The Two Piers Podcast
The Two Piers Podcast
Embracing Discomfort for Sustainable Growth with Eliza Simmonds, Your Gym Bestie
In this episode of the Two Piers Podcast, host Erica D’Eramo is joined by health and fitness professional Eliza Simmonds to explore the art of setting sustainable fitness goals. Eliza shares her inspiring journey from teaching preschool to becoming a fitness coach, offering practical advice on building routines that empower individuals to achieve long-term success.
Together, Erica and Eliza delve into the parallels between fitness and professional coaching, emphasizing the importance of a growth mindset, embracing discomfort, and creating routines that align with personal values. They tackle common fitness myths, highlight the benefits of strength training, and discuss how small, incremental changes can lead to lasting results.
Whether you're a fitness enthusiast or someone looking to integrate wellness into your busy life, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable takeaways.
Connect with Eliza: Follow her on Instagram @eafitme or email her at Eliza@EAfitnessandperformance.com to take the first step toward your fitness goals!
Links: EA Fitness and Performance
Hello and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo and today we have Eliza Simmonds joining us. Eliza is a health and fitness professional, aka a gym bestie for her incredible clients. She's a born and raised Mainer and a graduate of UNE with a bachelor's in health, wellness and occupational studies. After finding her passion for fitness, Following years of teaching preschool, she became an NSCA Certified Personal Trainer CrossFit level one, and earned a nutrition certificate through precision nutrition to broaden her scope of fitness and health knowledge. In her spare time, she can be found on the trails with her husband and her dog in the garden with her chickens or curled up with a good book. Thank you so much for joining us. Eliza, really happy to have you.
Eliza Simmonds:Thanks for having me.
Erica D'Eramo:So today, I really wanted to talk about setting sustainable goals and how we can implement healthy routines that help us meet meet those goals. So yeah, thanks for coming on to talk about this.
Eliza Simmonds:I love that sustainability around fitness and health goals is, is my thing.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, I think that it might sound, it might sound unusual to be like talking about, you know, going to the gym or health and fitness on a professional podcast focused around tackling professional challenges, professional skill sets. And yet, this topic comes up again and again with my clients, because we are dealing with the whole person when we are doing professional coaching, when we are looking at professional goals. And so often this element of wellness, well being comes up time and time again. And in fact, we just recently recorded a podcast with one of our coaches, Dr Anthony Luevanos that discussed how leaders could really set an example around prioritizing well being. So this feels like a great segue for us to talk about, like, how do we operationalize that in our lives? So yes, thank you for joining us to talk about this. Absolutely
Eliza Simmonds:Absolutely so excited. It's so important to be able to focus on that whole person, that bigger picture. If you can't, you know, show up for yourself and be your whole self, then you can't be that whole self for other people and be the best person for your business and in, you know, in that professional stance, so super important to take care of that full body.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, before we get into the meat of it, too, I really want to acknowledge so many of the parallels that I've seen when you talk about your work and how you help clients, and so many of the parallels I see with the coaching work that we do around like growth mindset and goal setting and what good goals look like, and, you know, approach versus avoidance and all of those fun things that really seem to be some strong parallels between the work we do with, you know, maybe different client sets.
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, absolutely going in with, you know, any, any bigger picture type of thing, you have to have those, those sustainable goals to to get there, you have to have a routine around it. And there's so many different overlaps that come with coaching, whether it's that physical body or the that mental piece.
Unknown:yeah.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself, like, what's your what's your origin story? What brought you to this point?
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah. So I grew up being super, super active. I was in a ton of different sports growing up and found, found the gym during my time as a preschool teacher, and I just really fell in love with with fitness and with learning how to feel super empowered with moving that weight. And then as I started really getting into finding that passion myself, I found that passion for teaching, for teaching fitness. Always knew that I had a passion with teaching, and really found that parallel with teaching fitness and teaching preschool too. There's not as much difference as you would think. And so from there, I really wanted to be able to be people's gym bestie, be there for when they had challenges come up, and to really help them overcome it, and whatever challenge that they had before that made it so they weren't able to be successful in reaching their goals prior. What can I do to help them, help them navigate those goals? So I I'm sure you get a lot of people who come in, they just want to hear all right, tell me exactly what to do, and I will do it. But that's kind of like leading somebody in a canoe with a blindfold and then being like, alright, figure out your way back. So I definitely want to, you know, like, you take that blindfold off. I'm going to give you your own paddle, and I'm going to show you those steps to get there. And that's definitely where I found my space in the gym. So I really want to be that type of, that type of trainer, that type of coach for my clients.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, it's, it's funny, because in some ways, if we are doing our jobs right, it you. So you know, we're setting our clients up for success, to be able to operate and navigate the world even without us, potentially, and they might still gain that value of working with us, but we are trying right to create this like sustainability and and have it be underpinned by belief in self and belief in our own capability. So I love that when, when I hear you talk about working with your clients like it just seems so empowering.
