The 5 enemies of health and fitness change

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:31.470] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are you?

[00:02:33.600] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:35.700] – Coach Allan

I'm doing all right. I'm a little tired. Yeah, I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination. And there was a Halloween thing, so yeah, again, you guys know we record these a few weeks ahead, so yeah, here he is talking about Halloween in the third or fourth week of November. But, yeah, we had a Halloween contest at one of the local places, and our whole group went as the characters from Gilligan's Island.

[00:03:03.330] – Coach Rachel

Oh, how fun.

[00:03:04.590] – Coach Allan

Yeah. So I had the easy one. I was the professor, so all I had to do was wear a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khakis. And then I had a little antique looking radio thing and coconut and aluminum foil.

[00:03:20.200] – Coach Rachel

Oh, how fun.

[00:03:21.410] – Coach Allan

That was it. So, yeah, we won the group award for Gilligan's Island. And then one of the guys that's here, friends of ours, he dressed up as Ginger and his wife dressed up as Gilligan.

[00:03:34.590] – Coach Rachel

How cute.

[00:03:37.430] – Coach Allan

He won the best dressed, I guess, the best individual costume award for being Ginger. So, yeah, it was good. But it was late, and so I got in late and was tired and had to get up this morning and run a bed and breakfast. So that whole breakfast part, jeez, if we just stopped doing that.

[00:04:00.590] – Coach Rachel

It's early. Yeah, right.

[00:04:03.100] – Coach Allan

No, but I am an early morning person. But this morning I was not. So I'm going to get through my about 3 hours or so of stuff I got to get done today, and then I'm going to take a nap.

[00:04:14.930] – Coach Rachel

Good idea. That sounds like a plan.

[00:04:17.320] – Coach Allan

Yeah. So how are things up there?

[00:04:19.360] – Coach Rachel

Well, funny you mentioned Halloween. We just got dumped on with some snow. Where I live, I only got a dusting of snow, but to the cities west of us that are in the lake effect area, they got about seven inches of snow. And so the poor kids in some cities nearby, the cities postponed Halloween or trick or treating to the next day, so the poor kids got snowed out for trick or treating. Crazier things have happened.

[00:04:51.540] – Coach Allan

Yeah. Seven inches, though. I thought you guys kind of had that whole snow thing covered. So seven inches. That's a random Tuesday.

[00:05:02.770] – Coach Rachel

Yeah. It is still early. It's not unheard of, especially for Miganders to go trick or treating with costumes underneath our snow jackets. But it was a little not fully unexpected, but a little unexpected. And seven inches is quite a bit yeah.

[00:05:20.810] – Coach Allan

That's when being a superhero or something like that is not cool. But I can be a bear.

[00:05:27.930] – Coach Rachel

Exactly. But nonetheless, it was a good night.

[00:05:33.740] – Coach Allan

Good. And ixnay the candy, right?

[00:05:37.130] – Coach Rachel

That's right. Yes.

[00:05:38.810] – Coach Allan

But you don't have the little ones, so they're not coming home with bags of the stuff.

[00:05:42.850] – Coach Rachel

No, I get to hand mine out. Whatever I've got left gets to go home with my kids.

[00:05:48.610] – Coach Allan

Yeah. And so, yeah, that's the lesson here. If you're still sitting on some of that candy hoard from Halloween, it's time to give it away. Just take it to the office, put it in a bowl, leave it on a table in the break room. Just anything you got to do to get rid of that stuff, it's time to get rid of it and get serious about your health and fitness. All right, you ready to have a discussion about that?

[00:06:15.260] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

[00:06:16.120] – Coach Allan

All right, let's go.

Episode

Today we're going to talk about the five enemies of health and fitness. Change. I get it and you get it. Change is hard. It really is. Humans were not really programmed for change. We weren't built for change. We were built to basically look for stability, look for the same, find comfort, find safety. And we get that through something that we know, which is security and solid. And so when things are changing, that puts us out of our elements. Often that makes it very difficult for us. In fact, our senses in our body react to change in a negative way because typically if something's different, it could be dangerous. So we want to recognize change and be afraid of it or be prepared for it. So we're looking for change. But change often elicits negative reactions because the same is safe. Change can be dangerous. And so that signal is in our head and so change can be hard. But if you conquer these five enemies, it's going to make change a lot easier. Now the first one I want to talk about of the five is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing.

Now there's a quote that's associated with Einstein. He's not sure he said it. Someone said he said it. He said it sounds reasonable. So he's not going to fully claim it. He wasn't willing to fully claim it, but did say it was good advice. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. That's the quote. And so believing you can get a different result just by doing the same thing, well, it is what it is. So I want to start each of these enemies with kind of a story. And I think the story is going to kind of give you a good picture of how this manifests within a client or within a person, rather. Okay, so the first story is about Marie. So Marie was a really cool person, had a very stressful job. And so each evening when she got home from work, she'd have a glass of wine. Sometimes it was two, sometimes it was three. And she did this every evening. This was her kind of her go to wind down habit for each evening. So she finished work, she started dinner, she started the wine.

