Episode 179 - These Experts Want To Revolutionize Your Fitness Journey With Sustainable Habits

Hey everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Oh my gosh, you guys. We are finally doing the do the Thing Get Fit challenge. It is coming up sometime this summer and this has been probably the most requested challenge that I've had so far. Every time I do a challenge with do the Thing, I do a survey at the end and I ask, what kind of challenge do you want me to do next? And Get Fit has been something that everyone has pretty much said over and over again. And so here I have this amazing expert panel that I put together and I am just so excited to be able to introduce some to you guys. So first off, I have Pam Moore. She is a certified personal trainer, a certified intuitive eating counselor, a marathoner, an ironman finisher, group fitness instructor, and has written about health and fitness for outlets like the Washington Post, Self Runner's World, Outside and others. And I have Emily Countryman. She is the CEO and founder of Shift Set Go, a chain of weight loss clinics that offer a three part program to help people lose weight and maintain their goal weight. Emily's own experience with weight loss inspired her to help others and since opening the doors of Shift Set Go, her team has helped thousands of clients lose over £100,000. Emily is a certified weight loss coach and a board certified holistic health coach from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. She is committed to making a better future for the next generation by ending the obesity pandemic through education and information. Emily and our next expert is Adam Gilbert. He is the founder of My Body Tutor, a program that simplifies the weight loss process into practical, sustainable behaviors that help you lose weight and keep it off. Adam has made a career out of getting results for clients who have tried everything but just haven't managed to keep the weight off. Since 2007, he's built my Body Tutorial into the world's top daily accountability program with a team of 75 plus health and fitness accountability coaches. And our next panelist is Joe Calabria. He is an expert in natural pain relief and injury prevention with a unique perspective gained from his background in personal training and youth basketball coaching. He has become a licensed acupuncturist and uses his knowledge to incorporate nutrition, sleep and fitness into his treatment plan for athletes, emphasizing holistic wellness to improve their overall performance. And our next panelist is Brandon Coluccio, the founder of White Collar Savage, a life coaching brand that transforms ordinary white collar civilians into unstoppable white collar savages. Brandon has a unique story that he actually Got fit while in prison. He used his time in prison to transform himself from the inside out. With relentless dedication and positive reinforcement, Brandon redefined his life's purpose and emerged from prison a completely new man. Stronger, fitter, and more determined than ever before. Through his coaching programs, he shares the same transformational blueprint that allowed him to rise from the ashes and become the ultimate white collar savage. And I also have David Bush, who is a certified health and lifestyle and peak performance coach, speaker, and author of Live an extraordinary life. He has coached top industry leaders from across the nation to achieve extraordinary levels of success and significance. Prior to coaching, he also had a successful career as a professional football player. So, oh, my gosh, you guys, I am so excited to have you all here and I just cannot wait for the listeners to get to know you.

So.

So I just wanted to have you say a quick hi to everybody.

Welcome, everybody. Hi.

Hello.

Excited to be here on everybody.

So I want to start off, I mean, oh, my gosh, you all have such different backgrounds and I just would love to just hear kind of what your thoughts are about doing a get fit challenge and giving people the opportunity to have just a spurt of an opportunity to get started with getting fit and what that could mean for them if they could just make the first step and be able to get with a community of people and get started. So I'd love to, actually, David, if you don't mind starting off for that.

Yeah, thanks so much, Stacy, for having me. And yeah, my story is story of being a big guy. All my life. I grew up in a family where I was kind of like a trash can. You could step on my foot and my mouth would open and you'd give all the leftovers to me. And I was a football player, so it was always about becoming bigger, stronger, faster. And then I got done playing football and I became a dad and got into the world of white collar working. So I'm sure Brandon could have helped me to become a savage back in the day. But I was at a point where I had kind of lost hope. I had done so many different things that it kind of just got to the point where I felt like that I just was not capable of change. And even though I was a very motivated person in the area of health and fitness, I just for the life of me could not figure out how to eat right and exercise. So it was a friend of mine who challenged me and invited me into a short term challenge. And I felt like this was going to be different because it was really about lifestyle. And I knew that I, I didn't have an eating problem, I had a thinking problem and I needed to think different. And so in that 28 day challenge for me it was changing the way that I was thinking. And Zig Ziglar has this great quote. He says our thoughts dictate our appetite. And if you can change your thoughts for a short period of time, 21 days, 14 days, 28 days, you can begin the process of behavior change. And so that's my story, Stacy, is that I needed a jump start. I needed a nutritional and mental defibrillator to come. Just give me the pump that I needed to awaken me of what I was capable of. And then I was able to find a long term lifestyle behavior change program that was able to coach me to lose a hundred pounds and to kind of get my jam back. So I think challenges are great for that short term. Just prove it to yourself. And there's this thing in the world of health and lifestyle coaching that's called the teachable moment. And if you can get yourself to that teachable moment where you can prove to yourself that you can do more than you thought you could and everybody has some level of belief of things that we don't think we can do, it's right in the middle of the word beliefs, L I E And some of the things that we've been telling ourselves are not true. And a little challenge can be a great jump start.

Yeah. And I love that we're sitting here talking about a challenge and that's how you got your start, was through a challenge. And we'll revisit that idea of how thoughts dictate how we're doing. Because I definitely think there's a lot of things that we could do through the challenge to help them through that. And Pam, I'd love to hear from you next.

Sure.

