Start Strong: How black & white thinking could be holding you back

Many women fall into black and white thinking with training, food, and health, either you give 100% or give up. 

The evidence is clear that this all-or-nothing approach leads to inconsistency, burnout, and poorer long-term results, yet it's something we are all guilty of in our day to day lives. 

In todays episode, Emma and Laura break down why creating your own scale is far more effective than aiming for perfection or hitting that 100%, especially when life, hormones, stress, energy, and injuries all get thrown into the mix. 

We cover:

• What black and white thinking actually looks like in training, nutrition, and everyday life
• Why consistency beats intensity for long-term strength, health, and body composition
• How to use a 0–100% scale to get better results and make progress 
• How flexible thinking improves adherence, confidence, and results over time
• What progress really looks like when you zoom out beyond a single workout or week

This episode is for anyone who feels stuck in cycles of going all in, falling off, and starting again. 

The goal isn’t lowering standards. It’s building an approach that actually works in real life, supports your body, and keeps you moving forward even on the harder days.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, welcome back to the Anne Bloom Unfiltered Podcast. Last week we covered everything you need to know about returning to the gym or starting exercise for the first time. This time we are going to be covering the all-or-nothing trap. So it's something that we all know very well. It's that black and white mentality around either exercising or not exercising at all. I'm joined by Emma. Hello, Emma. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

How are you? Good. I like these episodes. I'm excited by them. Especially this one because I feel like I am I can still get myself into all or nothing. And this isn't just with diet or gym, this is like with opening a new gym.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

And yeah, I feel like we are all, even no matter how much we know about it, it's something we can all get very stuck in in every area of our life. Completely. So where is it something that still comes up for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, for for sure. Um, in in every single area. Um, sometimes I have thoughts, you know, new year, new me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run every day. I'm gonna, and sometimes I do don't do those things. I did my mile a day, I did my 12k every day for a month, you know. Um, so yes, I definitely, definitely noticed it, but I think I've been I've learnt to be less extreme in the past um and and kinder around the nothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah, definitely. So if you are listening to this and thinking, what on earth is the all or nothing mentality? It's where we get very black and white in our thinking. So we are either 100% or zero percent, and that is quite a dangerous place to be because a lot of the time, whether it's with your nutrition, whether it's with your health, whether it's with your fitness, it's not actually possible to be 100%. And we always say this we expect too much of ourselves and always want to achieve too much when actually we'd probably be better off aiming for 50%, so finding that grayscale option, which you're going to be able to do really well, and ticking that box over the long term, that's going to get you a lot further than being completely on or completely off. Um, what do you think the biggest danger is of perfectionism and people thinking I'll be perfect or I won't bother?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I think it's that freeze mentality. None of us can be perfect in the lives that we live. And I think this on holiday a lot of the time, like you know, you go on holiday, I might go to the gym in the morning, play paddle in the evening, and oh, wouldn't it not be nice if life was actually like this? Life isn't like this, right? And so, therefore, being being that per like that for me is a perfect day of exercise, and and I would love my life to look like that, but it it doesn't, right? So, what then happens is after a few days of me not being able to achieve those things, I stop bothering at all, and I think that's the danger of it, is it creates this freeze effect where rather than just doing a little bit better, unless we are a hundred percent, we do zero.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, I think I see it so much in nutrition, and it I think we all do it a lot over the weekend or like as it gets towards the weekend. So Monday we really maintain like we eat very healthily, you've meal prepped everything, you're really on it. Tuesday, same, everything's good. Wednesday, something comes up at work, you get a little bit stressed. By Thursday, you're knackered, you're stressed, you haven't eaten enough, you've probably restricted your calories a bit too much. You have one biscuit or one glass of wine, and it's that screw it, I'm done, I'm gonna start again on Monday. So then people really overdo it because because they know in their heads they're starting again on Monday, they're like, I'll eat everything, I'll get everything out of the house, and then Monday will be fresh. And so many people think the diet they're on isn't working, but actually, it's because they're in this cycle of Monday to Wednesday, you probably were in a very big calorie deficit, but then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you've overcompensated and probably ended up eating more than you would have done if you just eat normally to then come back on Monday and then restrict all over again, it's that endless cycle, and I think people do the same with exercise, it's the intensity they chase, but intensity doesn't last, and we know that it like we see in our clients that it doesn't have to be like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

