The Hidden Layers of Fitness: Mastering Mindset and Self-Belief with Adam Badger

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 355, the Hidden Layers of Fitness, Mastering Mindset and Self Belief with Adam Badger. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. It's Chris Little here and we are back for another episode. So today I am really excited for you to hear Beverly's conversation with the one and only Adam Badger. Adam's been in the fitness industry for over a decade and in that time he's gone beyond just the physical aspects of training to really dive into the mental and emotional barriers that hold people back from reaching their full potential. In this episode, Adam shares his journey from being a conventional personal trainer to becoming a coach who specializes in breaking down self limiting beliefs, managing stress and falling fostering a mindset that leads to lasting change. So if you are a coach or trainer who's ever struggled with helping your clients stay consistent or get past their mental blocks, you are going to get a ton of value out of this discussion. Adam's approach is all about mastering the mind to achieve the body. And I'm confident that his insights will resonate with you and your practice. So without further ado, here's Beverly's conversation with with Adam Badger.

What's up, Adam? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you?

I'm doing very well. So right before I hit record, I'm so well. First of all, I'm so excited to dive into today's episode. It's going to be so fun. I can already tell that we are going to just really get into some awesome things. I had to quickly hit record because we were realizing you can't hear this or you can't see this if you're listening to it, but we're matching because we are already, already feeling the fall season come upon us. And for me, I'll speak for me that I am sad about it. I am holding every moment I possibly can to summer.

Yeah, I was talking to one of my clients about it, actually. I don't dislike fall. I just don't like that it means summer's over and winter's coming. So if it was just like I had, I had summer and then it went to fall for like four months and then went back to spring, I would be good. But knowing like you're in New York too, knowing that the snow is coming and that the, the bone chilling cold is coming just makes me very upset.

It is so true. I mean for me is, I just wish that we could have, I mean, I'm with you on this, right. If we could have fall and summer and even spring, I'd take.

Spring is good. Yeah.

Yeah. But I start to notice that the sun goes down a little bit earlier and it just starts to feel sad.

And I'm still, I'm sure we'll get into this too, but I'm still like a 4am wake up person during the week. So like during the summer around five, you know, five o', clock, the sun's already starting to peak, peak out. And then now it's like, you know, six o' clock in the morning, it's still dark out. So it's very brutal.

So sad and it's so sad. I'm, I'm just a sun person. Right. I just, I love it, I love it, I love it. Anyway, okay, so let's go ahead and dive in. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time and have not been introduced to your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Yeah, absolutely. So my name's Adam Badger. I've been a personal trainer and in the fitness industry for over 10 years now. So for the last 10 years I've have not made $1 income that was not directly related to being a coach. So full time living for the last 10 years. Right now my business is mainly online. It's mainly focused on, you know, it started off like every other fitness business. Oh, I can help you get in shape, I can help you lose weight. And I, over the years, just through my personal development and working with the, the style of clients that I work with, I've been diving a lot deeper into the mindset and defeating self sabotage and managing stress and how that affects your ability to stay consistent with these healthy habits. So a lot of the work I do now is very one on one conversational based, helping people identify and then break all these like self limiting beliefs they have in their head around who they are, what they're, what they're capable of. So I hate to use this term, but it's definitely become a Bit more life coaching with nutrition and fitness as the vehicle to get there.

I love this, I love this for so many reasons and I'm just curious because I'll share with, I'll be happy to share with you my experience with this. But I'm curious, how did this come up, how did you, what caused you to start really diving deeper in this realm?

So client wise? I'm very, I don't know what the word for it is because I am very open, but that's not what I'm getting at. I'm very inviting, I guess to have deep conversations and people have, feel comfortable opening up to me, especially clients. So just over the years I just, you know, conversations with clients just naturally started to gear towards what are they going through in their day to day life, you know, their job, their relationships, what was their childhood like? So the, the, the, the direction that way with my coaching kind of started to happen naturally. But for me personally, becoming a dad and having my own business, those two big life journeys forced me to confront a lot of my own shit. And I started doing that deeper mindset work, meditation therapy, like, like really digging into traumas and triggers and self limiting beliefs and noticing behavior patterns and confronting them. And that's been really deep into that. And over the last probably, probably 2ish years of where I've been really doing that work on myself. And a lot of my coaching has been just sharing those principles with clients and helping them relate it to their weight loss, to their workouts. And then it naturally turns into, you know, helping people find new careers, helping people get through breakups, helping people get through divorces or you know, these big, you know, family, family events. So like, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Not necessarily tragedies but like confrontations they're having with their parents that maybe they're in their 40s, they never had before and they're like, why am I feeling all these things all of a sudden? Right. So not to go. Yeah, I'm kind of rambling at that point. But, but doing that deeper work on myself made me realize that there's way more to this than just programming workouts and giving people food, food group cheat sheets and meal templates.

Which it's so true. So you mentioned your dad. How old are your kids?

I have a three and a half year old son and a three month old daughter.

Oh my gosh. Congratulations.

Thank you. So.

How terrible. Just kidding.

No, no, we're, we're, we're in the thick of it right now. We are in the thick of it. We're deep into the toddler stage. We're still in the newborn stage. So we're in the toddler stage and the newborn stage. Right. At the same time, transitioning from one kid to two kids was, was really a really big transition. Really difficult. Just managing, spreading out your emotions and, and your attention. And keep in mind too, I, I know a lot of coaches listen to this, like, so I'm also the, the provider, so. And I have my own business, so I work from home. My wife, she coaches some women on, on who have trouble conceiving. She works with a lot of women trying to conceive, but it's not her full time job thing. She used to be a teacher and she's, she's resigned from being a teacher. So we're like, we're like in the trenches with parenting. Like, we don't use daycare, we don't use a babysitter or a nanny. So it's just from the moment I wake up, it's just trying to get everything in work, you know, workouts, food, kids stuff, naps. Not for me and my wife, but for our kids, it's a lot.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. So I'm, I'm laughing, but also not. I'm with you. Okay. So my laugh is just because I understand my daughters are now, now one's turning nine in just a few weeks and then my other one just turned seven, but I had two under two. And that transition, holy moly. Like, no one can prepare you for that. I mean, we. Not only is one kid to two kid, just the transition of a lifetime, it's also, you know, you have two different human beings and personalities that you're managing.