Eliza Simmonds:We definitely have a lot of fun. And you know, seeing somebody step up to a bar that has 250 pounds and they had no idea that they could move it, and pulling that thing off the floor, seeing that excitement in their face and that knowing that they can do it, and just how much that just blows that mindset open to I can do anything.
Erica D'Eramo:So what I mean you talked about like, what drew you to the work and your passion around teaching, and your own relationship with discovering fitness, and kind of that, that growth around fitness. What? What makes this, this work important to you? Like, where do you find the value?
Eliza Simmonds:There is a tie to fitness and health in in everything that we do. So you know, whether it's being able to go into a meeting refreshed, feeling confident, you know if you didn't get enough sleep, if you didn't feel your body the right way, if you threw your back out giving your kid a snack in the back seat on your way, and that's all you're thinking about, is how much your back hurts and how much stress you have in your life, and you can't be your full self going into that meeting. I yeah, I just, I think it's super, super important to be able to to really, like, hone in on the longevity piece of it. How can you show up for yourself? Because that that health and fitness is going to come out everywhere it's again, like, whether it's sleep, whether it's nutrition, whether it's potentially throwing your back out, turning around in the car, that really is, like, one of the biggest reasons why I see people throw their back out. So there's just so many ways that there's all that overlap, and you want to just make sure that you're at least aware that's the biggest piece, is just becoming aware of it, and then you can make those steps to to making that change.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, I think that this is a great time for us to also explore what we mean in terms of fitness or health, because I feel like so often people associate fitness with being super skinny or hitting some number on the scale. And we had an episode recently with a guest who joined us, who works with you know, folks who have had complex relationships with food. So Keri Baker joined us to talk about that, and she works to understand, you know, what some of those complex relationships can look like, because definitely, a lot of high achieving women that I work with have complex relationships with food. And so can you help debunk a little bit of the myths that you encounter around what fitness or health looks like or like. How do you conceptualize fitness or health?
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, so really, fitness and health? If somebody comes in and they they say, Hey, I want to get healthy, my second question is going to be, what does that look like for you? You know, if you, if you aren't interested in fitting into a size two, and that number on the scale means absolutely nothing to you, but your kids mean everything in the world to you, and being able to lift them up any age is is everything for you, then that is your standard of health and fitness. So it really can be defined by by each person. So I do find that in the health and fitness world, the standards that we see are really unsustainable and unattainable. So we really do have a lot of focus on that, on that being skinny, on being or, you know, if it's in the a lot of the men's side, it's being as big and muscley as you can possibly be. But that's not always the case. And again, to bring it back to that sustainability piece, when you see a lot of those, those fitness standards that we think are the standards, it's really just at that pinpointed moment, it's not sustainable. It's not from a sustainable change. So I really want to be able to help people understand that that is not necessarily what is healthy in the in the health and fitness space, what's healthy is what's healthy for you, you know. So if you're, you know, somebody's got a goal of getting a bunch of protein in say, their goal is 120 grams of protein, and they're only getting 40. If you can get 20 more grams, then that's great. You're not supposed to compare yourself to somebody else. It's always your own standard of health and fitness.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, that really resonates and and has some parallels to, like, the professional coaching sphere, where so often we encounter this kind of the onset of a coaching engagement, this goal, whatever that is, the presenting goal, and a big piece of the work is around understanding what is the real goal? Like that might be what we've identified as a stepping stone. So it might be like, oh, I need to lose 10 pounds or something. Okay, but what is the real goal here? Is it that you want to feel comfortable in your you want to be able to touch your toes? You want to be able to like fit into that, I don't know, wedding dress or and what does that mean to you then, like, why? What makes that important? What makes that the goal worth focusing on? So it's funny, because I think a lot of people just they want to skip you know, it's so natural. It's so natural to identify that first piece and want, want to skip ahead. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
Eliza Simmonds:Oh, yeah. I mean, you come in and somebody will say, I want to lose 50 pounds. Like, okay, great. Well, how do we get there? Where do we start? You know, you have to think about again, that health and fitness piece. What? What things do we need to focus on? For you, maybe sleep isn't an issue. Maybe it is creating the routine in the gym itself. And maybe when they get close to losing that 50 pounds, maybe it wasn't the 50 pounds all along which seems like it really was that they didn't feel comfortable around their friends who were 30 pounds less than they were, and it was really just about their self esteem and how how they felt about their work.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, yeah, we get that a lot with like, I want the promotion, right? And there's so many reasons you might want a promotion, and it might sound silly, and I'm like, so what makes a promotion valuable, right? It sounds like, on its face, it's a silly question, I perhaps, unless you're a coach, and then you're like, okay, okay, obviously, that's the question. But, like, but when you start digging into it. Is it because it's more money, it's more flexibility, it's more extrinsic validation, you know, like, what is it about that? And are there other healthier ways, or are there other ways to attain that higher or, you know, higher order goal that are more aligned with your values? So, yeah.
