S6:E24 - You Don’t Need a Better Diet...

Before we get rolling with today's episode, I have a very small favor to ask. If you get any value whatsoever from our episodes of the Enterprise Fitness Podcast, please share it with a friend or leave us a review. You see, our mission here at Enterprise Fitness is to empower as many people as possible with their health, fitness, and training, and we believe the best way to do that is with education. That's why week after week we continue to put these episodes on and try and jam-pack them with as much valuable information as possible. So hope you enjoy today's show so much so that you want to leave us a review. Now let's get into it. So have you ever followed a diet? Did you put the weight back on? Do you know someone who followed a diet and put the weight back on? Anyone? Yeah, plenty of people. Did it matter what the diet was? Did it matter that it was keto? Did it matter it was vegetarian, vegan? Did it matter that it was calorie counting? No. All these diets people have had success with and all these diets have let people down. Right, there's two. And some people still like, yes, this diet's awesome, right? It's, it's changed my life. Because ultimately it's the identity, not the diet. So one of the things that the veganism and the paleo communities and even the carnivore community get right is they help people create a different identity which entrenches them to behave differently, right? Someone becomes a vegan You know how you know a vegan is they'll tell you within 30 seconds. Do you know how you know a CrossFitter? They'll tell you within 10 seconds, right? But they adapt an identity, and that's— I mean, it's a powerful thing in many ways because they don't— they identify differently as I'm doing this for these reasons. It's not— it no longer becomes I'm doing this for just weight loss, which is super, super powerful. And that's— I think that's the real secret behind why the paleo diet, for example, the carnivore diet or vegan diet, that's why it works. It's not the actual technical of what people put together, it's that they identify with foods better. Now, a vegetarian diet, there's nothing wrong with a vegetarian diet except you just need to add meat, right? It mostly is a pretty healthy diet, but it obviously, it lacks nutrients. In Chapter 5, I'll talk more about it, but it's just harder to make up the protein. But from an identity point of view, awesome. It gets people eating healthier, and it's certainly a huge step up from the standard Australian diet, right? The SAD diet. I'd rather have a vegan client than someone eating a standard Australian diet for sure, because a vegetarian and vegan diet, they're going to have a healthy user bias. So it's definitely healthier. But yeah, you can optimize it if your goal is body composition for sure. There's this concept, weakness, theory, fact, conviction. So a lot of people, what happens is they have a weakness, And so I had a friend, right? He really loved junk food. Just fucking loved junk food. And he had a weakness for junk food, and he converted that weakness into a theory that if he didn't eat junk food once a week, he'd become catabolic. So he would walk around, and then he created— he used to say it so much that it became a fact. And he would then tell me that if I didn't eat junk food, I wouldn't get the gains that I needed, and I needed junk food to make more gains in the gym. And that also became his conviction, where we would be out and he would interrupt, or he'd have to eat a Hungry Jack's burger a couple times a week. But it's not based on fact, it's based on his weakness. Likewise, people also have the success theory fact conviction, which is some people sometimes will taste success on a certain diet, then they create that as a theory. And you see this all the time on social media, is people have a success on a keto diet or a vegetarian diet, and then they convert that into a theory. Well, everyone needs to be vegan, and they create a whole lot of other reasons besides them getting results. Then they created a fact that if you don't be a vegan, you're not going to get any results, you're going to be unhealthy, you're going to die early, and all these kind of things. And then that obviously becomes their conviction, which they tout as, you know, God's message. So we need to be aware of our biases. We need to be aware of other people's biases. So the problem with setting fitness— any questions on that, by the way? All right, we really want to get into the identity. So the problem with fitness goals is that they're not endlessly scalable, scalable. And to achieve— you can— if you think of it like 100%, right, you can create massive change without having to dedicate your whole life to fitness, right? And most of our clients aren't going to dedicate their whole life to fitness. Fitness. But if you want to be in the top 1% of athletic performance, you need to dedicate twice the amount of time than to get kind of that— just lose weight and build a little bit of muscle, right? So if you want to go— in other words, if you want to get a 200-kilo deadlift for a guy, it's like 180-kilo deadlift, I think, for a guy is pretty, pretty easy. It's pretty achievable. It's not that hard of a goal. But to go from 180 to 240, there is a lot more work, a lot more work, even though it's less weight. Like proportionally. But then to go to 240 to 260, it's even more work. And then go to 260 to 300, even though now it's only a 40 kilo, you need to dedicate even more time. Your whole life has to— and obviously genetics and all that kind of plays a part in it as well. But the point that I'm getting at is these goals, fitness goals, for the most part, they're not endlessly scalable. So the problem with a lot of clients in the fitness industry in general is that people come in with all-or-none mentality. Most clients, they see challenges and they want