How To Not Give Up Even When You Hate The Process

Hello, welcome to the Lean of Plants podcast. My name is Chelsea and if you are struggling to lose weight on a plant-based diet, then this podcast is for you. While there are thousands of books, podcasts, and resources about the benefits of a plant-based diet, the reality is that being vegan does not guarantee losing weight.

If you are feeling frustrated and confused about where to start, or you know exactly what you should be doing, but you just can't seem to rustle up enough willpower to do it, then keep listening. In this podcast, you'll learn the truth about plant-based weight loss, but just as importantly, how to use proven methods of behavioral change to turn what you know into lifelong habits that lead to getting and staying lean. Can't wait to get started. Let's do this.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm going to be talking about how to not give up all the time when you want to quit. And this is important for two things. Well, I mean, I think we all probably know why not quitting is important, but...

we've got to figure out well how do we actually stop quitting when the hard times come when the challenges happen that we can actually keep going because if you don't quit then you will reach your goals if you do quit you won't but also just how to have a lot more confidence for yourself so that you have evidence

through the way that you think about quitting and the way that you think about facing challenges that when they arise, you know that you can keep going. And I think this is going to give a lot of people a lot of assurance in their journey because if you don't have an understanding of what...

you're going to do in these challenging circumstances where you would normally quit then you're going to constantly live in fear that there is going to become a day where something is going to be essentially bad enough or you're going to feel emotional enough where it just all turns to custard and maybe all the progress that you've been working super hard for just goes. So let's avoid that and let's think and operationalize how we avoid quitting differently.

The first thing to understand is that there's macro quits and then there's micro quits. So a macro quit is going to be where you quit on a large scale. This is where you have been dieting for a couple of months and then you maybe have a bit of a binge or you have a bit of a week.

maybe you have a holiday and then what that turns into is another cycle of months or maybe even years so that would be like a macro quit where you just you basically just go off whatever plan or commitments that you'd set for yourself and then some along the way, whether that's an intentional decision or it's just something that you kind of fall into, you're done and you don't get on the horse again for a long time. A micro quit would be you maybe skip the gym for a day or you...

were sitting and having a cup of tea and then someone puts a cookie in front of you and then you go, you know what, stuff it, I'll just eat, I'll eat the cookie. So I would say that those are kind of the difference between the two. And it's super important to understand the difference between them because...

One of them is going to be almost like an impulse decision, the micro quit, where you just go, oh, I just wasn't even thinking. I was out drinking and it just kind of all happened. And the other one's going to be a bit more calculated where there's a little bit more time where you can actually go, well, do I want...

this or do I not and then the other piece that comes into both of these is what do you do next what do you do when you experience failure because that's really where quitting I believe comes in and you go well how do I actually deal with the fact that I've eaten the cookie and I didn't feel like I

wanted to that's kind of going off plan I now feel terrible or I've been binging for a week and I gained like a couple of kilos on the scales now what do I actually do it's the okay that happened now what so it's really important that we identify it there's a couple of things that come into play here I think the first one is just failure where we want to quit because we've had a failure and we just feel bad for it and if this is happening to you often then

Maybe you've just got an environment where you're set up to essentially fail more often, especially if this is happening on a micro level. And your environment is just not conducive to success. So I talk a lot in this podcast about... creating habits and creating an environment of change because I truly believe and this is supported by so much evidence that environment is the hidden hand that shapes behavior which is a quote from James Clear who wrote the book Atomic Habits.

have a environment that is essentially set up where the the least path of resistance is a path of quote-unquote failure then you're more likely to fail than you are to succeed and I want you to think about weight loss and really thing and any goal accomplishment as a series of more likely. Am I more likely to succeed if I do X or am I more likely to succeed if I do Y? Am I more likely to succeed if I have cookies in my house or am I more likely to eat the cookie?

Am I more likely to be consistent with my diet if I have food prepped up and ready for me? Or am I more likely to succeed? or to fail if I don't have any food there and then Taco Bell's just down the road. So it's much, much less about deciding to have a lot of willpower or that this is your time or kind of getting into your power or any kind of the woo.

motivational stuff that you might hear. And it's more just, well, what environment do I have? Is it conducive to me having the least and easiest path to whatever I believe in success is? A lot of people get this so wrong because they're...

watching I don't know maybe maybe I don't even know why it is maybe it's watching motivational content maybe it's watching someone who has a high level of discipline and then just erroneously thinking that that person they have something intrinsically more valuable than you do they have more motivation more willpower and then thinking that you somehow are going to develop that they do have more motivation and willpower but

They've developed that through creating trust in themselves. That when they say they're going to do something. They actually follow through and do it. So you do that initially in the beginning. When you are a baby at habit change. When you are a baby.

at discipline by having an environment that just makes it easier I don't want to spend a ton of time in environment because I've talked about it so much so you can go listen to some of the other episodes that I have about how environment shapes behavior but if you're failing on

a micro level because of environment, then that's the first thing that you actually want to change. And I'm constantly thinking about, well, how do I set up my environment for success? And I'm constantly recognizing patterns when I fail. So here's another way that you can actually use failure to not be a signal to quit, but actually just be a signal to learn. And that is, well, what is the reason or what is the thing in my environment that I can now shift and change to make it easier?

