You Know What To Do... But Why Is It Still So Hard?

Most people don't struggle because they don't know what to do. They struggle because turning knowledge into consistent action is much harder than it sounds.

Why is it so difficult to stick to healthy habits? Why do we keep falling back into old routines, even when we genuinely want to change? And is motivation really the answer?

In this episode of the All or Something Podcast, we're joined by Rachel Pendakur to explore the science of turning good intentions into lasting habits. We discuss why knowledge alone rarely changes behaviour, what psychology tells us about consistency and how to make healthy choices easier rather than relying on willpower alone.

Whether your goal is to exercise more regularly, improve your nutrition, lose weight, or simply stop feeling like you're constantly starting over, this conversation is packed with practical, evidence-based strategies that can help.

In this episode we discuss:
- Why knowing what to do isn't enough
- The psychology of behaviour change
- Why motivation comes and goes
- Building habits that actually last
- Common barriers to consistency
- The role of your environment in shaping behaviour
- Practical strategies to make healthy choices easier
- Why willpower isn't the whole story

If you enjoy evidence-based conversations about fitness, nutrition, health, and behaviour change, subscribe for new episodes every week.

P.S., If you want to support us and would like monthly lifting workouts, you can join the Momentum by Sohee fitness app. http://momentumbysohee.com

If you are interested in fat loss science, you can purchase Ben's best-selling comprehensive fat loss book, Everything Fat Loss. http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

For today's episode, we have the pleasure of being joined by Rachel Appendaker. Rachel is a certified strength and conditioning specialist with distinction who has her master's degree in psychological sciences. She specializes in health behavior change as it relates to physique and performance goals, body image work, and overall quality of life. She holds multiple certifications, including motivational interviewing, binge eating for health professionals, pre- and post-senal coaching, menopause coaching, and more. In addition, she has been working with me on my team as a coach for nearly seven years. Rachel, we're excited to have you join us.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Wow, that was so good. Thank you, Sophie. One take one. One take. One take wonder. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

For everyone listening in, that was one take if you ignore all of the presentation.

SPEAKER_05 0:44

It was one.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

We've been sat here for days.

SPEAKER_05 0:48

Rachel's already wilting. We haven't even started. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

So because Rachel is a pro with psychology, and So he is also a pro with psychology. I will be asking some of the simpler questions, and I might need you to dumb it down for me. But that's good because I am kind of like the listener who you get to relate the complicated concepts to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

Also, as a fun fact, Rachel, the way we connected was actually, was it 2018 or early 2017? Early 2018, when I had moved to San Diego and she slid into my DMs being like, Hey, do you offer personal training? And I was like, I guess I do now. And then so she would join me in my little studio. I was doing small group sessions with a handful of women, and she would come twice a week for I want to say like around two years. And then over time, obviously you get to know each other. And I was like, Oh, she's really on top of things, she's organized, she's getting her master's degree in psychology, she understands health behavior change. And then, you know, shortly after, I was like, Do you want to join my team? And she was like, Yeah. And the rest is history. That's why she's here today.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So we are going to discuss some general psychology concepts. Lots of great questions that we're going to ask her. But we are specifically going to get some actionable tips for the listeners or the viewers to get towards the end of the episode. So if at any point you're like, how do I relate this back to me? We are going to loop back around to it. Don't worry. So, first question: why do otherwise successful people struggle to do the things that they genuinely want to do?

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Yeah, I think that coming from the angle of understanding, or if it's the first time you're thinking of behavior change in this way, it's really important to emphasize the importance of skill building. Right. So I think with pop psychology or the whole self-improvement industrial complex, there's a lot of like this optimizing of your routine or saying all you need is the perfect schedule. Pick these five or ten things to focus on. If you want to do it badly enough, or if you're a high performer, you should be good to go. But we know that when it comes to successfully sustaining change, it probably has a lot to do with your environment, your social support, um, whether or not you have skills that apply to that arena as well. Um, things like money, our socioeconomic status and access to care and all of these things impact our behavior change attempts. So people who might feel like, okay, I'm I'm a high performer in these other areas. I see this all the time with clients. I'm sure you guys have experienced that, where when they identify as that, and it's a big piece of how they describe themselves, it can be very difficult when they are a beginner in another area. And certainly you can transfer skills over, but I think that that is a big hang up for people is maybe they've never considered the skill building required being a beginner again, dipping your toe in, being kind of a scientist or observer of your behavior, and using the skills that you were able to leverage to be successful in other areas in your health behavior change attempts or whatever you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

So this was actually one of the examples that I gave on an earlier episode was one of my clients who said that they struggled with their discipline in the gym, but they were one of the most disciplined people I have ever met when it comes to business. Very ambitious, very successful, very, very driven. But they seem to give themselves a hard time when they struggle to stick to their gym routine, as if they were lazy and they lacked willpower, despite the fact that in other arenas they weren't like that at all.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah. And when when you think of that client, what are the things that he did that you right away were like, oh, I see this person as someone who's disciplined, right? Maybe showing up consistently, maybe they're on time, maybe they're really regimented about paying sessions, communicating with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

5 a.m. alarms I think was the thing that that they told me that they did to get to work, like the amount of hours they were putting in, what time they were getting up, how regimented they were with their work schedule, how tired they were, how much they were committing to their business. But then when it comes to gym, they're like, oh, I'm just I'm struggling. I don't think I'm disciplined. Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

I yeah, that's such a good example because I feel like, particularly for people who really identify with what their job is and are high performers, and then seek out coaching or ask us about like why is my exercise goal the thing that is really the hang up for me when it's so simple, right? Why is that the thing? But it might be that if you have a really well-oiled schedule and routine, you're probably not making a hundred decisions at every point in time. You probably have a lot of those things more on autopilot, which ultimately is the goal.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

Yeah. And I think as is as it relates to skill bid skill building, as you mentioned, I would imagine it can be hard or maybe psychologically uncomfortable to sit with knowing that you haven't immediately mastered this new thing in your life. And also maybe you don't like being less than perfect. You don't like having less than perfect adherence, and so maybe you get continually frustrated.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I think one of the things with fitness, especially, is obviously most people listening to this are probably more into fitness than other aspects, but they can apply this across the board. Is I think a lot of fitness concepts are a lot simpler than most people realise. There aren't the it's not like people need the perfect diet or the perfect training program or the perfect macronutrient split or whatever. There are a lot of very key foundational behaviors where if you just say, Are you exercising three or four times a week or more, are you consuming five or more servings of fruits or vegetables a day? There are quite a lot of staple backbone behaviors that are very simple on paper, but people still sh seem to struggle to implement those even though they look so simple on paper.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Absolutely. And I think that I mean that a whole other discussion is like how morality is applied to laziness, which is a cultural label, right? And how people see that in their food behaviors or change attempts, um, which is a whole added layer to it. But absolutely, when their identity is so ingrained in I'm a successful person, I can do this here. Why is this the hangup when I really care about it? I'm invested, time, money, our clients, they're investing a lot. So yeah, it can certainly be a hang up when they're not considering the skills and that are running in the background in other areas. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:21

That brings us to our next question. Why is knowing what to do usually not enough?