Now the OD thing was she hired me and we kept talking about the wine, but she would step up her activities. She would do other things with her food. She literally was doing everything right except she wasn't willing to change the wine. Now she was getting results as we went through our training, but she wasn't quite getting the results she wanted. So we circled around the conversation several times and came back to wine. And each time it was, I'm going to work around it. But it was obvious that this was holding her back and she wasn't willing to change it. So she had this belief system that she could do the wine. But in her mind she also knew this was also what was holding her back. So she thought, okay, well, I'll just do it more. This is working. It's not working as well as I want, but I will just keep doing it. And eventually it will work. So sometimes we just have to face facts that we can't get away with the things that we did when we were in our twenty s and thirty s. Okay? This was part of her mindset was, well, I was fine when I was younger.

It's only now that I'm older, but I know if I keep working out and I keep eating this way, I'll get what I want. So three glasses of wine, let's assume a regular pour. But she and I talked about it probably wasn't a regular pour, was about one third of her daily calories. So if you figure three glasses of three regular glasses of wine was about one third of what she was expending in a given day, that was just not something that she was going to be able to out exercise. But again, her mind believed that she could just keep doing what she was doing and she would get different results. So the challenge for you to get something different, you will likely have to do something different. Now it doesn't have to be extreme. She didn't need to quit wine. Maybe just tapering it down because small changes can add up. She wasn't happy with the results that she was seeing, and maybe you're not either, but are you really thinking it through to say, what are the things that I'm doing that I know aren't serving that mission, that outcome that aren't going to make that happen?

And am I right to believe that I can keep doing those things and get a different result? And the answer is typically no. So unfortunately, yes. To get change, you have to do change, and you have to change things to get change. So one of the hardest things and one of the first enemies I talk about when we talk about change is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing. It's typically just not true. The second enemy of health and fitness change is self limiting beliefs. So jill. I got a message from Jill on Facebook. But before I get into the story, are we even friends on Facebook now? If we're not, you can go to fortyplusfitness.com Fballen, that's Fballan. Fortyplusfitness.com Fballan and send me a friend request. I am completely open. I'd love to have some conversations with you there. And that's where a lot of this stuff comes out. So anyway, Jill, I got a message from Jill on Facebook and she told me that she really liked doing the weekly challenges that we do in the Facebook group. But she wanted to know if I would take a few minutes each week and come up with a couple alternate challenges for her to pick from because she often found she couldn't do the main challenge.

So I asked her a few questions. Okay, I want to understand because most of the challenges that I put in the Facebook group are things that most people can do if they put their mind to it. So what we found was, okay, she couldn't do the food challenges because her husband liked to eat out, and so she was stuck with what was on the menu wherever they went. She couldn't do the physical challenges because she had a bad knee or she sometimes get migraines when she exerts herself too much. So she felt like she couldn't do any of the physical challenges. And then she couldn't do some of the other challenges because, well, she had a second job and she just didn't have time to do anything else. So basically what Jill believed was that Jill couldn't do anything food related, she couldn't do anything physically related, and she really couldn't do any of the other things because she just didn't have control of her schedule. So she had these self limiting beliefs that she wasn't willing to work around, and that was holding her back. Okay, so then I just had to ask the question, because it did kind of like, okay, why do you like the idea of challenges?

And she came back to me and said they made her think, okay, and that's good. You definitely have to start with that. But then she said she'd realized that she couldn't do this or basically couldn't do this. So she had this limiting belief. She had something that she felt was a wall, something holding her back that was keeping her from being able to do pretty much any one of these challenges. Now, there's another quote. I'll talk about a few quotes here and there, but Henry Ford is quoted as saying, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So, in other words, where your head goes, so do you. If you have limiting beliefs, those limits are real for you, okay? For me they might not be, but for you, they're absolutely real, and you're going to struggle to overcome them, okay? So to be successful in something hard like a challenge or weight loss or getting healthy and fit, you've got to start believing in yourself, okay? You've got to start believing that it's possible for you to make the change, and you have to start believing in yourself. And these are hard.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is something as easy because change is hard. But if you don't believe you can change, guess what? You're right. So I know you can do it, but you have to approach it with that attitude. And it might not be the solid, okay, I know I can do this, but at least I know I can try. I can try. I will try. And when you give it that shot just that much, you can push past that limiting belief and do things you never thought you could. So my challenge to you is when you set a goal, just be clear with yourself that, okay, not only is this attainable, it's almost easy. So that's why I tell people, don't set this huge goal that you're never going to be able to do, or that you think, okay, yes, if I'm perfect for a long period of time, I can get there. Start out with a pretty simple goal, set the bar relatively low, and it might be for someone, it might be, I'm going to walk for ten minutes in the evening, three days a week. Now, for some, that might seem pretty simple.

30 minutes of walking doesn't seem like a lot of time for some people. For others, that might be quite challenging. So your bar might be a little lower or a little higher, but it still, for you, has to be kind of a relatively low bar to get started. You'll probably hear this advice over and over and over again. The most important thing in change is getting started, and we have to get past the limiting beliefs to get there. So set that low goal. Now, are those 30 minutes of walking each week going to change your life? And the answer is, initially, no. But when you're successful in doing that consistently, your belief grows. Oh, I can walk 30 minutes per week more than I was before. Okay. And then you can start to feed that belief. You can start to make it grow. So you feed belief and you abandon limits. And you do that through consistent, gentle nudges of setting a goal, meeting the goal, proving to yourself that you can. So we get past the limiting belief and then setting a slightly bigger goal, getting that done, getting past that limiting belief, go to the next one.

