Broads: The Bold & Badass Fitness Podcast for Women

Body recomposition for women is one of the most underexplained concepts in all of fitness and the gap between "I know what a cut is" and "I know what recomposition is" has cost a lot of women a lot of wasted time on programs that were built for a completely different goal.

Here is the thing. When most women say they want to tone up or lean out, what they are actually describing is recomposition. They just do not have a word for it. And that word — and the clear explanation of what it actually takes — has been missing from almost every conversation about women's bodies and training. Everyone talks about cutting and bulking. Nobody sits a woman down and says: there is a third option, it is probably the one you actually want, and here is exactly what it looks like.

This episode is that conversation.

What's Discussed:

Why a stalled scale is not a plateau — and what it actually signals for a woman who is strength training and hitting her protein

The simple definition of body recomposition: losing fat and building muscle at the same time, and why most women are already in the middle of it without knowing it

The three options — cut, bulk, and recomposition — what each one actually does to your body and why the third one is the option diet culture never handed you

The honest trade-off: why recomp is slower than a dedicated cut or bulk, why that is not a flaw, and why the metric everyone hands you (scale weight) does not align with the actual goal

The biology of why recomposition works — muscle protein synthesis, fat mobilization, and why these two processes can run in parallel without a calorie surplus if the training stimulus and protein are where they need to be

Who recomposition works best for — and the specific scenarios where a dedicated cut or bulk makes more sense instead

The two non-negotiables: protein at 0.7–1 gram per pound of bodyweight and progressive overload — why both are required, and what happens to the whole process when either one is missing

The four metrics that actually tell you recomposition is working — and why the scale is the least useful one of the bunch

The five most common ways women accidentally sabotage their recomposition: chasing two goals with contradictory behaviors, undereating during the day and overeating at night, switching programs before the current one had time to work, treating lifting as a calorie-burning activity instead of a signal, and quitting in the window right before results actually show up

What a real recomposition week looks like across all five variables: calories, protein, training, cardio, and recovery — made concrete

How to find your starting point based on exactly where you are right now — and the single adjustment that changes more than any new program would

Want to go deeper on everything covered in this episode, including the hormone piece? Our free Body Recomp Webinar covers it all. https://www.broads.app/body-recomp-webinar

Ready to have progressive overload built in by design so recomposition actually happens instead of just being something you hope for? Apply for BroadsCOACH: https://www.broads.app/broadscoach

Learn more about Broads: https://www.broads.app/ https://www.instagram.com/broads_coach/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara: https://www.taralaferrara.com/ https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/ YouTube: @TaraLaferrara TikTok: @taralaferrara

Body image for women who train hard is one of the most common and least talked-about traps in fitness. If you have been hitting your goals, staying consistent, achieving more — and still feel like it is not enough — that is not a discipline problem. That is a pattern that no amount of performance can fix on its own.

In this episode you will hear from a woman who learned that at the highest possible level. Camille Leblanc-Bazinet is a seven-time CrossFit Games competitor and the 2014 Fittest Woman on Earth. At the peak of her career, her hormone labs came back menopausal — her body shutting down while her achievements kept stacking up. What she discovered on the other side of that, about worth, identity, and what strength actually means, is exactly the conversation women who train hard need to hear.

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet is a seven-time CrossFit Games competitor, the 2014 Fittest Woman on Earth, a gymnast, gym owner, coach, and one of the most honest voices in fitness on what it actually costs to chase performance at the expense of everything else.