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Yeah, I think this is certainly one that people who are really invested can get in the cycle of procrastinate learning, right? Info gathering. It feels good. It feels like you're doing something. This was absolutely me for a long time before learning and digging in with this. Because learning, I mean, it's a good thing. Uh, thinking again about societal norms and feeling about how am I invested in behavior change. I'm learning about it. I'm looking at the optimal training program, all of this info dumping that we're doing on ourselves as we're trying to think of these things. Um, but information and informational interventions might be really great at educating us, but they don't actually give us even necessarily the feedback from trying out step one, right? We can't substitute trial and error in real time with all of the learning that we're doing. We can't gather enough info to hack our way to step 10. And rarely is information, I see this all the time. I think, you know, practically speaking, rarely is information the bottleneck when it comes to change, right? I have yet to meet somebody or work with a client who has not a clue what they might work on, or that's shocked to hear vegetables are good for you. But we know the rates of adherence continue to be challenging.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

So reliance on info is is not enough to help people.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So let's use something like New Year's resolutions as an example. Part of the reason I think that's a pertinent example is because one, everyone knows that's a big time for okay, I'm gonna start something new. But especially because so many people start a health and fitness resolution in the new year, like gym membership spike, for example, new diets tend to spike. So, why do so many people fail their New Year's resolutions?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly, I want to start with the precursor to this that I'm not a New Year's resolution hater. In fact, I think they can be really important and meaningful for people. And yeah, and I really think that a lot of the narratives around New Year's resolutioners and thinking of that as like a derogatory term, or we've seen gyms get roasted by not letting people even sign up in January. I think that really can be quite damaging. And um there it's not an imagined phenomenon that New Year's feels exciting. It's a big cultural thing. There are these um points in time across the calendar that are called temporal landmarks, which are studied as well. These points in time, it might be like the anniversary of a special date for you. It could be Monday. There's a reason why it feels good to start on Monday or restart on Monday. New Year's is one too.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

I actually part of the reason I don't hate New Year's resolutions, a really selfish reason, is because even I have used it for, like you say, temporal landmark. I like to reflect on the year and say, what would I like to do next year differently? So w we have done things where I have said, oh, on New Year's Eve, I actually like writing down some goals for the year. Yeah. Because it's to me, it's just a convenient time to reflect. And I don't necessarily think the 31st of December is that different from the 30th of December, but it just feels like now's a good time to think about what I want to do next year.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Right, because also discouraging people from points of time where they can they can leverage that excitement, uh it it doesn't really make sense because, okay, it's kind of like the fat phobia narratives around like you need to lose weight, but not like that, or don't show yourself doing that, or not exactly like that, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

It's like there's not for the New Year's resolution, not in the gym. Not for them.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

You know, you need to do this now, but you can join in February if you're actually committed. So leveraging these points in time and saying there's a reason why we might feel like, okay, this is a point where I'm turning the page, that was an old version of me. Here's what I'm hoping for for the future. There's there's a lot of good things that can be achieved by using those dates. And I think that the reason why New Year's resolutions often fail, um, a lot of the reasons have to do what with any any behavior change attempt that you have. It might be similar things that are happening there, but it might feel especially emotionally charged. Um, one, because of the narratives of like, okay, you didn't follow through. Well, you weren't going to anyway. It was a New Year's resolution. And two, I think a big piece of this is if you consider future you, if that feels entirely separate from where you are now and you're not thinking about how to support yourself along the way, how to check in, how to recalibrate, then you might feel very distant or disconnected. And a lot of that might also be few fueled by shame, right? Of okay, I have to get everything together, start things now, change things now. How are you applying some self-compassion along the way? How are you framing your goals? Shame is not the motivator that we think it is.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

If you could you give us an example of when you talk about looking at your future you, for example, can you give a like a real-world example that people might think that sounds like me?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah. So if your current self-concept, if you feel like there are a lot of things that you want to change about yourself, sometimes the temptation or knee-jerk reaction is to think of future you as this totally life-overhauled version of yourself. But if you feel so separate from that, it might be something like saying, Okay, my second cousin is amazing. They have all of these types of um personality traits that you might enjoy, values that you align with. And I know you'll really, really like that person once you meet them. And each day, what I'd like you to do is put $5 in this jar to say for them they're working on this savings goal and it's really going to pay off. And I know you'll be great friends with them, right? That might feel okay, like, okay, I'm totally bought into who this person is, and that doesn't feel like a big jump. I'm happy to do it and happy to help this person out. But each day, if you're not feeling connected to this future you or this person or friend of a friend feeling, then it's really easy to not have those scales tip in the direction of acting in alignment with that person, right? So if we do something like, okay, I'm not exercising at all, I'm not really paying attention to eating behaviors, I need to go on this really restrictive diet and I'm gonna exercise every single day, and I can see like this future idealized version of myself. If we don't connect to why that's important, if it even is, um, do we actually enjoy the things we're doing? What are the drops in the bucket on the daily basis that we can engage in? It's gonna be really tough a lot of the time to do things that honor that version of ourselves.

SPEAKER_05 14:03

What is the biggest misconception people have about motivation?

SPEAKER_02 14:07

I think the biggest misconception tends to come from pop psychology or just social media discussions on motivation as this big foot, right? It's like you don't know when motivation will be there. It's this elusive feeling. When it's there, you see it, and then it could be gone at any moment. But in reality, what we're probably talking about there is more the feeling of excitement to do something. And in reality, there are different types of motivations. There are multiple theories on this, but for the purposes of our discussion, I think it's important to realize that you can leverage and create your intrinsic motivation or the value of doing things based on your goals and your expectations and how you apply those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:49

What would be an example of exercising for uh based on, you know, being driven by external motivation versus exercising for uh with intrinsic motivation?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Yeah, so external, I think if you're thinking of I'm I'm gonna exercise and I'm gonna do a good job in this fitness class because if I don't, someone's gonna yell at me or call me out on my form, right? There could be a positive spin, like, oh, I'm shooting for um this weight loss goal in the future and I need to hit it by this date, versus intrinsic exercise might be more in terms of, oh, I really value my independence as I age, I really enjoy working out. We know that not everyone enjoys exercise. It might be, I feel really proud of myself for doing this thing and it's done, and I can move on with my day.

