Discover the thin line that separates the excuses we make from the stark reality of our actions with co-host, Sustainable Anti-Diet Coach Zach Lloyd. In this thought-provoking discussion, we peel back the layers of self-deception that often hinder our health and fitness aspirations, stressing the power of self-awareness and the necessity of setting achievable exercise benchmarks. Listen closely as we delve into strategies for ensuring consistent progress—even through life's inevitable upheavals—and why a burst of intense physical activity could be the secret ingredient to revitalizing your wellness journey.
Connect with Zach:
Zach's website here
Get a free resource: End Calorie Counting Toolkit here
Follow Zach on IG: @zachlloydcoaching
Connect with Stephanie:
Get a free resource The 4G Method Journal here.
Shop Stephanie's books here.
Follow me on IG: @Giving_Gal or FB/GivingGal
Discover the thin line that separates the excuses we make from the stark reality of our actions with co-host, Sustainable Anti-Diet Coach Zach Lloyd. In this thought-provoking discussion, we peel back the layers of self-deception that often hinder our health and fitness aspirations, stressing the power of self-awareness and the necessity of setting achievable exercise benchmarks. Listen closely as we delve into strategies for ensuring consistent progress—even through life's inevitable upheavals—and why a burst of intense physical activity could be the secret ingredient to revitalizing your wellness journey.
Connect with Zach:
Zach's website here
Get a free resource: End Calorie Counting Toolkit here
Follow Zach on IG: @zachlloydcoaching
Connect with Stephanie:
Get a free resource The 4G Method Journal here.
Shop Stephanie's books here.
Follow me on IG: @Giving_Gal or FB/GivingGal
Hey friends, it's Stephanie here with the Giving your Best Life podcast and I am back with my friend.
Speaker 2:Zach Lloyd, Sustainable Anti-Diet Coach.
Speaker 1:Wonderful and today. So on the last episode, we talked about a lot of things. I loved it there were a lot of good nuggets. If you haven't listened to it, go back, listen to the last episode. But one thing that we touched on a little bit was excuses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, touched on a little bit was excuses yeah, and zach, in the work that you do with health, fitness, food, working out, I bet you don't hear any excuses. Yeah, none whatsoever. Yeah, try all the time. Yeah, I think a good entry point to this is something that I actually just had a conversation with somebody recently was they had an extremely challenging, stressful week and it was not just a work thing, it was a work and then like family, and then it just collided all right, and they've been on a really good path for, I would say, at least the last eight months of of, and what I mean by good path is they've been consistently making progress, moving forward with their nutrition, their training and overall health, and they found themselves going to the candy bowl regularly. I do that, you've done that. Huh, yeah, so have I. Oh, yeah, so have I, but it was actually a really interesting place because they felt like they were going back to last week's conversation, falling off the horse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I explained to them wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have like eight months now of a lot of evidence that you've been not only doing really well but progressing over time Right, and there is a reason that you're doing that. And the number one thing that I thought was fascinating was she was aware of it oh yeah, which most people aren't aware of it.
Speaker 2:so that even told me and reinforced the feeling that I had was this is more of like that was a tough week situation versus I'm like going down a dark road, I'm losing everything and like having that mentality.
Speaker 1:Like catastrophizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You said a couple of good things is one it's so interesting that we can forego and throw away eight months for one bad week Like we were talking about that last week of like beating ourselves up. And it goes back to the mindset that we have to have, which I love that she recognized it, which that's one thing that we want to talk about today is you have to learn to get real with yourself, and one, I think stop lying to yourself about the excuses that you're making, right, whatever, I mean, what are some things that you hear people like they're lying to themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, and to wrap that up too, it's like she thought she was making excuses, but in that case she really wasn't Right. There was a solid reason for having a different outcome that week, and then the proof is in the pudding the start of this week is it different? And it already started different? And the the issues that she was struggling with. She's basically mentally gotten through most of those and isn't having that high level of emotion emitting out, causing these behaviors that we don't prefer to see right over time. Right, so I think that's important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a good point is okay, because I love to like dive right in of like you're making excuses, because I make excuses, like we were just talking about that. I was supposed to write it five hours this week. I wrote three and a half and I could come in here and give zach a big long excuses, but I had the extra hour and a half. I chose not to use another hour and a half to write. But your write is one. You have to really start to know yourself and ask yourself, like is this an excuse or is this reality? Like is this a hard week? I've got family stuff, I've got kid stuff, I've got work stuff or whatever. Or doing a time evaluation and going no, yeah, right, I had the time. I'm lying to myself, yeah, and I think that's a good question. We always love to give you guys like a couple of questions that you can ask yourself. I think that's a good question.