this block of time where they're going to dedicate everything, like they're going to carve out time and everything's going to be perfect. But the truth is, that's not just not how life works. And the more affluent, the more successful the type of client you deal with, the more that's going to be true. As in, you're not going to— like, successful clients who run businesses, work for corporations, whatever, they might be traveling every second week. We've certainly got a lot of clients who travel every second week, every third week. Then they're not going to have a 12-week block ever that is going to be uninterrupted. And if you kind of set that as your expectation of what you want, then you're going to leave a lot of clients very, very disappointed in the results. Now, yes, you are going to have some of those clients if you're working with competitors. I used to see a lot of competitors, and they would devote their whole life around just competing and switch everything on their head just so they could get their meal time perfectly, they get their sleep perfectly, But that is a very, very small percentage, and that is the obsession. And they're not going to be what I would call your lifers in terms of clients. Your lifers are the ones that are going to, you know, you have to roll with the punches. Things are never going to be perfect, but something is better than nothing. And this is what you want to teach your clients. You don't want to teach them the all-or-none mentality because it's gonna— like, look, again, if you're working with an athlete, the all-or-none mentality is healthy. So it's again context versus content. It's not to say you can do away with the all-or-none mentality. If you're getting ready for a comp, you definitely want to go hard and you want to be that elite champion. You definitely need that. But for most of your clients, gen prop clients, that you need to switch their focus because that, that focus is actually more damaging. Because if they do have a quote-unquote slip up, what ends up happening if you have a slip up? I fucked it up now, might as well just eat McDonald's and KFC and go back to the way I was and drink wine. You need to make concessions for these things and coach people that we're not looking for an all-or-none mentality, we're looking for betterment. We're looking for continual improvement, continual adjustment, and success breeds more success. Another way to say it is I would rather give a client one piece of advice every week, which is only 12 pieces of advice, because it feels like winning. And small pieces of like the first week, it might be let's replace your juice with water, let's eat breakfast, let's remove the junk food from night. Like it could be very simple instructions Over 12 weeks, these things will stick and it'll also feel like success. And then I can stack compliancy over that time. Whereas what a lot of trainers— I used to definitely be guilty of this in the beginning— is I'll give clients 10 things and they get really fast results and they'll burn out in 4 weeks because they couldn't stick to it, right? Because you're going to have a lot more results because the body will only change as fast as it can change. And yes, some people come in with different levels of focus, and— but for the majority is you want to build compliancy trails. If I tell you to do 5 things and you only implement 3, it still feels like failing. If I tell you to implement 1 thing and you implement 1 thing, it feels like you can achieve it. It feels like you can do it. And that, that feeling of you feeling like you're winning constantly when you see me is really important, because if every time you see me you feel like you can win, I set you something, and over the weeks I set you more and more things that are harder to achieve, and you continue to achieve them then I can set you bigger things. Like, you— I'm training you to, to hit bigger goals, if that makes sense. Whereas if from the beginning, if I tell you to do 5 things and you can only achieve 4 of them, even it still feels like you failed. So beware of that, of how much instruction. In other words, don't overwhelm your client. Don't overwhelm your client. Coach your client. And this is where, like, the best performance teams— it's been noted that high performance teams will have about 36 points of contact over a week. It's a lot of communication. I'd say, like, our team— and communication can be small, it's not like a meeting every day, or it's like 36 meetings. Or 36 emails. It's small contacts of communication. Hello, goodbye, how are you today, do you want to get a coffee? Like, they're small. Same issue with your clients. If you can set up small points of communication and contact, it will improve the communication, but it'll also improve the compliancy to what you're doing. So this is where you could also have like autoresponder sequences using like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp, where you're sending out regular messages, text messages at the end of the week, just checking in, how's everything going. It could be simple as that. Them liking you on Instagram, seeing the messages that are coming through, so they're constantly getting that message. Having podcasts— this is where that can really influence clients and keep them on track, right? So all or none mentality usually gives you none. So don't set goals with clients. I mean, look, clients will come in and they will say they want to lose 10 kilos. That's an outcome goal, right? That outcome goal. What I would advise is you want to break those outcome goals into process goals, because process goals are things— because you don't know exactly, like, we kind of do know, right, that it'd be anywhere from half a percent to a full percent of body fat loss per week, to half a kilo to a full kilo of loss per week, depending on the person of how much weight they have to lose, right? And