So eventually you could be doing much, much more than you would have thought you could, your limiting belief, but you're doing it now. So challenge yourself to set a goal that's just outside your comfort zone, but obviously attainable, and then do it, and then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. That consistency of running over and passing your limiting beliefs is going to take you to some amazing places. So the third enemy of health and fitness change is staying in your comfort zone. So Carrie was a client, and when we first started working together, she told me, I can't walk for five minutes without getting super winded. Okay? Now, we couldn't just tell her. We couldn't just get her and say, okay, no, you're going to go and do all these workouts, and here's all the programming, and here it is in the app, and you just get in there and start doing this stuff. What we did was we said, okay, what's something that's generally attainable? Remember the limiting beliefs and that we can do consistently that you know, you'll do consistently. It's not going to be comfortable.

So I made it uncomfortable. I said, okay, how many minutes do you think you could walk in a day in addition to just your normal daily activity and she said ten minutes. So we started with ten minutes. Now, I told her, said ten minutes doesn't have to be all at one time. It could be two, five minute sessions, which she said again would push her a little bit. It could be four, two and a half minute sessions. It could be five two minute sessions. The point was for her to get ten minutes of dedicated walking done each day, each and every day. And it was really hard for her most days. Now, she started doing it, she started being consistent and she started doing it, getting it done. So she was walking every day for at least ten minutes. Sometimes she'd do a little more. Now, each week we started to bump up this target because she felt comfortable. She got comfortable with ten minutes a day. Now, we want to push just outside that comfort zone. So we go a little more, usually within a little two minute increments, which is not a bad thing.

It just is a thing. That was her gentle nudge, just to get her just outside the comfort zone. Now, some days when she felt great, she actually did more. So the goal might be twelve minutes and she might be doing 14 one day. Now, other days she just didn't feel good. And she's like, I just didn't feel good, but I still got my target hit again, just outside the comfort zone. Okay? Now she showed this courage each and every week, each and every day. And what ended up happening was her fitness improved. Now, it's kind of a phenomenon, but once people start pushing comfort levels in one place in their lives, they tend to start pushing comfort levels in others. So she improved her nutrition and these little gentle nudges know were coming just as a nature of her saying, I know I can do more. I've got to get outside my comfort zone. She was able to enjoy things that she had really struggled with before. Now, Carrie really loves music festivals, but she had told me, she said she was kind of dreading going because there was so much walking and she would always struggle with that walking.

But because she had done the little nudges just outside her comfort zone while we were training and she was improving her nutrition, she really found that she was able to walk around, enjoy the musical festivals much more than she ever had. And again, it was just from getting outside her comfort zone. It made things so much better. So no matter where you are right now, I'm going to tell you you can improve your health and fitness, but you're not going to do it if you stay in your comfort zone, okay? Now, getting outside your comfort zone doesn't mean you're doing something crazy like, I'm afraid of heights, so I'm going to jump off the Empire State Building. It's just little bits just outside the edge of where you're comfortable and you keep doing this, you keep doing this and consistently doing this again and again, and it all adds up. So my challenge to you is that you need to do things that scare you a little bit. Okay? Now, there's two operative words in what I just said do and scare. Okay? Change requires work. You are not going to change if you don't do something.

And you're not going to really accomplish much if it's inside your comfort zone. So if I say, well, I feel really good that I can walk 30 minutes in a day each day, I'm just going to walk 30 minutes in each day, not really going to grow, not really going to change. Pretty much going to stay the same. So it has to somewhat scary, just outside the comfort zone. And you have to do it, and you have to do it consistently. The enemy of change in health and fitness number four is unwillingness to invest. So Sharon was this prospective client. Now we got to talking, and she was doing these pain on demand workout things. There are several of them, but she was doing one. She said it costs something like 15 $20 a month. She's not sure. Occasionally they raise the price, but still not much. 15, $20 a month. And she loved the workouts, but she wasn't losing any weight. Okay, so we started talking and I said, okay, so how do you go about this? And she's like, Well, I just scan and they have some featured ones. And so I just do a featured one.

And I said, okay, well, how often are you doing this? And she said, well, when I'm turning them on, I'm turning them on. I do them. I do the whole workout. I feel really good. It's hard, but there's times when I just don't feel like doing it or I forget to do it or it's not something I want to do. And so basically, she said I could go weeks without doing any of them. And she says, Well, I kind of justified it. It's just $15. I'm not really losing much because it's just $15. Now, Sharon also told me a story about going to a gym and working with a trainer. Okay? She met the trainer anyway, and so she meets this trainer. The trainer is walking her through the gym, starts talking about programming and helping her reach her goals. And so she's starting to get a little excited that she can lose weight and be more fit, and this is going to be really great for her. Now, the trainer sat down with her and said, okay, they recommend that she buy the gym membership and that she pay for three sessions per week.