Yeah.

That you're like, I did not have this before. And then, you know, my husband does shift work and so he was just, it was just me for long periods of time. Anyway. Long. All that to say you are in the thick of it. But good news, because this means you can help your clients because you are literally in the trenches in it with you, with them.

So, yes.

The reason, the reason I asked you, you know, what brought you to this, because I'll just share for me, when I was coaching, you know, as a fitness manager and I noticed this even in my clients, right. There's only so far you can get with strategy and system. Because it's like, here, do this. And then they come to you week after week and you have to ask yourself, well, why aren't you doing it?

Yeah.

Not because you're not disciplined or you're not hardworking because you just described to me your schedule. So it's not that you can't do hard. Yeah, people are just not present to the, to the real reason why they're not actually staying consistent.

Yeah, yeah, no. And I feel like there's, you know, there's the hierarchy of the things you need to make progress in any area is you need your principles in place first and then you can have tactics and tools to help you. But most people, when it comes to their nutrition and their fitness, they just don't have principles in place. They just have a ton of tactics and tools that they've looked up over the years and they, they're just like kind of pulling out tools randomly. I'll try this, I'll try that, I'll try this. But they don't understand like the principle of what they're doing or, or why they're doing it. So that's why when I'm working with clients, one of the first things I have them do is take, I have this exercise that have them do and they have to really describe their ideal self and how they want to be showing up in life. And then from that they have to pull out what are the three to five core value traits of that version of themselves. And that sets the table for how are we gonna even start approaching nutrition and training? Because if you tell me, you know, a core value of yours is I set a good example for my kids and then it's day three and you're telling me that you're getting discouraged and you wanna give up because you know, you, the scale didn't drop £5 yet. I'm like, okay, well is that setting a good example for your kids? Like we're getting those principles in place first. And again, a lot of this stuff has just come throughout the years of going, you know, why, why is this person, like, this person, this client A, I hear from once a week on their check in and they're just, they're checking all their boxes, they're doing everything, they're very self sufficient and in client B, can't make it through like 24 hours without, you know, throwing in the towel. And if you looked at them on paper, they might be same age range, same, you know, gender, same amount of kids, similar work schedule. So what is the differentiating factor between these two people? And it always comes down to what are these stories that we tell ourselves? What are these self limiting beliefs? And again, I've had to confront a lot of that in my life too, because as someone who's has a coaching business and has been doing that for a while, I've been through business mentorships where I've been exposed to other coaches who were maybe my age or younger, and they're maybe making a ton more than me, or they have a ton more followers or they have a bigger audience. And I. And I would have to confront those things, like, what it. You know, and I say this very humbly. There were some people who are like, oh, yeah, I get it. You're really good at this. And there was other people, I was like, I don't get it. Like, I'm know that I'm, you know, I know that I'm more experienced, and I know that I'm better at this than this once, like, this specific, specific person. Like, what's the differentiating factor? And for me, it was always how I was approaching my business, my mindset, my emotions around it. So, again, people, when it comes to their nutrition and their fitness, the emotions they have around that process is gonna dictate, like, how they're approaching it, which is gonna dictate how successful they are.

It's so true. And I really love how. And notice how introspective you are when things like that come up, when the truth is, the majority of people are usually pointing the finger, forgetting the three fingers that are pointing back at them. So I'm curious, is there anything that was a catalyst for you that helped open up the window for you to be introspective? Or would you say that you were just naturally innate and born with this type of introspective and intuition, which is the word I think you were looking for earlier?

Well, the word I was looking for earlier is whatever helps you bring that out of someone else. I would say for me, I've always been very introspective. Any mindset coach ever. Like, I remember working with a specific mindset coach who was awesome. And, like, in session one, she was like, you are really aware of your behavior. Like, you're very, very aware. And she said, you know, that's great, but it's also probably causing you more stress and anxiety because you're just overanalyzing everything that you do. So I've always been very introspective. But the catalyst to get me to start to take action on changing those behaviors was when I realized, like, it was probably the year that I made the most money in my business. And I felt. And it's so cliche, but I felt the most detached from what Meant the most to me, which was my wife and my son at the time. My daughter wasn't born yet, but I remember being like, I'm not emotionally present at home. I wasn't enjoying my workouts. I wasn't getting good sleep. I was, you know, I had put on, like, unwanted, some unwanted weight that I, you know, even though I felt like I wasn't really doing anything differently, I just wasn't enjoying life. I, I, I literally just looked at my job as I felt like some depressed office worker going to their job every day. I would wake up just with, like, severe anxiety. And so I remember getting to a place where I was just thinking again, your mindset around the process was, well, if I'm here, in order to continue to grow, I'm gonna have to do more of what I'm doing, and if I do more of what I'm doing, I'm gonna fucking die early, you know. And then the, the next step was. Have you ever heard of an htm, A test?

No, what's that? Well, maybe, but what is that?

It's a hair tissue mineral analysis. So basically, you take a hair sample and it, it backtracks up to like, about three months, and it gives you, like, your mineral status, your thyroid status, all that stuff. And my wife knows how to read those results, and she does them for her clients because a lot of people who are having trouble conceiving and they have mineral deficiencies and stuff like that, so she had me do one. And I'm a fitness coach. You know, I've, I eat well, I don't, I don't. I drink alcohol very infrequently. I don't smoke. I've never smoked. I don't do drugs. You know, I work out all the time, all this stuff. And I get the results back from this test. And it basically said I have what's called a step up pattern, which is a sign of someone who's under severe stress who is likely to die early of heart disease or heart attack. And it said that they haven't been able to study this pattern well enough to know how to, like, to know where it leads to. Because most people who have this die early without fixing it because they're so stuck in their ways of high stress. Hustle, hustle. Go, go. And I had found this out, you know, when I, I was, my second baby was on the way. And I remember thinking, like, it was just one of those moments of, of revelation of going, okay, I have to, I have to start approaching life differently.

