¶ Avoid Common Weight Loss Mistakes
hello hello welcome to the podcast i'm super excited for this one which i know i say every time because we are going to be talking about The most stupid eight things that women get wrong when it comes to trying to build long-term weight loss habits. So if you want to be... smarter than 98% of people, get leaner than 98% of people and avoid the dumbest mistakes and know exactly what to look for so that you don't fall into these common patterns that I see over and over again.
then keep listening because we are going to dive right in. And I love this quote from Charlie Munger, who is, or was, RIP, Warren Buffett's partner. And he said, How much advantage people like us talking about him and Warren, not by being super smart, but simply by avoiding being really, really dumb. And this, by the way, is someone who was like a multi-billionaire.
one of the richest people alive. So obviously what he says has a little bit of weight and his inversion theory of simply avoiding what people who fail do.
¶ Don't Believe You're Unique
was highly successful and has been highly successful and is an amazing framework to use so the more that we understand the things that we need to avoid and just simply avoid them the more long-term success we can see so let's dive in the first mistake that I see is that people always think that their situation is unique no matter how many times i've heard the same reasons as to why someone can't lose weight no matter how many of these patterns occur over and over again people will think
that they are saying what I'm hearing for the first time or that their situation for some reason is special or different to everyone else. This is so predominant.
And even if you don't think that your situation is unique, you probably think that there's some reason why you are slightly worse off or why things are slightly harder or you have a slightly unique situation. So maybe my situation... being unique is less of a blanket rule and more of a spectrum where everyone will put themselves on the spectrum of harder.
slightly more unique, slightly more tailored, slightly more difficult. And I will meet virtually nobody and talk to virtually nobody who's like, I'm normal. Like my body is normal. My metabolism is normal. My environment is normal. You know, my husband is normal. My kids are normal. I have yet to meet someone, or I mean, maybe I have, but I've yet to meet someone who will say, you know what, I have every...
reason or every advantage and it's still, I'm still not doing it. One of the biggest blocks. to consistently losing weight is that idea that your situation is somewhat special or somewhat unique even if it is not the most unique and this is where people will say things like I'm going through menopause or my kids are really picky eaters or I grew up in a house where we weren't allowed certain types of food and I'm really traumatized from that or
Maybe I'm just even a little bit triggered by that or I don't want my kids to have the same feelings of deprivation that I did. So therefore, I'm like, I want to have a little bit of candy in the home and I want to be balanced with that. And therefore...
I end up eating the candy. Or I'm really stressed out at work. I'm a new mum. My metabolism is broken. Or I've done so many different diets. I don't have any support at home. My family doesn't understand why I'm doing this. I'm really, really busy. I don't have time to prep. I work a really stressful job. I have five kids. I have six kids. I have two kids. I have a baby. I have teenagers. I have no kids. I have no family. I just have to cook for me.
It's so much harder when you cook for one person. It's so much harder when you have to cook for a family. Insert any reason that you want why your situation needs more attention, needs more work, is more difficult, requires more effort. And you are going to have the same mindset that keeps those people that say those things stuck. It is the number one thing.
I started with it because it's juicy and it's spicy. It's a little bit squirmy to realize that we all think that our situation is unique. And we think it especially when we haven't been able to see success. There's this... interview that I remember listening to from Simon Sinek who wrote a book Dart With Why and I listened to this podcast where he was saying that in terms of logic you've either got to make a choice that
Everything is your fault or is because of you. Everything that you haven't achieved or haven't done is because of you. You take ownership of that and therefore when you see success it's also because of you or you take a view that everything that has happened to you that has been difficult or has been that has stopped you from achieving something is completely out of your control.
But then also, on the flip side, everything positive, all of the things that you maybe have achieved, your good job or your kids turning out okay or your grades or anything else, that also has to be luck. You have to pick a logic side. Either it's all luck, the good and the bad is out of your control, or you take ownership for the good and the bad. And I really like this because it's kind of a bit of a wake up call of just taking ownership.
for the situation that you're in and recognizing that you're not a unicorn, you're not special. Every single person who has seen success has had to overcome something, has had some kind of situation, has probably at some point thought that they were unique.
The only thing that we know to be true about change in terms of human behavior is that we are not unique. Our situation is not the first one. Whatever we're dealing with, whatever struggles we've encountered... in trying to lose weight whatever self-sabotage whatever binging whatever obstacles we are not the first person to have experienced those things we are not the only person to be experiencing them right now
We are not the person that is experiencing them at their most difficult. We are not the person who is experiencing them at their best. We are just a human with a common experience of having to overcome obstacles. The only experience that is unique, the only unique thing about your situation is the non-uniqueness of it. From a factual level, your situation and whatever is holding you back or making it harder for you to lose weight.
is simply not unique. It isn't the first time. It isn't the only one. So that's just factual. Somebody else has seen success where you haven't so far. That is also factual. So it's not relevant. Whatever obstacles you have are only relevant in so much as your choice to overcome them and your choice to take ownership of how you as an individual overcome them. So the first one is that they're not super relevant.
