Episode 438: Tara LaFerrara: Why Quitting Alcohol Is Your Secret Weapon for Better Fitness

Is alcohol consumption holding back your fitness progress? in this Fitness Friday episode on the Habits and Hustle Podcast, I talk with Tara LaFerrara and she gets brutally honest! We discuss why alcohol, even in moderate amounts, negatively affects everything from sleep quality to body composition. We also dive into the importance of daily mobility practices for joint health as we age and share practical advice on finding motivation beyond willpower. Tara LaFerrara is a certified strength and mobility coach who transformed personal struggles with body image and unhealthy habits into a mission to help women approach fitness from a holistic perspective. With 13 years of industry experience, she advocates for sustainable, enjoyable movement rather than strict regimens, empowering clients through her app Broadzit and virtual training programs. Tara specializes in a well-rounded approach to fitness that combines strength training expertise with mindset coaching, emphasizing community support and individual needs. What we discuss: Why alcohol is "straight up poison" for fitness goals and overall health The impact of alcohol on perimenopause and menopause symptoms The visible aging effects of alcohol on skin and body composition The importance of joint mobility as we age (1-5 minutes daily) How to incorporate mobility work into your existing routine The best time of day to work out based on personal circumstances Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com/ and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here https://bio.me/?utm_source=Jennifer, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link https://www.livemomentous.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorDUIZz3psr1Qsq_n1yE8_6JTq_QUFabOO9lH65HDEXCIoJOPLj and use code Jen for 20% off To learn more about Tara LaFerrara: Website: https://www.taralaferrara.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara Podcast: Broads: The Bold & Badass Fitness Podcast for Women https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/broads-the-bold-badass-fitness-podcast-for-women/id1710024779 Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

  Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle Podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

• 0:29Jen Cohen?

  What's your take on intermittent fasting for women?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  I don't have enough information to give my opinion on that. However, I personally am not someone that would do that.

• 0:44Jen Cohen?

  How about alcohol and body composition?

• 0:47Speaker 02

  I, and this is a hard unpopular opinion for a lot of people, I'm sure. Alcohol is poison. It's straight up, just shouldn't be drank. I don't drink it at all anymore. It's empty calories. It makes you feel like shit. Speaking of sleep, like it's gonna make you sleep like shit. I work with a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause. It will make your symptoms 100 times worse. Like, that is a proven scientific fact. If you want to feel better and healthier, I would say one of the first things you should do is maybe not even give up, but just lighten how much you are currently drinking.

• 1:23Jen Cohen?

  Now, listen, you're preaching to the converted. I don't drink at all. To me, it's the most, the biggest waste of calories ever. I'd rather eat than drink any day of the week.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34Jen Cohen?

  And the, what it does to your skin and to your body is horrendous. It also ages you 20 years. I mean, you know what I mean? People I look at who are like 45, who are drinkers versus not, massive difference. Massive difference. You know, the bloating, the, just in terms of this overall, it's just, it's the worst thing you can do. Like, I was saying, like, smoke a joint instead of a, honestly, than, other than, than take it, like, drinking a glass of wine. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying do either one, but if you're gonna, if you're gonna pick your poison, I'd rather you pick that. My opinion.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, although I will say, as someone that is California sober, marijuana is not poison. Alcohol is.

• 2:16Jen Cohen?

  I I was gonna say, well, I was gonna say that, too. I don't think it's poison at all. But it's like how you consume it, though, right? Like, if you're if you're smoking, it's not so great for you. If you're ba- vaping, it's not so great for you. If you eat it, I guess it's much better for you. Or take a gummy, that's way better for you.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then you have to look at, like, sometimes they put flavorings or something in those, too. I mean, if you look at the grand scheme of of what you consume, how can you take out just like small things that can make you feel better in general? So for me, my first thing was alcohol. I'm never gonna give up a chocolate chip cookie, but I will give up alcohol.

• 2:52Jen Cohen?