depending obviously how hard they want to go. But at the end of the day, someone could do everything right and they could lose slower than that. And if they're just looking at the number of the scale, it can be a little bit like watching grass grow and they can do their head in. So rather than understand, hear their goal— yes, I want to hear you want to lose 10 kilos— we're going to turn that into a process goal. So the process goal again is you look at— I'll show you the wheel in the next presentation— but breaking those goals down into processes that they have to follow and sticking and holding them accountable for those processes. So a process: eat breakfast every day. This is what you're going to eat for breakfast. Make sure you drink enough, 3 liters of water. Make sure you get to bed before 10:30. And then checking in on those processes that you've sent that are going to constitute towards helping them reach their goal. Because if you just focus on the goal, then people are just going to obsess about it and try and get any— they're going to use any vehicle, including crash dieting, to get to the goal as fast as you can. But that's not the goal with lifestyle clients. The goal is to get them implementing a lifestyle which they can sustain that over time is going to yield better health and results over a period, right? So in other words, say I'd rather have a twice a week client who's with me for 24 weeks than a 4 times a week client who's with me for 12 weeks, because I know I can have a bigger impact on a twice a week client with me for 24 weeks because I've got more time than that 4 time a week client over 12 weeks, if that makes sense, even though it's the same amount of sessions. I know there's some people who would rather the reverse, like in America. I know a few guys who rather 4 times a week, 12 weeks, and then see you later because they just want to get a transformation. That's it. But I really do look at— that's why the subtitle of this book is Long-Term Transformation. I really do look at long-term transformation. 12 weeks is good to form a habit, but people can go back to their ways. Personal example of identifying as the wrong thing: for many years, I identified as a bodybuilder. And the reason why I say identified as a bodybuilder is because my whole life was around bodybuilding. I'd wake up, I have to eat 6 meals a day, I'd have to have, you know, 200 grams of tuna at every meal, I'd have to have 400 grams of vegetables every meal, I'd have to have my carbs like 2 meals and timing, and that, you know, if I didn't have my post-workout shake within 10.5 seconds of my workout, I was going to shrink and catabolize and lose all my muscle and lose my gain, and my workout was completely wasted. And my whole life revolved around bodybuilding, and as a result, my personal worth revolved around bodybuilding. So if I stuck to the diet, I felt good about myself. If I didn't, I felt bad about myself, and everything was judged under that lens. It's not a great way to live, and I don't recommend it. The real switch for me was when I switched to change the mantra, which the frame of reference I had. Rather than it being about bodybuilding, I made it, I am a healthy person that eats healthy foods that build and nourish my body. And the other thing that really snapped me out of it was when I was at a bodybuilding comp backstage, I heard these two guys talking And one guy said, you know, I hate my life. Basically, I'm on antidepressants, haven't been on a holiday in 13 years, my wife hates me. You're having all these problems, but he won't— look, you look like a god walking the earth, don't get me wrong, the guy looked amazing, but he dedicated his life to bodybuilding. And I thought, for what? A $2 trophy and an audience that will fundamentally forget you just so you can look a certain way? Like, for me it seemed very shallow. I wanted more. And also, if that's your driving force year after year, you're chasing something external. It's an external outcome which— to which you have no control over, especially with bodybuilding, because you get up on stage, you hope the judges like you, and if they don't, what are you going to do? You could be the best person on stage, they still not like you. They don't, you know, they don't like the way you look. Okay, you're coming second instead of first. It's up to them. So there is a lot of external validation, and that's why for me I didn't find any fulfillment in that, because ultimately I think validation needs to come internally. And look, there are a lot of competitors who can get that from bodybuilding internally. Just for me, it seemed very pointless. It didn't seem the way that I wanted to live. I interrupt this podcast to give you a very special message. December, we are running an Elite Results Bootcamp. What is the Elite Results Bootcamp? It is a 3-day boot camp where we teach our systems around strength, hypertrophy, and fat loss. It is intense. There are 6 workouts over the 3 days, and our trainers not only spill the beans on all the techniques, methods, systems that we use to get next-level results, we take you through actual workouts so you can experience in real time. If you're a client, if you're someone who's interested in Enterprise Fitness, or if you're a trainer looking to level up, check out our course. Enterprise Fitness Academy and click on Elite Results. This is an example of Helen. Helen really— she's one of our clients— she really wanted to change, and she was very much a blank canvas when she came in. And she's maintained her weight loss. She's lost, she lost 40 kilos in about, it was about 18 months, and Thanks, Shane. Yeah, so she lost about 40— she lost 40 kilos in 18 months and she's maintained that. But the reason I like to use this example is because she completely changed her life. And as I said before about fitness goals aren't endlessly scalable, so what, she