Interesting. And Were you, you, you were a coach at this time?

Oh, I've been a coach for 10 plus years.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

10 plus years, yeah, yeah. So did any of that, like, people call it imposter syndrome, but more of like, you know, fraud feelings essentially. Did any of that come up while you were going through this?

A hundred percent, yeah. I think I've always had that. Anytime I, I just have a. From childhood I've just had this. I didn't realize it until recently when it was kind of described to me and we kind of dug into it. But basically I, I've, I sort of had anxiety my whole life. I just didn't realize it. And I don't, I don't, I don't. Like, I'm not someone who labels myself as like, I have anxiety. Like, not that I just feel like I, Everyone has a certain level of anxiety, but I was someone who always kind of had it. And growing up, I think I always had, I would always set like higher expectations myself. I went through a lot, my childhood, a lot of childhood trauma, a lot of trials of trauma around money, around things like that. And going into my adulthood I had this underlying subconscious belief of like, well, this all has to. This all is happening for. There's. I'm meant for something bigger. So like, this is. I'm going through all this because I'm gonna get to something bigger. So. But I didn't have that natural level of self love and self belief. So anytime I would achieve something, I would always play small, achieve the small goal, but then also be immediately met with like unfulfilled, like, all right, now what's next? Right. So once I started, it was when I first invested in business coaching and I really started to like, like grow my online business. And I was paying more attention to numbers and more attention to revenue and more attention. All this stuff. That's when I, that's when it kind of like all of that came like crashing in at the same time. So between like 2019 and 2023, it's like, when I think back on it, it's almost like, it's almost like I'm describing a movie that I saw once, but I can't put myself there. I was in such like a fog of just like stress and fight or flight for like pretty much three or four years.

Yeah, it's so, it is interesting and powerful. I hesitated on the word imposter syndrome because people really look at that as a bad thing. And for me, I really just, to me it's a sign that you care. You care about the people that you're serving and you care about trying to like raise industry standards.

And so yeah, I mean, I definitely have it. Yeah, I definitely have.

Yeah.

Yeah, I remember. You know, I mean even outside of business, I just. When we bought our house my. The first year, I just had this, you know, irrational fear that like, oh yeah, we could lose the house at any minute. Like, you know the, you know, this like I don't. They're going to find me out. Like there's no way I can buy a house while running my own business doing something that I enjoy. Like that doesn't seem. And I always had this, this again this fear that I was falling into things even though I was waking up before. Am working all the time, trying, trying, trying putting all this effort. It was, it was this subconscious belief of, oh, I just fell into this. Ten years into my career, you know, being able to make six figure figures and support my family. I'm still feel like it's day one of starting my business of going, oh, I don't know if this is going to work out.

I know, it's so true. It's a, it's the high achiever's curse. Right. It comes from this never enough plague that I feel like, you know, we just keep moving the dial, we just keep moving the goal post.

Yeah.

It's like, oh no, you keep moving it. Right? So anyway, now I do have two questions. Did you see and to end this, this portion and then I'll move into, you know, how your process. But did you see Inside out too?

No, I haven't seen it yet. I do want. I've heard it's really good though.

Listen, keep me posted on it, okay? Just keep me posted on it. I want to hear your take on it once you watch it. Because we talk about it talks about anxiety. But it was the reason I bring it up. Okay. Is because. And I feel like I can only bring this up with parents because. Or. Or Disney adults.

One of the.

But we took my kids to see it. I saw the first one. It was totally fine. I was so neutral to see it. It was like, no problem. Okay. Then we take them to see the second one and I just. There was like the hat. Like there's this one line in the movie and then for the rest of it and then 45 minutes after I was like undone and my husband's looking.

At me and he's like, what was the line?

Okay, the line is when Joy says maybe this is what it means to become an adult. And you just need joy less. Okay?

You need joy less.

You just need joy less. And oh my gosh. I was like, oh, my gosh. And then it just goes like, there's like 30 minutes left. My kids and my husband are like, what is happening to you?

Yeah, but it was amazing.

And then it's, it's, My husband has the same effect on the movie Coco. He can't, he can't even talk about Coco without him. Like, just like bawling throughout it.

Yeah, I, I, I think when you're, when you, when you're kind of, you're kind of in touch with that part of yourself, you can, you can get very easily. Like, like I have those lines in movies too, where it's just like that one part or that one line just gets you. And that, that is, that's something like even talking about now. Like, that's what gets me is going. You know, sometimes when my, when my son, he gets like, you know, he's getting all amped up because he has a three and a half year old. And I'm just like, in my head, I'm like, oh my God. Well, he just calmed down and I'm just like, oh my God. Like, he's gonna lose this one day. Like, he's gonna not have this spark. And I'm trying to do everything I can to guide him towards going into adulthood with less, a little less seriousness than I had. I think I just took life way too seriously for way too long, and I missed out on a lot of genuine joy. I kind of rushed into adulthood. I think I matured very fast as a kid. I was the oldest of three boys and grew up and, you know, like I said, in kind of a stressful environment. So I kind of, in a lot of ways, mentally almost fast forwarded through childhood. Cause I was trying to become a man very quickly. So there's times now where I'm, I think back and go, man, I wish I just took life a little less serious at times.