SPEAKER_05 15:34

Yeah. I think we do that. How many times have I, especially well, during pregnancy as well, but also postpartum? How many times have I come back from a run really excited because I did a new distance postpartum that I didn't hit before? Or even this past weekend, I was like, I did three and a half miles at a 9.32 pace. I haven't done that this entire calendar year, and that makes me feel extra excited, extra confident, and makes me more excited to keep going, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

So one of my examples with that is when I've talked about exercise enjoyment, for example. You you talked about how you can change your your feelings of like intrinsic motivation. So when I've talked about it, there have always been people that say, but I hate this form of exercise, as if it's a very black and white scenario. But I think there are often other levers that can impact how you view it. So for example, I hated running, and it wasn't until I started small and I had an exciting goal to join Sohi on a run. But then when I started small and I could run a little bit further, and I ran a little bit further, then I could run a little bit further and a little bit faster. I started getting more feelings of personal reward. Oh, it's amazing that I can do something that I couldn't do before. Yeah. And then I started enjoying it more. And even though it was an activity that I hated to begin with, it then over time I had this intrinsic motivation where I really enjoyed it. And even though I didn't think I would do it for as long as I have, I'm still doing it now more than I lift. And I think people view it as when I say or when we say, find a form of exercise you enjoy, they think of that as a modality like I like lifting weights or I don't like lifting weights, or I like running or I don't like running, rather than are there things that you can do that can then change your enjoyment of that activity.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah, absolutely. And circling back to our talking or our discussion about skills building and people who feel really competent or confident in other areas, they are using their meta motivational skills, which is thinking about your levels of motivation, managing it, thinking how do I tip the scales? Um, there's nothing wrong with grumbling your way to doing something that's good for you, right? And we're thinking about, okay, there's lots of things we don't want to do that we need to do or that uh are important for our health, paying our bills, trying to think about there you go, right? But the people who are really successful in any number of domains probably exhibit this skill. And the reason that I think it's so important to talk about motivation in this way is not because you have to remember any of these terms, but to realize you're in the driver's seat with a lot of it and it's a skill and it's a muscle you can build.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Okay, so moving away from motivation, obviously people think of motivation as a do I need it or not to start a new endeavor. So obviously, over time we like people to have an exercise habit, for example. So one thing that Sohi has talked about to me before on whether this is a myth or not is does it take 21 days to build a habit?

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Okay. Short answer is maybe.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Longer answer is um using this as a benchmark is not evidence-based. So this this came from, I mean, it's a nice number. It feels like if I do something for three weeks, people love nice numbers. It sounds like I could do that, I can invest in this, and seems reasonable. Um, this actually came from a book called Psychocybernetics, which was written by a plastic surgeon. And the the self-help world, I mean, it is more of a self-helpy book. And what he discussed in the book was that it takes about 21 days for patients to kind of get used to this new self-concept after a surgery. So we can see how saying, okay, I'm kind of getting used to this change after 21 days. This was all observational, it's not based on a study and how that was taken and run with. And again, it might take you a few weeks since you might start to feel a change in your behaviors, but this isn't a pass-fail benchmark of if you don't feel like this is easier after 21 days, you haven't necessarily failed. It might get easier way sooner, or it might take much longer.

SPEAKER_05 19:37

What would be because as you're talking, it made me think of what would be the marker of what distinct distinguishes between a standard behavior versus how do I know when it's become a habit?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Yeah. So one of the hallmarks of habits is some degree of automaticity, meaning you're not having to put a lot of conscious thought or effort into enacting that behavior. Um, and what we need, typically speaking, is some sort of cue that's stable. It could be environmental or it could be the routine, the greater routine that this is part of, plus the habit, which is your behavior routine and some kind of reward. And that might always, it might not always be like a positive reward, like a sticker on a chart or something like that. It also could be relief from something. So when we're thinking about habits versus behaviors, the automaticity is really important. And also to consider that habits are usually really small things. For example, washing your hands after using the bathroom, hopefully. Or tying your shoes in the same way every time. Hopefully. Or getting in the car and buckling your seatbelt, right? All of these things that are small, they're practiced, they're context dependent. So if I sat you on a curb, you probably wouldn't start mimicking putting a seatbelt on. Um, and they can be disrupted if that cue isn't there. Behaviors, though, this could be a wide variety of routines. It could include habits, but something like I need to exercise regularly, that's not a habit. It's it's comprised of a lot of different routines and habits that you can ultimately build. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:12

And I think what's also important to emphasize here is that habits can vary in terms of degree of complexity as well as, amongst other things, among as well as strength. So you can have a weaker habit or a really, really strong habit. And the example that I really like to use a lot is the habit of biting your nails because I think it's so common. As we know, it's an un it's considered an undesirable habit by a lot of people. I do it. Yes, you do. I don't think you use nail clippers at all for your fingernails.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

It's an adaptive habit.

SPEAKER_05 21:41

What do I want to use?

SPEAKER_00 21:44

I've evolved.

SPEAKER_05 21:44

Yeah, yeah. But for a lot of people, it can be triggered since you're talking about the habit loop, triggered by boredom, anxiety, stress, anything like that. The habit is nail biting, and then the reward could be relief. Relief, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

And I think. That's what a lot of people get hung up on. Um, particularly right now, I see a lot more information on ADHD and building habits or neurodivergence and building habits, and people who say that they don't have any habits. Well, you do if you break down your day and look at them, they might not all be these like optimized things that you are trying to do, but look at your routines. There's so much that we do that we have to do because otherwise our brains would not be able to function if we're making a decision every single action.

SPEAKER_05 22:28

And I don't want to put a percentage on this because I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure I have read research where it said that a lot of your daily actions are actually comprised of habits.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:39

Which then allows us to, as you said, free up mental bandwidth to devote to other more cog high cognitive effort tasks and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

When we have talked about the whole it takes 21 days to form a habit, you gave examples of habits that can be very quickly formed versus Yes.

SPEAKER_05 22:56

Okay. So this is not my example, but this is an example of a colleague. He said he was out in Arizona or somewhere in the desert one time. He left his hiking boots outside. One day he comes outside, he slips his foot into the boot. In the boot is a scorpion. Okay? So as you can imagine, the emotional reaction is strong. From that moment moment on, every time he was going to put on his boot, he picked off the boot and visibly peeked inside the boot to make sure there were no scorpions inside. That was an instant habit that formed. Another habit that formed, a little bit more morbid, is uh back when I lived in the South in the news. There was a woman who had left her car downtown after work. She went to go to her car, she goes in, buckles her seatbelt. There's a stranger waiting for her inside her car. As soon as I heard that, I immediately would make it a habit to check visibly in my backseat before I got into my car every time. Were those what you were thinking of? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah. And I think those examples also bring up the important point that we don't live in a vacuum, right? Our experiences with these things impact so much when it comes to behavior change. So all of the questions that we've addressed, all and all of people's experiences can absolutely be impacted by their experiences and they can change at any time. It's not like they're we're not robots, so there's no habit that cannot be derailed by something. So it's so important to consider that piece of it, the whole person when we're thinking about how to set these behavior goals up.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

My exercise habit got derailed when we had a baby.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

