Balancing Discipline and Flexibility for Fitness Success

Explore the intriguing intersection of discipline and creativity on your path to fitness success. Discover how data-driven individuals can leverage their structured mindset, akin to their corporate success, to achieve health goals. Meanwhile, for those who thrive outside of rigid systems, creativity and flexibility are the cornerstones of success. Through vivid analogies like picking ripe fruit or piecing together a puzzle, we illuminate the necessity of adaptability as life shifts. Weekdays become the foundation of discipline, allowing for a lifestyle that embraces social activities without restriction.

Join us as we navigate the delicate balance between discipline and enjoyment. Together, we'll unpack the impact of occasional indulgences, such as social drinking, and how they can enrich our experiences without sabotaging long-term goals. Hear from a fellow trainer who shifted from a strict keto diet to a more balanced approach, discovering greater happiness and performance through flexibility. Learn how prioritizing what truly matters across different life stages can lead to fulfillment and high performance in all areas of life. Happiness is often found in balance, not in the pursuit of perfection.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Balanced Approach to Healthy Living
• 8:10 Prioritizing Balance in Daily Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, thanks for joining me today. It's just me today, in a different bit of setup, trying something new with a short little episode. I've been talking with a lot of clients lately about understanding why certain people are successful and other people aren't successful in their fitness journey, and I see so often that your A-types these are a lot of the types of people that I tend to work with are your data-driven, science-focused people who are usually of a corporate background, business owner. I find that they are data-driven. They live life highly according to their routine and they are working with me to become healthier or lose weight because they have sacrificed that to increase their productivity in other areas of their life, usually their business or their work, and so fitness has fallen to the wayside. They're usually really successful making transformations because they can just follow the data, because it's now become important to work on this thing, and so it's a much simpler process of hey, you need to exercise this many times a day, you need to eat these things, you need to count these macros, you need to follow these habits and check off these lists. And it doesn't mean that it's easy, doesn't mean that they don't always run into problems, because there's always problems in anything you do, but I find, more often than not, most of those people tend to have a simpler path towards success because they've already reached success doing things that follow the numbers because of their career. They're usually rather successful business-oriented people, and I find that pattern exists. Again, there's always outliers. However, what I've found for the majority of other people because, let's face it, not everybody owns a business, not everybody has that, you know, really high performing I say high performing like executive level of corporate background they don't necessarily have that experience of that level of routine in place, and so I find that you need a little bit more creativity, a little bit more imagination when it comes to making a change in your lifestyle, specifically with health and with anything really. So I like to relate it back to, you know, if we use a diet analogy, as far as trying to figure out what to eat, I always want to go over to my fridge and just imagine that I'm picking stuff out of the garden, I'm searching for fruit in the jungle, essentially and when I find things that are ripe, I consume as much of that as I possibly can, and then I go back on the search.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Another analogy you could use is like a puzzle piece. You're living this lifestyle where something works right now, and if you found it and if it's not working right now, well, you have to start shaping a puzzle piece. You have to start trying things to figure out what is going to work, and then, as time goes on, you change, inevitably, whether you want to or not, because time is not on your side. You're going to get older, your body is going to change, your health is going to change, even if you are quote unquote staying the same. Things are going to change, and so you have to keep searching for fruit, or you have to keep shaping new puzzle pieces, and you go through seasons in your life in which something that you've used in the past might be working right now. It might not be working right now. You might have to switch to something else that you've done before, or you might have to just shape a whole new puzzle piece. The good thing is that if you just keep doing it, if you stay consistent, if you stay disciplined all these things that we talk about every single time we seem to do a podcast is you'll discover all these puzzle pieces and you'll be able to plug and play them as you go along and then that becomes where really the creativity it lies in your lifestyle, because you can just see where the problems are, what puzzle piece needs to go in to its place, and then things start to flow and you start, before you know it, owning your Monday through Friday. That doesn't mean you can blow things out on the weekend, but I love that phrase owning your Monday through Friday. If you can do that, then more than likely you're going to enjoy some of the things that you were doing in your free time. When you're not at work because most of you listening probably work Monday through Friday or five days a week you can enjoy time with your family. You can enjoy eating good food doesn't have to be perfect food that is data-driven all the time, but you still get results and you value those things because you've been disciplined Monday through Friday, five days a week.

Speaker 1: 5:05

I was talking with a client earlier this morning actually, and we were talking about how in the past this actually wasn't even a client. It was another trainer, a friend of mine. We were talking at the gym and we were talking about how in the past, we lived these lives, where it was very data-driven. He was talking about keto, doing the keto diet for a couple of years, and how you know, when he would go out with friends, he would have to sacrifice having a beer or having dessert so that he could eat a steak with butter and broccoli. And though that strategy might work for a lot of people and it surely does otherwise it wouldn't be so popular for him.

Speaker 1: 5:46

He felt like it was putting him in a box where he felt like he had to sacrifice socially experiencing happiness with his friends, with his family, because he was doing this thing that the data said, that he believed the science said at the time, was the best thing to do for him to hit his goals. And what happens is is that you end up realizing that maybe the goal isn't necessarily worth it, or maybe it's actually defeating the purpose of the goal. The goal is to feel better, his was and to be healthier and to perform well, and what he said he finds now is that now, though, he's not doing keto, he drinks some beer, he has some dessert every now and then. Having that more balanced approach allows him to find happiness and less stress. That brings his cortisol down and therefore he performs better, and so that's just one example of how you can be doing the things that you think you need to do and following the data when the reality is is that you could be missing the entire point of what you're trying to accomplish because you're so focused and trying to live life in a laboratory, according to the science, when the reality is is that you have this puzzle you need to solve, and it's not just data that's going to help you get there. It's going to be searching for solutions that you can sustain and that bring you balance and fulfillment in multiple areas of your life.

Speaker 1: 7:16

We happen to be talking about alcohol. We can all agree that alcohol is bad for your body, but alcohol does have some benefits. It helps you become more creative. It helps you socially communicate Maybe not communicate with people, but connect with people and that can serve you in a lot of areas of your life. It can serve you in your relationships, meeting new people, maybe meeting a partner. It can serve you in business, creating those relationships so that you can have a more successful career or financially make the deal happen. And so it's not that you should choose it and sacrifice your health. It's that maybe it's worth it sometimes to take that notch on your physical health because you have worked to get other things in place. It's okay here and there, to take that little notch when you realize that you are going to take care of yourself.

Speaker 1: 8:10

When it gets back to Monday through Friday, and that's going to outweigh that physical notch you might take on Saturday if you have a couple drinks Especially if you've already worked yourself to the point over years of being disciplined and that's no longer a problem you might gain more from that social experience using alcohol as a tool.

Speaker 1: 8:31

I'm not advocating you to go drink every single weekend not at all but what you can do is and my point of this whole episode is think about what things are most important right now and if those things are most important, then you can sacrifice some of the other stuff and follow the data to what is the most important thing for you to fix right now and then, after you've gotten some credit right you've owned your Monday through Friday and you've got consistent with doing that figure out what other things are important and how to start balancing those equations so that you can keep doing all of them at a high level, and how to start balancing those equations so that you can keep doing all of them at a high level and you can become more happy and more fulfilled, rather than just putting yourself into that laboratory, putting yourself into that box, trying to find what you absolutely think is going to make you happy, which most likely is not going to be hitting that number on your scale or having washboard abs.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Hope you got something from this episode. Thank you for watching on YouTube if you're watching on YouTube and I will see you in the next one.