Speaker 1:We always love to give you guys like a couple of questions that you can ask yourself, and one is if you're, you know, like you think you're falling off the horse or you have that bad week of working out or not doing what you're supposed to with your goals, is asking yourself is this an excuse or is this reality?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I like that framing. Do you have another like anything else that you would add, like, as you're talking through your clients, especially when it comes to like eating healthy, getting your workouts in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I think so, for instance with with time, and people will come back and say, well, I didn't have time on this day because x, y and z name of the excuses right, right, so, and sometimes it's like it's murky water, because sometimes the excuse is partially valid, partially, partially not. So instead of like evaluating all of our excuses all the time, I like having a minimum viable. Almost nothing can get in the way of you doing this workout, right, and then we expand on. Maybe the goal is to have a 30 minute workout with things being written out, blah, blah, blah, blah. But instead of just foregoing the entire 30 minute workout, you did something for five or ten minutes, and it depends on the person or what that is. But I mean, there's a lot of research too that shows like just a 10 minute vigorous exercise right like changes your brain chemistry, actually stimulates muscle mass and can change your mindset completely.
Speaker 2:So it's not a waste of time and it's not one of those things where you can say, well, I don't have the 30 minutes, so I'm just not going to do it. Instead, you have that minimum viable. Okay, every day I have a movement goal and there's like what I would like to do and then what I'm working towards, and then also at the minimum, this is what I always do and that's powerful because once you get a couple of those days in, you don't have that falling off the horse feeling necessarily as often.
Speaker 1:Right, because you're checking that off. What is the balance between? I love this because you know last episode I was talking about like this 15 minute cycle. I will tell myself just right for 15 minutes, and that's kind of my minimum. If I sit down, it's 15 minutes and that's kind of my minimum. If I sit down, it's 15 minutes. But what is the like? How do you get to the 30 minutes? Because do you then start to go well, 10 minutes is enough, or I can't find, you know, 30.
Speaker 1:Is there ever that struggle where now you find somebody that, oh, I'm getting the 10 minutes in but I'm never getting to like what the goal is or what you know they actually have time to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I would say it's usually something along the lines of they are they. They say they have a goal of getting to that 30 minutes, but really it's a goal that somebody else placed on them, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Where, like in social media, you see these things and like you'll just randomly be like oh, that looks like a good idea and attempt it without actually sitting back and creating like awareness around, like what's your environment? Actually, like proper goal setting and then realizing well, that works for that person, but that's not necessarily going to work for me, right, and I think that's where people really fall into, that of like may hit 10 minutes but they can't keep going because it was really set by somebody else. And I see this in coaching all the time, and I did this early on my career.
Speaker 2:I would set people's goals for them, which is one of the biggest mistakes and like red flags that you're not dealing with the coach that really understands human psychology, because it'll, nine times out of ten, not only fail but crash and burn right. And then the other side of that is the client will feel 10 times worse about themselves because they'll take the failure and own it, even though it was really the goal that the coach set. So they shouldn't be owning that failure because they didn't set those goals right, and that's that's something to be aware of.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good thing, is like we do live in this society of like things of the world or like things of the spirit, things in that.
Speaker 1:And so going back to of going, which I think you can get into, people pleasing you know you hire a client, you want to please that client, then you feel guilty, like you're setting your you're, you're trying to invest in yourself, to do make yourself better, and then you're getting into a bad, which that's why I always say is like, make sure you vet your coaches that you're working with Like for me, I have three or four certifications Like I went through a lot of training, I have a background, even though coaching and counseling are very, very different, so make sure that your coach understands the difference between those um.