But the second one is that we can't use them as an excuse because they're not valid or helpful. And when I say valid, let me be very clear. You may have had an upbringing that makes it more likely for you to binge. You may have had things happen in your past that makes it more likely for you to gain weight. You may be especially short, which makes it easier for you to gain weight and harder for you to lose. You may be experiencing menopause. And some of those things...
are most likely out of your control. They're not your fault but they are your responsibility. So the hardness level or the difficulty or the uniqueness isn't relevant because it's not true. So let's stop saying it. But the fix, which is more important, the pragmatic side of actually overcoming what you think are your unique obstacles, which are actually just common. You're a commoner. We all are. Accept it. Your common problems.
are your responsibility, even if they're not your fault. And the people that I see who get the most success let go of this. and stop making this a mistake in their life in a very practical way that they don't ever use it. It never becomes arsenal for them in any kind of toolkit or it never becomes weaponized. So there's no reason to ever bring it up. And you can see... how much of a filter this would be for a lot of people because you can't you can never use it anymore
It becomes like a useless object in your kitchen. So you decide to just throw it out. The only thing that really matters is what am I going to do about the specific obstacles that I have? What am I going to do now? It's future focused as opposed to the past. It's problem solving as opposed to problem finding. It's solution focused.
As opposed to obstacle focused. And when you avoid that mistake. You're much much more likely to see success. It is only your choice. So anytime that you start to see yourself go. well, you know what, like I experienced burnout or I experienced fatigue or any of these things, switch your language, switch your thought process to this is something that I experience.
I am going to do X in order to overcome it. I am going to do X in order to make it easier. I'm going to find some kind of solution, me, myself, proactively, in order to see success. Not even in spite, because in spite implies that it's something of an issue. It's not. It's just a thing. I'm going to use this as a catalyst for change. It's an opportunity for growth. Just like every single person on the planet will have things.
¶ Stop Serial Dieting Patterns
that are catalysts and opportunities for growth if we choose to see them that way that's the shift that we need to make the second mistake i see people make when they're trying to lose weight that will hold them back for life is that they see weight loss almost like serial dating. And if you're ignoring the red flags in a diet then don't be surprised.
when it doesn't last long term. The cereal dieting is all about looking for a good time as opposed to a long time. It's looking for metaphorical dating one night stands or dieting one night stands where You go in and you have like the best possible time that you have, but you're never going to actually continue with that diet long term. It's the opposite of how long term habit building actually works. And this is a big mistake that people make.
They're thinking on a very, very short timeline about the biggest results that they can achieve, the fastest things that they can. have access to in terms of weight loss the most significant result and in doing so what they're going to do is consistently sacrifice the ability to stay consistent with whatever it is they're doing.
The thing that I like to think about when it comes to long-term change is if I can't see myself doing this for the next 10, 20 years, then it's probably not something that I should be doing right now. If I can't conceivably see myself building a skill set or building a habit where I'm able to master this, then...
Why am I doing it now? Why am I attempting to do something that is not going to get me the long-term results if the long-term results are what I require and desire? This mistake is going to show up predominantly in diet hopping. It's this... low commitment to a diet it's thinking that the next one is going to be the fix it's always looking for something new it's looking for something exciting instead of analyzing well what were the things that I didn't like about this beach body
What were the things that were wrong about raw till four? Why couldn't I stay consistent with a fully raw diet or a carnivore diet? And now just going, well, you know what? There are people who are saying and raving. about this new way of eating or this influencer.
posted of what I eat in a day I'm going to follow exactly what they're doing it's dieting dating and it's not getting you any closer to your goal you have to stop ignoring the red flags of a diet if you want to stop making the mistakes that that diet led to the binges the inconsistency the weight gain the failure the self-loathing because you can't stick to something when it was never your fault in the begin with to begin with
There are so many diets that the way that they are structured in terms of the mechanisms of how they work will not be sustainable to you long term. It is your job to make those judgment calls with logic, with reasoning. and with pattern recognition about whether they're going to be sustainable.