For example, I've got a rehab that I'm currently doing. I tore my ACL. I've had ACL reconstruction about two months ago and I need to rehab this knee every single day. And part of that rehab is to go on a stationary bike. I'm at the stage now where I probably can go on a regular bike. But I just have to be careful with it. I don't have a bike. And the bike that I have been using for the last 12 years is my dad's. It's kind of broken.

And my sister's boyfriend is using it to get to work. So we also don't have a garage. We've got this tiny little shed that is full of crap. So there's a whole lot of obstacles there to me actually doing the thing that would be good for my rehab. And I can go to the gym and do it, but I wanted to be able to go, hey, you know what? If I'm feeling antsy, if I'm feeling stressed, I have this thing that is also going to be helpful for my rehab because I can't go on a run right now.

I'm not really allowed to be running. I'm not allowed to be skating. So a lot of the things that would help me to release stress and tension and pressure and exhaust myself physically, I just don't have access to. So I asked my parents, can you please bring a bike? They brought my mom's bike over. I have not put that in the shed because I know that that is as small as that is to have it locked away in the shed. It's an obstacle to me actually getting the bike out. So I've put it up on my...

like little tiny porch, it's hanging up there. It's kind of ready for me to use at any moment. And I now just essentially don't really have an excuse to getting out there. And so the way that I always am thinking about this is how do I make it just easy for myself to succeed? The bike, I can grab down. My helmet is there.

It is not locked away and I can just get on it and I can go. An environment that is conducive to success. The second way that or reason that people will often quit is that they feel like the goal is too far away.

If that is something that you've experienced, then you're in good company. Every single person who has a big goal feels like it's too far away. The answer to it is nothing special. It's just it is what it is. There is a time and a place where we just have to make a decision that whether we want something or not, it is going to take the time that it takes. And so if you quit, it takes longer.

If you stall, if you let your emotions override your logic and you go, oh, it's too far away, therefore I'm going to quit. You know you're not helping yourself. It just doesn't achieve anything. So there's got to be something that you replace that.

phraseology with when you go, well, it's too far away, therefore I want to quit. And I want to get into managing our emotions a little bit. And when I say managing, being able to tell ourselves different stories so that we can have different emotions and different feelings to different stimuli like the... feelings of failure. But the goal is always going to feel far away.

The reality is that time is going to go past whether you are working towards that goal or not. So you need to set up an environment where it feels like you can do this every single day regardless of seeing a payoff. But then also conceptually just realize that everyone that has achieved more than... you and has the goals that you have has a skill set of being able to look further ahead than you.

It is a skill set and it is a skill set that you can learn. Successful people see things on a broader timeline because anything grand is going to take you longer than a day. Like if you want to write an essay or you want to write a text, you can do that in a day. If you want to write a book and if you want to write a bestselling book, maybe that's going to take you 10 years.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't expect that anything that someone else or the rest of the world who is struggling so hard to achieve is not going to do it in a month or a week. Or three months even. If you have 40 pounds to lose, just change your expectations of how long that's actually going to take. Not just because of the weight loss and whether you lose a pound or two pounds a week, which is normal. You don't really need to be losing more than that.

But just having this understanding that you have got essentially decades of behavior that is supporting the opposite, which is weight gain. That is the world that you live in. So if you have decades of behavior, if you're not like a newborn baby starting this from afresh, whichever, if you are a newborn baby, then like, please go listen to the newborn baby podcast section. Like this is probably not for you right now. You probably need to be gaining weight.

all the newborn babies that are listening to this, if that's not you, then expect that changing those ingrained behaviors is going to take time. Change your frame on how long it actually takes to succeed.

The third one is that maybe you just don't have support. And support is just so underrated when it comes to achieving anything big. I've changed my views on this. I think like if you go back and listen to some of my older content, you might see that I talk a little bit about, I don't even know. You know what? I don't even know what I used to talk about, but.

I changed my entire business model because I became convinced people need support. Because I became convinced that I needed support. And I lean into this so heavily where almost every single week. And it correlates so much with my personal development, whether that is like fitness, nutrition, business, mindset, all of these different things. The level of support that I have.

directly correlates with how quickly I grow and how much I can achieve I have a coach for almost everything I have an ACL coach I have a business coach I have like people who are helping me with almost every area of my life that I want to see consistent growth in. Because what happens when you quit and you have someone who you can say, hey, I feel like quitting. I know I'm not going to do it. Like I say this, but I feel like I'm considering it. It feels hard. This feels hard right now.

And they can say, you know what, you got this. Keep going. Here's how to help. Here's what to do. They can give you in their outside perspective. And maybe it's just even that they cheer you on. Because you are going to have those moments. The other thing is that they're going to just tell you and help you to see where you can make changes so that you can stay the course. I remember reaching out to one of my mentors.

I feel extremely privileged to just even be able to reach out to someone I look up to very highly and kind of explaining to him some of the difficult things that I've been going through recently in my personal life. And like in my business professionally. And he just said don't quit. He's like Charles just don't quit. And that phrase from someone that I respect. That I know has probably been through everything that I have. It meant so much to me.