  Oh, my God. I could not agree. By the way, if there's more calories and empty shit in a glass of wine, it's all sugar. You're basically drinking sugar.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03Jen Cohen?

  Versus having a chocolate. It's like so much more satiating. But I guess there are people out there who don't care about food and they like alcohol. Not me. That's not me, but, you know?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  But also, it's like very important to note that, like, there's a lot of people that say, oh, well, I just drink one glass or I just have like this. What is that? You know, that's not that's not big of a deal. And it's like, no, you're right. It's not that big of a deal, but that one glass of wine will still interrupt your REM sleep. It will still hinder you the next day, even if you think it does nothing for you or it actually like makes you relax. It actually does the opposite in your brain. So important to know.

• 3:37Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah. I I think the number one thing people should stop doing if they wanna look fit and be fit and be healthy is eliminate alcohol 100%. Worst thing they can possibly do for their for their bodies, for their overall, for their skin, for their looks, for everything and their sleep. And also, that people don't even realize that, like, you're you may think that, oh, you know, I'm not sleeping well, but that's what that you end up eating more because of it. You end up making bad choices because of it. You're not like, the ripple effect is so terrible. Okay, one more question, and then we're gonna like wrap. Mobility. Let's talk about mobility. How important is mobility in comparison to, let's say, the weight training, the cardio, all these things?

• 4:20Jen Cohen?

  Because I think that, like, as we get older, our mobility, our flexibility definitely gets worse.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Mobility is in all of my training and I really just add it within the warmup and actually like in the strength programs. So it doesn't necessarily have to be this like extra thing, although it can be. Mobility is just the ability to move freely within your joints. So if we think about strength training is for our muscles, mobility is for our joints. So for example, sitting down on the floor and standing up, putting your arms overhead and not having to arch your back to get your arms there. Being able to twist to the side without your lower back hurting. It's just to be able to like move a little bit more freely within your body. This is obviously very important as we age because we want to be able to, if we do fall, get back up on our, on our own. Be with our

• 5:08Speaker 02

  kids on the ground as they, you know, are growing up. Also be able to like take care of our own selves, like wipe your own ass at the end of the day.

• 5:17Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  And so as long as you are making sure that you add that within your training.

• 5:22Jen Cohen?

  How?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  In your training session. Sorry?

• 5:25Jen Cohen?

  What are some good mobility exercises?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I like to look at mobility from a joint by joint perspective. So we think about our major joints that we use on a day to day basis in a lot of exercises are ankles, our hips, our shoulders, wrists and spine, really, I would say are like the biggest ones. So for ankles, that's something that you can do a passive squat. I'm sure you've heard of it as like a yogi squat. A lot of people in Asia sit in these squats all day long. You'll see babies sit, sit in a squat. So it's just heels and toes out and just sitting down.

• 5:57Jen Cohen?

  Also guys, you can Google it. You can, you can Google what a passive squat is.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:01Jen Cohen?

  And it's really good for your mobility.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Yes. So that is hips and ankles. You can kind of do both of those at the same time. You can kind of rock in and out of that. I do it while I'm watching TV or I'm on my phone or something easily while I'm doing something else. Really great one for hips is called a shin box switch. You can look that up, but it's basically 90 degrees on either side and you're just rotating your knees back and forth. So you sit on your butt, your legs are at 90, 90 and you just shift your knees, but keep your heels and butt on the ground. This is great for internal and external rotation of the hips. So a lot of times we are moving forward, but it's nice to be able Able to move the hip joint side to side and around. So this is a great one for the hips. You can also do what's called the world's greatest stretch or runner's lunge with a little rotation.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  So you're in a high plank position, your foot's outside of your hand, bring one foot outside of your hand, and then just kind of rotate your arm up towards the sky. So again, Google world's greatest stretch or runner's lunge reach. So great for hips. Also with that rotation, we're getting into our T spine. A lot of us sit on our phones or sit in a chair all day and we're rounded forward. We don't have a lot of lateral, like any spinal flexion, extension and rotation. So anything that has to do with your spine would be really great. I could do it right here while I'm sitting with you, just kind of rotating in my chair, moving side to side. Shoulders is another really great one, again with that roundedness of the shoulders. So instead of just pulling the shoulder blades back down and back, we can actually get into the joints