And if she signed up for a six month contract, she would get a free consult with a nutritionist to even bolster her weight loss even more. Okay? So I said, well, that sounds really good and probably similar to what I would do if I worked in a gym. So how did it go? She says, Well, I didn't do it. I said, okay, so why didn't you do it? She said, well, that's more than my car payment. So the six months that she would have paid for and gotten training three days a week and gotten a meeting with a nutritionist to help her with her food planning and give her a meal plan was more than a car payment. Okay? So she was okay with the $15, but wasn't doing it. She wasn't willing to pay for the more service, the accountability, all the things that come with that, and all the difference guidance that she would have gotten because she felt it was too much. Now, in the end, we were having the conversation. She said she did want to do something. She wanted to work with me. She realized, okay, I'm not accountable. I'm not doing things.

I do need that. I need this. Okay? So we started talking. I said, Well, I've got a six week starter program. Are you interested? And she said yes. Okay. And when I told her how much it cost, she was like, what her investment would be to do this thing with me. Her answer was, oh, that's a lot more than I'd pay. Okay? And the odd thing was, no, this was not $15 a month, but this was about a third of what she would have paid a local gym and nutritionist to work with her. So she had kind of a base for what this might cost. But she was like, no, I'm not going to pay it. I won't invest in getting this done. Now, at first, I was a little stumped. I'm like, okay, I don't understand this. The conversation we had. She saw her mother declining, and she just didn't want to go down that path. But I just was kind of dumbstruck. It's like, okay, are you willing to invest at all? And so I asked her simple question. I asked her, what is money? Now, that might seem like an OD question, right?

But I needed to understand this. And here's what I solved with that question. Do you know what she said? She said the word security. She had the money sitting in her savings account. It was easy. She could afford it. She could do it. She was working a job. She made plenty of money she could easily have afforded to work with me, to work in that local gym, to do all of it. She could easily do that. She just saw money as security. Now, I would have said money is freedom. So I see money as opportunity to accomplish things you want to accomplish, to do the things you want to do, to be places you want to be. I see that as opportunity. But if she gave me the money or gave that to the trainer, at that gym, she was giving away safety. Okay? Now it turned out after we had a deeper conversation about money, was, oh, well, this is exactly how her mother thought about money. Her mother would not invest in her health either. She would not buy more expensive healthier foods. She wouldn't sign up for different things. Like, I think her mother smoked and wouldn't pay for anything to help her stop smoking, even though she knew she couldn't do it on her own.

Okay? So Sharon didn't value money more than her health. She just looked at it and said, I'm going to find the cheapest way. So she was more than willing to pay $15 a month because it's almost nothing to her for videos. But she had this cheap solution, and she didn't do it because it wasn't there. She also told me she'd pay $30 for diet pills at costco. Okay? We had talked about that earlier with her, and she said she's paying for these diet pills, but they're not working. So she's looking for another low cost, free, if you will, even solution. And honestly, I don't know that they're out there. She'll probably keep looking. Now, with most things, you get what you pay for. So again, video sessions that are $15, there are people who use those and they do phenomenally. So I'm not going to poo poo that. It is an investment for many people. It's a big investment. For her, it was not. She's looking for the cheap solution. And so when you're going to pay for something, you need to do your due diligence to make sure that you're getting what you paid for.

That's true, because you can get ripped off. But if you really want results, you should be willing to invest for them, okay? If you're going to hire someone to do something for you and you need to get it done, you could go with the cheapest price, but you might be getting the worst outcome. You're going to have someone repair something for you, somebody build something for you. You're going to buy something and you're like, oh, look, I can get this really wonderful Corvete for $10,000, and I see every other one that's that year. Well, those are 30,000 $40,000. So the question is, okay, what's that 10,000 buying you? And usually it's a limit of a car because it's not in good shape. It's not what you want it to be. So you have to be willing to make the right investment to get what you want. And a lot of people are not. Here's the other cool thing about investing in yourself. When you invest in yourself, you have skin in the game. Okay? What does that mean? That means you made a payment, you wrote a check, or you put a credit cards in.

You did that thing, and that money is gone. That money is not yours anymore. So guess what you're going to do? You're going to. Do the work, you're not going to pay a large amount of money and then not do the work. And when you do the work, you get the results. So don't go cheap in the sales. If this is important for you, if this is an important thing, like a true priority, then you're going to invest to make it happen. You're not paying for something. You're investing in yourself. And you have to look at it that way because change is hard. And if you're not willing to invest in yourself, it's probably not going to happen the way you want it to. So my challenge to you, don't be afraid to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make, okay? And it pays off, not just in the way you look and feel. Today I feel good. I got my workout done. That's great. I feel good that I'm eating well. That's great. But it's the health issues later. I'm sorry. Sharon's mother is in really bad shape.

She's spending a lot of money at the hospital and doctors and all this other stuff because she didn't invest in herself, she didn't invest in her health. So she's dealing with all the health issues around the things that she didn't invest to change, even though she said she wanted to, and she probably wanted to, really wanted to, but she just didn't invest. She wasn't willing to invest in herself. And as a result, she's not getting the payout. So invest in yourself, do the work, and you'll find change. So number five in our enemies of health and fitness, change is failure to act. Okay? And this is probably the biggest one. So Matthew and I, we got on a planning call, strategy call, and we went through all the things, but one of the first things he said to me was, I know what to do, I just don't do it. And I can respect that. I was in the same position for a long, long time. And even now there's some pulls on me sometimes to just not do what I know is the right thing to do. So that's a normal reaction, normal feeling.