So if you don't have support and you don't have an environment of success and you feel like the goal is too far away and you don't have realistic expectations, I mean, you can stop the podcast here and just go change those three things. The fourth one is it kind of like comes into.

uh the same kind of thing in terms of the gold being far away and that's just unrealistic expectations about the journey itself so you you have this kind of expectation potentially that things are going to go smoothly or that things are going to be perfect or that once you join let's say you join a coaching program let's say you start you buy a meal plan let's say you go you know what monday comes around i'm really motivated i just

this diagnosis from my doctor that i really have to change my a1c and like all this terrible stuff's going to happen if i don't and then you think well because something's changed and i have some kind of catalystic event or there's there's something that's happened that everything's just going to

And so that's what I would consider an unrealistic expectation of the cost of change and the process of change. Change is not a quick thing. It can be, but you're going to have to have a lot of... intense stimuli for change to be fast for most people because we're mostly motivated to change by a feeling of lack I actually was telling a friend of mine recently that

Because brain chemistry is so fascinating. I could geek out about this all day. But I think maybe this will help you too. You look at studies done on rats that look at dopamine. And they will literally. I don't know how. Maybe I don't want to know how. They will drip. dopamine straight onto the brains of rats and what happens for these rats is they don't eat

They don't sleep. They don't mate. They do nothing. They just kind of sit there and they just receive the dopamine because they have absolutely no motivation to leave that highly beautifully wonderful feeling that the... dopamine creates in their brain and so any kind of craving that you experience any kind of desire to change your current state is because you sense lack it's because you don't like where you currently are even hunger on a most basic level

is felt because you have a lack of food in your system. A craving is because you are cake-less. You want cake, you're cake-less. You don't crave cake while you're eating cake. You crave sleep when you're tired. You don't crave it when you're rested. You miss someone when they're not there. You don't think about them. I mean, you probably do think about them when they're there, but you don't miss someone when they're with you. All this to say that...

Change can happen quickly when you have like a huge change in your environment. But for most people, they have a very unrealistic idea of their own process of change. Change takes time. Because behavior becomes ingrained. You're going to have to keep revisiting the old behaviors coming up. You're going to keep feeling like a failure. You're going to not get it right.

I have this thing, I'm going to be really honest with you. I have, I don't want to say I have a lot of perfectionism, but I have a tendency to overthink things. I don't like that about myself. It causes me to move a lot slower. then I want to move. I actually really detest it because it's ego-based. It's this idea that I want to make a good decision. I want to make a right decision because I feel bad about myself if I don't do it. The problem is that...

I don't have enough information as I'm learning a new skill to even know what a right decision looks like. So all I really need to do is have many, many shots at bat where I can just get the reps in so that I can learn what success and what failure looks like.

You can't really understand either failure or success until you fail many, many times. And even any success to begin with is just a fluke. So this kind of expectation that we would be able to be good or that we would know how to do something, whether that's meal... prepping, whether that is getting to the gym on time, whether that is having an afternoon, I don't know, afternoon.

nighttime routine where you go to sleep on time, whether that is that you stop scrolling your phone, whether that is that you start posting content, whether that is that you start telling people about... losing weight or at least changing your diet and therefore that you don't want to have them bring things into your phone your home I don't know why I said phone

Don't let people put food onto your phone. Just saying. Whatever it is. Have an expectation that that is going to take time. And it's going to take you reps. And I would actually say. Choose reps. And have an understanding. That reps are more important. Even than time. Because the person who puts in the most.

reps is the person that has enough times at bat to actually make the changes that they need to because they can learn from that and if you're a very very intelligent person which I would define is that you can have the essentially Take what you learn and modify your behavior very quickly so you don't need as much opportunity to fail if you're very, very intelligent.

maybe that you don't need as much failure as someone else. But if you are a little bit dumber, which who can say whether you need that or not, the only litmus test is whether you are actually changing. So change your expectations around how much time this, or how much effort.

this actually takes a helpful frame possibly is how I'm thinking now about my ACL my ACL recovery it's not time-based it's me moving through phases so the really the only thing that matters is am I doing the reps with my rehab so that when I get to actually test these different phases, I can pass them.

I can't have unrealistic expectations about how long that's going to take because I don't know. I don't know how my own body is going to respond to this. All I can control is did I do my rehab today? Yes. Okay.

move on take each day at a time and then just go from there the fifth reason that we often want to quit is that the cost just feels too high and it's uncomfortable i think these are slightly different things but they come into the same idea of it just doesn't feel worth it and

This is probably one of the hardest ones to break because we have to make a judgment about whether the current pain that we're in by not doing something, essentially the cost of our inaction or the cost of action contrary to what we are.

trying to not quit from. Very complicated way of saying it's uncomfortable to keep going a lot of the time. We've got to make this kind of decision about whether it actually is important for us to continue because we're getting this kind of new information all the time where... We start something, we do have an unrealistic expectation about how hard it's going to be. We get confronted with how hard it is. And then we go, well, now I have information where I'm less motivated.

Because it's not fun. I'm not getting the reward. I'm not kind of experiencing so much the pain of inaction. I'm experiencing the pain now of action. So what do I do next? And I want to address a whole lot of that. But just keep in mind that that is a normal reward.

reason to want to quit both on a micro and a macro level is that the cost just feels really really high and part of the way that we mitigate some of this is having an understanding of why we're doing what we're doing and making decisions long before we get to that stimuli of do I quit do I not so that we know what we're going to do in that moment so these five things are what we need to be aware of and then how we actually move past them is the framing and the thought processes and then

of course, most importantly, the actions that we have in those moments. If you're going to not quit when things feel difficult, when you're impatient, when you don't have someone just cheering you on and keeping on going, even if you have that, it's still going to

to be hard. If you're not going to quit, then you're going to have to have what I call a high agency frame. I did not come up with this term, but it essentially means that you can achieve what you want to. That you adopt a worldview that life is what you make it and you take radical ownership and responsibility. When I say radical ownership, I mean radical. I mean...