And I I I'm the most probably the most consistent exerciser that I know out of all of my immediate friends. I in over the course of years, I could count on probably one hand the number of workouts I skipped, and then we had a baby and I missed, I don't know, a handful of workouts the first month or whatever. So even though it's a very heavily ingrained behavior for me, like you say, something can come along and derail it. I think the I guess the the easy summary is there isn't ever going to be a very specific number of days that form a habit.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Correct. And if you're thinking about, like, is there a benchmark? What can I do? Um, I mean, a lot of people that we work with, or I'm I'm a timeline person too. I think if you're itching for an answer, you you won't be able to get one, right? But you certainly can use things like periodic self-monitoring or checking in with yourself regularly to see how things feel. Because requiring yourself to do something new, it's going to feel clunky until it doesn't. There isn't this timeline cutoff. So you can use that to your advantage and reflect and still shoot for goals that are a certain timeline. But if you leave that as an endpoint or cutoff, then often it ends in disappointment or it just it adds unnecessary rigidity to something that you can't put an end date on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:52

I feel like a better way of phrasing it would be understand that it's going to feel clunky in the beginning. Yes. Probably going to take a lot more mental effort at first, but over time it's going to feel more automatic. And one day, if you keep practicing, it doesn't have to have perfect adherence, but most of the time, there will come a point where you do it without realizing. And in fact, to not do that behavior, it will require more conscientious effort to not do that thing. That's a pretty good sign.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

I think I I think essentially what would be a good message to drive home to people is habits tend to feel automatic ideally. And if they are struggling with healthy behaviors, ideally over the long term, you want them to start feeling like second nature rather than as so he's given this example before when we've spoken, rather than white knuckling their way to sticking with that behavior, it's you want to get to the point where this is taking less conscious effort for you to embark on that behavior. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Yeah, for sure. Because uh my opinion, and I know that you guys are aligned with this, is the goal is not to take up everyone's free time with all fitness, everything, right? Uh I certainly would hate that, and it's I think it's unreasonable.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Like a 71-step morning routine. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, and you need the cold plunge and you need the sauna, and if you don't do that, then the rest of the day is wash. No, we're we're not trying to overtake your life. All of these things are supposed to be additive to give you give you more to open up your life, right? Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. Agree. Do you have to feel ready to start something? This one I think we can take both sides of readiness to change is something that's important. But feeling ready in terms of feeling like you know where you're headed exactly is not a prerequisite to being able to change successfully, right? One, similarly to the deadline of when something will feel like a habit, you you won't know till you get there. But there are things like if you sign up for a program or you sign up for a gym and you're like, I've committed, but I'm not gonna go even once, then of course that's gonna undercut your efforts. But I think readiness to change in terms of your mindset, your willingness to focus on flexibility, to be honest about your needs and priorities, I think that is all really important. But you don't necessarily have to feel like you know where you're headed from day one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:16

What about if let's say I had a lower body lift planned for today, but the moment comes, I'm tired, I'm cranky, I'd rather sit on the couch watching TV. Is that enough of a reason for me to be like, okay, let's skip the workout?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Great example.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Yeah, I think that particular example is such a good one for uh giving a picture of how to use meta-motivational skills as well. Because people think, okay, I'm not motivated, I don't feel like it. Well, what what you are doing is you're motivated to do something else. So when you're considering, should I tip the scales? Will I feel worse after this in terms of sickness? Will it feel uncomfortable? Maybe, but is that worth it, right? Considering in those moments of tipping the scale, that I think that visual is helpful because you can say, hey, maybe I still don't feel ready, but I'll go and do just the warm-up and see how I do from there. And it's okay if I'm not particularly enthusiastic about it, right?

SPEAKER_05 29:13

I think that's a great way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

I remember you saying this to me before, where you would you you said start so small, and one of your examples was floss one tooth. Yeah. And people got really pissed. Like some people like, but but that's stupid. What's the point?

SPEAKER_05 29:29

And you're like, the point is not the tooth, it's the point is it's good in the door. Yes. The habit of consistency. Also, the other bonus that I I think not a lot of people talk about is when you do a very easy behavior over and over again, it still builds confidence. It still builds, oh, I can do this every day. And guess what? Now that I can do it, it's going to further motivate me to take on loftier and more challenging goals.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Yeah, because I think people hear one tooth and that they get pissed off or go do one push-up. Yeah. That's the floor. You can go above that, but what you want to do at any level, right? Especially new parents, you're thinking about this on a daily basis and how you're making these decisions. What's the good enough floor for this? And I can always exceed it, or plans change, that's fine. But if you start from what can I do on the lowest energy days, or where I'm I don't feel like doing it, I might really want to watch that show I've been waiting for, and I don't really feel comfortable in the gym yet. How do you get your foot in the door? Because then you can scale. You've got to, if you put reps in with something accessible, then you can scale.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

This is gonna sound like I'm plugging something, but I'm not because there was no sales pitch involved. But one example that people might already know if they've been listening to this, is I think last year or maybe a couple of years ago, I said pick an exercise or something new and do it for 60 seconds. And at the time I was skipping, I just picked skipping. But to this day, I still skip after my runs, and I still only do 60 seconds, so I haven't built on that and I haven't grown it. But I will do 60 seconds faster and I will do it harder. And even though it was this tiny thing, I was like, no one thinks that 60 seconds is going to transform their life. But my skipping ability has improved so much and I can go so much faster, and I'm still doing several minutes every single week of something that's fast-paced, but it has become automatic for me. Yeah, it's like a habit stacking thing where if I do this workout when I finish, I finish with my skip and then Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:34

Even I know when I can hear if I'm at the in the house and he's in the garage gym, I can hear when he's off the travel mode. I'm like, okay, he's gonna do a skip and then I'll come in. Yeah, I always know that.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

But at the time it was like a new thing, it was quite weird for me to start, but it's second nature for me now.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Yeah, and thinking about that, I want to also mention that we're not saying you have to scale every goal, right? Things serve different purposes. We're at we're not trying to say that everything has to be scaled indefinitely.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, I never wanted to be like a world champion jump rope pur, jump ropeist, whatever. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What beliefs sabotage behavior change? I think that um when it comes to self-sabotage, I feel that with clients, especially who share a bit more about this, their knee-jerk reaction is to think of these behaviors as things that they are actively doing to undermine their efforts. But I think a big piece of this comes from when, again, when you feel really separated from this first future version of yourself and you are acting in accordance with current you, again, going back to the scales tipping, it might not be that you are actively trying to go counter to what your current goals are, but your current habits might be really well ingrained. It's hard to notice and interrupt them. It might be that your current priorities are different. It also might be that you you could have even set things that don't match your current life circumstances. So I think there's that side of it that a lot of people might not consider with self-sabotage is is it an active undermining of your efforts or are there competing demands? Are there current routines at play, other areas that you you might need to look at? And another big piece of this, I think, comes with self-compassion and applying that to your goals. For example, if you skipped your jump roping for a day, would that turn into really poor self-talk? Or you know why you're doing it, you're able to pivot and say, Hey, that's okay. I'm I'm cool with the rest of the days I got done, move on.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I'm pretty bad with self-talk. Like I'm recovering. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh could so could you give us an example when you talk about like active self-sabotage? Could you give us an example of how Yeah, I thought of one, but you can go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

I want to hear yours first. Well, very easy. Let's talk about diet. How many people expect perfection? I say perfection in heavy quotes, perfection, perfect adherence to their macros or their meal plan, and then oops, a cookie slipped into my mouth, may as well eat the entire plate and the entire Oreo sleeve and the whole box of cereal and so on and so forth. It's they call this colloquially the what the hell effect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yeah. I think that that that side of it where it's not like some calculated effort, but kind of a snowballing into that.