Eliza Simmonds:And like, you know, if, if somebody say somebody did want a certain promotion, or say they did want to lose 50 pounds, and say that is an accurate goal, then what are the sustainable ways to get you there, and how are we going to keep now? How are we going to get you there and keep you there?
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah. So what have you noticed around sustainability, like, what makes for sustainable goals, or what leads to success?
Eliza Simmonds:I think figuring out the biggest difference is motivation versus drive so and they have they're so gung ho. Maybe they saw for us, maybe they saw an ad online, or maybe they saw a friend and they weren't as fit as them, or whatever it was, whatever that spark was, they came in, they had that big motivation. But then few weeks go by and things get tough, life, life gets in the way. Eating a lot of protein is tough, and you know, sometimes veggies don't taste as good as Oreos do, so we start to lose that motivation. And if we are losing sight of those that spark, or losing sight of those goals, how can we keep that underlying drive, that bigger why that bigger picture like, why is it that you started your goals in the first place? And that's that biggest thing with drive is, is reminding yourself why you started in the first place, and keeping that at the forefront does not same with coaching, I'm sure, but not 100% all the time. We always have. We have a saying at EA it's be 1% better every day.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah. James clear would be really proud of that.
Eliza Simmonds:Oh, yeah.
Erica D'Eramo:That compounding interest of of 1% every day. So what do you think gets in the way of the that sustainability?
Eliza Simmonds:Really, it's it's when you meet a challenge, whether, for a lot of people, like in the gym space, it's that they whether it's getting an injury or they have a vacation, and it's really hard to get that routine started back up, whatever it is, it's just being able to break through that barrier and again, really digging into that deeper why. So how you can, how you can kind of get past those is will, will create those little steps. So what three little goals can we do that week or that day to help with the with being that 1% better? So like, what little steps can we do to to make sure that it's not 100% every day, because trying to do 100% every day isn't sustainable. So what can we do so it can just be incrementally sustainable for you to make it a routine?
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, I mean, hearing about those little steps makes me think about approach versus avoidance goals, which we've kind of talked about in the past around setting successful goals. And I love this concept of like, what can you do? So so often the conversation around health or nutrition or wellness is really framed around, like, I guess what I would frame as deprivation, right? Like, stop eating this. Don't do this, don't, you know, like, withhold from yourself. And those, I call those like avoidance goals. Like, don't do X, Y, Z, how long can we go without doing X, Y, Z, and those are so tough from a mindset perspective and from a sustainability perspective, right? Because, like, eventually you're, you're probably going to do the thing, you're going to have a little slip up, and does that mean you failed? Like, are you just one day away from failure, or do you get to like, how are you going to succeed every, you know, how are you going to rack up those successes versus wait for the inevitable failure? So I just said a lot of words. What? What? How do you see this working in your in your realm?