Every single thing is your fault. Every single place that you are today is because of you and your decisions. It is leaving any kind of victimhood, any kind of victim card. at the door and saying and essentially ripping it to shreds and I'm saying this because I believe it to be true and I think there's so much representation of victimhood in our kind of society and I think that there's so many people that subtly adopt this mindset and I see it so represented that I'm okay with

essentially going and pendulum swinging in the other direction. I've talked and I've alluded to this a lot on the podcast. I don't know if this is the first time that I'm saying it this blatantly.

If you hold a victim card, you have to tear it to shreds if you want change. Because whether what you believe about why you haven't achieved something and how it relates to something outside of your control is true or not, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter your childhood trauma. It doesn't matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter because it's not important. It's not valid. It's not part of your life. I'm saying it doesn't matter in terms of how you move forward from today.

It doesn't matter whether you are menopausal. It doesn't matter whether you are short and it's harder for you to lose weight. It doesn't matter whether you have someone in your house who brings home all the cookies and all the treats. It doesn't matter if you are addicted to food. It doesn't matter. anything that you have experienced that has made it more difficult for you, that has made it hard for you, that has caused you to have the relationship that you do with food.

You have to leave all of those reasons at the door and take ownership for what you do now. Because someone else in the world has had everything that you've experienced and worse and they have a six pack. Someone else has had everything that you've experienced and worse, and they have a phenomenal business. Someone else has had everything that you experience and worse, and they have a great relationship.

I'm telling you this because I experienced what it was like to be a victim. Of my own making. When my husband Nick was diagnosed with MS. And this is nearly 10 years ago now. Where I really thought that my life was going to go a certain trajectory. I had kind of had my happily ever after. I'd gotten married. I'd found my purse.

and I was ready to start our lives like I really was not wanting to have kids for quite a long time as well I didn't feel ready to do that and I just thought we were gonna have fun and I'd been like a pretty good girl like I had not really done anything naughty by my own standards. What the heck does that even mean? And I just felt like, well, you know what? Like now I've just got this good little life and I'm going to have, I'm going to have my fun. It's going to be my time.

He was diagnosed with MS about six months after we got married. And the six months that we were married prior to that, we had all of the kind of weird negative symptoms that he was experiencing. I had a pregnancy scare. And then the month after... That I had that pregnancy scare. He was diagnosed. The month after that. I found out I was pregnant. So kind of not. To say that the poop hit the fan. Is a bit of an understatement.

I just thought I would never be happy again. And so I crumbled. I completely crumbled. I also was extremely sick. And so I just didn't, I didn't try. And I'm very grateful for the people in my life that didn't give up on me because I gave up on everyone else. And I was like, I'm not going to be happy. My life now sucks. I'm going to be just so victimized in my circumstance. I'm not going to put any effort to change anything.

And this went on for a long time. This went on for, like, I'm going to say like a good year. Because even though once I had my baby and kind of gotten used to this idea that my life was going to change, I still was, every time she would cry, I was like, I didn't ask for this.

Every time that I would see Nick's symptoms get worse, it was like, I can't handle this. And I would have meltdowns. I would run away. I would just be a hot mess. And it doesn't matter whether it was legitimate or not. It didn't serve me. It didn't help me. to be a good mom it didn't help me to help my husband who was dealing with his own stuff it didn't help me to be happier it didn't help me to develop any resilience because I was just constantly

Feeling like life wasn't fair and that it was legitimate for me to have the response that I had because of circumstances. So I gave every single ownership of my life and my happiness to my circumstance. And I would not go back there for all the money in the world. Like I would not trade that for anything. Because it is the worst thing that I've ever experienced. Not Nick's diagnosis.

My response to it when I was a victim in my life. And it truly was only when I made the decision that I could own my response. And this comes from a book called... Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and where I learned it was, I've since read that book, but where I learned it was Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, absolutely changed my life because he talked about this gap.

It sticks so clearly in me when I first realized this. That between whatever happens to you. The stimuli. Which is your emotions. It's your circumstances. It's your memories. It's your childhood. It's all these other things. Between anything that happens to you.

And then what you do next, there's a gap. And that gap is your response ability. That you have the ability to respond. And how you choose to respond says whether you... are going to just let circumstances dictate or whether you're going to say you know what I can I can be proactive and I can choose the outcomes I have radical ownership and I can go well if I can make outcomes happen, if it's just on me, then I'm going to do something about this. And so I chose to adopt that frame.

The rest in some ways is history. The more I adopt that frame, the happier my life is. I have a wonderful marriage now. I have like two beautiful kids. There's a lot of challenges. But even the reason that you're listening to this podcast is because of me deciding to take a high agency frame, which is that I just left the victim card at the door. And there's been so many instances just even in the last couple of months that.

this frame has had to come into play with my ACL and just feeling incredibly sorry for myself when that first happened.

because it has been so much worse than what I thought it would be and realizing that you're going to be on a long lonely road of recovery where you're going back to much much less even than square one and that you're going to have really nothing to show for it in like six seven weeks six seven months even eight nine months time like you're just only going to be at baseline with so much work and effort that the things that I love doing I can't do those things.