And the reality is that most are not going to be because they are not designed to be. A lot of the feeling of looking for a new exciting diet all the time or looking for something to be extreme and hard, the feeling of... this is going to work because it's intense is because we think our situation is unique I have experienced this and I was telling a friend of mine this morning actually on our run that
Part of the reason that I decided to do the potato reset when I very first began my weight loss journey 40 pounds ago was because it felt like the most extreme thing that I could conceive of doing and I thought that it would give me the biggest amount of weight. loss in the shortest amount of time and it felt like it was restrictive enough or it sounded restrictive enough that I thought that for my broken metabolism it would give me results.
So I had a view that my metabolism was broken. I had a view that I needed something extremely extreme because I was unique. that a normal kind of moderate approach wouldn't work for me in particular. And I wanted it to feel intense because I wanted intense results because I was impatient. I wasn't looking to build something long-term. Well, actually, in that moment, I was looking to build something long-term.
term but I still had that mindset that it had to feel a certain way and so that's what I was looking for in the next thing that I did and amazingly that actually was something that I could sustain long term because it avoided hunger it avoided me having to white knuckle something. And it was actually inherently satisfying. And it is easy to do something like eating potatoes, which is how I still eat to this day. But my motivation at that point was because I was looking for...
Something I thought would work for me in particular because I was sure my metabolism was broken and that I was myself unique and special. I was looking for diets to give me a certain feeling. As opposed to asking what are the green flags that I actually want to see long term? What are the things that I can actually be consistent with for the next 10, 20, 30 years? What can I see myself doing?
for a lifetime. Can I see myself eating raw while traveling while 50 years old? No. So why am I trying to lose 40 pounds eating that way? Can I see myself for the rest of my life eating carnivore? Which I know this is a vegan podcast, so it's very unlikely that you're doing that. Or paleo, or raw till four, or counting calories, or literally anything. Can I see myself doing that? Does it have the green flags of I could commit to this long term? If not, why are you having a fling with it?
that's an inability to recognize the patterns and the red flags of everything that you've tried in the past. The fix to this or the way to think about it differently is the understanding that weight loss itself has core principles in the same way that a long-term stable relationship has core principles that you would need to look for as opposed to just a feeling in a short period of time.
And the core weight loss principles that we need to be on the hunt for are, can I do this long term? Does this help me to feel full and satisfied? Potatoes.
eating enough food does it help me to get into a long-term calorie deficit in that could I keep eating this way in 10 years or would I feel really deprived because when I changed my diet I didn't feel deprived anymore because I was actually eating enough of the right kind of food that it was fine for me to eat less calories because the volume of food that I was eating was more than it had ever been.
Weight loss 101 is much more about what you don't do, which is inverting success. It's avoiding the hunger. It's avoiding the bingings. It's building habits or avoiding the inconsistencies. It's avoiding an environment that's tempting. It's that inversion of avoiding the mistakes that cause you to be inconsistent as opposed to needing to get everything right. Don't be smart. Just stop being so dumb.
¶ Work With Hunger, Not Against It
Don't do another diet that's not going to work just like the last one. If it has the same red flags, then stop doing it. Third biggest mistake people make when trying to lose weight is trying to fight hunger. I want you to think for a moment, if you know anything about history, about how many heinous crimes have been committed because of hunger. I want you to think about every cartoon you've ever watched where someone is on a lifeboat, stranded out in the ocean.
and they're with their friends, and their friends start to look like a steak and some mustard because they're so hungry. People eat bodies if they are shipwrecked long enough. And you think that you can resist the chips in your pantry when you've had nothing to eat all day? Remember to invert. You don't have to be so smart. Just stop being so dumb.
you're not going to beat hunger nobody is designed to beat hunger hunger is a mechanism that is there as a safety net to keep us alive it is one of the strongest primal human motivators and the main mistake i see is people trying to eat less in terms of portion sizes a behavior that leads to inconsistency is trying to reduce portion sizes we eat a pretty consistent volume of food
For most people, that's around three or four pounds a day. So what happens when you reduce your portion sizes as the only way to reduce calories is you have this hunger that is going to motivate you to have more cravings or it's just going to create more cravings.
Those cravings are going to make it harder to stay consistent. And when we have inconsistency and we have stronger cravings, then we're more likely to binge, which means that as an overall average, we're more likely to actually eat more calories. Think about this scenario. that's going to lead to a binge. You half your portion sizes for the entire day. Nighttime comes around and you're so hungry that you end up eating an entire loaf of bread and absolutely
stuffing out your stomach. Not speaking from experience here. Or maybe something much, much, much worse. Three tubs of Ben and Jerry's, which is going to be over 4,000 calories. In that moment, because of the decision to reduce your portion sizes, you've taken a normal average calorie day for you.