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, well, I think a lot of people, they'll, they'll have a day that they start to slip. Maybe they what they eat isn't as nutritionally dense. I notice a lot of people, they'll do what, and this is a really tough thing too, because things aren't good or bad, they just are so, you know, right? I do so good I do, so good. I eat so well during the week, and then I'm so bad on the weekends. But it's not good or bad, it's we really, need to work on the guilt surrounding surrounding health and fitness. So it's not about being good or bad. It just is. And you're not being bad on the weekends. It's it's not a slip up. So being able to embrace that, that's okay, that there is going to be a natural ebb and flow, that the things that just taste good and aren't nutritionally dense exist for a reason, but that we also have to balance them. So a big thing that I tell people to help create sustainability is to blend their weekend habits with their week habits. So if you are somebody to you know, really binge on alcohol on the weekend. Maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe it's not going to be sustainable for your goals. So how can we help make that something that's more sustainable for you? Or maybe you really want to eat cake every day on the weekend? How can we make it so you can have that cake, you can have your cake, and you can eat it too during the week and on the weekends.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, there's I was just having this conversation with a client recently about recently about habit building, actually, and terming things good habits and bad habits. And you know, that was one of the reframes that I offered, was that like these are, they just are, and the goodness or badness is really just relative to what the goal is, in terms of, is this bringing us closer to the goal, or is it bringing us further from the goal? Is it a helpful habit, or is it currently not helpful or not? You know, not aligned, and then we can look at like more of or less of, instead of that, like binary thinking, right of like good or bad, because, yeah, that shame or guilt can be one of the most disempowering things, like, ironically, just from an effectiveness element, just not that effective.
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, can't be very effective if you're sitting in your own way, if you're sitting in the shame and blame spiral, there's not much moving forward to have happen. And that's my not really the type of that's not the type of discomfort that we should be embracing.
Erica D'Eramo:Oh, so, yeah, tell me more about the type of discomfort we should be embracing.
Eliza Simmonds:So well, we all know when we're working out, there's a certain level of discomfort. Some of us might enjoy it more than others. That's, you know, part of the part of the fun of it all we say at the gym. Um, but in order to grow, whether it's in, in coaching our minds, coaching our bodies, we have to get uncomfortable. We have to get vulnerable, and we we have to trust ourselves that we can be discomfort. We can be vulnerable. We can get into that discomfort, and we can grow and come out better for it. You know, if you want to, if you want to lift that 250 pounds, you're definitely not going to start at 250. You better start at 25 or lower. You know, you want to make sure that you're, you're incrementally increasing that discomfort. So it doesn't mean that you have to go all in. You don't have to be scared out of your mind when you go in for the first time, or, you know, when you're going into a situation in coaching, you know you don't have to be 100% all the time, 100% uncomfortable, but just getting into that discomfort is definitely going to help you grow.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, that's really like, I'm hearing so many overtones of this, like growth mindset versus fixed mindset of you know that growth mindset is that the the the growth is the value, that discomfort is the value not being good at something, is there is value in that, right in the learning of it. Yeah, that our, our value is not set at how good we are at something, but rather how much we can change and evolve over time.
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, it's not where, where are we right now. It's how, how much potential do I have, and how much potential do I truly believe that I have?
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, I this past weekend, I taught a yoga class, like a 90 minute vinyasa Yin a VinYin yoga class, and we talked a lot about discomfort, because for folks who haven't done yin yoga, that is maybe a new concept that we are going to sit for a while with some sensation and and we're going to observe how we interact with that sensation of discomfort, and also learning that like we don't need to move away from the discomfort, and we don't want to push it into the point of pain or injury or damage. So I love that you bring up this piece around, like it's, we don't want to go 100% right? We don't want to cause damage. We don't want to have those unsustainable goals.
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, they we talk about progressive overload a lot in the gym, and I think that that has a huge piece in in the coaching space as well. You know, you start, you come in, you start with maybe five pounds for an exercise. Like I said, you don't have to jump up to anything crazy, because we want to make sure that bit by bit, you're moving up, you're improving gradually. We're making sure that we're keeping eyes on form, and we're teaching you another piece is we're teaching your body those movement patterns. So we're teaching your body to recreate those same movements that are safe, that are uncomfortable at first, but we're creating that comfort. So it's it's pushing into that discomfort level to create that stability, to create that strength. So definitely.
Erica D'Eramo:Like that intentional, the intentionality of it and the awareness of it, right? The self awareness and situational awareness, yeah.