I mean, I can, I don't like saying I can't. It would be dumb for me to go try and have a skate right now. I will probably hurt myself again and have to have another surgery. But there was a little bit of moment, it was probably a couple of days where I was like, I just felt really sorry for myself. And then I...

I asked, well, how can I make this the best thing ever? How can I make this amazing for me? What if I use this time to develop a lot more resilience? It'll help me to have more resilience in my life. I'm going to need a lot of resilience. Like, I believe that. I don't think that...

The negative things are over. To be honest. With the trajectory of the things that I know. Are going on in my life right now. I know there's going to be more chaos. I know that it's going to be more difficult. I don't have unrealistic expectations. That my life is going to be easy.

This is a frame that I heard on a podcast that kind of solidifies this a little bit more. Everything in the future is unknown and it can serve you. If I tear my ACL, if I, if Nick. dies like I truly like this is the way that I think now if something happens to my kids everything I can use to serve me because the alternative is that I just I don't and it doesn't I'm not saying that I want it to happen

But it means that I'm not scared about the future ahead. Everything in the past is my fault or my responsibility. Again, I'm not saying that that's necessarily true. But I'm saying that it serves me. And it's not that every circumstance is my fault. It's not my fault that I was pregnant and that was unplanned. It actually is. It's not my fault that Nick was diagnosed. What is my fault is my response to that.

And how I chose to see that situation. That's my fault. But it's also my triumph in that. So I take ownership for that. Victims see the past as their fate. Heroes see the past as their origin story. You can have a really bloody good story if you choose to see it that way. You can have a story where you go, I tried to lose weight for 60 years and I tried every single diet and it was only when...

I got the support that I needed. I got every food out of my diet. I realized there was no excuses. I quit going out drinking with all my friends. I don't know if you're doing that for 60 years. Hopefully not. Whatever it is. I got a dog because I needed to. Like that can be your origin story.

or it can be your fate. That's a choice that each and every person has to make for themselves. Once you start to adopt a high agency frame, everything in your life is going to change, but you still need to count the cost of an action or...

action and that's to look at trade-offs i think this is something that people don't actually really think about that much and that is well what happens if I do what happens if I don't what are the problems that I want to have because we always just own problems we're more owning problems than we are actually finding solutions to things, we more have to count the cost of the downside than we have to count the cost of the upside. For example, everyone wants...

To look amazing in a bikini. Most people want to look amazing in a bikini. If you're listening to this podcast. You probably think that losing weight is going to help you do that. Or you have some other reason for that. Most people think that they will be healthier if they lose weight to be in a quote unquote healthy weight range. I don't care why you want to lose weight. If you're here listening to it, you should have the tools where you're able to do that. That's my goal for you.

But if you want something, the question really is, do you want the life or do you want the journey associated with actually having that thing? Do you want to have to be disciplined for the rest of your life? Do you want to... change up your environment do you want to have a problem of like being the weird friend do you want to have the problem of

not drinking again if that's what it takes do you want to have the problem of like not being the foodie not going out to eat very often having to say no like do you want to have the problem of all these things associated with actually achieving that goal because if we just look at the upside we can go yeah of course i want that

But the question is, well, do I want the downside? And which of the downsides of whether I do the thing or whether I don't, do I actually want to own? So for me, I think about this a lot where I just don't want to be in a wheelchair. Well, I just don't want to be immobile as I age. Therefore, which is the cost of inaction if I don't work out at the gym, I believe.

believe this very strongly for right or wrong. It helps me. I believe this frame helps me where I go, Hey, my, my bone density is going to go down as I age. This is a pretty undisputed fact, especially for women. So if I want to protect my bone density, if I want to protect my muscle mass, then I'm going to have to start working out and I'm going to have to start strength training and I'm going to have to have a habit of strength training for the rest of my life.

Because I don't want the downside of not being able to move, not being able to bend down, not being able to walk as I age, I'm okay with the downside of the action, which is that I have to go to the gym three, four times a week. And I'm planning to do that for the rest of my life. So can you see how you've got to be able to decide, well, what are the trade-offs that I want to have?

What happens if I don't make the changes that I say that I want? What happens if I quit? This is super important when you're thinking about those moments and those series of times where you're like, well, what happens if I quit? Well, what happens? What happens?

if you quit versus what happens if you don't like if you are eating cake and you have a binge and then you go you know what like poor me where I want to quit now what happens if you do well what are the problems you experience if you do that You're going to feel worse. You're going to have less trust in yourself because you quit again. You're going to have to start back from scratch. And who knows what else? What are the problems you have if you continue going? You're going to feel crappy.

You're going to feel like you want to quit and you're going to feel horrible, but you're going to keep going anyway and you're still going to feel horrible. Like you're going to feel horrible either way. Whether you quit, whether you don't, you're going to feel bad because it's uncomfortable.

either way one is just going to be maybe like less uncomfortable or maybe you can find like something that feels good when you quit in the moment maybe if quitting for you as you go eat a cupcake yeah maybe you feel good for a second The trade-off is you're going to feel really, really bad for the next week. Or maybe even worse. Or whatever it is.

It's just the trade-off that you want. I'm not saying don't ever eat a cupcake. I eat cupcakes occasionally if they're really good and if I have the opportunity. But I'm thinking about what are the problems that I want. And what does my decision of quitting on a macro and micro level, what problems do I own by that decision?