loses 40 kilos, is the next goal to get to 45 kilos? Is the next goal to get to 60 kilos? Is the next goal to get to, you know, lose At some point, her weight loss, she can't lose any more weight, right? At some point, if she lost, if she got to say 55 kilos even, she's going to be underweight and that's going to be unhealthy. So I say like fitness goals aren't endlessly scalable. The other thing is what we could say, okay, well, let's make a strength goal. Where's she going to compete in powerlifting when she's got no desire to? Is she going to compete in bodybuilding when she's got no desire to? She can't impose these goals, but you can again, you can make it a process goal. You can make it a performance goal, and you can make— the thing is in life, sometimes you want to cruise and put things on autopilot. And once you really— we transition to a maintenance phase. For the maintenance phases, we're not— the goal isn't weight loss anymore. The weight loss goal is over. We need to look at how do we maintain and how do we improve continually without obsessing about it. So this again, rather than the outcome goal, because if we just have outcome goals, the outcome goal is going to be, oh, we need to get to 100 kilo deadlift. But why? She's happy, right? Let's not invent shit and create problems when there are none. So process goal of maintaining this healthy lifestyle for her, far more important in the long term than setting another arbitrary goal that she fundamentally doesn't really care about or would benefit her life. Whereas losing the 40 kilos absolutely benefited her life, it completely changed her life. So just be conscious of that when dealing with clients. It's— the goal isn't always There isn't— doesn't always have to be a next weight loss goal or an extra strength goal or the next muscle goal. And think about it in terms of vectors of what else do you do for your clients other than just training. Because for a lot of people, training is an outlet. It's a way to connect, it's a way to look after themselves. And the value of that, of what goes back into their life, it is priceless. That's why they do it. It's not about I'm losing 10 kilos or I'm getting stronger. Yes, that's the gift with purchase. That's not why they're doing it. They're doing it because it makes them feel better, which is a reason enough. So again, I'm a healthy person that eats healthy foods that build and nourishes my body. And that's just a simple mantra that I created for myself because it includes a lot of things around— again, people who obsess about food, obsess about their body, have a poor relationship with food. This is an affirmation that you can teach your clients, get them to write on their bathroom mirror or on their fridge. To remind them that it's not a matter of— it's not a punishment, it's not a lack, it's not you're doing this because you hate yourself or you want to change yourself. It's transforming that relationship that you have with your body and with food. That's a really positive place. You want to come from a positive place, not a negative place of taking away. And the word nourish, really, that's— it's a good word because it's not about depriving and deprivation. And punishment and guilt or reward for that fact. Because people go into deprivation mode, but they also go into, I need— I use food as reward. No, both of those are illusion. Deprivation and reward are illusions. It's really nourishment, is we want to nourish our bodies, help our bodies recover, fuel our bodies for the actions required to live our best lives. So come from that centered place. So the Be, Do, Have formula is one of those personal development things that I think has been passed on from generation to generation. So the be, do, have is basically a goal-setting formula that I really, really like, and I do like to talk about it with interns here and obviously clients. But again, switching from process goals— switching from outcome goals to process goals— this is a really helpful framework. The most people, again, when we have an outcome goal, is what do we want to have? So again, in this case, a client might say we want to have 10 kilos of weight loss. We want to have 20 kilos of weight loss. That's the outcome goal. Then we could ask process is do. What do you need to do to get that 10 kilos of weight loss? So we can turn that into— and that's pretty good. But the problem is if you just focus on what you need to do, people will go back to doing what they were doing before they achieved the goal, if that makes sense. So they lose 10 kilos, they do all the actions to lose 10 kilos, and they go back to doing what they're doing to be 10 kilos heavier. So it's kind of short-lived if we just focus on what we have to do. The level above that is who do we have to become to do the actions to get the result. So in terms of process, it's the ultimate process-driven framework, because if we focus on who we need to become, we'll automatically do the actions that will yield the result. So don't focus on what you have to do to get the result, focus on who do you need to be to automatically do to get the result as a framework. Let's say, for example, for weight loss, what do you have to do? Well, let's say very simply you have to be in a calorie deficit. But let's just say theoretically you have to eat 14,000 calories a day spaced over 5 meals. That's what you have to do. All right. Well, it doesn't really tell us a lot of how to live. So rather you go, who do I have to be to stick to that? I have to eat healthy foods that build and nourish my body. I have to value my rest. I have to value sleep. I have to value my health. I have to value healthy eating. I have to sort good relationships with people and with food. I have to be aware of my emotions. I need to be aware of things that trigger me, that put me in bad states, and rely on physical activity and exercise to help me