Eliza Simmonds:Oh, 100%, definitely and again, like not not going 100% if you go in, if you go in too overconfident, you try to just throw yourself into something, because, you know why, not being under prepared is is equally, could be potentially equally as detrimental to, yeah.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, absolutely. So I think another challenge that might be similar between coaching and and fitness, or, like, professional coaching and fitness, is this element of, like, fixing flaws that sometimes we can get up caught up in. So where, how do you see that in your work, and what are your thoughts on that fixing flaws,
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, that you're man, you're not always something to be fixed. Sometimes things are great as they are. So there's a lot of nitpicking that we can do in the gym, whether it's surrounding form or, you know, like if people are wanting to change up their nutrition, there's always these little bits and pieces that we can, we can alter here and there, but being able to focus on the bigger picture of it, I think, is super important. Like it, it's not just about getting super nitpicky with it, like you don't sometimes things are just great, you know, like if you overall are keeping yourself safe and you have you're moving up in weight, you're keeping yourself safe, you're listening to the cues, all of that. If there's some things that we're having to adjust, that we're having to change overall, then, then that's a big win. It doesn't mean that you like every single time you come in. We have to adjust something. Or every single week that you hop on our body composition machine that, like, we have to be changing something. Sometimes they just are. And that's great. That's okay,
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, I see it's a lot of high performing folks, although I think maybe slightly disproportionately affects my female clients, perhaps, but we'll do like a Strengths Assessment, or, you know, different all the all these various assessments that are available in the professional realm, EQi, you know, etc. And folks will scroll, even if it's like a Strengths Assessment, people will scroll to the bottom and be like, but what am I bad at? I gotta go fix the thing I'm bad at. I'm like, no, no. This is, it's not a gap assessment. This is a Strengths Assessment. So we can figure out what you're good at, and then we can lean into that. And I feel like that's probably for, I think maybe for me and my fitness journey that was a big aha. Of like, if I don't enjoy, I don't really enjoy cardio, right? Like, and if I don't some types maybe, but if I just don't enjoy running, and it hurts my knees and I get stress fractures, whatever it is, like, I don't need to suddenly become the world's best runner. Like, I can go focus on the things I'm good at, which would be yoga, strengths based training. Like, I really enjoy resistance training and lifting and being in those spaces. So, yeah, I don't like where, where do you see that? What are your thoughts?
Eliza Simmonds:I definitely like, that's the thing people will will think that they just need to become this marathon runner that they need to, you know, or if they're on the other side, and they do love to run, that they need to start being Arnold Schwarzenegger. That definitely doesn't have to be the case. Um, their bottom line, period. Fact, there is no, there is no replacement for strength training, everybody in some way, shape or form, from any age, as young as you can take direction till the day. You are not on this physical earth anymore. You should be doing some form of strength training. Bottom line is just super important for your body. But aside from that, what form of that you do is up to you, and you should enjoy it. You know, like to tie it back into our sustainability piece. It's not going to be sustainable or miserable, and you know, life's too short to not enjoy the things that you're doing to move your body anyway. So we definitely want to make sure that it's something that you're enjoying and that fits you. If, if running is if running hurts your shins, it hurts your knees, it just doesn't you don't enjoy it, and it doesn't feel good, then why would you ever spend so much time of your life running, when maybe we could introduce you to something like rucking, which is just walking with a weighted pack, which is so much better on your joints, burns a ton more calories, is generally a lot safer, because you do have to train your body to start running again. So there's always some form of something that we can adjust to be the right fit for somebody that comes in. And that's one of my favorite parts of the job, is getting to adjust everything to fit each individual person, because you deserve that.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, that's such a like empowering framework that this idea that you can and should enjoy it versus, well, I'm about to talk about shoulding, right, like, but that this is something that, like, could very well be enjoyable, and ideally is enjoyable, versus the mindset of, like, you know, fitness as punishment or as and I think it ties into that guilt piece, you know, again, but that I really, I really need to be better about working out. I really should, you know, and like, I don't know, when people start getting down on themselves, it just like, saps all the energy out of it. It's like, okay, you're, you're giving in to the strict school teacher in your head. That's like reprimanding you because you didn't do what you're supposed to do. And now you're like, conceding to them and give just the energy around that's so different than, like, I get to go do this thing that makes me feel good.