Right now, what you can do is ask yourself an identity-based question. Because when you get to those moments of deciding whether the trade-offs are worth it... or not if you've already made that decision it's going to be much much easier to navigate that because you know what you're going to do you have a plan for those things so from an identity standpoint you who do you really want to be

Do you want to be someone who says that they're going to do something and does it? Do you want to be someone who is kind of fun and... doesn't really worry about like going out to eat like do you want to be someone who prioritizes being with the same group of friends that you're with and

maybe doesn't move towards their health and fitness goals. There's no right or wrong. Like I don't believe that there is, but there is going to be something that you're going to have to trade for either of those decisions. So who do you want to be? Not what do you want to have, but who do you want to be?

Do you want to be a fitness girl? Do you want to be the gym girl? Do you want to be the strong girl? Do you want to be the fun girl? Do you want to be the easy girl? Do you want to be the chill girl? Because a lot of these things are going to be incompatible with each other. You are not going to be the health freak and also the chill girl. You are not going to be the party girl and also the health nut. Like those two things are not going to coincide. You are not going to be the foodie.

Or the person who has a six pack abs. Like the really health conscious person. Like those two things are not going to coincide. So you got to ask yourself the question. Who do you want to be? And when it comes to those feelings of this sucks. This is hard. I don't want to do this, which you will experience. Let's set some expectations right now. You will experience those things. You can make a decision today, right now at this podcast. You can pause this and make a decision.

That when I experience those things, I want to be, even if I forget to do it sometimes, which you will, I want to be the person who says, I am not going to quit. I don't quit. It's just not part of who I am. So whatever that looks like for you specifically, you can make that decision today where you go, I just don't quit. And that any kind of negative feelings or any kind of emotions that you're experiencing.

When you're feeling like that, you want to, you go like, this is just an opportunity for me to prove to myself that I don't quit. And I want to be really clear here. There are going to be times and there are going to be situations where you realize that the cost of what you're doing or the cost of what you're not doing is not actually what you want.

You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to change course. This is why identity-based questions are so important and identity-based decisions. I'm going to show you how to do that just a second. Practically how we do some of these things where we actually... we actually change that.

Is creating a logical based reason for why or why not to do something. So when we come back to environment. Then we have to understand that environment is going to shape our behavior a lot. But we are also going to be influenced by how we feel.

in the moment, which is our internal environment. So one of the things that you can start to do to create a distance between impulse and logic is to just give yourself more time. It's to create a gap between the decision that you make, the kind of quick impulse.

I'm just, I'm out. Like this is dumb. Like I eat the cupcake, whatever it is. And then actually falling through in that action on it. And you don't have to give yourself a lot of time. You can give yourself minutes. You can give yourself days. You can give yourself however many, like how much length of time you want to give.

but when you're first starting out, it's going to be short. And so here's an example of how I do that. I was at the gelato place that I go to the other day, the only kind of place that I really go. There's one other cafe. My kids were getting gelato.

I was looking at the gelato cabinet and I was thinking, you know, I want to get something. I didn't really want to get a coffee. I wasn't feeling great. My stomach was not happy. And I was like, I want to get gelato. But I just was like, you know what? Let me just, let me just think. Let me just order something. for my kids ordered a gelato for nick nick was there as well we're doing family time and let me just see how i feel because i don't really know what i want

I don't really want to be like kind of doing this, but I also feel like it's not a big deal. Let me just give myself a little bit of time. So we sat down to add the gelato. I had some bites of Nick. I probably had like, I don't know, like an eighth of his ice cream. Gelato, whatever you want to call it. And I didn't...

need to get one. And it was really just because I gave myself a little bit of time and distance between the impulse and then actually falling through on the action. And if you are someone who is an impulsive decision maker, if you do go from being like, yep, I'm...

super firm on my diet I know what I'm doing to then like going through a drive-thru you just need to learn to give yourself more time this is very practical give yourself another five minutes put a timer on see if you can stop going through the drive-thru

For five minutes. See if you can like drive around the block once. Just see if you still want it. If you are like given or offered food. Rather than just taking that instantly. Say no to begin with. And then give yourself five minutes. See if you still want it.

It's not that you never can do that again. It's that you're just creating a gap between the impulse and the action so that you become the kind of person who can decide whether you want to do something rather than just being a slave to your impulses. The next one is to...

Do things out or not make decisions based out of comfort or discomfort. And this is really coming back to setting expectations that it's going to feel comfortable or uncomfortable either way. If you're used to comfort and you're used to comfort decisions like someone offers.

as you food and you take it then it's going to you don't want that to be a factor in your decision making in the moment so if quitting feels difficult if it feels hard then it's not relevant to the situation i hear a lot of people use the word hard i actually really hate it like i'm i i'm gonna be really honest with you i try very hard i'm telling you that now

I try very hard, this is the phrase I don't like, to say, oh, it's hard. It's hard to build a business. It's hard to lose weight. Because what relevance does it have? I'd rather think of how difficult something is as just as relevant as whether the thing is purple. I say this a lot. I'm like no one goes around there saying like oh you know like building a business is purple. Losing weight is purple. Losing weight is number four. Losing weight is I don't know.

tom hardy no one goes around saying irrelevant things we only say that something's hard because we think it's relevant but actually is it like does it matter whether it's hard or does it purple it is what it is like what does it matter whether it's hard

It is going to be hard. So what relevance is it to the situation, whether it's hard or not? We typically use that phrase because we think that it's some kind of reason to do or not do something. It is not a reason to do or not do something. Anything good is difficult.

