The School of Greatness
World-Renowned Personal Trainer: How To Lose Fat, Build Muscle and Improve Your Mental Health | Senada Greca
Wed, 8 Jan 2025
Get my new book Make Money Easy here!Get ready for an incredibly raw and inspiring conversation with fitness phenomenon Seneda Greca. From immigrating to America as a teenager and battling eating disorders to becoming one of the most influential figures in women's strength training, Seneda opens up about her remarkable journey of transformation. As Kim Kardashian's personal trainer and the founder of the WeRise app, she's revolutionizing how women approach fitness by championing strength over aesthetics. Her powerful message about building muscle for longevity and mental health, rather than just appearance, is reshaping the conversation around women's fitness. This episode dives deep into personal growth, overcoming body image issues, and finding purpose through empowering others.Check out Senada's WeRise app and get 25% off!In this episode you will learn:Why building muscle mass is crucial for women's long-term health and longevity, especially after age 40How strength training can be a powerful tool for managing depression and anxiety naturallyThe importance of making the process your goal rather than focusing solely on aesthetic resultsWhy tracking weight daily can be detrimental to mental health and progressHow to shift from viewing food as the enemy to seeing it as fuel for strength and performanceFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1717For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Gabrielle Lyon – greatness.lnk.to/1267SCDr. Mark Hyman – greatness.lnk.to/1695SCChris Bumstead – greatness.lnk.to/1602SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
My friend, welcome back to another episode of the School of Greatness. I am excited. We have Sonata Greta, who is Kim Kardashian's personal fitness and health trainer. And this is just not another episode about how to start off the new year with healthy habits. This is about how to really rewire your thinking around your body, your health, and your mental fitness all together.
You're about to listen to a very raw and inspiring conversation with Sonata Greca. She immigrated to America as a teenager. She battled eating disorders to become one of the most influential figures in women's strength training.
And she opens up about her remarkable journey of transformation, the struggles she faced as a teenager in her young twenties to where she is now with physical training, mental training, health and wellness, And as Kim Kardashian's personal trainer and the founder of the We Rise app, she's revolutionizing how women approach fitness by championing strength over aesthetics.
And this is a big challenge for a lot of men and women today. With social media and everyone filtering their photos and just posting six-pack abs or these perfect shapes of bodies, it's hard to not feel empowered. insecure. It's hard to not feel shameful about your own body when you see other people who just seem to have it all put together.
And it feels like no matter how hard you try, you're never going to get the results you want in your physical aesthetics. I've been there. I've struggled with weight and my nutrition and health and wellness as a
former professional athlete to then just consuming thousands and thousands of excess calories after retiring from playing sports and gaining a lot of weight to then trying to retrain but still eating a ton of calories to being addicted to sugar to all these different things that I've struggled with. It's challenging.
It's challenging for anyone of any type of background, especially if you're in social media at all and you see people posting stuff that just seems like, man, these people have either extreme genetics or they've just figured out the health and wellness hack. And I haven't, right? It's just this kind of, comparison shaming thing that might happen over and over.
And if that's resonating with you, if that speaks to you in any way, then please let me know over on Instagram or anywhere on social media. Let me know if that speaks to you because it's a challenge. I get it. And there almost needs to be a way where you rewire your identity. You shift your identity. And it has taken me years to learn this process.
And it doesn't mean I'm perfect all the time, but it has taken me a long time to create a new identity with food, to create a new identity with training, and to do it from a place where I'm not obsessive over needing to look a certain way, but I've set standards for myself and boundaries for myself to set myself up for success. And I think you've got to figure out whatever's best for you.
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Chapter 2: How did Senada Greca overcome her challenges?
It was, you know, when you have an eating disorder, you're blind to it, right? It's more the people that are outside of you that notice it. So it was teachers and parents that started noticing it, that I was losing weight drastically. But when you have this body dysmorphia, you could be the thinnest person
that you've ever been, that you could possibly be, that you're risking serious health problems, you don't see yourself as that.
Really?
When you look in the mirror, you see, you know, I'm fat, I'm big, I'm this, I'm that. You're just like... the most negative, you're breaking yourself down. You just don't think that because you have such advanced body dysmorphia and looking at yourself from a different lens that you don't recognize that.
What do you think is the main cause of body dysmorphia for most people? Is it an emotional trauma? Is it a hypercriticism they get from patients? parents or peers? Is it a pressure from seeing marketing in society that like, oh, I'm not enough and so I need to become like that thing? What is the main cause?