break patterns, to get enough sunlight every day so I'm in a good mood, that I'm not sitting down all day. I need to fall in love with exercise. I need to be an active person. These are all process-driven things that become kind of ways of thinking and ways of being. Rather than just focusing on what you have to do every day. Because again, I said it yesterday, but the person who loves walking will always go further than the person who loves the destination, right? It's the same thing here. The B aspect of that is it's the meta program of— on this keyboard, on a computer, there's code on this, you know, iPad. If I press any of the letters, it comes up with the corresponding letter that I press. That's the code. No one sees the code, no one cares about the code, but fundamentally to a human, that's the be, that's the philosophy. So you want to entrench the actions that one must do with a philosophy of how people show up in everyday life so that they get the result, because the result is just the byproduct of being and doing, right? So again, let's not focus on the doing and having. If you focus on the being primarily, you'll do the actions that will get the result. The two main motives that everyone has is pain and pleasure. And which one's more powerful? Which one do you think is more powerful? Pain. Absolutely. Who agrees? Anyone not agree? Anyone? You're all awake? Need coffee? No? Pain. Pain is way more powerful. Why? Pain forces you to move, right? If you've got your hand on a hot burning stove— anyone burnt their hand before or been near a hot burning stove? How fast do you move, right? Like, fuck, right? You move like, shit, I didn't know I could move that fast. I put my hand near a kettle the other day, I was like, Jesus, right? I moved very, very fast because it was burning. I was It's a bit like it was a second and I was in instant pain. Compare that to reaching for a pleasurable cup of coffee. Yeah, you can move very slow towards pleasure. Point being is clients will often come to see you when they're in pain. Yeah, pain will push you until the vision pulls you. If you're really good at what you do, you get people out of pain very fast, but it's temporary. Because what will happen once you get people out of pain is what? They go back to their pain. Unless you help paint a vision that exists, that their pain doesn't exist. Yeah, so the pain will never exist again. So be very, very aware when you're working with a client for the first time of what their pain is, because there was a trigger event. Most people are not pleasure— look, you will get clients, you will definitely get clients who are pleasure orientated, as in they have a goal that they want to have a six-pack, or they want to do a photo shoot, or they want to be more than they are currently. And yes, those clients do exist, and you will see quite a few of them. But a large proportion will come to you because there's a pain. And the pain might also be that they don't feel that they're enough with their health and fitness, that they could— they're leaving, they're not maximizing their time, right? So that's also a pain, is they're not pushing. They feel like they're wasting their time on health and fitness. They want to be optimizing, right? So even the person who's coming to see you out of pleasure, they're also— there's also a pain existing there that they're wasting time and they want to be doing it better. So be aware of people's pain, but then also once you're out of— once they're out of that pain, paint a better future for them so they can stick and create it as a lifestyle. Yes or yes? Good. So this is the Pyramid of Change, also known as the DILTS model. I really love this model as a way to coach, as a framework, right? And this isn't necessarily something that you have to draw out, although you might, draw out for clients, but it's a framework to help you understand the journey of which clients go through and just really summarize everything that I'm trying to teach you right now. Um, so let's go with this one. That's a bit better. All right. So at the bottom of the pyramid, we have our environment. Then we have our behaviors. Then we have our skills and skill sets. Then we have our beliefs and values. Then we have our identity. And at the very top, we have our purpose, which I'm not going to talk about. So if you look at this portion of the pyramid, this is the do aspect. If you look at— sorry, not do, this is the have aspect. If you look at the skills and skill sets, this is the do aspect. And your beliefs and values and identity is the be aspect. In other words, change will often trickle— will always trickle down. Change will always trickle down from the pyramid. Seldomly does it ever trickle up. It does trickle up. It can trickle up, but it's often short-lived. So let me give you some examples to make this real. Who knows the show The Biggest Loser? Everyone or some of you? Yeah, everyone. So on The Biggest Loser, does everyone lose weight? Yeah, everyone lose weight. But have you seen the lawsuits and the case studies where the same people who lost 100 kilos put the weight back on and then have tried to sue the show for not taking better care of them? Have you seen this? Right? Yeah, there's been a lot of lawsuits in America. It was like rampant where the contestants tried to sue the production company because they put the weight back on. I like it as a case study. I like it as an example. Why? Because it shows that it was a purely environmental change. You took a morbidly obese person who had an environment that supported them to be morbidly obese. Their code, their way of being was morbidly obese. You took that person and you put them in an environment that was designed for rapid change. Did they change? The answer is yes, they did change. But the hardwiring, the code, the B, the beliefs and values, the identity was still that of a morbidly obese person. So