What's Discussed:

How growing up as a gymnast shaped her relationship with her body — and why the generational patterns she inherited from her mother and grandmother mattered more than any sport ever did

Fueling for performance as the escape from restriction — and how that evolution also came with its own cost when performance became the only thing that mattered

The hormonal crash at the height of her career: on paper menopausal while competing as one of the fittest women alive — and what that moment finally made her face

What it actually felt like to receive body criticism online while holding a world title — and why no level of achievement made that noise go away

Why she retired, what her body was asking her to pay attention to, and why she does not regret the decision

The IVF journey, multiple miscarriages, surrendering — and what she found on the other side of that

The first hard thing she ever did: setting one rule for herself every morning and what that installed in her that nothing external ever could

The strongest thing she has ever done — asking for help on her knees after her daughter was born prematurely — and how that changed everything

How she is intentionally breaking the generational patterns with her own daughter and why talking about struggle out loud is a form of parenting she never had modeled for her

What strength means at this stage of her life — and why her answer is vulnerability and the willingness to say "I need help"

Her closing message: sit still, find your light, hold yourself

Ready for coaching that builds around the woman you actually are right now? Apply for BroadsCOACH at https://www.broads.app/broadscoach.

Learn more about Broads:
https://www.broads.app/

https://www.instagram.com/broads_coach/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara:
https://www.taralaferrara.com/https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/
YouTube: @TaraLaferrara
TikTok: @taralaferrara

Check out more from Camille Leblanc-Bazinet:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camillelbaz/
ThunderBro: https://thundrbro.com/

You’ve been told cardio kills your gains. Or that you need more of it. Or that HIIT is the answer. Or that HIIT is the problem. You open Instagram and find a different opinion every time, and at some point you just start guessing because the information around cardio is genuinely that contradictory.

Here is the thing: cardio itself is not complicated. The noise around it is.

Just like with strength training, there are nuances with cardio that you need to know if you want to see + get results.

Most of the time, the lack of results are not because you’re doing too little, but usually because you’re doing the wrong type, at the wrong time, for the wrong goal. This episode fixes that.

What's Discussed:

The three types of cardio — Zone 2, steady state, and HIIT — what each one actually does to your body, and why knowing the difference changes everything about how you program your week

Why Zone 2 is the most underrated form of cardio for women who strength train — and why a 30-minute brisk walk during a work call counts as a legitimate training session

The Peloton problem: why the popular high-energy classes are almost always steady state or HIIT efforts, why that is not building the aerobic base you think it is, and what to choose instead

How much cardio you actually need based on your goal — strength-first, balanced fitness, or training for a specific event — with realistic session numbers for each

The interference effect: why doing cardio and lifting too close together blunts the results of both, why order matters, and the one exception that is not actually cardio

Six signs your cardio volume is exceeding your recovery capacity — including the ones that show up in your joints and your sleep before they show up anywhere else

Why the fix is always subtraction and not more effort — and why none of the warning signs mean you are failing

A practical weekly structure for women lifting four days a week and women lifting three — with specific session types, timing, and how HIIT fits in as a tool rather than a default

The specific cardio plan for the busy woman who lifts two to three days and has a Peloton she uses once a week. Let’s simplify this!

If your joints have been feeling beat up, grab the free Mobility Guide — five minutes a day for seven days. https://www.broads.app/mobility-guide

For the full picture on how cardio, protein, and strength training work together to actually shift your body composition, the free Body Recomp Webinar covers all of it. https://www.broads.app/body-recomp-webinar

Ready to have your cardio and training programmed so everything works together instead of against each other? Apply for BroadsCOACH at broads.app/broadscoach.

Learn more about Broads:

https://www.broads.app/

https://www.instagram.com/broads_coach/

https://www.instagram.com/broads.podcast/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara:

https://www.taralaferrara.com/

https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/

YouTube: @TaraLaferrara TikTok: @taralaferrara

Most women have been told to manage stress with mindset work, talk therapy, meditation and breathwork, or just pushing through. And those things can help… but none of them address what the body is actually holding — the tension that has been living in your muscles for years. And the stress patterns your nervous system built to protect you are still running in the background long after the original stressor is gone.

That is what somatic healing addresses. And most women have never heard of it.

Liz Tenuto spent ten years living with chronic pain and insomnia that started at fourteen. She saw every specialist, tried every modality — acupuncture, yoga, massage, meditation, craniosacral therapy. Nothing lasted more than a few days. It was not until a ballet teacher pulled her into a somatics class that something finally shifted. She cried in the bathroom after the first session — not from pain, but because it was the first time she had ever stopped being hard on her body. Her insomnia was almost gone within four lessons.