which, to be fair, is probably not going to get you losing weight of about maybe 2,000 or 2,500 calories. Over 4,000 calories in that one meal, in that one binge. So really, probably more like about 5,000 calories. So the decision to reduce portion sizes and to consistently trying to do that when it consistently leads to binging and inconsistency, whether that is night to night.
week to week or even month to month when you give up on your three-month stint of massively reducing your portion sizes and then you gain 5, 10, 15 pounds back. is not actually getting you closer to your goals. It's this cognitive dissonance that we continually have between the patterns that we can observe.
and the behavior that we can see that is holding us back and our consistency to go back to those same patterns. We are not hardwired to beat hunger. We are hardwired to want a large volume of food. three to four pounds for most people so work with hunger instead of against it rather than cutting your portion sizes or reducing your calories way too low you need to use calorie density and actually eat more food
Eat more potatoes, which are about 400 calories per pound. They're the most satiating foods on the planet, which means that they reduce cravings. They help us feel really full and satisfied, not just with volume, but with the satiety. magical feeling that happens in our brains. Choose more foods that are lower in calorie density like vegetables. Add half vegetables to every meal like a 50-50 plate. Reduce the high calorie elements.
your cooking like oil which is 4,000 calories per pound if you were to simply do this without reducing any portion sizes and you cook with oil every day you're gonna save yourself thousands of calories a week so you swap out a granola bar for an apple You're going to save yourself 400, 500, 600 calories a week. If you make those swaps consistently to eat smarter as opposed to eating less, it's going to be very easy to get into a calorie deficit.
and therefore lose weight but don't try and do this by eating less it always backfires instead make it your goal to feel full and satisfied because that's going to lead to more consistency overall and you're going to be able to do this long term
¶ Assess Your True Calorie Intake
Mistake number four. Most people massively overestimate how consistent they are and how good they are with their diet and massively underestimate how many calories they're actually eating. women aren't overweight because of hormones they're overweight because of just this once every single day
I was having a conversation with a client of ours who has lost over 60 pounds and I was asking her if she gets comments from friends or family or relatives now that she's lost the weight or people ask her how she did it. And she said that she does have... some people very close to her who can't understand why they're not losing because they're doing exactly the same thing as her and they're not actually seeing results. And so I asked her that.
well, are they following exactly what you do? Have they asked you questions? Are they eating low-calorie-dense meals? Because she lost weight in the same way that I did. Low-calorie density and building habits to get consistent. The thing that she said, which I thought was...
really sad and funny at the same time but is a mistake that I've seen time and time again is that these people and one person in particular who is very close to her is convinced that her consistency to a whole foods plant-based diet is at 90%.
When in reality, it's about 50 or 60. I asked her, how can this person possibly think that they're doing everything right? How can they think that they're being consistent when you so clearly can see that they're not? And by the way, I've seen the same pattern. In hundreds of people, they're convinced of their own consistency and I was too. The thing that she said was really interesting and I can see how clearly or how easily this builds up for me and also people I know who struggle.
And it's that everything feels like a one-off. The bagel that you don't normally have. The time that you go out with a friend, which you hardly ever see. The glass of wine that you would not normally have because you're on holiday. Your life and your food choices consistently are these one-off patterns of highly processed food and you're not able to see them as patterns. You're not able to actually identify.
that you are consistently eating a lot more calories than you think, and that your consistency to a whole foods, low calorie dense diet is not actually where it needs to be. in order to get into a weight loss zone. And this is a very frustrating place for people because they will start to feel my metabolism must be broken. It must be because I'm going through menopause. I'm doing everything right and I'm not actually seeing results.
of having the clarity and understanding that you're just not doing everything right and not even close to it there are so many studies that will have people estimate their calorie spend or how many calories that they are consuming in a day and this will include dietitians nutritionists and doctors people who have a very good understanding of macronutrient content and in these experiments
Scientists will either give them a plate of food or feed them over the course of time. They will have to guess how many calories there are in things or they will have to give an account for how many calories they're eating or as an idea, their own consistency.
You get the general gist. There's a lot of studies that look into this. The consistent outcome of those experiments is that even the people who have the most familiarity with calorie content, with their own patterns of behavior... will underestimate the calories that they're consuming by about 40%.
Which means that if you think that you're eating about 1600 calories, you're most likely eating about 2200. If you think that you're eating about 90% consistently and your diet is about 90% whole foods. It's probably closer to about 50%. This is just the reality for most people. And it's a consistent pattern that I've observed where we always think.
that we're better than we are. We always think that we spend less on coffee and we always think that we spend less on eating out. We always think that we invest more. We always underestimate how bad we are, how... terrible our behaviors are and we always overestimate how positive our behaviors are. We always underestimate how many times we worked out or how consistent step goal is and when you actually look at the data
We're always doing worse. This is a consistent bias that human beings have. The mistake that people make is to not recognize it as a bias. It is going to affect all of us. It affects me, but I'm aware of it. And you can be aware of it too so that you can avoid it. There are two ways that you can do this. The first one is to just get some clarity. Have public accountability.
