The Science Behind “I Know What to Do, But I Don’t Do It” (with Kasey Jo Orvidas, PhD)

Struggling to follow through on your goals OR getting your clients to follow through — even though they know what to do? It’s not a willpower problem… it’s a mindset one. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Kasey Jo Orvidas — PhD in psychology, certified health and fitness coach, and creator of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification — to break down the actual science behind lasting behavior change.

We dig into:

• Why you sabotage your goals (even when you want to succeed)
• The truth about willpower, motivation, and self-control
• The difference between guilt vs. shame — and why it matters
• How to build real consistency through self-efficacy and mindset shifts
• What coaches and health pros need to understand to help clients change for good

Whether you’re tired of “starting over” or you’re a coach wondering how to help clients finally follow through, this episode is packed with practical psychology and zero fluff.

🔗 Links mentioned in this episode:

• Free Coaching Code Event
• Follow Kasey on Instagram
• Link to Work With Michelle

TOPICS COVERED👇🏼

00:00 Intro to Mindset and Psychology
05:45 Kasey's Journey into Psychology
10:28 Merging Health/Fitness Coaching and Mindset
13:38 The Psychology Behind “I Know What to Do, I Just Don’t Do It”
18:33 Step 1 to Changing Your Habits
20:51 Guilt vs. Shame
25:47 Decoding Willpower, Motivation, and Self-Control
26:04 Out of Willpower? Here’s What to Do Instead (+Defining Willpower and Self-Control)
29:35 Motivation & the Science of Follow-Through
33:29 Building Self Confidence
41:49 Building Self Confidence in Coaching
44:23 How to Change Your Mindset to Work For You Instead of Against You

Transcript

Michelle Yates (00:00)
Welcome to Nourished and Free, the podcast where mental health meets physical health, food guilt gets ghosted and toxic wellness advice gets roasted. I'm Michelle Yates, a registered dietitian, certified health mindset coach with my master's in health psychology. And if it isn't already obvious, just by what I've said so far, I love talking about how psychology impacts our relationships with food and our body. So today I'm joined by the perfect guest to talk about

Today I'm joined by Kasey Jo Orvidis. She is a PhD in psychology and is a certified health and fitness coach. Her expertise is in mindset and health behavior change, which I find to be just a huge gap in the health and wellness space. And potentially the most important part of health and fitness, if not the most important part, because there's no point in having all this information about what's healthy and good for you.

if you can't even follow through on it. Kasey has transformed hundreds of lives and minds in her coaching career while also being published in multiple peer-reviewed scientific journals for her research exploring the relationship between our mindset and our health and fitness behaviors. After finding so much success with her own online fitness coaching business, she also created the accredited certification program.

which is the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. So when you hear me say that I'm a certified health mindset coach, this is the certification program and the creator of it who is the genius behind all of this. She's teaching other coaches how to effectively use the science of mindset and psychology to develop lasting change with their clients. And I can say from first hand experience, this has been one of the most helpful and critical things when it comes to the work with my clients, it's just mindset.

and figuring out how you perceive things, how you view things, your attitude, your beliefs. I mean, when it comes to our clients, week one, we are talking about their mindset and digging into all the things underneath the surface. Because if we've got a history of trying diet after diet after diet, and having an all or nothing mentality and struggling with binge behaviors or emotional overeating,

that tells me that there's things underneath the surface or just in your brain that we haven't tapped into yet and that we need to address and rewire so that you're not self sabotaging anymore. So I'm really excited to dig into this topic with Kasey today. She is obviously the best resource I think for this topic. And ⁓ also if you are a professional, a health and fitness professional ⁓ or coach,

I you'll really enjoy this episode too as you learn more about how to support your own clients through their own behavior change. Let's dig into it.

Michelle Yates (02:57)
Welcome to the show Kasey how's your day so far?

Kasey Jo (03:02)
It's good, it's running behind as we kind of talked about off air, but it is good nonetheless. ⁓

Michelle Yates (03:07)
Yes,

yes. What does a typical day look like for you? I feel like you've got a lot of you've got a lot of ⁓ moving pieces in your business. So I mean, is every day different? Or is it like? Yeah.

Kasey Jo (03:16)
goodness. Yeah, I don't really have typical days, which honestly

is something I really love about what I do. back to college when you're really starting to figure out, what am going to do for a career that's like every day until I die, basically, right? And I was so concerned that I would end up in some kind of role where it's like, okay, you come in and you do the same thing every day and then you leave. And I am very, very grateful that that is not my life. ⁓

Michelle Yates (03:33)
Yeah.

Kasey Jo (03:45)
What did I do today? I spent a lot of time. I did a couple of guest trainings this morning, similar to sort of like what we're doing here on the podcast, but in a live environment with an audience. And I'm reviewing a bunch of social media for our upcoming launch, our enrollment period for the certification. So yeah, I've been a lot of like talking to the team, talking to other people and just staring at my computer screen.

Michelle Yates (03:45)
Yeah, I feel that.

you

Kasey Jo (04:11)
But different

things, right? So like different days look different and yeah, I wouldn't want to name it.

Michelle Yates (04:16)
Yeah, I'm the same way. I think there's value to being the peon where you've just got like the regular grind of doing the task list and it's the same every day. And some people really thrive on that. They just want to show up, do their job and leave and have that consistency. And I think maybe there's seasons of life where that's more appropriate than others. But yeah, I'm really glad that every day is different for me too, because I just get bored, you know, I just need things to be exciting. ⁓

Kasey Jo (04:41)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And I will say too, like I have an incredible team and to be honest, I am kind of told what to do a lot. So there are like, that does feel good to show up and say, I use ClickUp for like, for everything. It's like our project management software. But I come on and I check my ClickUp home screen, like, okay, what does everybody else need me to do so that I don't bottleneck them? That still happens. But it is kind of like, we've got a lot of things down to a really solid system. So.