you put them back into their natural habitat, so to speak, and what do they become? Morbidly obese. So that person could have, and maybe there were a few people who went back into that environment and said, what the fuck am I doing? Why do I have this much ice cream in the fridge? Why do I have all this junk food? Let me chuck this shit out. Let me reshape my whole life. In fact, let me move from this neighborhood. I don't want to be in this. This doesn't fit me anymore. I don't like this neighborhood. This is supporting of the old me. I want to become the new me. And they remove all these beliefs and values and they create something completely new, entirely new for themselves. They become a new person. But many of them, they had this massive change. They were that, you know, fit, 80 kilo, 90 kilo dude, or whatever it was, and they went back to the way they were because fundamentally their identity of the way they saw themselves, they had an imposter syndrome. They didn't really change on a mental level, right? So that's, that's one level of change. Above that, you know, who's seen these kind of fitness challenges, like a 12-week challenge, 6-week challenge? Yeah, so these challenges are sold to clients. Let's say it's 12-week challenge. And do clients lose weight on 12-week challenges? Yeah, sure they do. But how many of them put the weight back on? Because this focus is just behavioral. It's here, stick to this amount of calories for the next 12 weeks, next 6 weeks. You do it, you lose 6 kilos, and then what do you do? You stop with those behaviors because it was just a temporary challenge. Next level above, skills and skill sets. I love this one. These are the easiest clients to work with, right? If someone just has a constraint of skills and skill sets, it's fucking easy, right? So there was a guy and I was assessing one of our new trainers. This was a couple years back and I was sitting in, we're doing a nutrition consult. I was letting him drive to see what he was doing and he starts going on about all these macros to this guy and I'm like, again, pattern recognition. What he's saying was technically correct but completely wrong for the person he was saying it to. And I said, all right, can I just— I'm just going to stop you. Let me ask you a specific question. Do you know how to cook? No. Do you know how to do food prep? No. Have you ever done food prep? No. The guy didn't know how to cook. Well, the reason— what was telltale sign for me was you looked at his food plan. What was he having? Cereal in the morning, kebabs at lunch, and pizza at night. All right, all his food was takeaway. All of his food was takeaway or out of a box. So to me, I could see very clearly the reason why everything is out of a box is because this guy doesn't know how to cook. So rather than talking to him about macros and meal timing and all this kind of stuff, I said, all right, let's use this time to talk about how and how you're actually gonna— where you're gonna buy your food and how you're actually gonna prepare it and what your food's gonna look like going forward. Let's give you some practical strategies on that, because no one actually ever taught the guy, right? We teach him this, he implements it, he gets massive change. So it's a skill issue, and often people are limited by their skills and skill sets. So if you do get clients like this, it can be very simple. Let me teach you how to food prep. Let me teach you how to do this. Let me make your food tasty. You know, I don't eat, I don't eat healthy food because I don't like the taste. Well, no, it's not that you don't like the taste, It's that you don't know how to make healthy food taste nice. They're two different issues because healthy food does taste nice. It's just that you don't know how to make it taste nice. Does that make sense? So it's a skills and skill set issue. Very easy, very practical. Now, the two most difficult ones are these ones, because we never question the beliefs we don't think to question that we believe to be true. We don't believe If we believe something to be true, we won't think to question it. The best example is, I don't know if you've heard about the elephant metaphor, which is a young elephant, well it's not even a metaphor, it's actually true. If you get a baby elephant from birth and you put a stump in the ground and a chain and put it there, the baby elephant can't run away, right? But over the years, that anchor of that stump, you do that to a full-grown elephant, put the stump, put the chain, put it there, the elephant thinks that it can't run away. Why? Because of all this childhood conditioning. This childhood trauma of there's a stump in the ground, here's the chain, you can't move. Yeah, but you're a fucking, I don't know, 500-ton elephant. Of course you could move. Of course you could break the stump. But the elephant still thinks that it's that child. Now, how many of us walk around with our childhood conditioning with the stump in the ground when we don't realize we're actually the elephant who could just simply take a step and rip that stump right out of the ground? Right? That childhood conditioning— I'm not going to say just clients, like some of you in the room, people in general— we have people carry their childhood conditioning. We don't question those beliefs. We get stuck by the stump in the ground, and we don't realize that we're an adult. And this concept in psychology of the adaptive child and the maladaptive adult. So you have— this is a bit of a side rant, but it pertains to identity, beliefs, and values. Is that if we have essentially in relationships with our parents and as a child, we have attachment and authenticity. As children, we'll always pick attachment because we need our parents to survive, which means that we'll sacrifice our authenticity of who we are for that attachment and that love, which then creates— we adapt as