Have an accountability coach. Have some way of tracking. And that doesn't mean that you have to count calories. I don't believe that counting calories is positive because it actually leads to more inconsistency of tracking when you have a binge. But taking a picture of those meals. journaling every single thing that you put into your mouth and a bite of someone else's meal, a sip of someone else's drink, one chip at the restaurant is still you eating those calories.
Just because it was one chip doesn't mean it has zero calories. Just because it was one sip of alcohol doesn't mean that it doesn't have calories. Those things all do have calories. I'm telling you this to make you aware that you are eating more. than you probably think you are. Not to shame you into other kind of behavior. We're talking about getting clarity so that you can make decisions and avoid mistakes. Because if we have clarity, then we can do something about it.
So those are some of the ways that you can do that. And we take pictures of meals inside of the program that I have for this reason so that you can get clarity on what you're actually doing. It's actually an amazing accountability tool as well.
The next way and the other way is that if you are going to have some processed food or if you are going to have some foods that are... off plan in terms of consistency, or if you haven't made a choice to go fully whole foods, to go fully in, then having a framework where
You just don't have those at certain times or you remove some of the ambiguity around when you have those foods is going to allow you to be more consistent overall. So what this would look like for me is I've had... full periods and when I was losing the 40 pounds that I lost I wouldn't eat chips at all I never would drink juice I would not drink alcohol it removed even the ability for me to underestimate my calories
Because I wasn't eating foods that would allow me to do that. Even if I ate more potatoes and broccoli, I couldn't fail at that. Or I couldn't unknowingly overeat on calories because it was simply impossible to do so. You can either create clarity through consistent accountability and consistent tracking in some form, but it has to be consistent so that you can observe behavior.
This is almost like doing like a time audit or a food audit. Or you can create frameworks for yourself where you don't have the ability to be inconsistent. This is an environmental change.
¶ Embrace the Messy Learning Process
The fifth mistake that will hold people back from consistently losing weight is not embracing the messy middle of change. and going back to being a beginner to master a new skill. We all want clarity before we take action. We all want to have complete certainty of the frameworks and the rules and the things that we need to do in order to be successful. And we don't like...
And so one of the things I see people do consistently that will hold them back is think that they need to have all of that clarity. and search out for things that give them clarity on something that they're not designed to have yet.
This is why you'll see people gravitate towards things like meal plans or needing to know a certain calorie number, even though if they look at the red flags and the patterns that they've experienced in the past, that having a meal plan didn't actually mean that they ate the thing.
on it knowing how many calories they needed for weight loss didn't actually stop them eating Ben and Jerry's the knowledge of what you need to do doesn't actually change your behavior the clarity of the actions that you need to take doesn't make those actions easier
When it comes to losing weight, it's not the knowledge of what to do that's the issue. It's learning how to consistently implement when you don't want to. But even the knowledge of what that... actually looks like when you fail, which is inevitable, when you have a binge, whether that's going to affect your results, how many exact potatoes to eat, which is going to depend on your hunger on the day, all the uncertainty.
of actually mastering a skill that is specific for you and your unique situation because of your unique life, all of that is going to feel messy and uncomfortable until you've mastered it. The mastery... of long-term fat loss is going to feel like learning to read. And a lot of the reason that people get stuck here is they don't like feeling like a beginner and they don't like operating without clarity.
And so they'll stay stuck doing the things that haven't worked, but at least it's the devil they know as opposed to the devil they don't. You're trying to avoid feelings of failure by creating perfect plans and systems that you will never stick to. You avoid taking the action that you need to because you'll have more clarity on Monday. You'll have a better fridge at the end of the week. You'll have more options to start.
and more headspace when you've come back from vacation. Be in a place of more certainty, of feeling like you're more in control at some futuristic time. with some futuristic perfect plan instead of embracing that the way that we get clarity the way we build great plans not perfect ones the way we're able to iterate and problem solve when encountering the merit of problems and issues that come in day-to-day life around sourcing the right kinds of foods
And dealing with failure, we're looking for that feeling of certainty. So we put off starting until Monday. When if we started now... We would have so many more reps by Monday. We would have failed so many more times. We would have had dealt with the uncertainty and by Monday we would be more certain. We want to go into a gym and feel confident instead of like a complete noob.
