I’ve been getting tons of questions about my fitness routine—from my weight lifting split, to what creatine I take, to how I manage to get enough protein in each day. So I put everything together in one place!
Over the last month, I committed to a 30-day fitness challenge focused on getting stronger, building better habits, and fueling my body in a more intentional way. Along the way, I’ve shared bits of my progress on Instagram—and the DMs and comments have been full of questions.
In this post, I’m breaking it all down: my weight lifting routine, the creatine I use, how I get more protein into my meals, and the small changes that made a big difference. If you’re curious or want to follow something similar, here’s everything in one place!
My Fitness Routine
When I started my weight lifting journey 8 years ago, I use the Sweat App. I’ve posted about it a ton of times and I think it’s great. However, I was ready for a change about a year ago, so I started using the Madeline Moves app. They gave me a code for you – MERRICK10 for $10 off your first month or year when they check out on movesapp.com (the code is not available through the App store, so make sure you sign up on their site).
It’s very simple and you can choose 30 and 60 minute workouts each day. The app has a combination of legs, core, arms, etc throughout the week, so you get full body strength training.
I do weights 5 days a week through the app, I run or incline walk every day, and I take Sunday as a rest day.
The small change that made the biggest difference
I follow Madeline Moves (creator of the Moves App) on Instagram, and she mentioned one day that to get the best results with weight lifting, you need to SLOW DOWN and do the movements as slowly as possible. For years, I’ve tried to move around as much as I could to burn the extra calories and hit my move goals on my aple watch during my weight training. But that is not the right thing to do – in fact, it’s just caused me to hurt myself and get back spasms multiple times.
So I’ve spent the last few months really slowing my movements down and lifting as heavy of weights as I possibly can, and breathing through my core as I do each rep.
This has been a completely game changer for me!
Which Creatine do I take?
I’ve started taking Creatine everyday while I do my weight lifting. I just add it to my giant water bottle along with my electrolytes so it’s really easy to take and I drink it slowly over the period of about an hour. THIS is the Creatine that both my husband and I take. Code MERRICK is my discount code, if you want to try it. It’s very fine powder, so it mixes easily into water and doesn’t have chunks. Highly recommend.
Let’s talk about protein
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the whole health world is blowing up about protein. I tried for the last year or so to “prioritize protein,” which basically meant that I ate a Chomps beef stick or a protein shake as a snack, and tried to eat healthy the rest of the day.
When I actually set a goal to have between 110-120g of protein per day, and I started tracking it, I realized that I was vastly underestimating how much I had to pay attention to hit these high protein numbers.
Also, everything that I’ve researched said that you need high fiber in order to balance out all this high protein, so I made a goal to have 25g of fiber each day as well.
I’ve been taking THIS FIBER SUPPLEMENT to kickstart my day with 5g, and then I usually have berries, leafy greens, avocado, chia seeds, or flax seeds throughout the day in any given recipe, so I hit my fiber goals pretty easily.
How do I find recipes?
The best place for me to find recipes has been Instagram! The algorithm is so good that if you start saving recipes with protein, or following people who share healthy recipes, the app will show you so much more on your feed. I save things constantly!
My favorites currently with the easiest and tastiest recipes are Sugie Addict, Smaller Sam PCOS, and Shred Happens. I’ve made a bunch of their recipes and they’re all good and so simple. I don’t need anything overly complicated! They’re all low carb, high protein, so if those are your goals, they are great to follow.
How I track my food
I’ve been using the app LoseIt for the last few months and I find it 1000% better than the old MyFitnessPal that I was using before. Truly, it’s a major difference. It has a paid and free version, but I use the free version and get everything that I need. With each meal that you input, it gives you a breakdown of nutrients, so you can see your fiber and protein content per meal, plus a total for each day.
If you’re counting your macros, it gives you a full breakdown of all of that as well, along with percentages.
I hope that’s helpful! If you have any other questions of things that I missed, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or send me a message on Instagram!
This is super helpful info. I dow nloaded the Lose it app and it doesnt APPEAR that the free version allows you to track macros including fiber. Wonder if i did somethimg Wrong??
Lynn, that’s what I’m seeing too. the free version shows macro percentages, but no breakdown of actual protein/carb/fat/fiber intake without upgrading.
Hi! On the “log” page of the app, you see the entries of all your meals and you can click the three little dots in the top right corner of each of your meals and it’ll give you a breakdown in “meal summary.”
Also, in the “dashboard,” it shows a breakdown of macronutrients with a few charts, and if you click the chart it shows you all the specific numbers.
Hi! On the “log” page of the app, you see the entries of all your meals and you can click the three little dots in the top right corner of each of your meals and it’ll give you a breakdown in “meal summary.”
Also, in the “dashboard,” it shows a breakdown of macronutrients with a few charts, and if you click the chart it shows you all the specific numbers.
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I also tried LoseIt and felt extremely satisfied, especially the nutrition tracking is very detailed and still easy to use. Much better than MyFitnessPal I used before, LoseIt helps me control indicators like protein and fiber clearly for each meal. Like in Sprunki Retake , everything has to be considered and strategic, but with LoseIt, everything becomes much easier and more effective.
You look great! Thanks for the update on what you’re doing.
How did you set your calorie goal? I know you are supposed to eat in a surplus to gain mUscle, so just wondering if you did that or just ate matintenance. Your muscle increase is impressive!