Episode 87: The Practical Side of Lifting Heavy - Five Days a Week and Fixing My Relationship with Food

Description:

This is the follow-up to Johnna's 35-year anorexia story—the practical side everyone's been asking about. How did she actually program her workouts when she went all-in five days a week? What does eating look like now after decades of restriction and bingeing? Is she nervous about gaining the weight back? And what unexpected areas of life improved that had nothing to do with the scale?

What we get into:

• How Johnna learned to lift from the Mind Pump podcast—full body compound lifts, progressive overload, and why she stuck to the basics for years instead of jumping around
• Why she probably overtrained at first but it worked because her nutrition matched the intensity and she wasn't laid-out sore every session
• The protein target debate—one gram per pound of goal weight sounds great until your liver can't handle it and your digestion is wrecked (body awareness over blanket rules)
• Johnna's actual 80/20 split—which is really more like 90/10 because she doesn't like feeling like shit, bloated, or brain-fogged anymore
• Why she doesn't track macros and never will—her goal was healing her metabolism, not competing in a body composition challenge
• The unexpected wins—shopping off the rack without thinking "what will cover my fat rolls," better mobility than she thought possible, and actually presenting herself differently because insecurity doesn't live in her body the same way anymore

We're walking through the balance between learning new lifts versus sticking to the basics (spoiler: stick to the basics and get really good at them), why cheat meals are bullshit when you're first starting, and the lifelong battle with body dysmorphia even after the transformation. This is what it actually looks like to do the work—not just the highlight reel.

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