Speaker 1:But you too, like you've got a lot of the certifications and the um, like you've put the work and time in and I think now we do live in a society where a lot of people don't have any of that, but they're portraying themselves as something. We're listening to them as experts which I even find myself doing that on social media. Like somebody will put something out and I will pause and go wait, go like look a little bit about them, like what's their history, what's their experience?
Speaker 2:What have they?
Speaker 1:done Like do they have education?
Speaker 2:Like what's their clients? I don't know Anyway.
Speaker 1:so that got us off on a little bit of a tangent. Yeah, it's a good point though it's helpful. Yeah, so I want to go back in a little bit to this of like the friction between this like 10 minutes and the 30 minutes and I got to thinking about priorities. It really does go back to and I've talked on previous episodes Zach and I talked about when we started, our accountability is you really have to go? Is health, fitness, eating well, taking care of myself, a priority?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that might be an excuse, you're making yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is yeah it is. And then my guess is, they come to you and you're like you're never doing more than 10 minutes but you're spending the money to work out with me. So is there something that you do to help people like think about the time that they have and like dive into? Is this really a priority for?
Speaker 2:you or not in your life. Yeah, yeah, like we're saying about time, it's one of those things where, if they're not willing to commit a substantial amount of time to just starting to change their behaviors, that's usually a good sign. It's not a top priority, and that's actually pretty common in personal training, because someone even not purposely doing this, but hires the personal trainer to do the work for them. And unfortunately it doesn't work like that right? I mean it sounds nice, but we're not there yet.
Speaker 2:So I would say it's it's more about talking about what are you willing to give up to get there? And then what does that look like for the given person? And and like some people, it's a very substantial amount of things that they have to change or give up and walking them through like what does that look like? And envisioning the new person that they could become, and that's a scary thing to do. And then you also have, for instance, a spouse that wants to change and another spouse that doesn't want to change it.
Speaker 2:So it's like okay, how do I change my environment if my spouse doesn't want to change the environment? And that's another challenging.
Speaker 1:Oh, that sounds like a good topic.
Speaker 1:Like you can dive into it, because it is hard when you've got like family members and you're cooking and eating and like there's a bunch of things that go into it. I do like the well, I don't know if I like the idea, but really is going back to getting honest with yourself of the excuses, of the reality, of oh no, I'm going to have to give up stuff, and I think that something that isn't talked about enough is there is always this exchange right, you know, you've got 24 hours in a day and so it is painful to give up stuff. But that's why I always say is it's why a lot of people don't accomplish the goals that God set for them, because they want to sit in comfort, yeah, yeah and it's funny because your friend, chad Wright, puts this really well.
Speaker 2:I just love the framing, so I'm going to steal this from him in the sense that, like, uh, long distance running, if, if you're a beginner, the first mile is going to be really challenging, right, but like, let's say, you've been running for a little while and you go to a race and it's like a 10 mile race. Well, depending on the person, the work doesn't start till the sixth or the seventh or the eighth or the ninth mile, because you've been there before until it starts sucking and you're totally suffering and you get those thoughts of I want to be done I want to quit.
Speaker 2:I want to be doing something else. That's when the actual work starts, yeah, and it's mental work, and it's mental work, yeah right, it's mental work, yeah Right. And I think that speaks to what you're talking about. Is that friction that takes place and, like the 10 minute workout may have started out being that? I hate this. I don't want to do this. This is not for me.
Speaker 2:I want to quit but eventually it'll turn into 10 minutes or 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and then that's where it gets fascinating, because all of us will have a choice. No, that's where it gets fascinating, because all of us will have a choice. No matter how fit or healthy you are, you're always going to hit that, and there's a substantial amount of people that think you need to keep pushing at some point. I don't know if that's necessarily true. That's an interesting conversation to have, but having a general baseline of health and fitness, in there there has to be friction or else you're not really moving the needle, there has to be friction, or else you're not really moving the needle.