Michelle Yates (04:51)
Yeah.

Yes. yeah.

Kasey Jo (05:11)
Although I'm doing different things, a lot of times I am being tasked out specific things to like kind of keep everything, the machine oiled and all of that.

Michelle Yates (05:18)
Yeah. And that's nice

too, because then you're not constantly putting that energy towards making the decisions necessarily. Like there's some give and take there. Okay, well, tell me about your obviously you have a PhD in psychology. What if you could give me kind of like the short version of your your lore or your origin story when it comes to getting into psychology? Where did that passion come from? And that interest?

Kasey Jo (05:25)
Exactly.

Yeah, honestly, it's so funny. I feel like a lot of what I ended up doing kind of just fell in my lap. And I know that sounds like people are gonna be like, really? Okay. But the reality is I really, really am like, how far back should we go? In high school, I took an AP psychology class and I loved it. And here's the thing though.

Michelle Yates (05:56)
I'm sorry.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (06:06)
Everybody really loved it, right? Like psychology is interesting. Human behavior is interesting. People want to understand why we do things the way we do, why we don't do things that we want to do, all of that. So loved that. And they, for whatever reason, we need to fix this. I mean, there's so much that needs to be fixed in the education system. But to make an 18 year old choose, this is the path you're going to take in your four year degree and your undergrad. And then that kind of decides your future then like that's crazy.

Michelle Yates (06:07)
Yeah ⁓

Mm, great.

Kasey Jo (06:35)
So at that time, the only thing I really knew that I enjoyed was psychology. So I selected that as my major, knowing full well that will probably change and I'm gonna go a different direction. And I actually tried really hard to not choose psychology because it felt like too easy. was the simple obvious one, right?

Michelle Yates (06:53)
I think

of it. I did know a lot of people that chose psych as their degree and then they would change it within a semester. Yeah.

Kasey Jo (06:59)
Right, right, and so many people do that and like good on

them, you it's like you determine like, no, I just picked something that I know is somewhat interesting to me, but then they figure out what they really wanna do. Like, and that's where I thought I was gonna go as well. Like I really ran the gamut of like, do I wanna be an orthodontist? Do I wanna be a lawyer? Like I'm not kidding, everything. Because I just felt like there's no way that I'm just gonna choose this randomly basically. And then that's what I ended up doing, which is hilarious, because I...

Michelle Yates (07:10)
Okay.

No. ⁓

Kasey Jo (07:27)
went the full way and got a PhD in the subject matter. So yeah, I continued to study psychology. did actually, I have a double major in the sociology of law, criminology and deviance. So yeah, I wanted to go the criminal psychology, forensic psychology route at first. Actually had a pretty long stint of wanting to be a prison warden, believe it or not.

Michelle Yates (07:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

very cool.

Yeah.

Wow, yeah.

Kasey Jo (07:51)
have a lot of friends in the

Minnesota Department of Corrections because of that. So I was going that direction. And then probably like junior year or so really, really started to fall in love with nutrition and fitness and saw how much it impacted me in so many different ways, not just from like a physique perspective, but just dedication and determination to something that I really enjoyed and how that spilled over into other things. And really started to ask the question, why are more people not doing this?

Michelle Yates (07:55)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (08:19)
Why do we

have like an obesity epidemic on our hands? Why do so many people know they need to exercise and eat healthy and they're not doing it? And to me, those are all psychological questions. So pursuing a degree in psychology, thinking I'm gonna go the criminology route, but when it came time to really start to think about what do I want to do with my degree? is my life actually going to look like?

I started to ponder what it could be, where I could, is there a way I could meld these worlds together, the health and fitness stuff with the psychology stuff? And also kind of like came to the conclusion that everybody enjoys psychology to some degree. A lot of people are into like true crime and know, NCIS has been around for like how long, you know, a lot of people are interested in that stuff. What made me different is that I was really, really interested.

Michelle Yates (09:01)
yeah.

Kasey Jo (09:08)
in health and fitness and not everybody is, right? So I started to check out different programs that were available, master's degrees, PhDs, and came across the mindset lab at NC State. So at this point in time, I had no idea that there was even a science to mindset. And this was now what, like 2014, 2015, and you didn't hear growth versus fixed mindset stuff talked about just like.

flippantly on the internet. It wasn't in people's Instagram posts, it was nowhere. So I learned about mindset science through this lab and they were doing some work on health behavior change and how mindset plays a role in that. So got very interested in there. I interviewed at a handful of different places. I did get an offer at NC State. I loved Raleigh, North Carolina. I loved the advisor that I was going to be working with. So again, just kind of like fell into the world of mindset science and behavior change.

but was kind of directed by just my interests and my passions, right? So yeah, that like long story short, now here we are and I got my PhD in 2019, we're now in 2025 and I have built a certification around the science of mindset, behavior change in psychology and how it's applied to health and fitness practices. So, which you know well because you've been through the program yourself.

Michelle Yates (10:28)
Yes, yes. I went

through it. Yes. And I loved it. Yeah, I feel like there's some parts of your story that overlap for us because they're in you, you had this desire of like, how do I combine these worlds of health and fitness plus psychology? And where is there a place to do that? It seems like that's kind of an untapped academic market in terms of bringing those worlds together, you kind of have to like, pick and choose and get this degree here, get this thing here, and then make it your own. That's

what I had to do, I knew I wanted to work in the field of eating disorders, but as dietitians, we don't get any training in psychology beyond just the Psych 101 that is required for Gen Ed, you know? But I'm like, hang on, this is like the number one thing that dietitians say they feel intimidated about when it comes to eating disorders is because it's a psychiatric condition.