Oh my gosh. I, I can relate. I definitely, I definitely get that. We, we, we were a house of girls always. Like, my kids are girls. I had three. There's two sisters, three of us. So yes, I, I definitely can relate. Okay, so now just wanting to switch gears a little bit, you started to talk about it, but I'm curious about your process in terms of how and carries someone through your method, essentially from never hearing of you before to becoming your client and then getting results of the client. So the first thing you started to talk about was like, hey, I want you to describe your ideal self. I'm taking that. I'm, I'm assuming that this is like part of their intake form essentially.

Yep. So let's, you know, just to, if someone signs up, they go, okay, I'm doing coaching. And they pay, you know, whatever, and they get their first email, they, they fill out their intake form, all that fun stuff. Get them onboarded, like, get them set up as a. On the client app and all that boring stuff. And then once that's set up, I'll go through the intake form, I'll set up their workout program, I'll set up their nutrition protocols. Uses usually after I have them track their food for a few days just without coaching, so I can see what it looks like. And then I send them their steps, which is, it's a video walkthrough of telling them how to do their core values and how to do what I call their daily wins checklist. So they're gonna set their big long term goal and they're going to chunk that all the way down into what are three things I have to do every day to get a little closer to this goal. And then they bring those to our onboarding call, our zoom call, and I go through with them and I'll, you know, politely critique them or guide them because a lot of times no one's ever usually done this work before. So when they're listing their core values, they're more listing aspirations. And I'm like, no, like, a core value is. I would like to. A core value is not I would like to be healthier. That's not a core value. A core value is I prioritize my health. It's a, it's a very definitive statement or a trait or quality about you. And I've had people come in and they give me core values that they think are very. What's the word I'm looking for? Like, they'll give me core values. Like, oh, I've always put my family first. Things like that I always take care of. I'm a good parent. And I go, none of these core values have anything to do about prioritizing yourself. It's all based on other people. So then we have to reframe that. So I really, we get very clear on take this seriously. What are your three to four, what are your core values? What are the daily wins checklist? And then I really encourage a lot of open communication throughout the process. But to simplify it, it's basically phase one is building baseline habits, whether that takes two weeks, two months, or eight months, depending on the person. The first phase is how do we get you to a point where eating three to four balanced meals, getting around seven to 10,000 steps a day is, is very easy. You're following a workout program progressively. You're not just hopping around doing random stuff. You actually get what we're doing. You're able to eat at maintenance calories. Like you're able to do all these basic things. And the way I frame it for clients is I say this is, we're creating your post fat loss lifestyle first. So if I create, if we create a lifestyle for you and what's included in this lifestyle, how many days a week do you think eating out fits into your life? How many days a week does alcohol fit into your life? Like, you know, what's your strategy? What's your morning routine? What's your nighttime routine? We get all that stuff set up and then throughout the process they realize, oh, hey, I'm full all the time and I'm losing weight. This is pretty crazy. And then we can go, all right, now we're gonna keep everything the same. All we're do is reduce calories by like 2 or 300 a day. And then, boom, we start losing weight. We do that until they get to their goal, and then we bridge the gap back to baseline. And then for some people, they're good enough to go on their own. And for some people, they're like, I don't want to have to think about my workouts and I like the accountability, so they'll stay on for longer. So I have some clients who've been with me for three years. I have some clients who have been with me for three months. I still have some in person clients who have been with me for six plus years. So I think overall I have pretty good client retention. And I think a lot of that comes from building those relationships and not just treating people like a number.

Love that. So now something I'm curious that you mentioned, and I'm curious your approach, because I know there are different opinions on this. As you said, the first thing you have them do is track food. And then you talked about how you have them, you know, focus on their, their baseline habits. Well, I. And you also when you first started talking about, you know, helping people detach their relationship to emotional eating. So I'm curious your perspective on this concept of, you know, do we track, how long do we track? Does tracking cause emotional eating? So I'm just curious about your Perspective there and how you manage it for your clients and whether or not it's individualized or not.

I do think it's individualized. I think it is, it is very case dependent. I will say that I've rarely if ever had anyone never track. There's always going to be tracking involved at some point. Just because the way I frame it for clients, if this is helpful for other coaches is. I don't say that this is something you have to do or this is like a make or break. I'm just telling them, hey, this is just, this is the best way that I can help you. Because there's no way you're going to remember everything you ate or you're going to take pictures of everything you ate. This is just a way that I can see what you're eating and I can give you suggestions. I don't do macros. I'll do calorie ranges and protein ranges. For some people, tracking is maybe just an exploratory tool. So, hey, can you just do this for a week just so I can see what you're eating? Like, I don't even want you to worry about things, specific numbers or anything like that. So I think that tracking is. I did a reel about this. Actually. It. If you think of a knife, like a knife can cut a lime for you or a knife can stab you in the stomach. So it's a tool, depending on how you use it is whether it's harmful or helpful. So if you're using tracking in an obsessive, I gotta hit these perfect macros and you have all this emotion behind it, then it's gonna be harmful. But if you can get coached through that and look at it as simply, hey, this is a tool that's helping me learn about food. And then the goal is you don't have to track forever. I think if you can track consistently for few weeks, a few months, you should be fine. But I think a lot of people, when they're coached the correct way, meaning we're not making them feel like they failed, we're showing them how, just how flexible this is. I mean, if your protein goal is 130 and you eat 115 grams, nothing bad's gonna happen, right? A lot of times people will then get to a place where they go, oh, you know, I actually kind of enjoy tracking. It helps keep me, it helps keep me on track. So I wanna do it most of the time. But they learn, hey, I don't have to do this when I'm on vacation or I Don't have to do it every day, maybe six days a week or something. Or something like that.

Yeah. So I'm curious now out of, you know, you were talking, you talked about fat loss. So I want to speak to fat loss specifically and then I want to talk about maintenance. But do you, how long do you keep your clients in fat loss phases?