• 7:34Speaker 02

  by using a broom or PVC pipe, moving it back behind us and back in front of us. Maybe a band or something like that. So lots of different ways to move around your body. But I think mobility is really, it's about moving freely, but it's also about enjoying the process of finding the way your bodies can and maybe cannot move just yet.

• 7:57Jen Cohen?

  How often should we be working on mobility?

• 8:00Speaker 02

  You can do it every day for one to five minutes a day. Like I said, you can do it while you're listening to this podcast, you can do it while you're watching TV, waiting for water to boil, I don't know. But I can do some wrist rolls right now, like while I'm just with you right now. So I would say absolutely every day if you can, if you remember to do a minute or two, that's awesome. And then also adding it before your workouts will be helpful to make sure that your movements actually feel a lot better too.

• 8:27Jen Cohen?

  Do you think it makes a difference when we work out, morning, night, afternoon?

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Depends on the person as always. For example, if someone is having trouble sleeping, I would not recommend that they work out past like 4:00 PM. So that is someone that I'd be like, all right, let's try and work out in the morning or at lunchtime. For someone like me, I need to work out before 8:00 AM because that is the time that I have allotted and that's where I feel the best. So it really just depends on the person and what works best for them.

• 8:55Jen Cohen?

  How about motivation? When people aren't motivated, how do you motivate people to actually stick to a plan and kind of be consistent with it?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when we think about motivation, we think about intrinsic versus extrinsic. Someone like maybe me or you have a lot of intrinsic motivation because we know how great movement makes us feel. We know we get the endorphins. We know that we can lift heavy and feel really good afterwards. But a lot of people, you know, always are searching for that motivation, but they don't actually have it within them just yet. So they might need some sort of external or extrinsic motivation to get there. So for example, it could be something like you join a program, you work with a coach to get some accountability, you go to classes, you get a new workout outfit. People always are searching for something, but no one's ever motivated all the time. Even though we might both be intrinsically

• 9:47Speaker 02

  motivated, I sometimes do not want to go to the gym, but I still go because I know that it's going to make the rest of my day feel better. And I know that it's just like doing a hard thing when you don't want to do it. You're going to do it anyway because it sucks, but you know, on the other side, it's going to make you feel better. Like finding that little piece of like that extrinsic motivation is is super helpful for people that are always searching for it. And then, once they get to that other side, like that three, six month mark, they'll feel it so much more internally as well.

• 10:18Jen Cohen?

  I agree. I mean, I always say, don't do it even when you don't want to and never rely on motivation as your reason for doing anything. Think about how you're going to feel afterwards, not how you feel before. Right? And on that note, I might go for my walk because I still, I have to, even though I don't want to, and I'm super not motivated, I know I'll feel really good afterwards.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. I love that.

• 10:42Jen Cohen?

  So, thank you so much, Tara, for coming on the show. I appreciate it. You've been great. And thank you. Guys, Tara, tell us where people can find more information if they want more fitness advice.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all the things. That's my first and last name. Lots of As, lots of Rs. Tara LaFerrara. I also have a fitness app called Broads, where we do strength and mobility workouts. And it's a program you can follow along with, Progressive Overload and RPE.

• 11:09Jen Cohen?

  Thank you so much. And by the way, I'm wearing this hat, not because I don't want to look at you, but I have a terrible rash I got under my eyes and I don't want to look at it.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 11:17Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. So I'm not trying to be rude, guys. That's why I'm covering my eyes, not because I'm hungover, obviously.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  No, she's not on over because she does not drink.

• 11:27Jen Cohen?

  I do not drink, exactly. Thank you so much again, I appreciate it.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, thank you.