Kasey Jo (11:09)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Yates (11:20)
So

how do we as dietitians understand mindset more and not even necessarily just for eating disorders, but just for behavior change in general? Because so many times I'm in like these Facebook forums or whatever and people are asking like, how do you help motivate your clients? How do you get your clients to actually follow through on what you talk about? They feel like they've got this hard skills, right? Of like, know what you should do and I'm communicating it, but I don't know how to get you to do it.

And that can be like a really difficult thing both for provider and for patient to or client. And just then it's really discouraging if no progress is being made.

Kasey Jo (12:01)
Totally.

Yeah, I can start to really think like, am I even supposed to be doing this, right? If I can't deliver the results for my clients when the reality is right, you're just supposed to be guiding them to get there using specific tools. But it can really, really feel like that for dieticians, coaches, anyone who's helped, honestly, in any sort of behavior change coaching role. It can feel that way and I can feel like, okay, well, then maybe I'm just not meant for this, you know, and that is not a good feeling.

Michelle Yates (12:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's not. And that's what I really loved about HMCC. I got my my going back to the like picking and choosing degrees, I got my master's in health psych, which I liked, but it also wasn't, I don't know, I felt like it gave me a good baseline knowledge, but not again, not super applicable to the clients I wanted to work with.

Kasey Jo (12:51)
Hmm, that makes sense.

Michelle Yates (12:52)
And so then doing

HMCC was like, cool, we're digging even deeper now. We're taking all these concepts I've already picked up and then going and applying them to my clientele, which was super nice. So I loved that. But something that we've kind of touched on is this idea of knowing what you should do, but then not feeling like you can do that. And that's probably something that I hear from 90 % of people who either work with me or contact me interested to work with me is,

I know what I should do, but I don't do it. Like know I shouldn't binge eat, but I do it. Or I know I should eat more vegetables, but I don't. And so I love for you to speak to that gap and why we see that where somebody is punching themselves or kicking themselves because they know they weren't supposed to do it, but they did anyway.

Kasey Jo (13:38)
Yeah, yeah, that is, it's the classic, I know what I have to do. I can't get to see a place where I can actually do that consistently, right? Like that's not something that I feel like I'm capable of doing, which to me, like, my gosh, there's so many directions we could go. But really what we want to get clear on is why, right? Why is that happening? Why is there this gap? And this is actually in the literature, what it's called. And I know you're familiar with it, Michelle, the intention behavior gap.

Michelle Yates (13:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (14:07)
So there's a gap between what we intend to do and then actually doing it. So how do we figure out how to build a bridge over that gap? And I really think step one is figuring out, yeah, why? Like bringing more awareness, which is really the first thing we talk about inside the certification as well, and just how powerful that can be. Because sometimes people just, they literally don't know why they're doing it, right? It's not just a...

I know what I should be doing and I'm not doing it, but it's also, I don't know why I can't do it. I don't know why I can't stick to it or why I keep self-sabotaging or getting in my own way. So that's really at the core of what needs to be figured out. Like what is going on here? What are the barriers, whether they're internal, external, totally made up, know, everything in between. So spending some time to get clear on that. And I know it's like a very...

Michelle Yates (14:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kasey Jo (14:58)
seems very simple, but is a very complex thing. Because anyone listening to this is going to go, yeah, okay, but how do I do that? But the reality is so many people aren't even spending time there. They hear me say, you need to figure out why it's happening. And they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, and moving along. But the reality is like, you really need to get in there and figure out what that is. And so we talk a lot about growth versus fixed mindset.

Michelle Yates (15:06)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Kasey Jo (15:23)
I am incredibly biased in saying this because this is where all of my work has been done and so much of what I focus on. But very, very often what we see is what it comes down to is mindset. And you may not even realize it that you do have a fixed mindset and that's what's holding you back. And that could be structured from old beliefs, experiences, what mom was doing when you were growing up and how she was like paying attention to her food and her weight and whatever.

and you're watching her fail over and over again and now that's kind of like ingrained. here's the thing is if you have a fixed mindset, if there's even just a small sliver of you that believes this is not something you're capable of doing, I'm not capable of being an exerciser or a fitness person or someone who consistently eats healthy, other people can do that, but it couldn't be me. Any of those beliefs are going to hold you back from actually doing the things even if you say you want to do those things.

Michelle Yates (16:20)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (16:20)
Because

ultimately, if you don't believe in your ability to make these changes, to do things differently, to develop, to grow, to whatever, to actually achieve your goals, then you are very probably silently, again, without realizing it, going to self-sabotage because you don't actually believe you can do it, which makes sense logically too, because if you don't think you're capable of something, what is the point of trying? There isn't a point. It's just, it's like fruitless efforts, right? So...

Michelle Yates (16:44)
Yeah.

Kasey Jo (16:49)
That's where I typically like in my decade of coaching to one-on-one working with folks, that's where I try to tackle first is what are some of those fixed mindset beliefs that might be there that we need to unpack and go through and see what's actually holding you back. ⁓ Obviously too, when it comes to awareness, maybe not obvious necessarily, but really paying attention to those instances of a lack of self-control or a self-sabotage moment.

what is going on and I talk about this in HMCC2 as well, HMCC as well, ⁓ really paying attention to that moment in time where there was some form of self-sabotage or you're getting in your own way or you didn't have self-control, however you want to look at it.

What was going on in the hours beforehand? Maybe even at the beginning of that day, leading up to that event, right before that event, during the event, right after the event, the hours following the event, the next day, and really just trying to take a more objective look and pick apart that entire situation to better understand it. It's kind of like you become the researcher on your own life and on yourself and on your own situations, and you're just trying to gather data and figure out what's going on here.