Depends on the person. And, you know, if someone needs, if someone wants to lose, you know, 40, 50, 60, 80 pounds, I think that you can kind of keep them in a fat loss phase for as long as they need to lose the weight. The key is, is that you. I really am big on just being realistic. I don't coach Olympic athletes or professional athletes or bodybuilders. I coach real everyday people. For a real everyday person, 8 month fat loss phase is not an 8 month fat loss phase. They're going to have multiple times where they're falling out of it, they're going to have weeks off, they're going to have bad weekends, they're going to have vacations. So you have to understand that a fat loss phase for a regular person is not the same as a fat loss phase for a bodybuilder. Fat loss phase for a bodybuilder is very regimented, very strict. It's very depleting. They do it for eight to 12 weeks. If you're a nine to five worker who gets 5,000 steps a day and you need to lose a hundred pounds, you can stay in a fat loss phase for a while. The key is to make that, make that stop. I, I like to call it like, like when I say maintenance, right? Like maintenance in quotes. It's almost, I don't want to say it's a lie, but it's almost like, there we go. It's like kind of a, it's kind of a little lie because we are telling someone is, hey, if you eat 1500 calories a day, you're probably going to lose weight. But if I, if I have you at 1900, you're probably not even going to hit 1900 most of the day. But having that extra, most days, but having that extra flexibility is going to give us some slack on the weekends when you know you're probably not going to be perfect. So they're at maintenance, but their consistency is not 100%. So they end up losing weight at maintenance because the, their goal says maintenance. But what is, what do we know about coaching clients is you're lucky if you get 80% consistency. Most people are going to be 60 to 70. So it's gonna be teaching them that it's okay to have that higher calorie goal. And then I think you have to just earn, you have to earn levels. So if you're at an 1800 calorie goal and you're hitting that goal 90% of the time for six weeks and you've dropped three pounds and you're like, I want to accelerate this. I'm like, yeah, you've earned, right. We can drop the calories lower, but if someone is all over the place and they haven't even hit their goal for seven days in a row yet, and it's month six, then what are we, what are we, what are we talking about here? Like, well, I've been in a fat loss phase for six months. No, you haven't. You've been trying to be in a fat loss space for six months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so then how do you navigate plateaus? Well, first of all, how do you define a plateau and then navigate a genuine plateau?

The technical definition I think is if you are 100% consistent and it's been four plus weeks and you haven't seen any progress, right, that would be a plateau. But again like progress on the scale.

Progress in the composition. What do you mean?

Any form of progress. So it's, let's say it's four weeks, you're in a, you're in a fat loss phase, you're 100 consistent, you're, you're meaning across the board, steps, workouts, nutrition. Right. And no, no scale drops, clothes aren't fitting any better, no noticeable changes in the mirror, which has happened before. And that sometimes in those situations, right. If, if you try, if you pull out every tool, there are the very outlier situations where maybe it is a hormonal thing or maybe it is like a thyroid thing or something like that. But again, I've seen that maybe twice, right, in 10 years. What I say is when someone is in a plateau, the first thing I do is go, okay, well how consistent have we been? Cause if we're not consistent, then we're not having the plateau conversation because you're not a plateau. You're just, you're either being impatient or you need improvement. The two eyes, you're either impatient or you need improvement. So the way I approach this though, with clients, just so everyone's aware, is not this blunt. I, I have a much more soft handed approach to it. But I'll, I'll just ask questions, you know, well, how, where do you feel like, you know, if you're, if you're being 100 honest. Where do you feel like you could probably, you know, improve when it comes to things? And I, I, I, I. Talk to me about the four dials, right? So there's four dials. There's your nutrition, which under your nutrition is, like, you know, your calories and protein. Then there's your workouts. Then there's your, like, your daily movement, like, your step count. And then there's your stress management, slash sleep and recovery. And the mistake people make is they try to crank all those dials all the way up and be perfect at everything. And then as soon as they can't do it anymore, they turn them all off. What you want to do is keep all of them at, like, at 6 or 7, and then you got to identify what is the area where the dials may be turned down a little too much, and I have to turn it up. So if you're, if you can look back on the last three weeks when you say you've been having a plateau and I've had this happen 9 out of 10 times is I go, where do you feel that they need to be improvement? Well, you know, to be honest with you, a lot of weekends, you know, I, I'm just like, not tracking, okay, Oh, I can see that in your food logs. But it looks like you're tracking breakfast. But you have to understand, on my end, it says that you ate 800 calories that day. But then you find out, oh, but they didn't track, like, the other 2,000 calories day that day. So then it becomes, okay, we don't have to fix this plateau. We have to figure out how do we get your weekends on track? And then we have strategies for that. If it's someone who is, oh, they've been skipping their workouts. Oh, we look at their workouts. They haven't lifted, they haven't increased their weights in four weeks. Like, there's just so many layers to it. I don't think that many genuine, everyday, general pop clients are ever truly hitting a plateau. I think a lot of times it's just they're just not being as consistent as they think they are, which is fine. That's why you have a coach. Because I tell my clients all the time, I go, the fact that we're even having this conversation is improvement. Because a year ago when you didn't have a coach, you would just be making an emotional decision right now to quit. But now we're having a conversation about why could we be seeing a plateau? And is it Even really a plateau. And now you're learning something. So then that's how we continue to.

Make progress, you know, and all of this also, just for the record, it also transcends in your business. Like, for me, this is the exact same conversation that I'll have with my clients on business. It's the exact same thing. Right. And so something I'm also curious about is you talked about impatience, because I hear this, too, in my clients. They're like, I posted a reel. Why didn't I make a million dollars? And you're like, oh, okay, let's take a deep breath here. Okay, but how do you nav. And. And. And by the way, just for the record, I don't blame my clients for this. I know why they have these feelings of impatience, because you've got people on the Internet saying, like, eat this orange and burn your esophagus, and you're gonn. And then you have people that on the Internet that are like, you know, here's how you get a hundred clients in a hundred minutes. Like, yeah, it's. Of course they have these feelings of impatience. I would have it too.

I do have it.