Eliza Simmonds:Exactly it should, it should be. And I get to and, you know, like, I I'm 110%realistic. Do you think that every single time that I work out, I want to be working out? No, absolutely not that. I don't know anybody in this world that every single time they are moving their body, that's they would not want to be doing anything else other than that. But it's understanding the importance of it and being able to put that at the forefront. And whether it's you know, like it in quote, unquote enjoyment of it doesn't necessarily mean that you've got a big grin on your face while you're doing a heavy back squat, but it might be that in the back of your mind you're thinking, hey, this means that I can put my cousin on on my shoulders, you know, and give him a piggyback ride or something like that. Like it's keeping that importance in the forefront of your mind, keeping, yeah, keeping that longevity piece, the sustainability piece, in the forefront of your mind.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that framing. And it's so different from what I think, you know, like, I ran track in high school, and I did field hockey and these sports, and I still remember, you know, going into the weight room and being like, Oh no, I don't want to get too I don't want to get big. To get big. I don't want to gain too much muscle. I won't be skinny enough, like, and having to go in for, like, weigh ins and stuff, and just all of these elements that were so, like, punishing, and so I don't know, you know, I was supposed to be small and tiny and probably not even that strong, right? This is not about me being sustainable. It was like how, how the world was going to view me from the ex external. So I really appreciate that the narrative is shifting, at least in your at least from you, what I'm hearing from you,
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, well, I mean, it takes, it takes piece by piece. I think, I think overall, as a whole society is is shifting. I think that there is a lot of focus around the positivity around fitness. I mean, there's a lot more women in the fitness space than there were even 50 years ago. So, I mean, that's a huge win my mind, and it's just really cool to see the types of people that are getting into the fitness space, especially, you know, we're just one we're just one small gym. And the amount of people that I work with, or the wide range of people that I work with, is absolutely incredible. So, you know, I like to believe that we're not just one little speck on the map, that there's a bunch of other people out there that have that similar mindset or and similar goals, especially in, you know, in the fitness space and outside the fitness space and in your coaching space as well, that we can all kind of meet each other, tie together and create a more sustainably built world.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, yeah. I know, like, there's, yeah, that, there's the con. I think I work with a lot of engineers, or, like, technical type folks, and there's this question, oh, always of like, well, but what's right? Like, this is, but I'm right or, or they're wrong, or, and, and I think just shifting from that to like, what's effective here, what's going to be most effective, and that's what I hear coming through strongly for you, is like, you know what? What's going to be effective?
Eliza Simmonds:Right? Exactly. It's not about what's right. It's what's effective, or it's, it's what's right for you,
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might say getting up at 5am and doing a CrossFit workout every day is is going to be what works for you. But if you if you're not doing it, and we have the empirical evidence that you're not doing it, then we can either examine how we change that, or maybe we choose something else that's more effective.
Eliza Simmonds:If you've never seen 5am before, and you don't even know what a dumbbell looks like. Maybe we're not starting with a 5am CrossFit workout,
Erica D'Eramo:Right? Exactly, exactly. So I What would like, what, what would your key takeaway be for our listeners today, like, what's the what's the headline for you that folks, you would love folks to to take away with them?
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, I think it's about really embracing that discomforts Okay, embracing the vulnerability that comes with change and knowing how important it is to create a sustainable routine around your health and fitness, because it really will. It really will tie into so many different facets of your life and it and that is forever. Like I said, that that's my one biggest thing is that there is no substitute for strength training and in whatever capacity we can, because strength training really is for everybody. Doesn't have to, doesn't have to look the same for everybody, nor should it. So what can we do to help people create a sustainable change that makes them happy and keeps them healthy in their definition of healthy and happy?
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I think even, you know, with with Two Piers in our focus on really opening up access to people, I love that you hone in on what works for different people. Because this is not, you know, a lot of times, I think in the fitness space, you see a lot of you know, there's, there's maybe not as much representation as I would love to see about like, different types of bodies, which you mentioned, and also people that have disability, right? And and they can, there's still an element of like, what works for you, what works for you.
Eliza Simmonds:100% everybody, everybody has a space in the gym that they are more than deserving of, and it's just about finding which, which space you feel most at home at, and what, what method gets you, gets gets you to those goals that you have.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, so if folks are really resonating with what they're hearing here, and they wanted to reach out. How do you how do you work with people, and where could they find you?
Eliza Simmonds:Yeah, so we do have a gym that's our physical location. Is located in Portland Maine, but we do also work remotely. So if folks are interested in working remotely, all of our programs are fully customized. So like I've been chatting about, we really focus on that sustainability piece for people. So if anybody's looking to have a little bit deeper of a conversation, even if it's just about kind of honing in on your goals around fitness and health, they could find me at @eafitme on Instagram, or Eliza@EAfitnessandperformance.com, com,
Erica D'Eramo:Awesome, and we will put those in the show notes. And yeah, I really appreciate you coming on to share this wisdom. And I don't know like explore these parallels and where we have so much overlap in helping people achieve their potential.
Eliza Simmonds:That's pretty cool. I had no idea that there was so much overlap in health and fitness coaching and mindset coaching and business coaching, and until you and I started chatting. So thank you so much for having me.
Unknown:me.
Erica D'Eramo:Yeah, thanks. And for anyone listening who would love to find the summary of this episode, you can do that on our website, and you can also access the full transcript there as well. And we appreciate you joining and we will catch you next episode.