Michelle Yates (17:38)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (18:04)
And the more time you can spend with that, mean, sometimes, and I've seen it many times where clients will go through this process of trying to like dig out what's actually going on and in doing so build that awareness. And now we're already in a better spot because they're aware of what's going on. They're seeing where they're tripping up and they're seeing the people in the situations that are causing this to happen so they can better plan for it. And they don't even necessarily need to try to plan for it. It's just now that they're aware of it, they are better able to. So.

Yeah, that's kind of like step number one, I would say, is just overall, like long story short, build more awareness around everything.

Michelle Yates (18:40)
And it feels so elementary when you think about it, or I guess when you hear it, this is what clients say all the time. They're like, this is so basic. Why have I not thought of this before? it's, I mean, I think a part of that is just because in our nutrition climate, health and fitness climate, we are told a million things that are pointless and worthless information. we come away from the basics really easily as we try to get more obsessive about the little details. But also, ⁓ it's just like,

Kasey Jo (18:47)
Yeah.

So true.

Michelle Yates (19:10)
You get so caught up, I think in the self judgment and the self criticism and the blaming and shaming and guilt that we don't necessarily want to engage in that awareness sometimes because maybe we don't.

Kasey Jo (19:21)
it's so true. There is like

that barrier of I don't want to go there because it's not going to feel good. It's uncomfortable. Like I don't have to face the reasons why I'm doing this to myself and take responsibility. Like, heck no. Like, keep me away. Yeah.

Michelle Yates (19:26)
Yeah, I don't want to go there. Totally.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's hard to face the crap and go into the not so pretty stuff. mean, none of us really want to admit that we have our faults or there things that aren't so great. But it's also so necessary because then you can understand more about what's really going on underneath the surface. I think too with the awareness piece, just running with that, something that's been so ⁓

I think important, especially in the work that I do. So I usually work with women that struggle with binge eating and emotional eating and yo-yo dieting and weight cycling and all that. All the fun things. All the super fun stuff. There's usually a lot of judgment and shame and guilt. And something that I tell the women I work with a lot is like, you've got to be a little researcher in your own story. Try to understand yourself and do that without judgment because

Kasey Jo (20:12)
All that fun stuff. Yeah.

Michelle Yates (20:32)
it seems like when we start to engage in that judgment and those feelings of shame and guilt come up, it makes it harder to really make change. guess with that in mind, what do you think is happening there psychologically when there's guilt and shame being introduced into the equation when you're trying to build more awareness?

Kasey Jo (20:51)
Mmm.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I actually just did, I said just did, but it might have been like two months ago, a podcast episode on this because it came up on one of the HMCC calls in our last cohort asking about the difference between guilt and shame and how to handle different situations. And it launched us into a whole conversation as you can imagine. And then I thought, okay, podcast episode. yeah, and I've...

Michelle Yates (20:58)
if

Yeah.

Kasey Jo (21:18)
read a lot of Brene Brown's work too. And I don't know if you're familiar with anything that she's done, but she does talk about the differences between guilt and shame. I've kind of like had that in the back of my head of like, I wonder how this then applies in like a health and fitness coaching context for people who are trying to lose weight or trying to change their habits and behaviors in a health and fitness context. So what we kind of discussed both on the call and what I talked about on the podcast episode was

Michelle Yates (21:21)
Okay. Yeah.

Kasey Jo (21:45)
how we really do need to pay attention to the differences between guilt and shame. Because ultimately, guilt is, I feel bad for something that I did, right? So yeah, you overate and the next day you feel guilty because you took that action and it wasn't aligned with your goals. It didn't make you feel your best. You don't feel good about what you did. Whereas shame is really a, I feel bad because I am bad. So you're feeling shameful because of the type of person.

that you are. And this is where then my brain goes into mindset land because in some weird kind of twisted way, feeling guilty is more growth mindset coded than yes, right? And I still need to kind of tease this apart more because I'm like, what is going on here? But when...

Michelle Yates (22:27)
I was just gonna say, that sounds like growth versus fixed.

Yeah.

Kasey Jo (22:37)
with a fixed mindset, you really believe it's something you can't change about yourself. And this is where you say like this, am who I am. This is the type of person that I am. I can't change. This is like a non malleable feature about me because it is just who I am at my core. So shame is very much similar to that, that like I feel shame because like I'm just, I'm not good enough. I'm not capable because of who I am. So in a way, we almost would rather feel guilty than feel shameful.

So again, I'm still kind of even trying to tease this apart, but it is an important thing to understand. then I think also on top of that, everyone's gonna have their own definitions of these concepts for themselves. So one person may say, I feel guilty, but it's the same situation, same context, same thing happened that another client was in who was saying like, I feel shameful. Like I feel ashamed of myself.

So we need to get really clear on how people are using these terms because everyone is going to use words to describe different things and see it and define it differently for themselves. So I think that is what is a really important part of this conversation. I mean, all of it is, but to really understand even just for yourself, for those of you who are listening, like in what situations do you feel guilty and in what situations do you feel shameful? And what are the differences between those situations? What's coming up for you? Like what?

Michelle Yates (24:01)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (24:06)
self-talk is attached to those different situations. Because then also where we can go with this is if it's a feeling of guilt because of something that you did, then okay, all that means really simply, truly is that you just need to change your actions and you won't feel guilty, right? Like it can be quote unquote that simple. Whereas shame is, okay, well, let's dive a little bit deeper and figure out why you think you are.

Michelle Yates (24:27)
You

Kasey Jo (24:33)
that way and what feels unchangeable to you and where that story came from and what contributed to that got you to this point today to be this person who is in these situations and can't do X, Y or Z. So yeah, it's kind of like a messy conversation, but an important one.