I love just to piggyback on what David said about our thoughts dictating our actions. One of the biggest self sabotaging thoughts that I used to have was this big all or nothing mindset. It was like, okay, if I don't have time to go on my four or five mile run, forget it. I'm just not going to do anything. It's not worth it. It's not worth putting on my exercise clothes, sweating, having to take a shower, yada yada yada. That's just not true. Something is always better than nothing. And when you can make a habit of something, you can play with doing more or doing more intense or whatever is working for you. On that day, day by day, but just carving out some time every day. What happens is, for me, I was. I did not grow up athletic. People think, oh, you must have been athletic all your life, Done marathons, done Ironmans, this and that. No, I was picked last for every single team. I started running by chance. I don't know why, but I played lacrosse in high school. And so I ran to get in shape for lacrosse and realized, okay, balls are not my thing, but I can put one foot in front of the other. That's really what running is. And you keep showing up day after day, and lo and behold, you can go faster, you can go farther. And that was so gratifying for me. So for me, it was about number one, like you said, David, realizing I could do more than I thought I could. I never thought I would run a marathon when I was younger. It just wasn't in my world. I didn't know anyone that was doing that. So being able to do that and also having the habit of exercise and showing up every day and running marathons and doing Ironmans over time, that changes the way you see yourself. It starts as a habit, and then it becomes an identity, and then they feed off of each other and it's like, yeah, this is just what I do. It has been years since I have run a marathon. I have two young children. I'm working, I'm, you know, I'm busy. But I just flew out of a spin class and did not take a shower and came here because it's just part of my life. Some days I go in my basement and I use my kettlebell for 20 minutes and that's all I have time for. And I'm totally okay with that. But just making the habit, even if you only have five minutes, whatever it is, it over time changes your self concept and it becomes something that you're just like. It's not am I gonna do it? It's when and how am I gonna do it today.

I love that idea that you're flexing that all or nothing thinking. Cause I think that's so easy for people to get into that habit of if I'm not gonna do the whole thing that I'm just not gon. So we'll be exploring that more too on this call as well. And Joe, I'd love to hear from you next.

I appreciate you putting this room together because I'm already getting to learn from extremely smart people. This is cool. So as far as the challenge goes, the community is everything. It's very challenging to be able to do things like get fit when you're alone. But if you could put yourself in a community like that you've designed for everybody, you know, monkey see, monkey do. And it becomes much easier and much more motivating and you start to connect with people and you'll connect with people outside of the community or outside of the challenge and continue to build relationships, which is incredible. So that I feel like that that is the most important part is being in the same room as people that are doing the exercise. A big focus for me is I always was very athletic. I got into weightlifting when I was a teenager, when I was 16 years old. It was a really big reason of why at only 5 foot 9, I got a chance to be recruited to play college basketball. I had no business playing basketball, but it was because of my strength at the time. I carried that into my personal training career in my early 20s. But I was full of ignorance. So I didn't know how to warm up, I didn't know how to exercise, properly perform and things like that. I could do pull ups with 100 pounds around my waist. But there was a day that I decided I was going to do that without a warmup when my ego was just pushing through it and I could feel something in my shoulder. And lo and behold, that shoulder was never the same after that. The fortunate thing is that I started to find clients that always had shoulder problems. And I started to see this pattern of people that they couldn't get into exercising consistently because they would always blame that they need to rest an injury. So that became a very big part of my life of how to take care of an injury. Not just as a practitioner for people, but as self care of being able to. How do I take care of an injury myself? One of the biggest myths is rest, ice, compression, elevation, the Dr. Gabe Merkin is his name. Dr. Gabe Merkin that coined that phrase in 70s has retracted it because it's known that it's actually not a good thing to do anymore. That movement is the trick and we can dive more into that stuff later. But I've made that a very big part of my life and I've been fortunate to attract a lot of athletes that need it because they want to stay on the field, they want to stay on the court.

Yeah, there's a few things there that I'm really excited about. That one is the community. One of the pieces of the do the thing formula is well, I have the shirt on. It's I'm game is the formula and there's an M in I'm game, which is my people. And it's really surrounding yourself with people that want the same thing as you and that are really going after the same thing. So then you're getting the community and the connectedness that you need to be able to do the thing. And then the other thing you just reminded me of, Joe, I have this amazing video of fascia and what it does when it gets tied together in knots and if you don't move it. So if you get sore. And I'm really excited you just reminded me because I think that'll be a good visual for people to see how important it is to move even when you might not be feeling at your best. So thank you. Thank you for that. And Emily, I'd love to hear from you next.

Yeah, thank you. I love the idea of a challenge because I think, like Joe said, that people are doing it together so they have that common support together, that camaraderie of we're all going to do this together. Ideally, if they have a buddy that they're a little bit closer to, they can text with or chat with in the group and kind of hold each other accountable because that accountability is going to be huge and during a challenge. And also all those quick wins. So if you're, if you're setting it up to say, okay, I'm going to do this for 21 days, 30 days, whatever it may be. Seeing quick wins along the way, they'll see, depending on what changes they make, the pounds on the scale might go down, their body fat percent might go down. Hopefully energy increases or their gut health improves. So seeing those wins, they can then build on that because like we talk to our clients, we always say when they're making new meals that these are not your, your quote diet meals. These are your forever meals. These cannot be just thought of as just a quick challenge or I'm just going to do this until X date. So if they can find things along the way that they are enjoying and maybe they don't love running three miles every day, they go, okay, cross that off the list. What's next? Okay. I do love, like Pam said, doing my kettlebells for 20 minutes a day. Okay, check mark. I love that. I'm going to keep that in mind. Forever rotations. And they can just keep adding things to their tool belt that they will continue to go back to. Well, well, well, after the challenge is done so that this can become their forever lifestyle and not just a quick fix.

Yeah.

And you're bringing up a few really important things that I think a lot of people have a hard time when they're getting into a new fitness program, both for weight loss or for just getting fit in general. And it's that idea of how slow the progress looks visually. And so by having some kind of psychological win, quick win, I've been calling them dopamine hits, something that can at least give you that encouragement to keep going. So I'd love to explore that more on this call as well, because I think there's so much in that that we could learn from. And then, of course, the accountability piece and ways that we can help people have both external and internal accountability, which I think both are really important when you're starting something new.