SPEAKER_05 34:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Again, maybe craving that fresh start or feeling like, you know, today is a wash, I need to start over. This is why practicing real evidence-based self-compassion is important because it's not, oh, I just need to be kind to myself and never talk poorly about what's going on or not be real realistic. It's about being radically honest about what you're noticing. How do you build supports in so that self-sabotage is harder to do, right? What are the things that are easy to do? That might be the self-sabotage, not this active behavior, but it could be both.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

And you said that instead of say active self-sabotage, you can have something like a competing priority. Yeah. So what would an example of that be that our listeners might resonate with?

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Yeah. So I think let's take exercise um adherence to a plan as an example. Um, oftentimes when clients start, I'll ask them what frequency they're working out at currently and where they kind of want to take things. Sometimes they'll really overshoot, and I think that's the fine balance between um what you want to try versus what's going to be best for you. And sometimes they'll they'll say, okay, I trained three times a week instead of the five I was going for. I totally sabotaged my own plans. But then you dig a bit deeper and it's like, oh, I had to pick up my kid who was sick from school, and then I didn't have meals prepped because my fridge broke, and all of these things that are very much life-driven changes. And I think that a lot of people struggle with not labeling those as personal shortcomings instead of applying um, you know, a bit of reality there and saying, okay, maybe this isn't me sabotaging my goals, maybe there are these other factors at play at part of it.

SPEAKER_05 35:59

Another example that I thought of now, I was thinking of how can I make it more and more ridiculous? Yeah. Okay, single mom, parent to newborn twins, who has no support in her life, already struggling with sleep, already struggling with time, comes to Rick Coach Rachel and says, I want to train for an Iron Man. That would be one pretty obvious example of okay, what your reality is and what your capacity is as not aligning with what you tell me your goal is. Right. So in that case, obviously we would have to re-redo some things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Uh so you have mentioned it briefly already, but a lot of people, I think specifically with diet, perhaps more than exercise, but maybe that's not true, feel guilty if they go quote unquote off plan. So on that note, what roles do shame and guilt play when it comes to successful behavior change?

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah, so to simplify, I think we can in the in our conversation, we can consider guilt like I feel like I did something bad. And shame tends to be self-reflective, like I am bad because this thing happened. And we know in the literature that shame is a really poor motivator of lasting change, but we also know that it can really negatively impact adherence to health promotion behaviors in general. And this isn't just diet and exercise, it's also things like going to appointments regularly or reaching out for the care that you need. And from the other side, the practitioner side, of course, our first few examples in the gym or experiences or on the medical side, we know a lot of people struggle with that. If shame is applied, it kind of creates this curtain, right? Of I shouldn't be vulnerable in this way, or if I try, this is a personal reflection that I'm not good enough. And it often leads to poorer adherence across the board. So when we're thinking about people who start things from a place of a lot of guilt and shame, we don't have to talk people into like toxic positivitying their way out of it. But it might be activities and shorter time points of connecting to that intrinsic motivation or the why that reframes it for them in that way while they're practicing it.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

So one example of shame that we have talked about recently is specific with weight stigma. So if someone insults someone else for their weight and rather than them going on being like, oh, someone called me fat and disgusting, and now I'm suddenly going to exercise more and eat healthily forever more. But when we were doing kind of a literature literature review and putting on the screen, one of the examples was people will often feel worse, and even though they might look like they are following a diet, for example, they are more inclined to eat in secret. And that popped into my head because you said it's like a curtain. Yes. Which I quite like because when I have gone through periods of my life, say like depression, for example, I felt like I was putting up a curtain where I didn't like people seeing me like that, and it made me more more of a recluse.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that eating behaviors, it it's really easy to come up with a lot of examples, unfortunately, from clients, um, from myself, I totally relate to that as well. And I would say that when I was struggling a lot, um, it was a lot of shame-based narratives, self-imposed a lot of them, related to eating struggles. And I think that if we if we consider the curtain piece, applying shame also implies that that is something to be ashamed of. So if, for example, you have a client who is enjoying a birthday meal with their family and they planned beforehand to stick to their macros or whatever you have set up and they have a piece of cake to celebrate. We can see so clearly why that is important, but they might be less inclined to share that with you as a coach if you shame them for going over their numbers, for example.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Yeah. Uh so I think one of the things that a lot of people misunderstand when I talk about this or when we talk about this is we are much more compassionate with our advice. Don't give yourself a hard time if you eat a cookie, for example. And I know that some coaches struggle with this because they think that by kind of quote-unquote coddling people, that we are some of the, I'm trying to think of some of the language and terminology that I have seen people discuss, but it's the idea that we're being too soft and encouraging mediocrity, if you will. Whereas the angle that we look at it from is there is research showing that self-compassion can help with even with weight loss endeavors, for example. So rather than giving people a free pass, giving them a soft life so everyone gets a participation trophy kind of thing, is actually if you can be more self-compassionate, you are more likely to be able to stick the path rather than beat yourself up and then deviate from it.

SPEAKER_05 40:58

There is research that supports that too. You are more likely to persist in goal pursuit with self-compassion. But I do think that to your point, and we've talked about this too, so many people misunderstand what self-compassion actually means. Exactly. I think a lot of people think it means making constant excuses and not having to try and accepting yourself where you are. Well, not in in in a way that you know discourages any active a positive change.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Yeah, it's not resigning yourself to your circumstances saying, Well, I guess that's it. That might bend oh well. Yeah. What's harder than saying, okay, let's get really realistic about what I am personally dealing with? What is even reasonable with these circumstances? And maybe I'm not pleased with what I've been doing, but how can I pivot? And is there a happy medium there? It it ultimately, and may feel counterintuitive if you never treated yourself this way before, um, it ultimately often leads to better adherence and you feeling more connected to your goals versus a threat, right? I must do this or I feel like a terrible person and I want to hide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

My own personal kind of anecdote with that is I my consistency and how I feel about my own nutrition now, for example, is the healthiest it's ever been. But I don't give myself a hard time if I eat something that a hardcore coach would give me shit for. So if I wanted a piece of cake or a muffin or something delicious that Sohi's made me, years and years ago, I would feel terrible and I would prohibit myself from eating that. And then if I'd eat it, I would feel guilt, and then I would feel shame, and then I would have that negative self-talk. Whereas giving myself more leeway, paradoxically, yeah, yeah, makes it so my overall diet quality is actually improved. And I think a lot of very hardcore coaches, that's the the discrepancy that they don't understand. They think that if you've given yourself more leeway, that you're, as So he said, making excuses for yourself, which obviously isn't the case.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Yeah, my my nutrition was never worse than when I was the most rigid. And same, you know, that also obviously corresponded with struggles in other areas. Um, and as somebody who has always struggled with mental health as soon as I was sentient, um, I think without considering that piece of it, it really can be a recipe for being very all or nothing, which often leads to nothing changing or you being really miserable along the way, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Would you say all or something?