Okay? Then he told me, he said he wanted me to ride him a program using the equipment that he already had. He didn't want to buy another membership. He didn't want to do anything, go anywhere else. He had a good equipment. He really had really good equipment. We'll talk about that in a second. But he was just super excited, okay? He had all this equipment, all this stuff. He's like, I want you to write me a program using this stuff. And so he took his phone because he was on his phone on this call and he video showed me his gym and man, it was pristine. It was beautiful, all this equipment. It was just new. Like all new, beautiful. Now the reason that was new, because Matthew never used it, matthew would buy a piece of equipment, and then it would sit there. So he bought a peloton. You remember those? They're still popular, but he bought a peloton, $2,000 on this bike. He's paying a membership with them every month. And he had this beautiful peloton. He read about it in an article, and he bought one. And then one of his coworkers told him about the smart mirrors.

Okay, so this is where you see your image, and then they tell you what to do and all this other stuff. And he had one of those, and he had free weights, and he had bands, and he had cables, and he had all this stuff. The guy had well over $10,000 worth of equipment in his basement. Jim, it was gorgeous. I loved it. In fact, I almost wanted to ask him if he wanted to sell it all to me, that I would give him a take it off his hands. But I knew that wasn't where I needed to go with Matthew. But the thought did occur to me that I would love to have his gym. Okay, anyway, I told Matthew that I would write him a program. I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do, and I'll do it for absolute free, okay? I said, Pick one piece of equipment that you enjoy doing, and I'll write you a program. And so he chose dumbbells. He said, I like the Dumbbells, so I like their different weights. I said, I've got the bench. I've got the whole thing. He says, So I know I can do a full body workout and get stronger using Dumbbells.

And it's simple, and I don't have to worry about it. And so I gave him right there, right there on the spot, I gave him five exercises, okay, so here's five exercises. And then when I log off the call, and I did follow through, I sent him a video describing each one of the exercises I was talking about. And then what I did was I said, okay, go do this workout, okay? Three sets of ten with these exercises. I'll send you the videos. I said, when you get done with this workout, the first time, message me, and then we can make some adjustments. Now, this was in his morning. It was my evening. We had this conversation, and I didn't hear from him that rest of that day or the next day. So I emailed him, and he didn't respond. I texted him again, crickets. Nothing. Now, what they call this in the industry, when you have a client and you're working with someone, it's called ghosting. So basically, Matthew ghosted me, okay? Now, usually when a client or potential client someone ghosts you, it's because they're embarrassed about something, okay? In this case, I'm pretty sure it was because Matthew didn't do the workout.

Normally, I wouldn't give out a workout, like know, I was like, okay, I'm doing something kind of I wouldn't do. We're having this planning call, but to I want something. I want you to feel something. I want you to do something. Because all Matthew really needed to do was to do it once. If he did the action once, he was much more likely to do the action again. He hadn't done the action, and that he didn't do the action. So without action, there was no change. Without action, there wasn't any feeling. There wasn't anything. And then probably the only feeling he had afterwards was a little bit of guilt, remorse, and maybe embarrassment that he didn't even do the workout I gave him, even though he had everything he needed in front of him, and I gave him roughly 48 hours to see if he would do it. He didn't do it. Okay, so have you read my best selling novel? No. Well, of course you haven't, because I haven't written it yet. Okay. I have stories in my head. I read things about writing stories and fiction, and occasionally I even jot down a few ideas and maybe a little bit of what I think would be in the book, what would be in the story.

But here's the thing. I'm not really committed to writing a novel, so I like the idea of being a novelist. I like the idea of writing a best selling novel. It all sounds cool, right? But I don't do the writing, and so I don't have a published novel. Now, health and fitness is the same way. If you want something, you have to do something. So you have to take action. If you want to improve your health and fitness, it takes action. This is not a thought process where you can think yourself healthy, think yourself fit. You need those things. You need to believe in yourself. You need to get past limiting beliefs. You have to do those other things we just talked about. But if you don't do something, don't act, you won't have okay? So here's my challenge to you. I want you to be an action taker, okay? This is what you do. You decide you want to work online, you want to do something. You want to make something happen, you do it, okay? Now, if someone decides they want to work with me online, I always tell them, I say, okay, well, I've got a couple of rules, okay?

I've got a couple of rules. And so one of the rules and you know this because of the podcast you're listening to, is you have to be over 40. I work with people over 40 online. So if you want to work with me online, you've got to be 40 or more, okay? The second thing I ask them is, are you an action taker? Because the thing is, if you're not an action taker, I can't help you. I don't have an easy button, but what I do have are some easier buttons, meaning I can help you make this easier. I can help you get results faster. I can help you get better results. I can help you avoiding some of the problems that people have at our age. But I can't do it for you. So you have to be the action taker. My challenge to you is, are you an action taker? Be an action taker. So with that, I just want to summarize a bit, and we want to get past these five enemies that are keeping you from changing your health and fitness. Remember, the first one was believing you can get different results doing the same thing.

To get change, you're probably going to have to change something, okay? And you probably in your head right now, can point to one, two, three, maybe more things that you're doing that are holding you back. And if you think I'll just keep doing these things, you're probably not going to get a different result than what you already have. The second one is self limiting beliefs. Now, if you don't believe that, you can change. If you don't believe that you can do this, you're right, you can't. So you have to find a way to get past the limiting beliefs. Easiest way I found is to set goals that are just outside of what you think and then do it. Make it a low hanging, make it easy, but do that first goal. Then make it a little bit harder and a little bit harder. Push yourself just past your limiting beliefs. Over time, those limiting beliefs will go away. You'll reset your bar, you'll reset your temperature, and you'll know, okay, yes, I can do this. I didn't think I could do it before, but I know I can do it now, and I know I can probably do more.