So we avoid going in the first place, perpetuating our noobness without realizing it's that feeling of going up to a machine and not knowing what you're doing. It's that feeling of picking up a weight and realizing it was the wrong weight or too heavy. That actually creates the confidence to know which one is going to be helpful. It's the operating in uncertainty. It's the going back to being a beginner. It's the trying something and failing. It's the iterative process.
It's the looking stupid and looking dumb and being a novice that actually allows you to master this. And when your ego kicks in, When you think that you should be better, even though you haven't mastered this yet, that you should know how to do something that you've never actually learned, that you beat yourself up for failures that you've never learned to come back from.
That you stay stuck instead of realizing that's the process of change. A person that never made a mistake never made anything. If you don't know how to stay consistent, if you don't know how to recover after a binge, if you don't know how to... meal prep your potatoes or how long potatoes last in the fridge if you don't know how long to put on tofu in on the air fryer or how much salt to add
to a soup if you don't know how to follow a recipe if you don't know how to prep for the week if you don't know how to use certain gym equipment if you don't know how to make a plan and actually stick to it you don't know how to cook broccoli Or stop it going off in the fridge. It's evidence that you don't have that as a skill yet. Not evidence that you as a person are broken. But that you as a person.
are a beginner. Stop attaching your self-worth and your identity to the fact that you just don't know how to do something yet. That's stupid. That's like saying That a five-year-old who can't read the ABC because they don't know yet, because they've never learnt them yet, should be able to read a thesis if they just tried a bit harder. There's no shoulds.
There's just where you actually are. If you fail, you're not a failure. If you haven't mastered weight loss yet, you're just unskilled. That's not personal. That's just reality. So release the ego that you have that you should be different from how you actually are. Accept the reality and look to master skills through an iterative process.
That requires failure. It requires operating in uncertainty. It requires being a beginner. The feedback loop that we want, we're not looking to be successful. We're looking to learn. We don't need a specific outcome. We just need to learn from the process so that we can grow and change. Embrace learning through failure. through uncertainty as the goal, because it's the process that leads to the outcome we want. You can't hijack your way and leap to success.
without going through that messy period. So stop thinking there's something wrong with you because you can't do that. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just not special.
¶ Build Clear Weight Loss Systems
The sixth mistake that will hold people back from losing weight consistency is not having clear weight loss input systems. If your plan for weight loss only works when life is perfect, you don't have a plan, you have a unicorn fart. Unsuccessful dieters are consistently planning for their best case scenarios as opposed to their worst. They're constantly planning for when they're operating at their most rested, their most untempted.
When they have the most amount of time, as opposed to the worst case scenarios, they're consistently overestimating their own ability to do something, as opposed to relying on systems that then force them to change. And James Clear says that... We rise or fall to the level of our systems. And the environment is the hidden hand that shapes our behavior. I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of months ago and...
She knew a lot of, and she's been trying to lose weight for a long time. And so she was telling me, I'm going to do this cabbage soup diet. I'm going to have like this, this juice cleanse. One time was a juice cleanse, another time it was like a cabbage soup diet.
And I was saying to her, why do you want to do this? This doesn't seem like a good framework to me. This doesn't seem like something that you're going to keep doing. But the way that she was thinking about it was that she was thinking... about an outcome that she wanted to achieve which was how much weight she could lose in the shortest amount of time as opposed to an input that she could control which was a system that she needed to create.
In a way that tries to achieve an outcome as opposed to a process. And an outcome is always going to be a latent measure of some kind of input. The input would be having been consistent. At working your back in a gym four times a week for a year. The inputs are controllable. There's something that you can actually do. But the outputs, which is getting...
a pull-up is not something that no matter how much willpower you have, you could actually go and do right now. And when you look at the way that most people diet, they're always focused on outputs. They're always focused on how much weight can I lose by X? 30 pounds. by December. And I'll even use this in my content because I know it's what attracts people in. Six pounds in a week. Lose 40 pounds or lose 50 pounds in a year.
Or even lose two pounds in a week. The mistake that we make is to fixate on that outcome. As opposed to the input that will make the outcome inevitable. Weight loss on a long timeline. Mastering. The R of getting and staying lean has consistent frameworks for inputs. It's input focused as opposed to outcome focused. And the inputs are eat a pound of vegetables every single day.
Eat foods that are under 600 calories per pound on the calorie density spectrum. These are foods like non-status vegetables at 100 calories per pound. Fruits. At about 200 to 300 calories per pound. Potatoes are only 400 calories per pound. Pasta and whole grains. Oatmeal. Rices. At about 500 calories per pound when they're cooked. And then legumes and tofu.
at about 600 calories per pound and then a tiny bit of avocado or nuts and seeds but only about two tablespoons max per day and when you eat like that you can eat so much food You can eat ad libitum, which means as much as you want until you're stuffed.
and most likely get into a calorie deficit, because you've reduced your overall calories, that would mean that you would be able to lose weight. The outcome becomes an inevitable result of the inputs. But the inputs are the only thing that you can control. So everything that you do on a consistent basis needs to be about getting back to the inputs rather than getting the result as fast as you possibly can.