Giving birth is not my favorite thing. It's difficult. Building a business, losing weight, having an amazing marriage, raising great children, like anything worth doing is... uncomfortable and difficult at least on some level if you are going to be purely hedonistic purely comfortable in your life you're still going to have the trade-off of the consequences of that like you're still going to have a more difficult life

a harder life objectively at some point if you just eat every single thing that comes your way. If you don't exercise, if you watch movies all the time, if you scroll your phone, you're probably going to be homeless and you're going to be really overweight and then you're probably going to, I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen to you next, but it's not going to be comfortable.

Comfort is not a part of life. Discomfort is. Difficulty is. If we get some comfortable moments, if we get a little bit of retrieve from that, then great. Do the mahi. Do the work. Do the hard stuff.

Get the treats, but don't expect that you can have the treats and the comfort if you're not actually doing the mahi. Here's another way to give yourself time, because we talked about impulse control, on a more macro level. If you're thinking about quitting, if you're like, you know what, I don't know if the dieting is me. For me, sleep on it.

Just get a good night's sleep and sleep on it. If you still want to do it, then do it the next day after you've had a sleep. Same with takeout. Same with anything like that. If you cannot wait one day when you're like thinking like, hey, you know, it'd be nice to get pizza.

I want to, you know, I'm going to have a bit of food freedom and I'm going to just order some pizza tonight and I don't have to be super strict with my diet. If you can't wait one night to do that for the next day, then that has more ownership of you than you probably care to admit. Become less impulsive. Do the things you want to do, but do them on a longer timeline. This was wild for me when I actually realized it.

Because I used to tell myself I would never do things again. Every diet that I did, I was like, this is the last time. Charles, you're going to be perfect now. You're never going to diet. You're amazing.

I would not think that, but I was like, you know, I'm never going to eat chips again. And then what, what changed when I started to actually implement this way of eating is that I would tell myself I could have chips. I would tell myself I could have a burger. Like I was like, yeah, I'm going to have a burger on my birthday.

Or yeah, I'm going to have a burger next week. Or like, yeah, I'm going to have some ice cream. I'm just not going to have it right now. Maybe I'm going to have it later on tonight. It's just this delayed gratification that we can learn where you don't have to be perfect, but you do have to be okay with delaying gratification.

You're going to learn that by putting distance between when you have an impulse and then when you actually implement it on it. And the same thing can be said with when you want to quit. Lean into an altruistic why. This is kind of what I alluded to with an identity-based question. So who do you want to be? Quitting potentially is only an option if you maybe don't love the people that you say that you love, which is wild. But let me expand on that.

you can create an altruistic why and you really believe that you are doing what you're doing in terms of weight loss because of showing a different story to your daughters.

being around for your grandkids, being able to be functional for your spouse, being an influence to others in your world, being able to master something so that you can move on to running a marathon or being inspiring in some other way. If you don't... do those things and you quit then are you actually loving the people that you say that you love I like leaning into an altruistic why because

Conceptually, we just seem to be better at doing things for other people than we are for ourselves. And if you can tie your behavior to love for a human being that you do care for, then it's going to be easier for you to... to be uncomfortable because you know that you're doing it for them and I think about this a lot in terms of like working really hard uh and doing doing the mahi so I can get the treats and that is I always think about like I'm doing this for Nick

I'm doing, I'm working hard. I'm going through the uncomfortable things. I'm not quitting in what feels difficult because I love him and I'm here to support him. So everything that I do, it comes out of that desire to love and care for and support my family. Even to the point of like I'm working out in the gym and when I really think about it, I'm like, I want to teach my kids that this is normal.

Because I believe that that is going to serve them. And because I believe that that's how I love them. So lean into that kind of altruism. And that's in terms of identity. That's so identity based. When we go well I'm doing this because I want to be a good mom. I'm doing this because I want to love the people.

That is identity-based. That is where you can become almost like Captain America, where you can approach every challenge and you go, because I love my family, I am not going to quit. I can do this all day. Like I'm beaten. I am bruised. I am down, but I got this. I can do this all day because I am fighting a battle for someone else. And where I wanted to go kind of tying this back in is that.

What you actually do is kind of less important than your reason for not quitting. Because you might realize, you know what? I don't want to have a six pack. Like that is totally fine. If you go, you know what? I'm listening to this podcast. I've lost like, I've lost 40 pounds. So. it's different problems, new levels, new levels, all these different things. There are a lot of women who will spend a lot of time trying to lose what's called the last 10 pounds or trying to get really, really ripped.

when it's going to have the cost of it is going to be so high compared to the benefit you've got that kind of diminishing returns in terms of investment and so you might make a decision where you go you know what because of whatever reason it is for me loving my family

is going to be that I lose the weight that I need to to be healthy, but I don't necessarily have to take it beyond that. But for someone else, they might go, because I love my family, I'm going to go beyond that. I don't know why. People have different reasons for the decisions that they make. But what we do can change. Why we do it.