Michelle Yates (24:51)
And that goes back to awareness to being aware of the why and the stories and the beliefs and all the things that are underneath the surface that are just bubbling down there and we don't really pay attention to sometimes. So on the topic of the language that we use, the words that we use and how important that is, something that I hear a lot is not having enough willpower, especially in the context of binge eating. I don't have enough willpower to say no, I don't have enough.

Kasey Jo (25:02)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Hmm.

Michelle Yates (25:20)
willpower around sugar or food or fill in the blank. And I think a lot of times people will use willpower interchangeably with the motivation. And then they'll use self control in there too. There's discipline thrown in there. You're nodding your head. So can we tease those out? We've got motivation, willpower, discipline. And what was the other one that I said?

Kasey Jo (25:37)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Yates (25:47)
⁓ Yeah, what are the differences? Yeah, self control, Yep.

Kasey Jo (25:47)
Self-control. Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. my gosh. And again, like I can sit here and give you some research heavy definitions for each of those, but the reality is like, are you seeing those words? What, what meaning are you assigning to those things? Cause ultimately it doesn't matter what a paper says and how it's defining it. And even, even still every paper that you see that uses the word willpower will give the defense.

Michelle Yates (26:04)
Yeah.

Kasey Jo (26:17)
definition that they are operating from, right? And two different papers will say, we are studying willpower in this context with these participants and in this way and using this methodology. And here's how we define it. And it could be entirely different, right? Like not entirely entirely, but they're saying like, this is how we are conceptualizing the idea of willpower for the purpose of this study. So again, kind of like bringing you, bringing us back to the idea of being a researcher on your own life. Like first and foremost, how do you define these things?

Michelle Yates (26:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Kasey Jo (26:47)
and how are you operating from it because of how you define it, right? So one person may say willpower or self-control, you can use those totally interchangeably and the research does by the way. So whatever one you wanna take. ⁓ One person could be saying, well, willpower, self-control, those are things that some people have and others don't. You're just kind of like born with a certain amount of it. Like some people have.

Michelle Yates (27:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (27:14)
I guess discipline can now come into the conversation too. Some people are just more disciplined and that's why they have more willpower. Or someone else may say, I struggle with willpower in some situations, but in other situations, I'm really good at it. And it is something that I have as a strong suit. You know, talk to someone else who is like, self-control is like a non-issue for me. Like I'm always able to say no if I need to say no. So like, where do you, I guess, where do you fall on the spectrum of that?

and better understanding what that means to you, but kind of coming back to the conversation of all these different terms in general, I really see, at least from my perspective, willpower and self-control are very much one in the same. So do you have the ability to exert some type of force over your situation to say yes or no, depending on your goals, what's gonna make you feel your best, what you really want to do in the moment?

⁓ Are you able to make that decision? Yes or no. And that's where we're kind of like talking about willpower and self-control. Whereas motivation, I think, again, kind of from a academic scientific lens, I see it and a lot of what you'll see in the research is kind of on a spectrum of different types of motivation. So we often just hear people saying like, have no motivation or sometimes it's low or sometimes it's high and all of that and I need more motivation, right?

And my conversation usually around motivation is instead, like you don't necessarily need more motivation. You need more of the right type of motivation. We're motivated all the time. You're still motivated to press play on the next Netflix episode. You're still motivated to go through the drive-through at home. Felt that one. Shots fired. We are motivated to do something all the time. It's just that.

Michelle Yates (28:53)
Don't hit me with... Shots fired.

Kasey Jo (29:07)
maybe what you're motivated to do is not really goal supportive, right? We'll call it that. So to better understand motivation, we need to really look at the different types and that falls on a spectrum between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. So you can be really, really extrinsically motivated to lose a bunch of weight for your wedding or to feel better for someone or something else.

Michelle Yates (29:12)
Yeah.

Kasey Jo (29:35)
But when we're extrinsically motivated, a lot of times it's a short-term win because without the intrinsic motivation, you're doing it because you enjoy it. That's really like the purest form of motivation. That's what's going to keep you going long-term. And then within that spectrum too, there's a lot of different types of motivation and kind of moves you along closer and closer to true intrinsic motivation on that spectrum, that continuum. So when I think about motivation, I'm thinking first,

Michelle Yates (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (30:04)
you tell me you have low motivation, I would probably be willing to bet it's not necessarily low. It's just that it's more extrinsically fueled, right? It's coming from someone, something else, or it's someone made a comment about you or you're feeling badly about yourself. So you feel like you need to fix yourself coming from all of those places, which again can be helpful in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. So it's actually kind of very nicely comes back to the original question of

why do I want to do these things, but I can't get myself to do it. Maybe your type of motivation is off, right? We need to uncover more of the self-determined, autonomous, closer to intrinsic motivation types that fall within these behaviors for you, which is possible. It's definitely possible. You just gotta work to uncover it.

Michelle Yates (30:40)
Hey.

Yeah, it's cool to see that shake out in our relationships with food, like in that context specifically when somebody like, I'll take an example ⁓ from a conversation I had recently with a client. There was a situation with the spouse wanting to kind of control what was being eaten. And as a result, my client was feeling a lot of shame, a lot of embarrassment, a lot of like, ⁓ I feel like I

I mean, in a way, it's kind of like, do you not feel like a child in that situation when somebody is trying to control what you're eating and it's not you? You know? And so for her, she's in this place of, I want to please him. I don't want these conversations to be coming up. I don't want this to be happening. So that was more of an extrinsic motivation. Like I'm trying to mitigate this weird dynamic that's happening over here. And it's been fun to see the her look more

Kasey Jo (31:27)
Mmm, yeah.