And I'm going to keep pushing. Okay? The other is staying inside your comfort zone. And so this is the deal where I see women come in, or men, and they see the circuit machines. They're like, oh, this is awesome. I can get really strong and feel good. And they go through all the circuit machines, setting the weights on the same weight every single time. That's their comfort zone. Now, are they getting change? Are they getting more fit? Are they getting more healthy? And the short answer is probably no. Basically, they're staying in their comfort zone, so they're just not seeing the results. So if you don't find yourself getting results, ask yourself, I'm doing the work, but I'm not seeing it. Are you staying in your comfort zone and just not pushing yourself to accomplish that change? The fourth reason we struggle with change in our health and fitness is an unwillingness to invest. Okay, you're either going to buy equipment or you're going to join a gym. You're either going to buy better food or you're going to eat what you can eat. If you're struggling with the concept of investing in yourself. You got to work on that.

I'm sorry, but this doesn't come from just doing the things the way you've always done them, eating the cheaper, less whole, lower quality food, saying, oh, well, it's not much cheaper for me to pick up a pizza than it is for me to actually eat whole food. I can feed my family on pizza a lot cheaper. We can eat mac and cheese. We can do these other things, and it's cheaper. I can do this workout at home, although I don't really have any equipment, and I can do it with my body weight, but then I'm not doing it again. It's really about, are you willing to invest? You may need something. I'm not going to say you don't. We can work with what you have, obviously, but you probably have to invest to make this happen the way you want it to. And when you're invested, you're committed. And when you're committed, you do the work. And when you do the work, you get things. So change takes work. It's often and typically takes investment. It's definitely going to take an investment of time and effort. And I find you get it faster, you get it better if you're willing to invest in yourself with money.

And then the final one in what makes change hard, the enemies of change in health and fitness. And that's just a failure to act. So if you're not willing to do the work, you're not going to get the results. People will be angry. They're like, oh, well, such and such is carrying $130,000 purse. And I'm like, So the guy's a professional basketball player. He works his butt off. He stays in shape. He does everything he had to do for his whole life up until the point he got put into the NBA. Now he has some genetic skills and things like that. Yeah, but the guy works his butt off, and he makes a ton of money. So to him, $130 purse, $130,000 purse, no big deal, okay? But he didn't get there by just coasting. He got there by acting, by doing. And so I'd say, if you want something and you want something big, you've got to act. You got to make it happen. So think through your journey. And I have a question. Have any of these enemies kept you back? Did you recognize some of these? Are some of these in your life today?

Or have they been in your life in the past? So I want you to take something away from this, okay? This was not just I don't know how long I've been on here, but the reality is I didn't just have this conversation with you for you to decide, oh, okay, that was great information. And then again, number five, failing to act. Okay? So I want you to do what's necessary to do what you need to do to change. You've got to get past yourself. You got to get out of your comfort zone, and you got to be willing to do the work and invest in yourself. And if you're willing to do that, when you're ready to do that, if you have any questions, I'm here for you. So please reach out. I'm here, but otherwise, again, get it done. These are the five enemies. If you're dealing with these enemies, break them down the way we talked about today, and I'll talk to you soon.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:15.300] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:45:17.830] – Coach Rachel

Hey, Allan. These five enemies of health and fitness changes are really a challenge. And I know because I'm a creature of habit, but I also love change. I do a lot that when something's not working, of course I change it. But I can see how these different kind of ideas are just what's holding people back. And I guess one of my favorites, as you know, I love talking about mindset is the self limiting beliefs. I mean, right there, that's a hard stop. If you just can't believe that you can do something, then it's done for you've got no hope.

[00:45:55.040] – Coach Allan

Yeah, change is already hard. I mean, we're not wired for it. We're wired to find a consistent pattern where we can walk through places we're familiar and we can just be there. We can be in a familiar place because then it's really easy to notice the things that are different. But when we start to initiate change on our own, it's hard. What happens then is these different things that get in your way, like limiting beliefs. You can say you want to change, but if you don't believe that you can change, then you won't. I didn't get this for a long, long time because, like you, I'm very tolerant to change. I've lived all over the United States. I've lived in live in foreign countries. Things change, and things go on, and you're like, okay, what can I control? What can I not control? But even within that, there's a serenity prayer of hey, grant me this, to do the that it's about looking for the things you can control and kind of letting the rest of it go. But if you don't believe you can control yourself, then what can you control?

[00:47:18.010] – Coach Rachel

Right? The thing with self limiting beliefs, too, is that we're so ingrained to kind of hold ourselves still, like you said, to stay in our comfort zone, to do what's comfortable. But I just want to call people out to just question that belief in the running world where I see it, we've got people that. And I used to do it. I used to think I could never run a five K, which is 3 miles. And I just thought that was the most impossible task. But if you can just stop with that thought and really think about it for a second, well, why do you feel that way? And you've seen it with your clients. You've had people that say, well, I can't lose that 20 pounds or I can't do this at the gym or take this class, but you just got to pause and really question yourself. Why do you think that?