If we lean into that and becoming someone who doesn't quit, which is always going to be helpful in our lives, is going to be something that lasts the test of time. Expect all of this to feel... very difficult and that you are going to be resistance to change so everything that you're doing to change is going to be a threat to your current environment it's going to be a threat to the way that you habitually think the people that you spend time with the lifestyle that you've created

values that you say that you have, all of these things, it's going to feel counter to that. So if you recognize and expect that there will be resistance, then you're going to be more equipped to face it when it comes. And this has been helpful for me just with not wanting to quit with my ACL because I had...

an expectation that i would feel lonely i would i set that for myself like this is going to be a lonely battle i i would talk to myself like it was a hero arc where i would be expecting that i would be like having difficulty in the That I would be experiencing pain. I'm going in with my eyes wide open in that. And that I would feel these kind of senses of inadequacy along the journey. So I'm expecting that there is going to be that process of...

Of just having to fight. And really slog through. Or wade through mud. As I'm trying to change. And so when I'm going through those things. It's like yeah this is what I asked for. Like bring it on. This is what I want. I'm not going to quit here because I knew that this was coming. And this is what I asked for because I want the benefits. I want the treats. One of the things that's been so powerful for me over the past even like month or two is...

operationalizing how I want to change, how I feel. I believe that we are capable of changing the way that we feel if we identify the meaning for what we feel and then question that and come up with a new meaning. feelings are just chemical reactions in our brains, if they are just meaning signals, like if someone waves at you, you feel happy because you feel like it means they love you. If someone waves at you because...

they were mad at you and they're saying like, F off or whatever it is. And you feel sad. It's because you've attributed some kind of meaning or they're waving to someone behind you. And then you realize and you feel embarrassed.

If you didn't know that they were waving to someone behind you, then you might just feel happy. So what do feelings really tell us other than the meanings that we've created for ourselves? Yes, there's other things involved in that, but a lot of it is just the meanings that we create and our brains are meaning machines. So something I've been asking myself is when I...

feel these feelings of I want to quit. This is hard. All these different things in the moment is how do I want to feel? 5am. Don't want to get out of bed. Want to quit. Want to snooze. Feeling sorry for myself that I'm getting up so early and Nick's still snoozing. How do I want to feel? Ask myself that question.

What feelings would serve me? Well, probably I would want to feel grateful. I would want to feel excited to start my day because if I felt grateful and excited, then I'd probably just like jump out of bed like an influencer and just rip off like my... I don't know. Hair cooling things. What am I? I don't even know where I'm going with this. I would just be like, happy sunshine. Happy day. Roll out of bed.

What stories can I tell myself to give myself those feelings? Well, I'm so grateful that I'm able-bodied. I'm so grateful that I'm not going to work in that cafe job that I had where I was cooking bacon and eggs and like literally cracking eggs and dropping them on my feet.

of the day I'm pretty damn grateful that I'm not going to that and that the reason I'm getting up early is not so I can be at that job at 6am like freaking grateful for that I'm so grateful that I have a gym to go to I'm grateful that I can afford a gym

I'm grateful that my gym opens this early. I'm grateful that I had some sleep last night. I'm grateful that I'm not like freezing cold. I'm grateful that I'm in a temperature controlled house and that getting up is not super painful. I'm grateful I'm not going to do an ice bath. because i'm not crazy and then also maybe i will do that one day who knows that's not my routine right now but if i say that enough things to myself about why i'm so ecstatically grateful then

I'm going to start feeling grateful. And then getting out of bed is going to be like, wow, this is amazing. Go me. Yay. Self-high five. This is freaking amazing. I'm going to do that. And so now I go from hard mode.

Oh, this sucks. I feel sorry for myself. Gotta do it anyway. Suck it up, buttercup. To easy mode where I'm like, phew, I love getting out of bed. I can do this all day. This is amazing. You win the game by not quitting. You win the game by picking yourself up after failure. You win the game by just making a decision that no matter what happens, you are going to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You're going to tell yourself a story that you are the hero, that you are the main character.

That this is just your hero arc. That all the challenges, that all the setbacks, that all the problems you face are just a part of your story. That your story just makes your success more inspiring and more... beautiful when you get there it just makes it sweeter because things are sweet because of contrast because if you have dopamine dripped on your brain all the time then you're not going to do anything and you're not going to really appreciate it you're just going to die

So maybe the treats and maybe winning the war, maybe achieving the goal, maybe those things are not. beautiful and wonderful and amazing because in and of themselves they are they are awesome but because they are hard won so not giving up is really just the process in order to get there

And it's who you become along the way. Who you become as you do difficult things. That is what allows you to go on to so much more than just losing weight. Which is, I think, the most exciting part. So don't quit. You got this.

Get some support. If you're wanting some help and you're wanting some support, we do happen to have a coaching program that helps do that. And we talk a lot about behavioral change and operationalize what it means to actually take all of these things and to get out of all or nothing.

thinking and behavior and to actually make consistent progress towards your goals. I've seen it happen hundreds of times. I've seen it happen hundreds, thousands of times, not hundreds of thousands, maybe one day, thousands of times when women have the right tools, I believe.

that you are not special I believe that your situation is not unique I believe everything that you have been through someone else has been through worse therefore this is the message of hope you are capable of change and if you believe that too then maybe you do just need a little bit more help

And so I'm going to put some stuff in the description. That is it from me. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And I'll see you again next week for another one. So go crush it, my friend. And do this all day. You got this. Bye.