Liz Tenuto is the creator of The Workout Witch, a somatic movement educator with a background in psychology and ballet, and the author of When the Body Speaks: How Somatic Healing Sets You Free. She teaches zero-equipment somatic exercises — tiny micro-movements that release habitual tension, dissolve stress-holding patterns in the muscles, and regulate the nervous system — to nearly four million followers across Instagram and TikTok.

What's Discussed:

What somatic exercises actually are — and the hip rocking exercise you can try tonight that uses the same bilateral stimulation technique found in EMDR therapy

Ten years of chronic pain, every modality, and nothing lasting — and the one class that changed everything within four sessions

How Liz's background in psychology and ballet led her to build something that bridges the two in a way neither field had done before

Top-down vs. bottom-up healing — what talk therapy does, what somatics does, and why somatics is often the missing link for women who have plateaued in their healing journey

Why there is no separation between emotions and movement — and what that means for women who are already training hard

The forehead swipe exercise: one minute, no equipment, stimulates a cranial nerve that calms your fight-or-flight response — you can do it in a meeting and nobody will notice

EFT tapping vs. somatic exercises — what the difference is and how to know which one is right for you

When the Body Speaks — the book, the three sections, and who it is actually for

Check out more from Liz Tenuto:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theworkoutwitch/

TikTok: @theworkoutwitch

App and Courses: https://www.theworkoutwitch.com

Book — When the Body Speaks: How Somatic Healing Sets You Free: https://www.theworkoutwitch.com/book

Free resource from Liz: DM "release" on Instagram @theworkoutwitch and she will send you a one-minute hip rocking video to get started.

Ready for coaching that meets you where you are and adapts to your life? Apply for BroadsCOACH at broads.app/broadscoach.

Learn more about Broads: https://www.broads.app/ https://www.instagram.com/broads.podcast/ https://www.instagram.com/broads.app/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara: https://www.taralaferrara.com/ https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/ YouTube: @TaraLaferrara TikTok: @taralaferrara

You’ve tried the plans. You’ve done the tracking, the lifting, the early mornings. You know what you are supposed to do. And still, something is not clicking — not the program, but the mental layer underneath it.

Why does it stick for some women and not others? How do you keep showing up when you do not feel good in your body yet? What do you do when the gym feels like everyone is watching you, when comparison is quietly wrecking your progress, when you are carrying all of this entirely alone and the silence around it is starting to feel heavier than the weights?

Those are the seven questions this episode is built around. Because the macros and the programming matter. But the mental layer is what actually decides whether any of it holds.

What's Discussed:

(0:00) Why the questions in the inbox this time had nothing to do with programming — and why the mental layer is the actual work

Q1: Why it finally clicks for some women and not others — and the real pattern the women who make it stick almost always share

Q2: How to keep showing up when you do not feel good in your body yet — and the moment from Tara's own history she rarely talks about

Q3: How to stop overthinking and find a plan you trust.

Q4: Information overload and deciding what is true for you.

Q5: What to do if the gym intimidates you and how to boost your confidence.

Q6: What to do when comparison is quietly wrecking your motivation — and why her timeline was never yours to begin with

Q7: How to stay motivated when you are doing this entirely alone — and what actually changes everything

Ready to get started?

BroadsCOACH: one-on-one coaching with a coach who knows your patterns, calls you out when you are quitting on yourself, and brings you back when you are in a spiral. Weekly check-ins, coaching calls, and programming that adapts to your life. Apply at broads.app/broadscoach.

BroadsCLUB: done-for-you monthly programming with home or gym options, plus a community of women who are in it with you. Start with a 7-day free trial at broads.app/broadsclub.

Learn more about Broads:

https://www.broads.app/

https://www.instagram.com/broads.podcast/

https://www.instagram.com/broads.app/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara: https://www.taralaferrara.com/ https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/

YouTube: @TaraLaferrara

TikTok: @taralaferrara