children, but as adults, that becomes maladaptation. Because we're no longer children. We can pick to be authentic selves and say, well, fuck this, I'm going to be who I am, and if you don't like that, I'm going to find a new set of friends. But we often concede to people in general because we're scared of losing that attachment, but we're scared of losing that attachment in sacrifice of being our authentic selves. And people, obviously people in general, we struggle with this. We struggle with this dynamic of the maladaptive the adaptive, the attachment, being authentic. So when we come to this part, you can see this is quite deep, right? You can't force someone on a different identity. You can't force someone's beliefs and values. But what you can do is you can show examples. And how do you do that? You be the example. You be the example for people. And then they go, oh, fuck. All this shit that I thought was true, you're disproving it by the way you live. Because you go out and eat dessert, you like training, you are happy, you have all these things going for you. What's my fucking excuse? You serve the world much more by shining than you do by shrinking. So being the example, I think, again, because you can't force these things, but you can hold a mirror up to the client and say those things aren't necessarily true. It's just you've chosen them to be true. You've chosen these limiting beliefs. It's a hard one to deal with. I often— if this is a real sticking point for people, I have a friend, her name's Forrest. I get people to do hypnosis with her. I've referred her many clients, and she does a session with them, gets into all— you know, because I don't, I don't want to get into, as a practitioner, as a coach, I don't want to get into childhood trauma, right? That should start Okay, I understand. Some people might tell me some stuff. Awesome, cool. As a friend, I'll be like, that's— sorry to hear that. You should get counseling, right? I'm not going to sit down and do a session and talk to them about that. I'll talk to them as a friend and listen to them and that, but it's quite a burden to deal with that, if that makes sense, right? It's hard to deal with that. And also, we're not— we're trainers, right? But what I'm saying is people might tell you these things, but do refer out to professional. Like, I like Forrest. I did a podcast if you want to check out Forrest definitely tell her if you want to see her, send me a message, I can hook you up. But I've done a podcast with her, you can see her on my podcast, the Enterprise Fitness Podcast, and check out how she rolls. But really powerful stuff, right? Really powerful stuff. One of the things that I say to clients, just this kind of a frame, is if this is the person that you want to be, what beliefs and values might that person carry? And are there any beliefs and values that you carry now that you might need to reshape, right? Just as a way to introduce them. So we spoke about this, we spoke about The Biggest Loser, we spoke about 12-week challenges, comps as well. How many people do a comp and then end up worse after the comp? I certainly did. Skills and skill sets. To know what not to do is not really to know. But if someone says, yeah, yeah, I know that, and when I go to seminars, I'm like, if I hear a presenter speak, I'm like, yeah, I know that. If I'm not doing it, the voice in my head is like, well, why am I doing it? Well, I don't really know then. If I'm not doing it, then I don't really know. That's how I look at these things. So cigarette sales were— when once proven bad, cigarette sales plummeted. So again, knowledge can definitely can impact things. So beliefs and values— think of beliefs and values like a table. And if you do want to start to challenge people's limiting beliefs So a belief is like a table, right? So I want you to imagine this table is very steady. This tabletop is the belief, right? And let's say this belief is, um, I'm meant to be fat. Let's say your client comes in and says, I'm, you know, I'm supposed to be fat, I'm supposed to be overweight. It's a very steady table. What you need to do is you need to kick the table. The belief is going to be supported by legs. The legs in this case is evidence. The kid at school called you fat. You were bad at sport. You like ice cream. Not that that's a reason, everyone likes ice cream. You can't fit into certain sizes of clothing. Like all these, this evidence, so to speak, people build up evidence to support that belief. As a coach, you need to find ways to disprove that, or at least allow other things to be true. I'll give a silly one, but I like ice cream. If someone says, oh, I'm overweight because I like, I like junk food, well, I like ice cream too. I like to eat food as well. I love food. That's why I train so hard. It's— I know it's, it's a silly example, but it's also a way to show people that you can still be in shape and still really love food. You don't have— just because you love food doesn't mean you have to be overweight. So the more you can challenge people's beliefs, the more the evidence helping them find evidence for the reverse being true can go a long way in terms of helping them rebuild and reshape those beliefs. So confirmation bias loop. We all remember COVID, right? I don't think anyone forgot COVID. Let's use COVID as an example for confirmation bias loop. And I say this regardless of your beliefs, decisions, How you presented. This is just the way you can pick any topic, right? But the confirmation bias loop is a lot— most people, if you said someone on before COVID if you said to someone, what do you think about vaccinations? Most people would be like, nah, I don't really have an opinion either way. People like, yeah, my doctor told me to get one. Yeah, there's that auntie who said don't get them, they're full of poison. But most people don't really have an opinion on— they weren't