Michelle Yates (31:49)
into herself and like, about you? What do you want? What? How do you want to feel about yourself or about, you know, even just physically, how do you want food to make you feel? And seeing that shift in our clients where they're they're thinking less about what society or past personal trainer told them was the right thing to do. And then operating out of that to now considering how does this actually make me feel though?

is really, really cool. And it does, think, naturally lend way into that, like, okay, I want to feel that way again, or I want to feel that way more. This is something I enjoy. This is something that I see the positive benefits of showing up to work energized, or I see the positive benefits of going to bed not bloated and not feeling guilty. You know, I sleep better, and then they want to continue and replicate those results. ⁓

Kasey Jo (32:28)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Yates (32:47)
which also it makes me think of something else that we talk about sometimes in HMCC, if I remember correctly, because it's been a little bit since I've been in there, is this concept of self-efficacy and believing that you can do something. I'd love for you to speak on that because it's connecting as well with this idea of the fixed mindset, like this is just who I am. I can't change. I was born this way. My brain is just wired that way. So like zero

Kasey Jo (33:00)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Yates (33:18)
in that department then. is something tangible that helps people build on that self-efficacy and why even do it? What is the point of working on something like that?

Kasey Jo (33:29)
Yeah, Self-efficacy is one of those things, again, kind of like fancy research term, but really what we're talking about is do you believe in your abilities to continue to work towards something and do something even in the face of obstacles and setbacks? So that is, if you do believe that, then you do have high self-efficacy in that area. And it is one of those things that we see countless, countless, countless times in the research to be supportive for long-term.

behavior change, which makes sense, right? Like if you think that no matter what comes your way, you can continue to be successful, obviously that's going to help you be successful for the longterm, right? So when it comes to boosting self-efficacy, how do we work on this? Growth mindset is a really great way to do that. You're like, it's all not coming from a mile away. So what we see in the research too is that it's kind of like there's a relationship both ways. So if you have a growth mindset about

Michelle Yates (34:07)
Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to...

Kasey Jo (34:28)
if we're gonna say like to build healthier habits and better take care of yourself, like you believe in your ability to do more of those things and you really think it's something that you can change and improve. It's something that you're capable of doing. You have a growth mindset about those things. Then you likely also do have pretty high self-efficacy because you believe in yourself and your ability to do those things.

Michelle Yates (34:49)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (34:50)
And then vice versa, if you're a person who thinks, yeah, this is something that I'm working on. And when things get hard, I know I can continue to try and work through it, even if it's kind of sucky, then you also likely have a growth mindset about your abilities, right? kind of going, it very much goes hand in hand. So if we can start to cultivate more of a growth mindset and try to see where we've been successful in the past and how we can be successful again, take

feedback from other people, seek out resources, see other successful people in this area as inspiration rather than someone who can do it and I can't, right? There's so many different aspects of having a growth mindset in a given area, but if you can start to work on those things and kind of like just reframe and rewire the way that you typically think, then your self-efficacy is going to get boosted and therefore.

you will be more likely to be successful. So they all kind of like play in the same world, but if you wanted to pick a direction to go, I would say really start looking at your mindset and start to cultivate more of a growth mindset in the area that you want to work on.

Michelle Yates (36:01)
Mm hmm. I love that. that word mindset gets used a lot on Instagram and TikTok. And just, you know, all the things. do you feel like is the difference between the mindset that we see from your typical, I don't know, Instagram positive quote influencer versus somebody who's got a PhD in psychology?

Kasey Jo (36:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

or gone through HMCC, right? Yeah, and it's such like a blessing and a curse for me too, because if mindset didn't get as popular and like very like on the pop psychology side of things and all over social media and stuff like that, not sure I would have the business that I have today. And just very like call it divine timing that I like wrapped up my PhD and decided to do this while this stuff was really rising on the internet. And it really it truly is if you look at Google search

Michelle Yates (36:28)
Oregon through HMCC.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (36:56)
term trends for mindset and mindset coaching. mean, it's just like very much skyrocketed in the last like five to seven years. So again, blessing and a curse because yeah, you have a lot of people out there who are in the health and fitness industry or really in any industry in a coaching role. And now they're not just a fitness coach, they are a fitness and mindset coach suddenly, right? And to some degree, like I fully agree and understand this because if you are helping someone change their health behaviors,

Michelle Yates (37:01)
Yeah.

Kasey Jo (37:25)
you are likely having to talk to them about their life and the things that hold them back and like what their struggles are. And so therefore, all of these coaches are like, well, I am coaching my clients on their mindset too, right? Just naturally, right? Yeah, it is me. But the reality is like you could be doing those things. And I talk about this all the time because I want to get on to podcasts or be talking on Instagram and just making it seem like I'm shaming.

Michelle Yates (37:36)
Yeah, it is me.

Kasey Jo (37:53)
all these coaches out here who don't have any formal education and training in the world of mindset and behavior change and just slapping mindset coach in their bio, because I've also seen a lot of coaches who've come through our program. We're over 900 students at this point since the inception of HMCC. So many students, coaches who are doing things quote unquote correctly, they just didn't realize it.

Michelle Yates (38:10)
awesome.

Kasey Jo (38:18)
They didn't know that there was some research behind it. And now they're getting the additional tools to take it further and know what the next steps are and now what they can do next. And all of this, they just get to kind of like snowball off of that. However, that doesn't mean that they're not catching themselves like, ⁓ yeah, maybe I shouldn't be doing that. Or, I've been doing that in that direction. And now I can see how that might be actually cultivating more of a fixed mindset in my clients versus a growth mindset. So to answer your question, like what's the difference from what I see out there and

Michelle Yates (38:18)
Sure.

Okay.

Kasey Jo (38:48)
I mean, I could pick some specific examples, for instance, seeing mindset talked about as a just blanket statement. You either have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset in general about everything and all things. When the reality is from a research perspective, we actually know you can have a growth mindset in one area, let's say like your career, but then when it comes to health and fitness behaviors and changing your lifestyle in that way, you could have a totally different situation and very much of a fixed mindset.