Yeah. Because if they don't have any wins, three weeks in which of course they would, if they're making a lot of lifestyle changes, they're going to go, I'm not going to do this anymore. I quit. So that's where that accountability comes in handy. I mean, we would all be our goal weight, our goal body for fat percent, our goal fitness level, if it were easy and we didn't have to work hard at it and keep going every day, even when we don't see results. So being able to have those quick wins is. Is huge.

Yeah. And I also love that idea of finding what you like to do, because I think a lot of people might see someone else and see them running or see them biking, and it might not be something they like, but they think that's what they need to do. And so by them being able to identify the things that they like, I think that's going to really help them really realize there's so many ways I can do this. I don't have to just do it in this one box kind of way. So, Brandon. Okay, this is funny because Brandon and I did a podcast interview yesterday, and he was telling me about when he was in prison, he lost like 30 pounds or something, but not only did he lose 30 pounds, but he got bit fit. And then he's kept it off and been even doing more incredible since he has been out and been doing so many things for other people. And so I just think that idea of having no excuse and being able to do the thing in that way is so incredible. And so, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts in general about the challenge and all of that.

So I just want to say thanks for having me. I have no formal training in nutrition and fitness or whatever. I was a competitive athlete my whole life. So I was always relatively fit. But before, when I was going through my indictment, my pretrial period, I was self medicating, I was out of shape, I was eating poorly, I was not taking care of myself mentally, physically. And I walked into prison £186. And that's the most I'd ever weighed in my life. I'm 5 9, athletic build, but I was just a slob, right? And what I realized while I was in there, and just for context, the moment that I walked in there, I was sent to isolation for 22 straight days. And so I'll put it in context. Lock yourself in your bathroom for three weeks, that's what it's like. And you are now facing a mental challenge. But the beauty of fitness is the ability to lift your mind. And so I take more of the aggressive, psycho David Goggins, like, no excuses, I'm going to scream at you until you do this approach, which I realize doesn't work for everybody. That's what works for me. And it works for the people that I work with. Some people, like my wife, for example, she's just like, you talk to me like that one more time, I'm leaving you. So we don't train together, but the idea of a challenge is interesting because I like to challenge myself mentally and physically. And I now do outrageous exercises. Like I do a Murph every Sunday morning for fun. That's what I look forward to every week. So I have got to the point where I pushed myself through it. But when people come to me with excuses like, what do I do? I don't know how to get started. What do you need help with? Do you need me to tie your shoes? Get up and move, right? And that's it. When you're in that deep, dark moment where a lot of these people are, you have to just choose, right? You have to just decide to get up and do it. And I think getting to the purpose of a challenge, that's a really kind of exciting way to do it, is to say, okay, 30 days, 60 days, whatever it might be, I'm going to do this thing. And the way to I frame things, I use reframing. So if I don't do this thing, I don't stick to this, there's going to be some horrible, negative, terrible outcome, right? And so if you can both challenge yourself, reframe it so that if you don't stick to it, there's this horrible thing that's going to happen, I think it can be an effective way. Everybody's Already touched on the accountability. I think people know what to do. They just need somebody behind them with a baton beating them into it. At least that's my experience. But the cool thing is, is that as you get those wins and you go, you know what? I did what I had to do today, that's awesome, I'm going to do the same thing tomorrow, you build momentum and then it becomes self reinforcing and then you start to feel confident, right? And then you're keeping your promises that you made to yourself, which is the most important thing. Because when you start and your negative self talk is just in this terrible place because you're not doing what you know you need to do, right? So you're just going down that negative spiral. And I speak from somebody who has the experience. And the final thing is just start. Perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise, right. If you have a space big enough for your body, you can get absolutely diced, crazy good shape. So you don't need all this fancy stuff, you don't need all this programs. In my opinion, you just have to start. You gotta find something that works and just hammer at it every single day. So that's my approach. I love the challenges.

Yeah. And you're reminding me. I went to a Tony Robbins conference. I don't know if you guys ever went to his unleashed Power within and he, he had said on the stage, he's like, if you want to lose weight, just have someone standing next to you and just say run constantly. And just being able to just get you into that headspace. And I love that idea of it happening in the space of bathroom, you know, because I think so many people can say, oh, I don't have this, I don't have that. And this goes back to what Joe was saying earlier. It's like, how can I make this work with what I have in terms of your body? And that's kind of what you're saying in terms of space, right?

Yeah, that's it. I mean, go do a thousand airsplots. You literally just need to be able to stand up and squat. That's all you need. You could be in a closet getting in shape, right? Just do that every day. And that's what you learn in prison. You make weight bags out of you filled plastic bags with water and lift them up over and over and over again. You filled that bags with books, right? You have nothing. So you have to just figure it out. And I think people just overthink it. Instead of overthinking, you just get up and go outside and walk. Just start, right? Just stop. Overthink it.

Just go.

So, anyway, that's. That's my approach.

Yes. If you guys are listening to this, just take this podcast on the road and start walking as we're talking. And so, Adam, I'd love to hear from you, because with my body tutor, I mean, you're all over the place. I know I originally heard about you from my first Million, which is the most popular podcast, I think, out there. And they were talking about how they've been using you for a long time and your program and how much it's helped. And I think that you have your own personal journey, and then you also help so many people. And I would just love to hear what your thoughts are in terms of a challenge and just what's coming alive for you right now.