Yeah, I do have it. So how do you navigate that? Conversations around what I like to call, like, dreaming big. But it's flexible. It's flexible expectation.

I always like to talk to people, and I do this with myself as well, is I just go, you know, okay, you know, all. All of your emotions are valid, but, like, what's the logical next step? Right? Because you. The first thing you have to do is you have to take quitting off the table. Because when someone says that, what they're looking for is validation to stop something that they're doing that they don't want to do anymore. So if someone doesn't, like, posting reels for your clients, and they start posting reels, and it's not getting engagement or it's not getting follows, they're gonna look for validation to stop doing that because it's. It's an uncomfortable feeling when they do that. Right? It's the same thing. And I always tell clients, I said, no one's ever quit fat loss in their life. You quit tactics, right? So no one's ever said, I don't want to lose the 20 pounds anymore. What you're saying is, I don't want to track my food anymore. What you're saying is, I don't want to cut these carbs out anymore. Whatever diet you're doing, you don't want to do the diet anymore. But you want the results still. So same thing with business. If you want to make $100,000 a year as a, as a coach, that goal doesn't change when you're not hitting it. You're just looking for validation to quit whatever tactic you're doing that's not working. So I like to just have that conversation and acknowledge that. First of, okay, listen, I get it. You're discouraged. You know, you thought you would lose 20 pounds in, in three months and you've lost 12 pounds. Right? Okay, but would you rather have not lost the £12? Do you still want to lose the next eight? Okay, cool. So then if you take the emotion out of it, what's like the logical next thing that you should be doing? What's the, like, what's the area you think you can improve on if you wanted to increase your results? And most of the time they have an answer, they'll be like, oh, you know, I have been really slacking on my workouts lately. Okay, well let's turn that dial. Or, or, oh, you know, I, I've had three vacations in the last two months, so that could probably be why. Right. And then you start to identify it. So it really just comes down to acknowledging the emotions, validating them, but not letting the emotions make the next decision.

Regulating emotions, so hard to do, but so important.

It's super difficult, you know, And I'll be honest with you, like, so as a coach for 10 plus years, I've had my own business for six and a half of those years when, when a client with body dysmorphia and, and, and they have like their 30 pounds to lose and they're very, very frustrated. They have very, very like, you know, a lot of like, emotional stuff going on around their body, around their weight, and they're seeing transformation pictures online. It's very emotionally triggering them and it makes them like, hate the process. Right. I have that same reaction to business coaching. Right. I've been through several business coaching programs. I think net positive on all of them. I've always like, made my money back and progressed some and, and, and it have learned stuff. But I think going, having no expectation of what that was going to be like, and then going through a gauntlet of business coaching in like two years. I basically developed this relationship with business of just being nauseated by any talk about numbers and, and I've seen coaches like reach out to me on Instagram going, I just started my business, you know, I just got my personal training certification and I'm thinking about investing $10,000 in like this business coaching program. And I'll be like, listen, the business coaching program is gonna work for you. But maybe before you do that, try just getting three clients on your own. Make the ten grand first. Prove that you can do that before you drop it. Right? So I think you know, for like we were talking about like that emotion around it, you have to really, if I'm talking to coaches who are, if there's coaches listening to this, like don't get caught up in that game. Like you know, figure out exactly what you want out of your business first before you get lost in this rat race that we all became coaches to get out of. And then, oh my gosh, we're in it watching people with their, you know, their dual screens on their standing desk doing check ins all day and dancing for reels and posting about how they, you know, they did a, you know, a 20k month. But that was like 20k in revenue and it was all paid in full. So that's going to get, still get diluted out over the next six months. Like it's all I like it's, I've seen all that stuff. So when I, when I am seeing that online I'm like, yeah, I've been behind the scenes, I know what that stuff means. But it doesn't change. Again, that imposter syndrome of going, I go, yeah, but maybe that person's thing is true and what am I, what could I, what am I doing wrong that I. But then you know, again, I've had, I've had the, I've had consistent 10 to 15k months for a, for a string of years and still was like, oh, that didn't fix, that didn't fill the void because then you're like, oh, I have to have consistent 20 and then I have to get this to 30. But no one tells you what are the, what are the, the trade offs that come along with that. And for me, I took a lot of work to be comfortable enough in myself to be going, okay, what do I need to make to pay my bills, save a little bit, invest in our index funds for the future and my kids college and maybe enjoy some trips. But what is the most important thing to me right now is that I, when my wife and kids get home from the library at 11:30 that I can step away from the laptop and go be with them and have lunch with them every day as opposed to managing a team of like five coaches or you know, all that stuff then I don't necessarily want to do we're not saying that that's wrong, but I think a lot of people, I remember getting pushed to scale very, very quickly and I was trying to figure all that stuff out. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it can be, it can be very daunting and discouraging for coaches. So I think I have a, I definitely have like a soft spot for coaches who maybe they're like, hey, like I just want to, I want to coach people and make a good living. Like, I don't want to become a fake ass CEO. Who says they're a CEO but they don't have any employees. Like, you don't want to do that.

Oh my gosh. You said so many things and I had so many things come up. And I'm going to say three things. The first is I'll never forget that moment when I looked at. Now, I don't say this to flex and I don't say and I just say this to confirm your point and to demonstrate credibility. But I had 45 grand liquid in my bank account like it was liquid cash. And I just started bawling, crying and my husband was standing next to me and he's like, what's wrong? And I was like, that was that moment when I looked at him and I said, when's it enough? Because the way I feel right this moment was how I look felt when I was trying to get my first two kids.

Yeah.

And it did not matter. That number could have said 4,500,000 liquid. It did not matter the number. But my baseline operation was not moving and that was like a big moment for me. So I definitely get that. I see that a lot in my coaches. I hear it, I hear it a lot in language too. And it doesn't matter what your goal is. Like we're talking, you can talk about this in a health and wellness. We're talking about humans. Right. It doesn't matter the goal, whether it's business, health, love. I can hear it in their language. Well, I only got two people these days. You know, I'm like, only those are two human beings that you're talking about.