Michelle Yates (39:01)
Bye.

Kasey Jo (39:18)
So you see it talked about like, just have a growth mindset and all of the things are gonna be amazing, but we really gotta like whittle it down to like, where do you currently have a fixed mindset? And like, let's talk about that versus just your general mindset about everything. It's very domain specific is what we would say in the research. ⁓ Other than that, I mean, some of the other big ones too is just kind of putting mindset in the same space as manifestation and.

Michelle Yates (39:44)
Hmm.

Kasey Jo (39:45)
some

of these more like woo woo topics, which, hey, I can get woo woo too, but there is a difference between what we know from the research when it comes to mindset and behavior change and changing your habits and motivation and all of this stuff and the manifestation space. But a lot of what you see on social media kind of just like puts those together when there is definitely a difference.

Michelle Yates (40:10)
It sounds like there's mindset as a science and then mindset as vibes. Just vibes. Mindset vibes.

Kasey Jo (40:15)
Vibes, yes. Just vibes, mindset vibes, yes.

⁓ Just like the hashtag positivity or hashtag positive vibes, right? Like that kind of mindset, yeah.

Michelle Yates (40:22)
Like, yeah, yeah. Hashtag growth

mindset. It's like when people tell clients to just stop eating sooner or just like, don't overeat. It's like, cool. Thank you. Similar conversation with just have a growth mindset. There's like, there's got to be a how behind there. There's got to be like, some personalization. Let's dig into your story a little bit.

Kasey Jo (40:38)
Just don't do it.

Right.

Michelle Yates (40:52)
So for any, do have some coaches and dietitians, nutritionists who along and reach out from time to time. So shout out to you if that's you. And I think with professionals, it's easy to get caught up in the imposter syndrome

would say

For going through HMCC, the nice thing about that is having like the affirmation and the validation that this actually does have something behind it. This is a science-backed practice. And then it can help to, this is just a plug to anybody out there who struggles with imposter syndrome. It can help a lot with reducing that imposter syndrome of feeling like, how do I even know I'm doing the right thing? Because we see evidence of it and it's all here. And then you can obviously, like you said, correct the things that maybe were not.

Kasey Jo (41:18)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Michelle Yates (41:42)
going the right direction. the students that go through HMCC, do you see that increased self-efficacy after going through that?

Kasey Jo (41:49)
Yeah, absolutely.

And I think like what you're talking about here too is just general coaching confidence, right? Like there's in, it's such this like double-edged sword for the coaches who care so much and really want to do the best for their clients and do everything that they can. They're the ones who are also worried the most that they're doing things wrong, right? And really being so cautious with things that they're saying and what they're doing and they're going through HMCC and are like,

Michelle Yates (41:55)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Kasey Jo (42:16)
Is this the exact word I should be using here? like, really doesn't matter that much. Like you've got the concept, right? So yeah, the people who care the most are usually the ones who also experience imposter syndrome the most. I think being able to go through a program and recognize like, okay, no, this is clearly showing me the things that I do need to work on. And it's also clearly showing me the things that I'm really good at and the things that I am doing well. And my gosh, it's also back.

Michelle Yates (42:36)
Mm-hmm.

Kasey Jo (42:42)
by research and science and all of this stuff. I that's amazing. So that's something I hear a lot from students who have gone through the program is just how much it's increased their overall coaching confidence. And then obviously, if you are more confident in your coaching, you can see how that's going to show up in your marketing and how you're going to make more sales. It's really hard to have a successful business if you are not confident yourself in what you are doing. And you may not even notice it or realize that when you're

getting on Instagram stories or you're chatting with a prospective client, your tonality and everything changes when you are so convicted and so confident in what you do compared to like the imposter syndrome really starting to get in the way. And yeah, I've got clients results and I've been doing this for a while, but I still just don't know if I'm good enough, if I know this stuff enough, if I can really get them what they need. And then that's going to impact your bottom line from a revenue perspective too.

Michelle Yates (43:40)
⁓

huh.

Kasey Jo (43:41)
And yeah, just honestly, having that confirmation in yourself makes such a big impact, not just in the lives of your clients in your life, but also yeah, in your business.

Michelle Yates (43:52)
Yeah, agreed. So good, Kasey. Is there anything that we haven't touched on yet today that you feel like would be helpful for our listeners, both the consumer who's struggling with feeling like don't have a growth mindset, they're struggling with getting out of the motivation rut or the willpower rut or the discipline, whatever you want to call it.

And then also for the coach, for the practitioner who's wondering how the heck do I help clients who feel that way?

Kasey Jo (44:23)
Yeah, I think honestly, the message can kind of be the same for everybody is really to just always come back to the place if you can, if you can really try to come back to this place that just because you are where you are now has nothing to do with where you want to end up. And I know we can really get into this place of, I haven't done it yet and I have tried all of these things and I've...

got this far, I'm 55 years old, nothing's gonna change now. Your current circumstances don't need to dictate your future circumstances. Your past circumstances don't need to dictate what's going to happen to you in the future. And we spend so much time reflecting on the things that we've done in the past that haven't worked and all of the things we've done in our lives that haven't gone the way that we wanted them to. And so we really start to cultivate a fixed mindset about our ability to do things. So I think the more...

you can just get really clear on what is real, like what's reality. And I know we talked about this in HMCC, so you'll find this familiar, like through kind of a CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy type of lens, like what is the evidence for the way that you're thinking? Whatever that negative thought is, whatever that fixed mindset thought is, what evidence do you have for it? Because you've thought it, so you do have some evidence for it. There's some reason you're having that thought.