So for myself, when I've been a bit more inconsistent, when my diet has started to slip in some way, I'm always going back to my inputs as opposed to an output, even if I do want to lose two pounds or three pounds. As the goal, the inputs become the thing that I focus on. And for me, that's defining what I want to have at my lunch.
at my breakfast, how many snacks I want to have, how consistent I want to be. The mistake of dieting mentality is I'm going to focus on a goal that I can't control. The success of lean mastery says I'm going to create an input. that I can consistently action every single day that makes the result inevitable. And you can do this with weight loss. You can do this with business. You can do this with content creation. It is the only way to consistently succeed at anything because it's...
¶ Iterate From Failure, Not Shame
operationalize the process of achieving a goal so that you can actually action it in order to make that a reality the seventh mistake that i see people make that will hold them back from losing weight is very Sad to see, it's hard to hear, and that is that they operate in shame instead of iteration. Shame and failure feels deep and emotional, but it's actually just being a dum-dum.
Failure is an inevitable part of the learning process. If you don't know how to do something, you're not going to get it right. And even when you do get it right, it's probably going to be a fluke. It's only when you've done something and failed thousands more times than most people have succeeded. that you're going to actually have mastery. Michael Jordan said, I have failed thousands of more times than most people have even tried. That's failure. Thinking that failure is personal. Thinking
That a binge or inconsistency makes you a bad person and causes you to wallow in self-pity is silly. Being hard on yourself is not a measure. of your ability to be successful, it's a measure of how likely you are to stay stuck. Negative self-talk and shame around failure.
and not being okay with that as the process is just because you haven't learned to do that as a skill set. What I've seen and observed is that people who are able to bounce back a bit quickly from failure, people who... are not negative in the self-talk they have around failure, have learned that and acquired that as a skill.
That it is the default process to beat yourself up. It is the default to be hard on yourself. It is the default to think that failure is so much worse to operate in shame. But the only thing that that does is it means that you can't learn as quick. It means that you're not able to actually iterate in order to learn what is right. It means that you attach so much meaning to the process of change that you scare yourself away from it.
If you're doing that consistently, it's not helpful for you and you can learn another way. I remember a very clear conversation with someone I had who was consistently hard on themselves and they weren't able to celebrate their own success. They weren't able to celebrate when they made little bits of progress. And I remember thinking like this person is so resistant to it because of their ego. Their pride will not let them see success or even a tiny bit of progress as a win.
They want to be hard on themselves because it feels better for their ego. But you are not unique. Failure is not something that you can avoid. It is not something that you need to wallow in. That is a waste of your time. your energy, and when you choose to do it because it is a choice or you choose to not build a skill of stopping it, which is also a choice, you are saying that I'm going to let my ego, which says for some reason that I'm better than everyone else.
and therefore when I fail it's worse than anyone else as opposed to it just being a normal part of the process because I'm a normal human being and I don't know how to do something yet then you're not going to actually make change then it's arrogance to stay stuck in that self-punishment
is not a way to improvement high achievers don't have less failure they have a skill set of neutralizing that so that they can take more action they bounce back fast and they examine their systems as opposed to putting this on their identity They disconnect a failure from them themselves being a failure and instead they look at that as a system error that they need to then change.
I think about this constantly when I see myself not actually following through on something that I've said that I want to do. I ask myself, well, what's the reason that I couldn't make myself follow through? It's not because I lack willpower, because I obviously can do some things.
What can I change in terms of my system? I'll approach that with curiosity so that then I can have a different outcome later on. And I'll give you an example. I was finding that I wasn't eating as much broccoli as I wanted to. since moving to the United States from New Zealand and I was thinking well you know what's changed in my system like why am I more inconsistent in this habit than I used to be it doesn't really matter exactly why But what I knew was that it's not me as a failure.
It's something in my system that's not forcing me to have the outcome that I want to have. So instead of beating myself up and saying, well, like you're so stupid and you need more willpower. I started buying the bags of broccoli that I could just easily microwave and adding some cauliflower in there as well because it felt. a bit more fun and that system change meant that I'm much more consistent with that habit.
I've used this all throughout my journey and I had to unlearn the negative self-talk. And it is something that you can unlearn. It's a process and it starts by accepting that it's not helpful and it's not smart and you can change it. So if you want better results, you're going to let it go. And if you want to remove your ego, you'll accept that you're the same as everyone else.