[00:48:12.970] – Coach Allan

Yeah, it's interesting. I haven't talked about this a whole lot on the podcast, but during my vacation, I guess it was still during my vacation back in September, we finished up a week, know, Mexico at a timeshare. It was all inclusive. And then I just, I'm going to, I'm going to take a break from alcohol. And right now that was about a month and a half ago and I still haven't gone back to drinking any alcohol. And I go out with my friends and they look at me like I'm a space alien. How on earth can you do this crazy thing of not drinking alcohol? Especially sitting in a bar with hundreds of other people all drinking alcohol? And so I just order a club soda and I drink my club soda and it's really that thing of saying I'm in control of me in the instant you tell yourself, but I need this to do that, or I want that to do this or I could never, or I can't. You're hearing those words in your head, you're telling yourself that it's not true. Yeah, it's not true. And so if you're struggling with something, yes, this is going to be hard.

[00:49:39.910] – Coach Allan

This is not an easy change is not easy. That's one of the core things I want people to take away from this is that you can't keep doing what you're doing. You can't let these limiting beliefs stop you. You can't stay in your comfort zone and expect change. Okay. It sounds simple, but this is the hardest thing you're going to do. If you truly have weight that you want to lose or you want to build a fitness level or you want to do these things and the things you have done to date have not gotten you there, you're going to have to do something different.

[00:50:19.270] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:50:20.120] – Coach Allan

Okay. And to make that something that you can keep doing, it has to be sustainable. And for it to be sustainable, you got to get yourself doing it. It sounds like this crazy paradox of how do I if I can't and it's like eating the elephant one bite at a time. You just do a little bit more and a little bit more. Get outside that comfort zone, do a little bit of pushing, believe in yourself.

[00:50:46.670] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:50:47.330] – Coach Allan

And if you're struggling with any of that, invest don't just sit back and say, yeah, I do these workouts online. They stream them to me. YouTube this and Pilates that and they're great, but I don't do them. Yeah, so you can say you do them, but then you say, well, when's the last time you did it? It's like, well I did it. Well, I guess the 1 September I started was a Monday and I did this, and then I did it on Wednesday, and then I skipped Friday because of this, and I've never done it again. And so, no, you don't actually do those videos. You did two of them. Be real with yourself. You did two of them. You don't do them. You liked them, but you didn't like them enough to keep doing them, and you didn't do them long enough to see results. So you went back to your comfort zone. You went back to your normal habits. You went back to living the lifestyle you were, which got you where you are. And that's cool. I don't want to diss anyone that says, okay, I'm happy with where I am. But if you listen and you're still listening to this podcast, you want to change some things.

[00:51:59.270] – Coach Allan

And so you got to do the work. You got to do what's necessary to make that happen, for sure.

[00:52:07.530] – Coach Rachel

And that kind of brings me almost to the next one, the getting out of your comfort zone, as well as willingness to invest in that, taking that next step and doing something that's different is intimidating. But if you could meet with your friends or if you hire a trainer even, or go to the gym and talk to the people there, I mean, it's good to learn something new, because you never know, you might like it. You might go to the gym and take, like you said, a Pilates class or the spin class or I recently took not a tai chi class, something I never would have done on my own, but I went with a friend, and I really enjoyed myself. I mean, try something new and see if it sticks. And you mentioned being surrounded by people who are not drinking or are drinking alcohol while you're not. This is a good chance for you to go inwards and to really focus on yourself and decide, what do you really want? If you did those home videos and it didn't stick because maybe you didn't like them, I mean, it was fun in the moment, but it didn't stick, maybe you need to find something else that would stick, something maybe sign up for a series of classes, like I said, and see how that goes.

[00:53:19.740] – Coach Rachel

But you just need to find something that you love.

[00:53:22.580] – Coach Allan

Yeah, a lot of people, they have the advice. They say, what exercise should I do? And the answer is always the one you will exactly just find something you enjoy. And I think as a starter, that's often a really good advice. You can't just keep doing that. So you can't say, well, I really enjoyed doing that 30 minutes online video thing. Well, you can do that online video thing, and you can do it three, four, five times a week. But if you're not getting what you want, then you might need to do a little bit more or a little bit different. And so this is not a one and done. And you don't have to think about it that way. We don't have to get from A to Z in one jump. There's 24 other letters in the alphabet. And so it's just, okay, if that 30 minutes thing is your B, then you went from A to B, and then you got the B, and now you're like, okay, I'm comfortable with B, now I'm going to do C, right? And you start working your way through, and you stack these habits, and you stack these activities, and eventually you start putting this intrinsically into you.

[00:54:34.390] – Coach Allan

It's like, I don't even think about it. Yes. Someone comes around and says, Would you like a beer? Because people are buying buckets of beer, and they're sitting there with a bucket of beer, and they see me standing there with nothing. They're like, Would you like a beer? And so I have to, at that point, realize who I am, why I'm doing what I'm doing, what it means to me, and say no. I said no. I said, thank you, but no. And I had to do that dozens and dozens of times last night because everybody wanted to offer me a drink because I was weird for being in a bar not drinking. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay outside my I have to be outside my comfort zone. I have to know my limiting beliefs of, oh, okay, if I think that I can't do this and someone offers me a beer, I'm going to take it. Well, I got to get past that limiting belief because if I don't, then every time we go out, there's going to be some offer. I have one friend, we went out to dinner right after I got back, and I said he's like, do you want to split a wine?