really like super anti— unless you're in the medical community, people weren't really anti-vax or pro-vax. Majority of people were like, meh, right? But then people were forced to make a decision. Once you're forced to make a decision, these are decision points. People then double down on those decisions, and the confirmation bias loop is once you've made a decision, this decision tree you double down and say, no, most people will not accept the opposing viewpoint at all, and they will simply find evidence for the decision that they've already made, and they won't question the possibility of the decision that they made either way ever being incorrect, right? And think about this, you know, people do with all types of things, people with all types of things. Social media is really bad at having having a proper conversation or getting objective views on any topic. Because let's just say you identify as a Republican, or like in this country, a Labour or Liberal, you're going to get populated your news feed supporting that view and not challenging the opposing view, right? And that just creates more and more of a decision tree. Your beliefs get more and more reinforced, but that might not necessarily be true. And we've got to look at this objectively and be aware of our own confirmation bias loop. This is why when I study a topic, I like to go, okay, this is what I believe. Now let's look at everything that challenges those beliefs. Let's look at the opposing side. Let's see if there's merit in those unemotionally. Is this an emotional argument or is this a factual argument? We need to calm down the emotional brain and get to our rational brain. So the— and speaking of the emotional and rational brain, Think of the emotional and rational brain like the rider and the elephant, right? If this rider gets in a fight with this elephant, who controls, right? The rider thinks he's in control. So the rider in this case is the rational brain. It's like, go left. Elephant, not emotional, goes left. But if the emotional brain wants to go right, guess where the rider's going? Going right. So who's in control, the rational brain or the emotional brain? Well, who's in control, the rider or the elephant? Which one? Ultimately, the elephant. The elephant's always in control. We can only direct, but we need to calm down. So if we want to go, we find ourselves getting emotional, our client's getting emotional, you've got to calm down the emotional brain, think more rationally, realize that we're emotional. You know, in this metaphor, calming down the elephant to then help steer it where you want it to go. The Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect is big in coaching, and this will affect, I think, all interactions that you have. The reason why I've trained so many champions and that all of our trainers that we have here rise to a standard that is just well and above what you'll see at any gym studio— people, we get more out of our trainers, our clients, than I think— who like Dragon Ball? Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball Super. Yeah, so we unlock, you know, how Supreme Kai unlocked Goku's mystic abilities. It's like that. You're probably the only one who gets the metaphor, but we're able to unlock people's abilities for the fact that we really believe in our team. So the Pygmalion effect basically states that the teacher, the mentor, the coach creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you believe your client can win gold You believe your client can get the result, they will. If you believe your client can't get the result, they won't. And they've done this with like schools where teachers have gone in and it was a really underperforming school, and they told the teacher that this was an A+ class and that they all were really good and they were all going to get A pluses. And as a result, the teacher believed it, and everyone in that low-performing school got A pluses because the teacher believed they were A+. And they've done the reverse where they've said, you know, really top-performing class They've told the teacher they're all really bad students, they muck around, they play up. Teacher goes in thinking they're all shit. The teacher's bias projected, all the students are shit. So think about that when you're working with a client. Are you projecting onto the client that they're not going to get the result, they're limited, they're full of excuses? Or are you projecting onto the client that they can do it and their potential simply needs to be unlocked. Fundamentally, you want to believe in your clients. You want to believe your clients can win, because when you do, they often will. That's a picture of Janet and I, who I coached for 10 years, and she believed in me as much as I believed in her. So I wasn't the coach to train her to championship gold, but she believed in me so much that I was able to train her to champion gold. I believed in her so much that she won. So it's It was really nice. All right, the exercise using the DILTS model. So the DILTS model is that triangle. Um, answer the following relating to your health and fitness identity. Who do you want to be? Just make some notes if you've got your notepads. Who do you want to be? What beliefs and values relating to health and fitness nutrition does this person have? Right, everyone start on that, and then I want you to answer the the do aspect. So skills and actions. What skills and skill sets does this person have around health, nutrition, and fitness? And what behaviors do they make daily towards their health, nutrition, and fitness? And finally, have. From doing the above, what body and environment do you manifest for yourself in 12 weeks, 12 months, 12 years from today? Oh, hi there. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. While I've still got you, why not check out our book, www.enterprisediet.com, today and grab your copy?