So there's no reason that you wouldn't experience failure. So therefore there's no reason that failure should feel so painful for you because you're not special. Of course you're going to fail. You're a little baby. Stop thinking you can crawl before you can even sit up. Four-step process to iterating and changing and growing instead of operating continually in shame of failure is this. Number one, accept that it happened. It is what it is.
You can't go back in time. Don't beat yourself up. Number two is accountability. Set up a system that will create change. That's modifying your environment to force change upon yourself as opposed to thinking that you are the issue. If you're constantly going to your cupboard and eating chips, it's not a willpower issue. Stop beating yourself up. Just get the chips out of your environment. That's the accountability. You'll most likely stop doing it.
And number four, adapt, review that process. If it didn't cause you to change with whatever you actually change in your system, that's an opportunity for you to try something else. There is something that is going to get you to change. You just need to keep looking for what that is.
And the only litmus test for was what I did successful is did I actually change my behavior? Your behavior and what you did or didn't do is the measure of the success of your systems. Your willpower is not. Stop saying I just need to try harder. It worked. I just didn't stay consistent. It didn't work because you didn't stay consistent. That's the test. It didn't work because you needed willpower. That's the test. Go back to the drawing board.
and create systems that don't require so much willpower. If they do, and you keep failing, the failure is your system, not you. So change your system. Mistake number eight that stops people from consistently losing weight.
¶ Take Action Now, Don't Delay
is saying and thinking, I have time. The biggest lie people tell themselves is, I'll do it later, and I have time. There is no later. There is only now. Women fail because of inaction. not negative actions, not inconsistent actions, because a delayed action, inaction, is the killer of dreams. Not messy action, not imperfect action, inaction. It's saying, I'll do it later.
Monday, when I have a fresh start. When I get home from my vacation. When the kids are a bit older. At my next meal. After I've finished off the processed food in my fridge. After my birthday. When my new diet starts, when I joined a gym, the only time that you can actually take action is now. Future action is not actually real. Future planning is not actually action. And the only thing that actually creates change is action. The mistake that we make consistently that will always hold us back.
is thinking that there is a future date where that action can become realized so that we can avoid it now. The action that you need to take is now. Because there will always be something... That will make us avoid the work that we need to do in order to be successful. Accept that we will always want to do it later. Accept that there will always be a better time. The mistake that holds people stuck is not that Monday might...
couldn't hypothetically be better if we were to start on Monday or that next week when we have all our groceries wouldn't hypothetically be a better chance or better time to start. It's the mindset of delayed action. It's the mindset of avoiding work. It's the mindset that without pattern recognition, it's the inability to recognize that that pattern of behavior, of pain avoidance.
is what got you to where you are in the first place. That action avoidance is what holds you back. You need to become an action taker in spite of feeling like you are not ready, like it is not the right time, like you are not equipped. You need to become an action taker now because anticipatory action isn't action, it's inaction. Doing something on Monday is inaction because you haven't done it yet.
So get up right now. Go and do something. Eat a potato. Put some microwave broccoli on. Throw some chips in the bin. Hit subscribe to this podcast. Text your mom that you're not going to be drinking alcohol this week. Take some kind of action. to prove to yourself that you're the kind of person who consistently can take action. That's the thing that changes lives. It's the ability to consistently be an action taker despite your situation feeling unique and uncomfortable.
To do something different than all the red flags that you've done in the past. To embrace that feeling of uncertainty and messiness as you're learning. Because it's not going to feel better on Monday and more certain. To get clarity through action. And what you're actually eating now. To get better at fighting hunger now. To learn the iterative process that leads to change now. I saw a reel recently that really hit this home for me.
And this was someone that worked in a psych ward and they said that they saw people from every walk of life and every age range from kids to older people. And the universal thing that they had was an optimism that things would be better, that things would be fixed, that they would start living their life at a future date. And it was, I will get... consistent in the future i will leave this relationship that i don't want to be in in the future i will change careers at some point in the future
And people spend a lifetime doing that. Your life can change today through consistent action. There isn't tomorrow. There isn't a better time because that's inaction. And the only thing that gets results is... action and inputs and the only way to achieve outcomes is to retrospectively have inputs so the only way to get close to an output is to take action so that it becomes retrospective
You've got to get your actions in the bank. Lasso them from the future and put them in the past now because that's all you have. As always, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you. I value you. And if you like this podcast and you find it helpful, then please go and leave a review. And you can also tag me on Instagram. I would love to know that you're listening to it. I'd love to shout you out and know what you found most helpful. Tag me in your stories.
and as always i will see you next time for another episode go eat a potato you got this bye