I think it's a combination of all of what you mentioned. It's hypercritical parents. I love you, mom, but she, if I didn't get like the highest grade in class, if I wasn't first in class, you know, if you're not first, you're last kind of mentality, which comes with
amazing side benefits when it comes to drive and achieving and overachieving in life, but it comes with a huge weight on your shoulders to be the best. And that is not always required to be successful, to be the best, to live the best. So I think it's a combination of all those things.
I think there's the societal pressures that weigh on young people that are in their formative age, in their formative years. And yeah, the comparison of, of unrealistic beauty.
And for me at the time was all of those factors as well as trying to figure out how to fit in, in a new place, new country, new culture, you know, trying to control something that felt controllable in months, uncontrollable, an uncontrollable situation.
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Chapter 3: What role does strength training play in mental health?
Like, it seems like there's these trends in the culture.
why do you think that first off is that accurate that there are trends for women in their way that their body is supposed to look if so why does that change for women over the years there is definitely trending there's been like you said you know i agree with you that there's been you know the trend of being skinny and then curvaceous and i don't know that it's necessarily being thin again i hope not
It's being fit and strong.
I think there's a movement. There's a true movement with being... being like strong being strong and i love and appreciate all the doctors that are coming forward and sharing their their data on how strength and and having as much muscle as possible is healthy um for a woman not just quality of life now but in their later years i think um
Yeah, I think a lot of these studies and these doctors that are coming forward with women-specific, because I think a lot of the studies have been done on men, but with women-specific studies that show that importance. So I'm hoping that that's the new trend, and that's here to stay.
Well, it's interesting because, as you mentioned, when you moved to America, you saw pressure from other teen girls in your school. You saw media, marketing, whatever it might be, campaigns of celebrities that you see look a certain way. But you're also a trainer for Kim Kardashian right now, and you have been for a while.
And I'm assuming you're around a lot of top celebrities as well in that world. How do you navigate knowing that you're working with a very influential woman that women look up to, women want to look like, women want to, you know, emulate.
Maybe they feel comparison to or a lack of comparison that they can't live up to the way she might look or something like that or just other celebrities in general. How do you navigate, I guess, your work with someone like that while also understanding that there's a 15-year-old out there who was once like you that maybe sees her and wants to be like her?
And then does that help her, inspire her to eat healthier and train? Or is it like, let me go extreme food deprivation? I don't know. How do you navigate just that in your mind?
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Chapter 4: How can women shift their perception of body image?
First starting point for me is always, have you tried doing it naturally, right? So are you able to? Because some people are just not able to get to that point, right? So for me, it's like starting with the attainable things that you can naturally, like nutrition and working out. And if that hasn't worked and you are, as a matter of fact, somebody that is a candidate for that drug, then
There's more and more research that shows that that can be helpful in a lot of aspects, not just losing weight, but health wise. So as with any other therapies, pharmaceutical therapies, I'm not necessarily opposed to them, but there's a place and time for them. So, for me, it's like, have you tried the foundation? Which, again, we know is eating right and working out, getting enough sleep.
Exactly. Meditating, for me, meditating is huge. Did I mention everything? Yeah. So, like, if you are, if you're focusing on having those foundation and you still are struggling and maybe it's time to talk to a professional to see if that is something that is that would be of benefit I know that again there has been studies out there with Drastic weight loss, I'm not on board with that.
So if it's happening, even with a Zempik, if you're utilizing it and you're experiencing drastic weight loss, that is not healthy because you're losing not just fat, but you're losing lots of muscle in that process.
Really?
But if it's done with kind of micro dosing, again, is what studies show is that you're able to maintain muscle mass while slowly losing weight.
Interesting. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It just seems like a lot of people just have lost weight really quickly is what it seems like. Again, I don't know who's using it or who's not using it. It's hard for me to tell, but it seems like that's what's been happening. And that scares me.
It is super scary. That is scary. The drastic weight loss, no matter what way it's done, if it's a drastic weight loss and if it's done because you're restricting your food intake and you're working out like crazy or whether you're doing something like GLP-1, like Ozempic, then that's not good. That is not good.
This is an interesting question I have for you, Sonata. I'm curious. When you know that also women... I don't wanna say all women, but there's a tendency that women may compare themselves to other women. And you have content out there that may seem unattainable for a lot of women, right?
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