life to support one another when we need to inquire and get a transparent reply. Kind of like Lori and Zlata have done in the past where I was like, Lori, tell me how to put on a live event. And on a napkin, there she was. But every time I see you, you don't go, Zlata, when are you putting on your live event? You know what I mean? Because you know that we're just there to support each other. And a lot of communities end up being kind of like that broken fix me relationships. Which I'm like, no thanks. So I really wanted to create the steps for how to organize your own community. What are the steps that need to be present in your community? And I wanted to give somebody an outlet to join a virtual community that is free of charge to feel like they belong somewhere. Because our bus is where all the fun is. And if we are on a bus with a bunch of judgmental Judys or somebody who just doesn't get us, the likelihood of us having fun in it, not so hot. So that's the community, man.

I love that power too, because I really am feeling like the, I don't know, just true leaders, which anyone can be, are truly creating or giving the power to help people create their own communities. Because it's not just about starting in your community. Right? But you're talking about saying, yes, start here, learn how to do this. Create it for yourself so that you can forever be successful and you can forever be surrounded in your immediate life as well as, you know, supporting yourself in this other way too, which I think think is so vital, having a coach and creating that support system in your own life. So, Zlotta, I am so excited for this and truly you. I mean, there are some ideas in here that it's like they're in my head, they're beautiful, but I have not been able to articulate. But it's truly what works and I love, love, love that. So where can we find your book? What are you most excited about?

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for beautiful compliment. It means a world to me because I know that you've lived in our world, you've lived in the world of competing and you have overcome so much yourself and you're constantly doing that in your community with your message. So that compliment from you means the world to me. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And you can find the book@SexyFit.com book it will be available through that link. It's a hard copy or an ebook, whichever you prefer. It will also be available on Amazon, but SexyFit.com will get you to where you need to be. And what am I most excited on right now? I mean excited about. Here's my Russian coming out. What am I most excited? It is what I'm most excited on. It's having this book. I am most excited about this book and I'm most excited about this message and I'm most excited about the community and how this particular piece of my work is going to create a shift for many women out there and. And really excited for doing less and having more impact.

Go ahead.

Yep. It's all about the book.

That's so awesome. And you know what? I am just beyond grateful to have been kind of on your journey in the last year and just been able to really catch up and be able to see you in all, you know, different situations and elements. And I just want to say that you are committed to what you're doing and you're truly showing up in such a beautiful way. And your vulnerability is really giving us hope and faith that we can do this exact same thing and create purpose for our lives and pay it forward with our message. So thank you so much and I will link all of that up in the show notes. And I have one last question for you.

Sure.

So I'm pretty sure that you asked this or I asked this one before to you, but you know, it changes like monthly.

Absolutely.

Because we evolve.

Changes every minute. Exactly. I'm a woman. I don't know what's going to happen next.

Exactly. So let's see what comes out on this one. So you have a 30 second elevator ride with someone and they look over at you and they say, how do I make myself happy? What do you say?

Look at the choices that you're making on a daily basis and how that is influencing your happiness and what you are responsible for to give yourself that happy place. And it probably would be a smack in the face and they'll look at me and say, what? What? But I'm willing to take that as a crazy look because I know that that's the key. That's the key.

The truth is freedom. Thank you so much for being on. And you guys, if you love this episode as much as I did, make sure you share it with your friends. And until next time, earn your happy.

Bye, everyone.

Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment. Tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of it would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and of thousands, thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again, guys.

Bye.

Bye.