[00:55:43.200] – Coach Allan

We used to just yeah, that's what we do. We all go to dinner, and he'd be like, okay. Because our wives would do the white wine. They'd split a bottle of white wine. He's like, you want to split a bottle of red? And I had to say no. And he said, well, what happened to my bottle splitter? So I had to have that conversation with, that's not how I'm choosing to go right now. So ordered his bottle of red, and we went on with our night. The next time we went out, he's sitting there wanting to order a bottle of red wine, and he's like, you want to split a red? I'm like, not really. And he's like, okay. He found someone else to split that bottle of red with, and he was fine. They were fine, and I was fine. But again, I'm not going to say it's not uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to tell your friend no. It's uncomfortable to be in an environment where everybody's drinking and you're not. It's uncomfortable to go for a run. It's uncomfortable to stop eating the things it's there. It's delicious. It's going to give you that hit.

[00:56:42.180] – Coach Allan

You're going to feel great for a moment, then you're going to feel miserable, either because physically or because emotionally, you're going to feel guilt and shame and all these other things about food. Whereas you could say, this doesn't serve me. This does not serve me. I'm done doing it. I'm a different person. I see myself. I don't have this limit where I have to do something. I'm a grown ass man. I can do what I want to do.

[00:57:11.520] – Coach Rachel

Right. You're an adult. Make your own decisions.

[00:57:14.820] – Coach Allan

Exactly. And so just realize that change is hard and it's going to take some time and effort. It's going to take action. This is not something you passively do.

[00:57:28.880] – Coach Rachel

Right. And that was the last thing I wanted to chat about before we leave, is the failure to act. I think that's where people get paralyzed the most because we have so many different information and advice floating around us all day long. Do this exercise, eat in this manner, this diet, that diet, or whatever, and we get paralyzed. Too many decisions, too many things to do. Just pick, just do something, make a plan and do it. Don't be stuck with that failure to act. Don't be bombarded and confused by what's out there. Just make a decision and do it.

[00:58:07.150] – Coach Allan

Make your lunch for tomorrow.

[00:58:09.110] – Coach Rachel

There you go. One thing.

[00:58:10.860] – Coach Allan

One thing. I'm going to start making my lunch and taking my lunch. Okay. Or it can be, I'm going to eat a whole food meal tomorrow. Easiest one for me to do would be breakfast.

[00:58:21.810] – Coach Rachel

Sure.

[00:58:22.780] – Coach Allan

So my whole food meal tomorrow is breakfast.

[00:58:25.970] – Coach Rachel

And that's a great way to think about it. It's the easiest meal of the day to prepare.

[00:58:30.590] – Coach Allan

Pick one and then the other things are looking for ways to make that as easy as possible. So I saw someone online the other day, and it was a business thing. It wasn't even a diet thing. It was a business thing. And the guy said, I have the same thing for breakfast every single day. And it was literally three boiled eggs and then some blueberries and strawberries. That was his breakfast, okay. Every day. And he said he just makes it easy on himself because he doesn't even have to think about it. He has the boiled eggs and the fruit already in his refrigerator. He got to a point where he was ready to eat his breakfast. He went in, he pulled those things out, he sat down, and he showed the breakfast. He said, I eat the same thing, so I don't have to think about know, Steve Jobs used to wear the same sweatshirt, and as a result, so does Mark Zuckerberg, is what I've heard. Basically, they wear the same thing every day. So it's not like they go in their closet and, hmm, what am I going to wear today? They know, grab a hoodie.

[00:59:33.070] – Coach Allan

Grab your jeans and just put them. So make it as easy for yourself as possible, because, again, change is hard. Decisions are hard. But if you're going to do one thing, then put all of it together. Make it where you won't fail. Make it where it's easy, where it's overwhelming odds in your favor. And the more you can do that, the more that thing is going to stick. And once that sticks, it's like, okay, what's the next thing? A. Then to B, then to C. Eventually you'll find yourself at Z. You'll probably find yourself at Z, and it will have felt like a journey, but it's not something you do today. We can't beam ourselves to Z from A. We've got to go through each of those letters. We got to do each of those things. And if you don't try to stack too much of it on your plate at one time, it becomes overwhelming, and you're much less likely to make it. Some people do. Some people sit there and say, I'm changing everything today. Woke up at rock bottom, and I'm changing everything. They blend up that smoothie that morning. They go for a run, they come back in, they shower.

[01:00:39.590] – Coach Allan

They do everything right, and they can do that. I'm not one of those people, and I don't know if you are either, but it's just one of those things of saying, hey, I got to change what I can change in the order. I can change it the easiest way I can change it. But if change is important to you, really important to you, you do that. That's what you do.

[01:01:02.470] – Coach Rachel

Absolutely. Yep. This was great, Alan. Really great information and insights that we could use.

[01:01:08.710] – Coach Allan

All right, well, I will talk to you next week.

[01:01:11.100] – Coach Rachel

Great. Take care, Alan.

[01:01:12.570] – Coach Allan

You, too. Bye.

[01:01:13.650] – Coach Rachel

Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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