Speaker 1:And I think on the other side of that friction, if you never experience it like that, for me I mean that's a great point that you bring up with Chad is, I can remember I set a goal to do the Disney Princess Challenge, which is a 5K, one day a 10K, the next day a half marathon. The third day I did not train. The farthest I had run was four miles. I know signed up to do something stupid, and day one was fine. Yeah, it was a 5k. It was miserable, though it was in florida, it was cold, it was like 30 degrees.
Speaker 1:It was pouring down rain. I had to leave my hotel like three in the morning and after that 5k I was like I'm not, it was pouring down rain. I had to leave my hotel at like 3 in the morning and after that 5K I was like I'm not going back for the 10K. This sucked.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that's when you have to determine, though of, okay, it sucked, can you do it again? And I was like I paid all this money, I'm down here, so we go through this whole, through this whole thing. In the morning the 10K sucked again and I had convinced myself I'd done two thirds of it. But you have to get in yourself up. There does have to be like that internal fire of am I a quitter? I've come all this way, I've set this goal, am I going to give up on myself now? Why not at least go to that start line? And I will tell you that third day for that half marathon, which I also, I like that like minimum for me in running. It has always been, except I do have a one exception race is I will not walk. Because when you tell yourself if you're thinking about, if you tell yourself, if you allow yourself to walk, if you have not planned, that and some people have a run-walk trial, but if you allow yourself to walk, you've given up mentally.
Speaker 2:The race is over.
Speaker 1:You've given up mentally, and so what I told myself is okay, my standard of doesn't matter how slow you go in this half marathon, and I had a great half marathon Like I ran it, I didn't hardly hurt, I enjoyed it, and that is the power of your mind, though. And that was a reward too Like how you felt like that when I finished it, friends. It's like one of my favorite pictures, because you've got a medal after each day.
Speaker 1:And then the third day, if you finish all three of them, you have this big medal. And I was just like it wasn't about the medals, but it's the fact of you have a choice, like I had a choice not to give up on myself. I had a choice to get to that line and I could have made excuses. I haven't trained, I'm out of shape, it's three o'clock in the morning that I have to get up, it's raining, it's cold.
Speaker 1:Like those are all excuses, right, but when you can do those things that get you outside of your comfort zone, to that six mile, seven mile, and then you do it, you create this mindset when that next battle comes up, I have so many things in my life that I can go back to and go. No, you push through that. You can do it again, again. But if you're always in this comfort zone, you are never creating that up. Oh wait, I did this 10 miles. Or you know what? I showed up for eight months in a row. Like I'm so proud of your client that did that, because now she has it in her to go. Wait, I've done eight months, yeah.
Speaker 2:You have evidence that you can fall back on, and that's why I think just starting is the hardest thing because you don't have much evidence at that point. Just starting is the hardest thing, because you don't have much evidence at that point.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So starting is the hardest thing potentially, and once you start building up more evidence, you have something mentally to fall back on. So when it gets hard, which is going to get hard again, you have something to fall back on. And why is that situation any different? It's not. It's not.
Speaker 1:We can tell ourselves.
Speaker 2:It is, but it's really not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one last thing I want to touch on is you talked? About, like people think, because they hire a coach whether it's me who's working with you on your books, or your goals, or your mindset, or you who like health, fitness, mindset, like all that stuff is you're going to do the work?
Speaker 2:for them.
Speaker 1:Like, okay, I've got a coach now and I always tell people when I was a track coach I could help you with the plan. I show up at the track, but, girls, you're the one that has to run around and do the training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would see, from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, of the girls who showed up and practice hard, the girls that did their weekend running or whatever, like you, could see the results and I always love that to go. I could stand on the sidelines and yell and cheer and be that accountability which we are as coaches, but unless that girl was doing the work, is she either saw the results?
Speaker 2:or she did it. Yeah Right, yeah, you can't avoid the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah and we want to. Yeah, you can't avoid the work. Yeah and we want to yeah. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. We want to avoid the work, so, uh, I think we'll end on that today.
Speaker 2:Great conversation, uh if you have any topics that you want.
Speaker 1:Zach and I to dive into or have a conversation about. We're happy to do so. Just reach out to one of us and, at the end of the day, no-transcript.