SPEAKER_02 43:30

All or something and building momentum. Oh, with where's that from?

SPEAKER_00 43:35

I had to say that because I was waiting for Sohi to say it in my ear. Yeah. So for our listeners or or viewers, all of the kind of psychological concepts that we have discussed so far, what are some evidence based strategies that they could implement right away, ideally, that could help them follow through?

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, I think that something that you could do to Day. If you listen to this and you're like, I have five minutes, I want to do something.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

I like this.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Start with auditing where you are currently. If you don't remember a single term, but you're like, okay, they're talking about some things are automatic, some things are not, how I talk to myself matters. Look at what how you spend your time. You can jot down like a time log, a captain's log of your day. Um, be your own observational researcher and look at your baselines. Because again, when we're thinking about how our attempts at change can really be impacted by our narratives and what we are, we're assuming we can do these things. If we don't have take the temp on where I am currently, and then from there consider what's reasonable. That can be, it can feel like you're not able to change, but you might need something more appropriate with appropriate to your baseline. And then I think another thing on um, another piece of that, if you were to add on top of that, is look at the goals that you've set for yourself and consider whether there are a laundry list of things that you do not want to do, or if you have specific actionable steps that you're trying to take that are framed positively. And what I mean by that is the the list of things that you do want to do or that what you're trying to do instead. Um, if you go to a restaurant and you're like, okay, I'm working on healthy eating, I'm not gonna have pizza for this meal, how many options does that lead you to have to choose from in the moment? So when we frame things as all this stuff that we don't want to do, that really actually asks a lot of yourself to then choose at every time point what you're going to do. So those are two things that you could do immediately to create better behavior change goals.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

So on the second one, could you give us a couple of other examples of looking at something from the positive perspective rather than the negative?

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Yeah. So another example might be if you have a goal that's something like I want to stop snacking after dinner, or I want to stop emotional eating. You need to slot in what you're going to do instead because these might be part of habitual patterns. We're talking about automaticity, meaning you might not be thinking about it in the moment. So a positively framed goal might be looking at that baseline and saying, Hey, I tend to do this because I'm skipping dinner. Maybe your goal is then you'll make sure that you eat something within the dinner time window, right? It doesn't have to be I'm having three meals a day, this many calories, this much protein. It might be the one notch better that helps you reduce the thing that you're trying to move away from.

SPEAKER_05 46:26

Another example along those lines I thought of is if thinking of you said snacking after dinner, maybe you like a sweet treat after dinner in the evening, which I definitely do. Plan it ahead of time. Yeah, yeah. Either either work it into your if you have physicals or whatever, work it into your calorie allotment ahead of time, or you can say, rather than no, no ice cream, no snacking whatsoever, can we have uh instead of eating a pint of ice cream after dinner, which is maybe you're in the you're in the habit of doing that every single night, can you instead do after I finish my dinner, I will have two cups of fruit. Or maybe I will have half a pint of ice cream and one cup of fruit. That way it feels like less of a drastic change, which can be helpful, especially if you feel like the change is so so sudden and extreme that you then feel deprived.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

This is actually a almost weirdly perfect personal example for me because many, many, many, many, many years ago, I was probably early 20s, I think when I was pursuing fitness modelling and all of that, I obviously I wasn't eating that much, does it when I'm going for say six percent body fat or whatever I needed for a photo shoot? But I I don't think it was an intentional thing, it wasn't like I can never eat this, but I got in the habit of eating fruit instead. So I would eat lunch and then I'd have a piece of fruit or a cup of pizza fruit. To this day, it has become so ingrained for me that the when I finish lunch or dinner, even so he will be like, Oh, there's apples in the fridge. She knows that my brain goes that. I don't even think about it. It's not like, oh, I don't want to eat cake, I'm gonna have fruit instead. The moment I have finished my main course, I'm like, I just want I want a piece of fruit, I want a cold piece of fruit. And it's it's so automatic and ingrained for me now.

SPEAKER_05 48:12

I think someone got us a big container of sliced fruit today, too. So you can add that to the fruit. I think we're in a very nice uh situation.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Um and going back to the first one that you said, so you said taking an audit of where you are now, why was that the first thing that you said? Why is that so important?

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Yeah, I the temptation might be to pick the shiny new goals. And especially when we're talking about future self or this idealized version, whether it comes from shame or not, it it's easy to pick the thing that you think you might want to do. But do you have the capacity? Let's not even think desire or interest, do you have the capacity to take on this thing that you've signed up for? So the triathlon example or an Iron Man. If you don't have time to add anything new, then booking yourself with something that takes the most time probably is unreasonable. It's not, oh, you're not committed to this goal or you don't care. It's like, let's let's be rational about and look at what's going on. And it's not to say that you can't shoot for these big goals or have these really meaningful events on the calendar, but it might not be the life season for that. And that's okay. It's not a again, it's not a personal shortcoming. You've got to look at what's going on first.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

So if you're if you encourage people to take a self-audit and then pick something that when they look at it, does it align with their future self, for example? Does that essentially boil down to assess where you are now and make sure that the goals that you are picking are realistic?

SPEAKER_02 49:42

Is that what we're realistic and applicable to what you're going for? And realistic, you might not know if it is realistic until you try it, right? And same thing with New Year's resolutions or any of these times where we're like, I must change now. A lot of people will sign up for all the things that they think are reasonable, but how long are you doing this? Till you die? What if you need to change or you don't like it anymore? If you've assigned it to this is what a dedicated person does and nothing else, then it's really hard to change. So yes, absolutely pick what what seems reasonable or bite-sized, but try it out. And this is a great way to build in kind of that deadline of okay, for the next seven days, I'm gonna try this out, see how I like it. Do I even like doing this thing? Um, does it is it a mismatch of when I'm adding it in? Does it help me? Can I build on this? It might feel way too easy or too difficult. So, yes, absolutely start with that and trial and error.