I think challenges are great. However, I'm obsessed with sustainability, and I want consistency. And I think for a lot of people, the challenges get them started. You know, to your point, I think a lot of people are in a state of inertia, and it's hard to get them just started. It's hard to get them to just do the damn thing, right? And one of my things I always recommend is ask yourself the question, like, what's the least I can do without doing nothing? Because when you're in that state of inertia, anything feels daunting, right? Anything feels impossible. So sometimes it really is as simple as just putting on your shoes or going outside the door. But in terms of challenges, I mean, I think challenges are great. But for me, I like to say, if it's not sustainable, then it's not successful. We really focus on behavior change and helping our clients lose weight once and for all. So whatever you do, ask yourself, can I see myself eating like this for the rest of your life? Right? Because I think someone else said, if you're kind of saying to yourself, I can't wait till this is over, then you're going to go right back to your old ways. So whatever you do, you want it to be sustainable. You want to make sure you're focusing on your. What we call, your mph, your mindset, psychology, and habits. Because so much of weight loss is what's going on between our ears, right? For the most part, we know what's good for us. We know what's not good for us. The real question is, why can't we do it?

I'm really glad you said that and you opened up the space for that, because I had done a challenge and it had so many different factors to it. And then after the challenge was over, I just went completely opposite because I was contradicting the challenge because I was on this forced thing for so long. And that's definitely something I am thinking about with this, making sure that it is something that people can take with them. And just to give you guys an example, my very first challenge, it was called a dating dare challenge where I was getting people off dating apps would do the thing and getting them to actually just go out and meet people in the wild. And surprisingly enough, the daily objective that I had them do was not even dating wise. It was just saying, what do you love about yourself? Because I noticed so many people were drained and sucked out and energy burned. And so they really needed to build themselves up in the inside. And so that was one of their daily things, was just saying what they love about themselves. And so many people that are still in the community, that's something they're still doing every day as they're saying that. And so these are kind of the ideas that I want to bring into this space is to think what are some things that we can have them do now that they're going to be able to continue on. And so let's start off with that. Let's start off with. I think the first thing I really want to kind of talk about is self talk. And I know a few of you mentioned that because, I mean, that is probably the easiest thing to cripple you, right, is to have poor self talk because it's so easy to get disappointed with yourself when you're not doing the things that you think you want to do and not to celebrate your win. So I'd just love to hear if anyone wants to speak up to this idea of self talk in ways that we can really help them improve it. I do give them dares every day and basically that helps them have a bite size thing that they're able to do and it gets them to actually do it because they're seeing that it's not hard to do. And so if you have any thoughts around self talk and even maybe using the dare component, that would be great.

I would love to speak to self talk, particularly Brandon. A lot of the things you were saying were really resonating with me about that, like, just do it. And I love that you acknowledge that may not be for everybody. When I started my sort of fitness journey, I was really hard on myself. I used to set my arm super early so that I could get in my run before grad school classes, and my alarm would go off and I would say to myself, get up, you lazy piece of shit, or else you will not be able to run this marathon. You have got to do it. And so there was a lot of fear for me. Like you were saying, Brennan, what if I don't? What is the scariest thing that's gonna happen if I don't? And it wasn't just, you won't finish the marathon. Layered underneath that which I unpacked later in life was this deep fear of not being enough. I was using all of these races and things to prove to myself that I was okay. And it was good at first. It was super motivating. It lasted a while. But to your point, Adam, it was not sustainable for me because I got super burnt out. Every group ride, every track workout, every master swim, I was like, oh, I'll go. I'll go, oh. Cause I was afraid that my friends would get faster than me and leave me in the dust. And it was all about fear. And I, over time, shifted to, wait a minute, that's not serving me. I'm getting injured, I'm getting burnt out. I don't even like this anymore. And over time, I had to shift to this mindset of, how can I do this? From a place of nourishing myself instead of punishing myself? A lot of it, too, for me was about weight loss. And I know this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I do not do these things for weight loss anymore. Because, again, that was, for me, a fear of, what if I'm not thin enough? And now I'm like, effort. My body is my body. I eat pretty healthy. I exercise how I want to exercise, for joy, for community, for performance. And I would say to people, instead of looking in the mirror and going, like, I don't like what I see. And that's why I'm going to exercise. What about, even if you don't love yourself right now, what about, I'm working on loving myself. And that is why I want to give myself this opportunity to improve my mental health, to be more patient with my family, to be more productive and focused at work, whatever it may be. But I think you can tackle the same goals coming from a place of love instead of fear.

I like that in terms of maybe even a dare around, I'm working on loving myself. Something they're saying to themselves as they're doing these new things, because I think that's so easy to do, is to, yeah, just be hard on yourself when you're feeling like you're not meeting what you thought you were gonna do.

Yeah.

And I wanna say too, like, oh. Another of my fears was, what if I don't have this mindset? What if I don't hate myself and that's why I'm trying to do all these things? Well, I thought, well, the other alternative is I'll probably lie on the couch and eat Pringles and watch Netflix all day long. Probably. My therapist was actually like, do you really think that? And I was like, maybe not. I don't know. She's like, what about if you just try not being so hard, let's see what happens. And I think that's another thing that people could adapt, is see what happens. Use it as an experiment. And if something doesn't work, if you planned that two mile run after work and it didn't work out for some reason, instead of going, oh my God, I messed it up, what about taking a stance of curiosity, just, hey, why didn't that work? What got in the way? What could I do different next time? No judgment, just curiosity. I think that will take you far. So for me it was like this experiment of, well, why am I so afraid of lying on the couch and eating Pringles? What would happen if I was a little less hard on myself? And you know, what has happened is I just have more fun when I'm doing everything that I do. I mean, I rode my bike up the highest paved road in North America last summer at age 44 and did it faster, I guess. I was 43 last summer, did it faster than I did 10 years ago. So it's not like I'm like become this lazy piece of crap. You know, it's just I do these things from a different mindset.