So thinking again, back to like, well, in my childhood or last week, or this is how I tend to react to things or how I feel about things, or this person said this thing to me, and that's what's causing you to have that thought. get clear in awareness again, right? Get clear on the evidence for that thought that you have, and then also think about the evidence against it. And that's where we can kind of get into, well, what's happened to me in the past doesn't necessarily have anything to do with me right now.

and doesn't have to dictate my future and I'm trying something new that I haven't done before. So it's not even really fair for me to compare what I was doing before to now, et cetera, so on. So taking the evidence for, the evidence against, and then really getting to what is the most accurate and real depiction of this thought. And so if we're going with this example of changing health behaviors or changing your coaching practices or your confidence or whatever, you could be thinking, well,

I've tried things in the past that didn't always work well. However, I know I'm willing to continue to try and learn and do things now. So there's no reason that I should be telling myself that I'm totally incapable when I'm willing to try new things. So now you can kind of sit with that real accurate thought and go, huh, that feels so much better. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Even me just going through that, this like fake scenario, I'm like, yeah, that sounds nicer.

Michelle Yates (47:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kasey Jo (47:10)
And it's also what's more real, right? So

⁓ that's kind of what I would say, a little bit of like a thought exercise to leave everyone with depending on where you're.

Michelle Yates (47:20)
I love that. I love that. And then you have a free event coming up. It's the coaching code. Yes? No? Cool. Tell us about that.

Kasey Jo (47:25)
The coaching code, yep.

Yeah, so it's three full days that you get to sit and hang out with me. This is for health and fitness professionals. We mainly have coaches, but people who are all different areas of health and fitness, whether it's coaching, we've had nurses, doctors, mental health therapists of the like come to the coaching code in the past. This is our fourth or fifth time running in the coaching code. So.

Michelle Yates (47:32)
you

Kasey Jo (47:52)
three days of training essentially with me where we are gonna talk about mindset and health behavior change and how to start incorporating this into your coaching practices with your patients, with your clients, et cetera. And it's totally free, $0. So you can kind of get your feet wet too in this world of everything that we've been talking about on this podcast episode. And if you're interested in the health mindset coaching certification, becoming a health mindset certified coach.

The coaching code is a really great way to kind of get started and see if it's a direction that you want to go, if this is stuff that you are interested in learning. Yeah, so really exciting. It's so fun. It's like our biggest event of the year and I get to do it totally for free, which is really fun. And I get to connect with a lot of people. You guys get to connect with each other. Think at this moment in time, we have already like 1500 people registered.

Michelle Yates (48:41)
Holy cow.

Kasey Jo (48:41)
and

we get started on August 14th. It is currently July 30th as we record this. So yeah, get in there.

Michelle Yates (48:47)
Yeah. Love it. I love it. I'll put

a link to that in the show notes. then, yeah, I mean, gosh, for all the professionals out there, I can't recommend Kasey enough and HMCC. Just try out the coaching code. See what you think because again, from just like a practitioner confidence standpoint, it was really affirming for me to go through that and be like, okay, yes, everything I'm doing, there's a reason for it. I'm not just like making this up out of my, you know, out of nowhere.

And also, I just did a survey. Actually, I've been talking about this on my Instagram, so I'm sorry for anybody who's like, Michelle, I know you did a survey. Shut up about the survey. But I did a survey last week ⁓ with the graduates of clients who have worked with me. And it was just the coolest thing ever to see. I put a minimum of you have to have been on your own for at least six months.

Kasey Jo (49:43)
Mmm, love that.

Michelle Yates (49:43)
I don't want to talk to you if

we're still working together. Just kidding, I do. Obviously, I love all my clients. I want to know if you've been done with us for at least six months, did the results stick? How are you doing? And we had results from, think the lowest end was seven months up to 45. So almost four years. Such a cool spread of responses. And the overwhelming response was that they've been able to maintain their results.

Kasey Jo (50:00)
⁓ so cool.

Michelle Yates (50:11)
still been tree still have a high relationship with food body image. It's incredible how much your mindset from a science perspective, not a vibes perspective. Just your actual mindset. ⁓ When you rewire your brain to work for you instead of against you and do that in a non judgmental way. It's

Kasey Jo (50:25)
Not a hashtag positive vibes perspective.

Michelle Yates (50:39)
so powerful and it's how you get lasting change and honestly why even start a change or start changing if you don't plan for it to last forever. So yeah, if you want somebody to help you with that, feel free to check out the show notes as well. Just if you want to learn about working with us, I'll put more information about that in there. yeah, for any coaches or professionals out there, definitely recommend checking out Kasey. I'll put the link to your Instagram in there too because you have awesome stuff.

Kasey Jo (51:07)
That sounds great.

Michelle Yates (51:07)
I feel like I need to recalibrate

my Instagram because my algorithm has not been showing me you lately. It has beef with you. I don't like that.

Kasey Jo (51:14)
don't feel like I've seen you lately either, but here's the thing. Most

of the people I want to see, I don't see. So it's usually how it goes, I know.

Michelle Yates (51:20)
know right it's so annoying i need to recalibrate

things and i'll get you to the top of my feed again because i love your posts they're always so good that does make quite the difference it does the second you dm someone that is all you see on your feet it's so good yeah we do well thank you so much for your time this is such a good episode i know it's going to be so helpful

Kasey Jo (51:28)
We just needed DM like every day for 30 days. It does.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so we got some work to do.

Michelle Yates (51:48)
for on all fronts for consumers, for professionals. I'm excited to get the responses. If you loved this episode, let us know by leaving a rating and review and be sure to share it with your friends as well and help them cultivate that growth mindset as well. Thank you so much, Kasey.

Kasey Jo (52:04)
Yeah. Thank

you.