SPEAKER_05 50:36

Yeah. I love the idea of a food log, for example. I feel like, especially with people who want to improve improve their nutrition, it's a really great way to build self-awareness because how often are people engaging in a mindless eating and they genuinely do not realize how many cookies they've eaten throughout the day, for example. I had a friend in college who, when he asked me for diet help, I said, okay, let's keep a diet log for three days. And he came back and he said, I ate 10 cookies a day. I didn't even realize I was doing it, especially if you're working, for example, in an office setting where there is a communal break room and there's a box of donuts always there or a plate of cookies, someone's always bringing snacks, and it's very easy to mindlessly reach for the stuff and put it in your mouth, and you don't even register it, nor nor do you fully even appreciate the experience. And I think that happens a lot.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

So one of the things that I think calorie tracking or food tracking sometimes gets too much of a bad rep because they immediately associate that with meticulous calorie tracking, like I'm weighing every single thing that I eat. And I personally don't like meticulous calorie tracking. I don't think that's how people most people view food. I don't think they want to know everything to the gram. That's too obsessive for 99.9% of people, I think. However, that doesn't mean that I dislike food tracking for the exact reason that so he's just given. So with clients, I used to say, write down everything you eat, and I would make it super informal, just as an idea, just why I know where you're at, you know where you're at, and almost every time they would tell me what they needed to change. So I wasn't I wasn't like, you can't do this, you can't do this, you're only eating 1.4 grams of protein rather than 1.6 grams per per um kilo or whatever. They would come in and be like, I drink way more alcohol than I realized, or I eat way more dessert than I realized, or whatever it is. But that audit, as so he says, yeah, often creates self-awareness that most people didn't have to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

And how you frame it, right? Um, because I can't imagine you walking in and screaming at someone and shaming them.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

I'm not screaming at some point.

SPEAKER_02 52:45

Right, but like curious. Yeah, you know if you frame it as, oh, how interesting. I will have clients say this out loud if they're really in a thought spiral of like, oh, I didn't want to even talk about this, I did this, I didn't even say, say, okay, stand up and say, you don't have to do this on like a Zoom call or something, but say, oh, how interesting. I didn't realize that I ate three boxes of this when in my mind I had one cookie. If you frame it as, let's look at this, let's audit this, how how can we approach this in a way where you're gathering info that then you can apply? That is way different than you better not pass this calorie limit or you're not committed.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

Yeah, that's I think goes back to the thing that you're talking about earlier and the thing that I mentioned, where I think if you create an environment where people don't feel like they can share things. Yeah. So how many we talk about things like calorie under reporting, how many people wouldn't say to their coach that they desert because they think their coach is going to scream at them?

SPEAKER_04 53:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Rather than feeling like they can share that information with their coach and then they can be on the same wavelength with whatever the next steps might be.

SPEAKER_05 53:51

Rather than us who are more likely to be like, What flavor did you get? Yes. And you know what's my favorite.

SPEAKER_02 53:57

It's so interesting because I can't even tell you how many times, and I'm sure you've gotten this too, where clients will say, I know you wouldn't do this, but I felt really weird about mentioning that I enjoyed this meal with family that wasn't on the plan I set. Or um in the past, I don't know how how much detail I should give you about things that aren't exactly what you told me. And it is interesting because it is nice to know that they don't think that I would apply that shame and guilt, but we can see how those formative experiences change a lot of that shame. What we're willing to divulge, how we how we see that information.

SPEAKER_05 54:31

That actually reminds me of I've had a number of clients who would say basically, hey coach, I've struggled with consistency for the past two weeks. Can I skip this check-in and I'll do the next one? Yes. And I realized they were thinking of their check-ins as homework assignments. Exactly. Basically, and if they're not gonna get an A, they'd rather skip it. Yes. And of course, I understand that there are lots of coaches who do make them feel that way. If you don't give me an A, you don't have an A performance, I'm going to make you feel bad about it. When in reality, we think the value of a coach is in we're not here to judge you or grade you, but if you are struggling, I would say that's when you need us even more. And hopefully you are in a position where you feel like you can come talk to us and open up to us so that we can work together to help you get to a better place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

I used to say to my clients, obviously, kind of tongue in cheek, I would say, I don't care if you drink and do drugs at the weekend, just help me. And my whole ethos with that is obviously not that I am very pro-cocaine, for example.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

You're like, just log your macros, log it as carbs.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Like, are the macros of cocaine? I where I grew up, I think they had a fairly high concentration of drug dealers and drug users. But part of the reason that I would make that joke is because I thought if they were comfortable sharing that information, they wouldn't feel the need to lie if they wanted to eat cake. Yeah. Because the idea that someone's like, Oh, I can't tell, I can't tell my personal trainer that I ate cake at a birthday party is like relax.

SPEAKER_05 56:02

Yeah. Life life is too short to stress. And in reality, how many times have coaches, and I'm sure this happens more often than clients actually admit, later on, they're like, you know, I was actually lying to you about my diet six months ago. Yeah. And I've I've had people say that to me. They're like, I was, they're like, it's nothing that you ever did, but I had so much shame around this, this, this. And of course, that would explain why we weren't see the progress that we wanted. You didn't have all the information.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Yeah.

unknown 56:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

And uh sort of side tangent, but not. But that style of coaching makes me think of, you know, in the past what, 15-ish years, the push in literature around health behavior change has shifted from individual compliance, like you are being told what to do, you must execute, to adherence and putting the the person or the patient in a more active role. And that all that always kind of goes back to that compliance. Like, you've paid me, I'm your coach, you must obey what I say. And I think that if you move away from things like we don't post transformation photos or um, you know, the the nuances there in our client responses. I think if you're really focused on that style of like militaristic coaching, you must obey, then you're what are you actually setting clients up for? Doing well, maybe in one domain while they're working with you, but what about everything else for the rest of their lives? Yeah, agree.

SPEAKER_05 57:21

For someone who has been struggling for years with consistency, where should they start?

SPEAKER_02 57:26

I think that the place to start in that case is usually self-compassion, right? Because particularly if you've been struggling for years, I'm sure you've seen this all the time. I know I do. They're so wrapped up in these narratives around what that means. I've struggled my whole adult life with this. I don't know if you will work with someone like me, I don't know if change is possible, or they'll be like, this is my last attempt at working on this. It might be, again, a mismatch or season of life thing. Or did you start and continue to kind of square peg round hole the same goals all of these years? I think if you really turn a mirror on what's going on and take a real look at at the self-compassion piece, that is where I would personally start and help a client with as well.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Final questions before we finish. What is one thing that you think the health and fitness industry get wrong with behavior change?