Yeah. And David, I'd love to hear from you since you mentioned specifically thoughts dictating actions and that's how you were able to get started. Really was kind of reframing that mindset.

Yeah. So one of the things I've learned along my journey was is that there's three different beliefs that we have. We have the beliefs that were given to us from birth, which are the implanted beliefs which we had no control over. We didn't get to choose what country we were born in, what family we were born in, what city we were born in. It just happened. And there are certain belief systems that we begin to trust as truth in the very early stages of our life. And we don't realize how they're affecting us at 40 or 50 or 60 and then there's the imprinted beliefs, which are the experiences that we have. Growing up as being a heavyset kid, my identity started to shift in becoming the bigger kid. And then the third level is a level that most people never go to and that's the inspired beliefs. And I think that Brandon said it earlier, people do what people do. And when they're around people in a challenge that allow them to become inspired and they see other people doing things that they want to do, it brings them to a new level of belief to think that maybe they could do it. And when they start habit stacking and they start with something small and they start finding those wins, as Emily talked about, they start to gain some inspired beliefs. And you know, Simon Sinek always has this phrase, always start with why. So I believe there's four things that dictate long term success and sustainability, as Adam had talked about. And I truly believe that challenges are just the beginning. Without sustainability, really you're fooling yourself that you can actually be successful long term. The four things that I found in success is number one is motivation. You can use pain or pleasure. Both of them work. Oftentimes disgust is a pretty good motivator. It gets you started. But what happens is the reason why we go into yo yo dieting is because when the problem becomes less, our motivation becomes less. Right? Because as we're beginning to get better and healthier, we're giving ourselves a little wink in the mirror. We're saying, hey, things are working out, we're not as disgusted or we're not as motivated because of the pain. So you gotta have some pleasure that you're shooting for. So set a non weight loss goal. If you want to lose weight, that's fantastic. But set something beyond weight loss that's meaningful and purpose driven. Because again, weight loss is a means to an end. Focus on what the end is. And then the mindset. We use this thing called stop challenge, choose, stop beating yourself up and kicking your own arse. Nobody else needs to do that. There's plenty of people to do that. Challenge the way that you're looking at things and choose to make a healthy choice or a healthy response. So it's not about restriction. Everything is permissible in terms of eating healthy. Everything. You could have ice cream and still eat healthy. Just don't eat too much of it, eat less of it. And if it's a trigger food, find something else that may end up meeting your needs. But you have to challenge and then you have to choose. Choose is what breaks the behavioral Chain of habit. And if you make that choice over and over and over again, you can create some new inspired beliefs. And that's crucial for mindset shift. The third area is skill sets. I don't know. Many of the people watching this video right now probably don't know the answer to this question. How many calories is your body's burning? I. I was 35 years old. I was a dad of three kids. I didn't know how to calculate how many calories my body was burning and how much I should be eating to lose weight. I had no clue. I was a college graduate. I felt like I knew some things in life and I did not know that. And so knowledge is power. And when you have knowledge and you have skill sets to know how to lose weight and create a healthy lifestyle, you're going to get better at accomplishing it. And then the last piece is action. You got to take action, right? Your motivation, mindset, skill sets in action are all required to have lifelong transformation.

And you mentioned the non weight loss goal. And I think this goes to what Emily was saying earlier with the psychological win. I was thinking about this the other day. I was lifting up my dog's dog food bag, which is pretty heavy, and I'm like, okay, I'm actually lifting this a little bit easier now than I was a few weeks ago. And I'm just wondering if you guys have thoughts on that idea of a non weight loss goal, something that will give them that psychological win to be able to push forward even though they're not seeing any kind of results yet. Emily, do you want to kind of share since you sort of started that.

Yeah, we call them non scale victories. We have been, some of our locations got bored, clip pins up where they can write something down. Most of our clients have a significant amount of weight to lose. Usually it's about £50 or more. So oftentimes they have a lot of health issues related to that. So some of our major non scale victories would be reducing their medications, possibly going off their insulin. We've even seen things like a lot of activities of daily living. So they can tie their shoes now by themselves or they can walk upstairs without being out of breath. So really looking at those little things that maybe they feel as insignificant, but that's a big life change. To be able to do a lot of those things now and to be able to do it without as much pain or without being out of breath. Of course there's fitting into certain size clothing or we've had a lot of clients say I can fly now. I don't have to buy first class out of necessity, I can do it out of luxury and or I don't need the seatbelt extender anymore. So I mean those we could go on and on for, for days with so many non scale victories. So just to be looking out for those and celebrating those wins is huge. A little on the motivation stuff. We do a lot with our clients with identifying their sabotaging thought and then helping replace with new healthy habits. That all comes from the Beck Institute at behavioral therapy. So helping our clients identify where those thoughts come in because there's a trigger. So the boss brought donuts in on Friday. Then you have the sabotaging thought of, well, I've done so good this week so I can have this donut today. Then you have the response of eating the donut. One of the best quotes in that book is you don't accidentally eat a piece of cardboard. So helping the client really identify what was that sabotaging thought? So that we can work on those week after week after week when they're coming in, meeting with their coach, we put them on little note cards we have printed for them so they write down what it is. But replacing that with a new healthy response of yes, I love donuts, but I love my health more and I'm not going to eat a donut on Friday or whatever their plan may be, maybe it's getting excited to work out for the day. So it's maybe like what Cam said, well, I can't go run five miles today and therefore I'm going to be lazy forever. So that's the sabotaging thought and it's instead the healthy response, well, I could go on a 10 minute walk though and that would still bring me closer to our goals. And then of course that's not the cure all. So when clients are having a hard time with that, another thing we do after we've helped them with their why, we have them all run through a why worksheet. Why am I doing this? You have to get to the root of your why. But that can fade too. So then we talk about the advantage list. So okay, we know why we want to do this because we want to be healthy, we want to have energy, we want to be able to take our grandkids to an amusement park one day. All the things is the advantage list. What are the advantages of me getting fit, getting healthy? So kind of flipping the why over and doing it from that point of view. That helps a lot too. So that could even Be part of your challenges is make your advantage list today. What are five advantages of getting fit? Something like that.