We've got clients that have got more muscle mass, look and feel incredible, and they train three times a week, and so you know, when people first start out with us and they say, Oh, well, I'm only gonna train two to three times a week, and and we say, Yeah, because that's what's get what gets results, and people are sometimes quite surprised that I thought I'd have to train six to seven times a week to get results, and actually, it's not like that at all. So it takes a lot of rewiring to get out of that all or nothing mentality, but I also think with with education and proof that it doesn't have to be that way, it can become more manageable, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

And I think we want to see everything we do for our health to some extent, we want to see as a long-term thing like can you carry this on for years? And if you can't, how long do you want to be able to carry it on for? Is it sustainable enough to get you the results you want? And I think when we're chasing that intensity, sometimes it can work, but it so depends on your lifestyle, it depends on your personality. I think for the majority of people, especially our clients, consistency is gonna win every day, and I'd so much rather you missed one session a week than tried to do six sessions and didn't manage to keep it up longer than two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, what does good enough look like?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I think it's so dependent. I think everyone needs to make their own scale. So if you put 0% as you didn't get out of bed and 100% as you've ticked off every single thing you wanted to achieve in one day, find a scale of what that looks like. So set a minimum standard for yourself and a maximum standard of what's achievable and what can you do on the days that feel really hard. So whether that's two minutes of breath work compared to 10 to 15 minutes of meditation or 8,000 steps compared to 12,000 steps. Like, as long as you can hit somewhere in the middle of these things, it could be trying to hit your protein goal by lunch so dinner doesn't matter as much. I think finding that scale for yourself is really important because then you don't look at every day as a of either achieved or I haven't. You've always achieved something, you've always hit a goal, there's always a small win there to tip off. What do you think people should do if they have missed a session or they are having an off day? What is your advice?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Do you know what I look at it so differently now? And as you were talking, I was just thinking this. And because we offer monthly sessions, so people come and join us and they do nine a month, 13 a month, or 17 a month. It's then about achieving the sessions in that month rather than I haven't exercised today, that means I'm bad, you know. Um, so I would encourage people to say, right, rather than is a meal good or bad, or can I eat that yes or no? It's like actually, what do I want my day to be filled with? Well, probably want it to be filled with over 100 grams of protein and five to ten fruits or vegetables. So, how do I ensure I get those in? What do I want my month's exercise to look like? Well, roughly I want to average eight to ten thousand steps um a day across the week. So that would look like 60 to um 70,000 steps a week. That is right.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Um, and then also doing my nine or 13 or 17 sessions a month, and I think when you frame it in that way, that is more of an achievable target for most people than having to do five things every day that they need to think about, and I think it comes back to the self-talk stuff where if you don't achieve, like you said, you're bad, whereas you can't not achieve when you're doing that because you've already ticked a box by getting to that bare minimum, so anything you do above that is a win, and then I think we stop talking ourselves out of things that you can get in such a negative spiral, um, and the mindset makes such a big difference, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Definitely. What would your scale of one to ten look like?

SPEAKER_00 9:01

I think with steps I normally say between eight and twelve because there are just some days where I can't do ten. Yeah, like especially if you're sat at desk. Like when I so when I'm coaching, I think I normally hit about four or five, and that's great, that's like four hours. If you're sat at desk for eight hours, it's so much harder in the winter as well, and I think like you said, across the week's really important. So, okay, you can't hit it on a Monday or Tuesday, go and meet a friend for a really long walk on a Saturday. Like, it doesn't have to be condensed, 24 hours doesn't matter that much. I think, like you said, look at your habits and goals and stuff over the space of a week, over the space of a month, that's gonna matter quite a lot more, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

And then I would just add to that, you don't have to do it all at once, and this is definitely the self-sabotage that we see people get caught up in. They want to start exercising, they want to completely change up their diet and their routine. Whereas actually, we will give you something to focus on one week at a time, and the magic in that is that after six weeks, people turn around and go, Oh wow, I don't think I I don't feel like I've changed anything because it's not been that hard for your brain because you only have one thing to think about every week, and that is so much more sustainable. So if anyone's listening listening to this and they do want to change their habits um around food or their lifestyle, then I would just recommend take one habit every week, and if you don't manage to smash that habit this week, that's fine, continue it into next week. And if you manage to smash that habit next week, great, add another habit on top of it, and that is much more sustainable, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Definitely. We will be back with you next week for episode three of this series. We'll be talking about fuel and recovery for your workouts. Um, just a note for this week try and aim for good enough. So find that scale, figure out the boxes you can tick and aim for small wins.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Perfect, thank you so much.