I remember running my first or my first challenge as under the umbrella of my own business. I had had my own business for about a year. So yeah, it was a year because it was like my one year anniversary when I started my business. Keep on. When I started my business, I started it as fully in person. I was subleasing space and I did an online challenge for like 150 bucks and I had no team, no business coach. I just did it all on my own. I figured out how to like do Google Docs for everyone and give them their macros and give them workouts. And I worked really hard and I got like 30 people to sign up and it was like 4,500 bucks. And I remember feeling like so proud of myself, right? And then the next time I did one was, you know, I think it was. That was in like May, so It was probably seven months later, like January 2020. And I increased it to 250 and got 50 people. So it was like I made like 10 grand on an online challenge as an in person coach and I'm like, oh, damn, this is amazing. Like so proud of myself. And then I remember finishing out 2022 and being like, oh, I. I made like, you know, all in probably over 200 for the year and had same situation like 45, 50 of liquid in my bank account. And I remember I was like, I'm riddled with anxiety. I'm so stressed out. I feel like my wife doesn't even want to hang out with me. I gained probably 12 pounds and I look like, I look fat and I don't like how I look and I'm not enjoying my workouts and I'm like, so what do I have to do to get to the next level? Like, how fucked up am I going to be when I get there? And then 2023, I. My business had a dip and I was. Ended the year probably 50, 60 grand less than the year before. And I literally got to a place and I don't know how deep you like to get on these podcasts. I hope this is bringing value to people, but I literally do. I got to a place where I was literally. I had a. We had had two miscarriages that year and it was really rough on my wife physically and mentally, emotionally. We had both done a lot of deep work. I had made a conscious effort to like pull away from the outcome of my business and everything was just like finance. Like I was just not making the same money. Like I went and I, I still ended the year, like I said, doing incrementally better than I had done two years ago, but feeling like a piece of garbage because I didn't hit the goal that I had the year before. And I got to a point where I was literally. I remember driving in my neighborhood, I live in a nice four bedroom suburban corner lot house with an in ground pool. Like it's. We bought it in 2019, so that was before housing prices were crazy and we have an awesome mortgage rate. But. But, like, I remember driving and feeling like my hands were going numb and then getting, like, tunnel vision, which is like, I found out later. And this has happened to me several times in my life. I was like, oh, yeah, that. The therapist. Like, that's a panic attack. That's what that is. And I remember thinking, and. And I don't say this lightly, but I remember just having this thought that I never had before, which was, oh, I get this is why people kill themselves, because this level of hopelessness that this, These bad feelings aren't ever going to go away. And then that's when I was like, I really need to do something. So the last nine months of my life have been a lot of commitment to daily focus on how I'm feeling, managing my emotions, breathing through things, having tough conversations, connecting deeper with my wife, being vulnerable, like, not holding in the stress, like crying if I need to. And this year, I feel like I have not worked as hard. I still work hard, but not in that. Not like that hustle, just doing anything to feel productive sort of thing. And I've had a better year this year than I had financially than I had last year by kind of detaching a bit from chasing those goals. And that's not to say it's been easy. There's. I definitely have my moments. I definitely have plenty of moments throughout the week where that those feelings hit me, but I've now, instead of them ruining, like three days of my life, they ruined maybe like 30 minutes of my life. And I'm able to kind of like process them. So that's one thing. Not to interrupt you, but one thing I just. This can help dieters, fitness people or coaches, but one huge thing, and I. I'd like to say I came up with this because I think I did, but I. Because I never heard anyone say it to me, but I'm sure I had didn't. But I, I said to my clients, I said, one of the most discouraging things you can do when you're trying to improve your mindset is to set the expectation that the bad thoughts will go away. So you have to remember that when you're improving your mindset, whether it's to your. To your business, to your body, to your relationship, whatever, you have to set the expectation that the bad things never stop coming. You just get better at handling them. Because what happens with a lot of people is they go, oh, I'm fixing my mindset. I'm fixing my mindset. And then they get hit with body dysmorphia or anxiety or stress, and they go, oh, my God, I'm not supposed to feel this. I thought I was doing better. I thought I was making progress. And you have to remember, like, no, no, they're not going to go away. They're going to come back over and over and over again. You're going to hear a line in a movie and start bawling and not know why, but you're going to get better at identifying. Oh, that's why I felt that. That's okay. And getting to the next.

So good.

Yeah. The next thing.

And. And honestly, it is the High Achievers curse, right. Is because we just have this, like, oh, I hit this goal. I got it. And then we make it mean something. Right? And my old acting teacher used to say all the time, and she didn't. She didn't invent this, but it stuck with me. And I don't know where the original line comes from, but it's hello, Darkness, my old friend.

Oh, that's from that Simon Garfunkel song.

Yeah. Yes. But it's like, you can't. It's not about. It's not about getting rid of fear. It's about moving with fear. It's about something Michael Singer always talks about. It's acknowledging that it's there and working with it.

Yeah.

Michael Singer, he wrote the Surrender Experiment. I don't know if you've ever.

I have to check that out.

Oh, my gosh. It's such a good. It's such a good book. It's. It. It's so good. Anyway.

That's awesome.

Anyway. Okay, so I want to be mindful of your time and be very respectful.

You're totally. You're totally good. The kids and the wife are gone for a little bit, so. But, yeah, go anything.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

So for those of you who want to. To go deeper with you, that want to learn from you, that want to work from you, I mean, listen, this is like transforming. Transforming from the inside out. So I'm. I'm curious. Tell me a little bit more about. What are your. What are the things that you have going on? How can people go deeper with you? What. Where are the best places I can send.