Yeah. And, Adam, I'd love to hear from you in terms of accountability, internal, external accountability, what's coming alive for you in terms of what could really help them during this challenge? That maybe is something they could stick through and be consistent with after it's over.

Sure.

So I think accountability is wonderful. I think it's very easy to lie to ourselves. It's very easy to say, I'll start fresh tomorrow or I'll start fresh on Monday. Or I had recently had a client sign up, and she said she's been telling herself she's going to start fresh on Monday for the last 10 years. So. But there's different types of accountability. Right. There's what I call peer accountability and pro accountability. And peer accountability is with your friends or loved ones. And it certainly could work. But I think there's a very big difference between that and pro accountability. Because sometimes with peer accountability, it's hard to tell someone the hard truths they need to hear.

Right.

So, for example, my mom is a former high school English teacher. Many years ago, when it was time for me to take the SATs, she also tutored for the SATs. She wanted to help me. And of course, because she's my mom, I didn't take it seriously. Right. So.

But when you have a professional, someone.

You pay, someone who is able to kind of be objective and tell you what you need to hear sometimes, even though you may not want to hear it, that's very powerful. But you could still start with accountability. Engage a friend, talk with a friend or loved one and see if you guys can hold each other accountable to start with. But if you feel like that's not enough, if you feel like you guys are letting each other slip, then you can kind of engage a professional program where you're getting professional accountability, someone who could kind of tell you what you need to hear sometimes.

Yeah.

And I'm curious, too. Do you think maybe even them? Because I'm even thinking I want to talk about my body tutor during the program, during the challenge. Just something after it's over. So I was almost thinking if I could get them to post their food in the group just to get used to posting their food and what they're eating and how they're feeling. If you have thoughts around that as well.

Yeah.

So the more you share, I think for a lot of us with weight loss and fitness, there's a lot of shame. And part of the work we do is kind of, hey, just owning up to yourself and kind of everything we've talked about. I think the underlying thing here is having some self compassion. We're all so hard on ourselves and it's so easy to kind of notice. Most people, if they kind of mess up, they say, here I go again. And it's like, oh, here I go again with the donuts or whatever it is. And it's like, rarely do we say here I go again after we do something good, right? Oh, here I go again to the gym, or here I go again choosing fruit instead of ice cream. But the idea is self compassion, less judgment, and being willing to share what you're doing with other people. So I love the idea of posting to a group, sharing your pictures, and the more you can kind of just be okay with what you're doing and have less judgment because it's just food. It's not your best friend, it's not your worst enemy. There's so much judgment with what we do.

Right.

And one of the things I often encourage people to do is if you have an extra bag of cookies or bag of cookies, whatever it might be, it's just cookies, right? It's the judgment that comes afterwards that gets us in trouble. But it's just cookies. So practice sharing what you ate without judgment and seeing how that feels.

Yeah, I like that. And Brandon and Joe, I'd love you guys to speak to excuses if you could just for a couple minutes about the excuses people make for why they can't do the things. I think, Joe, you have the perspective of people with injuries and they're figuring out how they can do it with having all these things that they're going through. And then Brandon, obviously you have the idea of literally knowing how to do it with a small space. So I'm just kind of curious what you guys think with people that are making excuses for not being able to get fit during the challenge.

Yeah, I'll start quickly. So I think that one of the biggest reason why people come up with excuses is because of they don't speak up if you're not educated on something. For example, like if you've got pain in your shoulder or things like that, you may complain about it, but you may not look into it. You may not talk to people that know what to do with it. You will only talk to people that are like, oh, yeah, yeah, my knee hurts too, and that's why I didn't do anything. And now you, you start to be, that's why I'm so Excited about the fact that you have a community here. Getting started is one of the hardest things to do. So now you take away the excuse of just getting started by being with an entire group of other people that are just getting started. So that's, to me, the number one thing is just getting started. David was talking about it before take the action. Brandon was to just take the action, take the action. So a very quick example. One of the things people may not know is that one of the greatest ways to rehab an injury or help an injury, for example, let's say it's your shoulder is by doing full range of motion with the shoulder. Could be whatever weight that doesn't hurt up to the point that it hurts. And you would just do it to there. So you would do half the motion and then you would just strengthen it to there. And then you would be able to get through that little plateau as it starts to get stronger there. And now that range of motion will increase. One of the top way, I think Dr. Andy Gall speaks to it. Well, from a case study at Cal Fullerton, it's literally the number one way is to put yourself through full range of motion. So we'll often use the excuse of I can't move because I have this problem. Meanwhile, moving is the greatest thing that you can do. So those would be two of the, the main things I speak to.

And I just interviewed someone that had like 25 stretching facilities, facilities. And we were talking about people that say they have no time to stretch or do things in that way. And he was like, well, do you want to age quicker? Because that's what's going to happen. And I think when people kind of connect the two together of what, how important mobility is, it can help them as well. Okay, Brandon, your turn.

So I think on Joe's point of view on the injury stuff, I think you gotta be careful and you gotta seek expert help. But I, while I was in, I had a back issue, I had a shoulder issue and I just kept doing burpees, right. And I just worked through it. And Joe, I'll probably ping you offline if it's okay because I do have a lower back. I think I'm doing the wrong stretching anyway. So the way that I look at excuses, to me it all just comes back to negative self talk. And I think a lot of these people, and I don't really agree with the coddling approach. I know maybe we'll say it's not sustainable.