SPEAKER_02 58:27

Only one? No. I think a major issue is this idea that individual health status is entirely your personal responsibility, right? Um, and I think people get angry when that's talked about because they again think that that means you're saying you're not going to take responsibility for health behaviors in in any regard. But we have to understand the systems in which people exist, how things are very complex, like obesity, um, our change attempts, our experiences, all of these things are complex and they can be impacted by so many factors that are outside of our control. And we can leverage the things within our control, but I think the discussion is incomplete if we're just acting like everyone's starting at the same place and they should just start piling up behavior goals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:18

I know we feel very strongly about this, and I have been in too many arguments on social media to know that a lot of people don't feel strongly in the opposite direction. My I think where I think some of the opposing viewpoints come from is if you say, for example, uh fat loss is not fully within your control because there can be genetic reasons or environmental reasons or whatever, I think often the people who are really good at it, like bodybuilders, for example, view that as you're making excuses for people who aren't good at it. And I understand it from their perspective, but I also think it seems silly to me that they can't relate that to other people's circumstances. So for example, if a single parent suddenly their child is sick and they can't go to the gym or they fall ill and it changes what they want to eat, for example, they can have huge knock-on effects to how people live their life. But acknowledging that isn't making excuses, it's just saying there are reasons that some people find it harder or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

I think it's like when people get triggered because they have overcome something difficult, and it's the well, I did it, so you should be able to. How we know that for a lot of people who were living in bigger bodies can turn around and be incredibly fat phobic, right? Um, or we see this across lots of different domains, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

It's kind of sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt what you said just reminded me of discussions about GLP ones. Yes. Where so many people are angry that other people are taking GLP ones because they view it as a shortcut.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

Yeah. It's like the conversation about privilege, right? Oh yeah. By acknowledging that, we're not saying you're not a hard worker or doing these other things.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:05

So many people say that. They say it triggers me because it does sound like you're saying I didn't have to work as hard to get here. Well, you can have a lot of privilege. Yeah, I'm like, that may have been the case, but also you can have a lot of privilege, privilege, and still work hard, yeah, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:18

I think it's just it's just saying that even if you're even if everyone is going from A to B, sometimes the journey is a little bit more uphill for some people.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:28

Actually, that reminds me of the great the great analogy that we put in at the end of one of our joint lectures we did years ago, is essentially that where if we're both trying to run the same distance, but you have to run uphill on a 30% incline to r run the same horizontal distance, it's going to be a lot harder for you than it is for me. So I might get there faster and more easily than you. Yeah. Basically. What behavior change advice annoys you the most? Just try harder. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

Right? That statement I feel a lot of times comes from people who don't know what better advice to give, right? Because I think that that often is fueled by frustration, whether it be a coach is like, well, you're not trying hard enough. If you wanted this, you would get there. But we know that things like trying, like desire to change, like knowledge, these aren't the change bottlenecks. So again, I feel like that type of advice or that voice when it comes to giving people feedback, um, can really be destructive because how many times do you want to keep putting yourself out there? That's what it is. It's like, okay, I'm willing to be a beginner again. How many times and how much shame is built through those types of narratives? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:39

I have never come across someone where if I was coaching them and I said, Could you try harder? They would go, Oh, great, done.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

Now it's fixed. I just needed that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

You you just needed someone to remind them of the glaringly obvious thing, and then suddenly, boop, magic.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:58

Yeah. That reminds me of this example that I love that I've used for years, which is, and you know, you mentioned that I would talk about white knuckling or using brute force. Okay, so imagine your goal is to get past this brick wall, right? And your coach is sitting there saying, Well, push harder, push harder against the wall. When in reality, maybe they should be helping you come up with tools to help climb over the wall or help you walk around the wall instead. So find ways where you can get the same job done without it feeling so impossible for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

Yeah. You don't have to, you can finesse your way through some of this. Right. Exactly. It doesn't in Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:33

Yeah. And I would actually argue that a lot of times people are probably trying too hard using the wrong tools with the wrong approach. And uh similar to you, when you said when you were the strictest with your nutrition, is when your diet was actually the worst. Yes. Same thing for me. That was when my binge eating was at its peak, when I had the most rigid rules, when I relaxed the rules and actually found a way to enjoy the way that I ate and felt less restricted, my diet was actually markedly better.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:59

Is that because someone told you you should just try harder and then all of a sudden?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:03

It's when I ignored that advice after years of trying to do that advice that I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

If anything, I was I was I kept trying harder at every every point of feeling. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

I have to emphasize that I'm being sarcastic because not everyone picks up on my sarcasm. And then in the notes, they're like, what the fuck?

unknown 1:04:19

What did he mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

Um penultimate question What is something that you've changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

Ooh, I think the biggest piece of this is exactly what we're talking about. I used to think um I I'm a person who tends to have more of an action bias. Like, even if it does not serve me or is a disservice, um, it's really hard to get away from moving goalpost syndrome. And now I've been able to use that as something adaptive. But before that, I always felt like I had to do more because in a lot of ways I was spinning my wheels by white-knuckling things. So a big piece of what I've changed my mind around, aside from these tactics, is that you don't have to be miserable in order to change. There can be fun in this, and it doesn't have to come from a place of self-hatred or self-loathing. Really flipping the script on that ultimately opens the door to more.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:13

I could have used that advice in my younger years. I used to believe, and I'm no I don't know, I'm no I'm not alone in this. If something did not feel hard or if I did not feel miserable, it was not worth doing. Yeah. And it must not be working.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:27

Yeah. And that honestly, it makes it makes me sad for young me because I think um on the uh all of my struggles were very internalized. Like on the outside, okay, what more could I have I achieved at these various points? Um, I did what I set out to, but I didn't enjoy any of it, and a lot of it I didn't remember because I was kind of wrapped up in the thoughts. So yeah, it it doesn't have to be miserable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:51

And in fact, we would argue that for any journey to be sustainable, you have to have some element of of of joy, of actually liking what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:01

I know I know this is beating a dead horse, but just in case we need to beat it one more time, even for me, I used to do the same thing where if my diet had a hint of enjoyment, to me that was essentially uh kind of like a quality sacrifice. So it needed to be a hundred percent very, very strict. It was kind of like in the same way that real extreme bodybuilders don't even use seasonings because mustard only right in their in their head it's like it has to be perfect or it's not good enough. Whereas for me now, by relaxing things, that is I'm now the most consistent that I've ever been. But also, not just from a consistency perspective, but I'm happier than I was when I was trying to be on the most ultra strict diet. My body composition wasn't better than it is now. I know that's not the right word to use. I wasn't healthier, but my mental health was definitely worse.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:02

Last question for you: what is a hill you are willing to die on? Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:08

That health is inherently political, and that people who really push back against the people in the fitness industry talking about this have a fundamental misunderstanding of the social and political systems that we all exist in. I love this answer so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Do you want to elaborate, or is it better to just leave it spicy?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

You can elaborate. Going back to our points about what we actually have control over, so much of health accessibility comes down to public policy, funding, um, what we vote for, what's available, where you live geographically, how this has been historically set up. So if you feel like there are these factors outside of your control that are big and that do set the tone for everything else, certainly not imagined. And again, when we're thinking about that starting point or the starting line, it's so important to take those into account, not just jump into audit, let's add these goals. It's like what what are the systems in which I live? How does that impact the food I'm able to buy my family? Um, the safe space I'm able to walk in, do I have a gym nearby? All of these things are important and valid when you're considering what you want to change as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:22

We've talked about these in the past, so I hope they're not going to be too shocking to listeners. But yeah, hard cosine.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:28

Yeah. Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming up here and giving us your time and energy.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:38

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.