So my Instagram and my podcasts would be great places to start. My Instagram is at Badger strength. My podcast is called Talk and Fit with Adam Badger. If you. Both of those places have some free resources and links to get on my email list. So if you're listening to my podcast and reading my emails. You're probably getting the second best quality coaching that I offer. What first would be being actually within my program. And that's not because I hold anything back in my podcast or emails are simply just because there's more touch points. I can like talk to you every day. But I. If you're someone who's like a fitness customer or like consumer and you want and you deal with emotional eating or sugar cravings and you know, yo yo dieting. I'm doing a very, very low cost six week program that starts on September 9th. But you can, you can sign up starting August 27th. It's $97 and it's six weeks of step by step coaching on how to completely remove emotional eating and sugar cravings from your life. But in order to do that, you have to be proactive. So we teach you how to build nutrition habits, how to build customizable nutrition templates, how to work out, how to strength train weekly group calls, access to me throughout the whole program. I also put together a course that goes along with the program which that you'll be able to have access to that as well. So there's actual modules and resources in there that you can refer to. I would say if you're a coach and you want to dig a little bit deeper into that stuff with your clients, do the challenge also. Like you could take stuff directly from those modules and use it with your clients. I'm totally cool with that. I, you know, I'm 10 years in and I've been able to make a living from this, you know, industry for 10 plus years. So if you are a coach and you ever just want to chat or ask questions, I'm always happy to talk to people. I like talking to coaches.

I love that. I love that. I love that. And I think, you know, something that's important. We said this before. I hit record. But you know, something as you're hearing Adam share his journey is that there's always been help that he has reached out. And I'll say for me too is that I. No one ever got to where we are now now without help. Ever.

Oh yeah, 100. I, I don't. I, I honestly like, I just know for a fact I hit, I would have, I hit my ceiling in like 2017 if I didn't like start actively seeking some sort of, sort of help, you know, and, and doesn't always have to be like direct help. But I started listening to podcasts like this and, and consuming things like that and applying it so some sort of help, I think, is very necessary.

Absolutely. And I also love what you said. And this is gonna, you know, be one of those things. You were talking about it, like, when coaches are like, I just got my certification, and now I'm gonna go and spend $10,000. I think people underestimate the amount of value that is shared in so many free resources like Instagram and podcasts. And then people start to under. They also start to undervalue the fact. The fact that all of that work and it's not free. It's time you can't get back. Like, when you start creating it, when you start consuming it, people just start to take for granted those resources that are available to them. And it's really never, ever, ever about information. It's always about the implementation. And you even said it, like, just listen to something, implement it, and then get the help that you need.

Here's how. Here's how valuable information is. I just saw this the other day in, like, 2019 at my wedding. My cousin explained to me exactly what the difference between a DVD and a Blu Ray DVD was, and I have absolutely no clue what the difference is still, because he. He gave me exact breakdown of what it was, and I. I remembered none of it, and I still have no idea. And the DVDs are irrelevant, but I just remembered, like, thinking, like, that's how valuable information is, is that you can get information to a specific question that I asked him, and then they have no idea what it is still. So, you know, I think if you can. If you. If you just keep taking in information, but you don't actually, like, change any of your behavior, nothing's going to happen. So, yeah, I think. I hope that, you know, people got at least one thing that they could use to start changing their behavior.

So true. And implementation and repetition. Nobody squats once and never squats again.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. That is one thing that I. I have always had in my corner was just being very relentlessly consistent, regardless if I felt like it or not, whether it was in the gym or with food or work, just able to just show up and do it whether I wanted to or not. So I think if you're a coach and it's like, whatever your specific area of difficulty is, whether it's creating, you know, content or getting in front of a camera or starting your podcast, whatever you're trying to do, that you're having a lot of reservations around, a lot of hurdles around. I think if you just. I give this advice to coaches all the time who, who talk to me about stuff. I just tell them, you just got to start doing it. Just stop worrying about getting it right and just start doing it because it's going to take you. I'm on podcast number 164 and it still hasn't blown up, right? So like you're going to have to do 200 of these before any it even reaches a decent sized audience. So you gotta get started on the 200 now because if you get start in a year now, you're a year behind.

Oh my gosh. Listen, I tell my clients all the time, I'm like, listen, if you're not gonna show up for one person or the 34 people on your Instagram, what makes you think you're gonna show up when it's 34 million?

Oh, I didn't in, I didn't. I've done several in person seminars where I like literally just reach out to local gyms or whatever offices and like, hey, do, I'll come in and talk to members for free. I've. I, I did one for a local gym that has no bullshit. Thousands of members, right? They could, they're like a box gym. They have thousands of members and they're a local gym. So it's not like a big chain. So they have a lot of customer loyalty, right? And I did a free seminar for them and I blasted on social media. They blasted on their social media. They were putting it on their, on their, on their feed, on their stories. I was tagging them. Three people showed up on a Saturday morning and I sat down and said, okay, like let's, I just want to help you guys out. And I got a client, I did another one for a yoga studio where it was like 6pm on like a Tuesday and like two people showed up and I sat there for the full hour and answered all their questions and tried to explain stuff and was, seemed like I was happy to be there even though I felt like embarrassed. And then that led to a client down the line, right? So you just have to do stuff. I mean, I do, I love, I hop on. Literally, I'll do anyone's podcast. I don't care if it's your first episode and you have no listeners. Like, I just always do it because you just never know. You never know. And then sometimes you get opportunities to do like actual like legit podcasts like this and it's like, but that doesn't come if you don't put yourself out there over and over again. You're not going to get invited. No one's just going to pluck you out of a crowd and go, I want you to come on my podcast that has thousands of listeners. Listeners, you know, you have to, you have to prove that you're a worth worthy guest.

So true. So true. Okay, Adam, this has been such a good episode. Thank you so much for pouring into me and into the community. We'll be sure that we link up all of this, all of those places in the show notes and including your Instagram and your challenge. And thank you so much. It's been so good.

Thank you. I was, it was an honor to be on and I had a lot of fun.

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