I don't know.

My approach is the same me for, for multiple years. But maybe it doesn't work for everybody because I think actually that people have their standards set way too low. I think that they've gotten where they are because they just say, oh, it's okay, it's fine. No, it's not. Raise your standard and hit it, right? And the ultimate act of self love is keeping that promise to yourself through action, not just words, right? And so that's why I like to push people. Because it's like you just did something that you did not think was previously possible, right? And that's where I think the combination of accountability comes in. Raising your standards and just taking action and just crushing your excuses. Because the more you do this, the more confident you're going to feel. And the more confident you feel, the more you're going to want to do it. And on the non physical goals or the non fitness goals or body goals, I guess I should say, how about being alive? Right? Let's start there. I'm about to have my first child. I want to be able to walk my daughter down the aisle, right? I want to see my grandchildren, I want to be able to be physically active with them while I'm in my 80s, 90s, my grandparents are both in their 80s and my grandma plays tennis four times a week. She's active, she kicks the butt of 65 year old women that she hangs out with. So I look to these people to say, you know what, I want to be like that, right? So I'm going to reward myself by putting in the work and doing the work today. And so I don't look at it as a punishment. And I think that's how exercise is being framed. It's like, this is not a punishment, this is your reward, this is a gift, right? You're alive, you have the ability to move, the body was meant to move. And what that does for your mind is unbelievable. I know what it did for me in my darkest moments of my life completely shifted my standards in the way that I saw myself and my level of confidence. So that's how I approach it.

I'd love to. And I actually want to bring up what you said. The, the whole idea of you guys having different views on things, I think is exactly why I put these panels together. Because sometimes someone needs to hear one thing at one time in their life and they need to hear another thing and another time in their life. And to be able to pull all these different things when you need it, it's beautiful. So I love that you're able to speak up to that. As well. So thank you. I'd love to hear what your one thing that you think if they do every day during the challenge will be something that will help them during the challenge and then also potentially be sustainable for them after the challenge is over. And if you do hear this advice from someone else, please pick something different. So really putting you on the spot. Okay. Emily, if you could go first.

Yeah. And I have two. This is what we tell all of our clients is drink more water. Most people are dehydrated, so that is so simple that they can do. They don't have to worry about depriving themselves or changing too many habits. But we like our clients having at least 80 ounces of water a day. Ideally, they'd be having half their body weight in ounces of water. So if they're very far away from that, maybe they weigh 200 pounds. So that'd be about 100. Just work up every couple days, get a little bit more water in. That's going to help with so many things, and it's so easy. And the other one, it's going to be a little more challenging. But if they could do it would be to cut sugar for the whole time and not just say, okay, I'm cutting sugar, so they're not eating ice cream or a cookie, but really look at everything in their pantry and their fridge and their freezer and see how much added sugar is in everything, because that's going to make a world of difference. And they'll realize, oh, my gosh, this pasta sauce has it. These condiments have it. It's in so many things, it shouldn't be. So cutting sugar, they are going to feel so much reduced inflammation, more energy. They will feel so much better if they can get through the first few days of that sugar detox. But getting that out of there is huge.

Perfect. Thank you. And, David.

Yeah? Nutrition and hydration is so important. I would say I'd probably go along with the habit of a healthy mind. Always start with why. Eat your why for breakfast before you have a healthy fueling of healthy fruits and vegetables or protein, whatever it is that you're focused on, don't focus on the macronutrients first. Focus on your why first. Why am I doing this? Why is it important to me? And then just keep asking that question, why is that important to me? Do the seven levels deep of why from Dean Grazioso or whatever his name is, it's so powerful to just keep asking the question, why am I doing this? Because, as Jim Rohn says, The bigger the why, the harder the try. Whether you're doing a challenge or you're having to totally transform your life from going from Brandon's situation where he's incarcerated, he's going through a difficult season, I'm confident Brandon had a big why to transform his life to go from where he was at to where he is today. He had a big why. Every single one of us has been successful because we had a why that was stronger than the sewer that we had to go through, because the road to success goes through the sewer. And if you get into the middle of this challenge, you're going to be up to here in crap. And if you just start focusing in on the crap or the challenges and the sacrifices and the difficulties and the complications and the time and the energy, you're not going to make it to your goal. Focus on where you're going and why you're going there. And I have every belief that you will end up being successful. And what will happen is you'll turn around and you'll watch your family members following you. My dad ended up losing 42 pounds after I did, and he sustained it for 14 years. He's type 2 diabetic. I could have never believed my dad could have changed, but because I changed, my dad changed. And there's a whole ripple of people, family, friends, co workers. And when you see your story making you feel more fulfilled and successful and significant, you'll oftentimes keep going. Because it's bigger than just how you look in a, you know, size, whatever dress or whatever size clothes you want.

To wear, it's bigger.

We have a. Like Emily talked about in her bio, we have a worldwide pandemic. The virus was this big in comparison to the obesity crisis. We have almost 70% of Americans overweight and obese. 70%. And obesity is the mother and father of all disease. And there's only two kinds of people out there. The ones that go out there and live their dreams and change their world, and the ones that depend on people that live their dreams and change their world. So be the one that lives your dream and change your world by focusing in on your why. Thanks for having me, Stacey.

Thank you. And go ahead.

Hey, thanks, Stacey. I love this question. I love what everyone's saying about the whys. But as far as the daily action, I think everyone should take focus on those quick wins. And because the why can feel very abstract when it's five in the morning and it's your only time to exercise and you really want to hit snooze it can be very hard to think, okay, 20 years from now, I want my knees to be good or whatever. So what about right now? So, number one, remember, weight is not a behavior. Weight may come on, it may come off. We actually do not have as much control over our weight as we would like to believe. 70% of your weight is determined by genetics and focus on the behaviors. Studies have showed that regardless of weight loss, when people improve their behaviors around healthy eating and activity, their lab values get better. Cholesterol goes down, blood pressure goes down, all of this. So focus on the behavior. And I would say to that end, track it. If you're a walker, track your miles. If you are doing some other form of activity where it makes more sense to track minutes. Track minutes, make it visual, make it somewhere where you can see it. If that's too granular for you and you're like, you know what? Checking the box would do a lot for me. I mean, literally, like a child's star chart that you might give a kid to be like, did you do your chores today? If that makes you feel good, it really, for me, it feels really good to see that check mark. I've used all kinds of systems. It doesn't have to be fancy. You know what I think, Brandon? You were saying you can start like you were saying, you only need a bathroom to get fit. You don't need an app. You don't need some online whatever. It can be a piece of paper where you draw a grid, a box for every day, and you fill in the box. But if you like to see that buildup of, oh, my God. Okay, today it was two miles, but after three weeks, it's been, what, 21 miles or whatever. That feels really good. So track it.

Thank you.

So, so much of what we focus on with our clients is what we call their mph, their mindset, psychology, and habits. Because ultimately, their relationship with food has to change. And one of the best ways to change relationship with food is before you eat, pause and ask yourself, am I hungry or am I eating to change.

The way I feel?

Am I hungry, or am I eating.

To change the way I feel?

Because when you start to understand that food is never about the food, it's about what the food allows us to avoid and. Or the void it fills. It changes everything. And we talked about the question of why so much in the last few minutes. And certainly having a compelling why is important, but also even more so is, instead of focusing on so much on what you're eating, start focusing on why. You're eating when you start to understand why you're eating, what's driving those behaviors, because every behavior has a motivation, it'll be a lot easier to change what you're eating. So my challenge is, before you eat, pause and ask yourself, am I hungry or am I eating? To change the way I feel.

Yeah.

This makes me think, are you open to sharing about the broccoli test really quick, too?

Okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah.

So the idea of the broccoli test.

Is there's physical hunger, which is what we want to listen to. It comes on gradually. We feel it in our stomach, we feel in our head, but it's definitely a gradual sensation. That's what we want to listen to. And then there's emotional hunger.

Right.

Emotional hunger is what so many of us do. We're stressed, we're bored, we're anxious, we're frustrated, we're disappointed, all sorts of things. And the idea of the broccoli test is you pause and ask yourself, would I eat broccoli right now? And if the answer is yes, then you're actually physically hungry. If the answer is no, then you're not. You're emotionally hungry. Right. You're hungry for something else. So I call it the broccoli test. You can insert any vegetable, but the idea is if you eat vegetables, you're physically hungry, which is great. If you're emotionally hungry, then you want to try to figure out what it is you're actually hungry for, but it's not for food.

Brandon, do you want to go next?

Everything everybody said was really awesome. I really like what David said about finding your why. And for me, it is about setting that big, scary target. So when my life crumbled, I promised myself and I promised my wife that I would take this horrible, horrible event that has happened in my life and I would turn it into something that lifted people up. That was my big thing. How am I going to do this? I don't know. And then I had to wake up every single day, chip away at that goal, and that's really why I'm doing what I'm doing now. So that big why to me, is huge. That goes along with what I was saying. Raise your standards, hold yourself to that higher level. There's nothing wrong with that. And then just try to shoot for it every single day, take those little steps. And what I would do, what I did to start my transformation, I was locked in a cell. I mean, it's the most depressing thing you can possibly imagine, right? I woke up every single day and I did 25 burpees. Right out of the steel bunk right onto the floor. 25 burpees. And you know how I convinced myself that I love 25 burpees? I smiled while I did them. That's going to sound crazy, but if you want to change your perspective on exercise, wake up, roll out of bed, do 25 burpees. If you can't do 25, do 10. If you can't do 10, do 5. And smile while you do it and thank yourself. This is a gift. You woke up able to move, stand, and that's such a blessing, Right? So do it. And it will completely shift. I promise it will work. It will completely shift your approach to fitness, and you will start to treat it as a reward instead of a punishment.

And Joe.

Yes. So I'm very, very excited to be able to connect with all of you guys. Such incredible input. I was actually going to say something similar to what Brandon said, because I'm a big believer in, you just move immediately when you get out of bed. I think that you start to develop the muscle of willpower, especially when it's first thing in the morning. I always speak a lot to treat your future self like your favorite teammate, Right. So how can you set yourself up for success if it's gotta be like something very practical the night before? Put your workout clothes on, right? If you have responsibilities that you have to do immediately in the morning, you can sleep in those workout clothes. Cause who cares what you're gonna smell like anyway? And then if you gotta say, for example, take your kid to school. Well, don't let yourself back into the house after you drop off the kid before you do whatever it is, your morning walk. Or you could do your burpees outside. Cause let me tell you how beautiful it is to get sun on your skin immediately. I don't care how cold it is. So little practical things like that I think could be extremely helpful when it comes to a challenge like this. Because as we all know, starting is the hardest thing. And then obviously, like Adam said, too, and Brandon, you know, you want to. You want to give yourself something sustainable for a long time. You won't be able to get there until you can really just get started, get that first time, and make it a habit.

Well, you guys, I'm blown away. This was so incredible, getting a chance to talk to you and just getting to hear everybody's different thoughts and ideas. And I just am so excited to create this challenge for you guys listening. And I appreciate the experts for coming on and just. I feel so honored to be able to have this chance, to be able to learn from you and be able to apply the things that we talked about. And so I am super excited. I appreciate you all taking the time and. And coming here with me. And for the listeners, do the thing. Don't wait for opportunity, create it.