Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How's everybody doing? I am thoroughly enjoying the start of summer here. I'm also massively, massively enjoying. I'm in the middle of the metabolic and mindset mastermind that I'm running, and it is just the best group ever. Everybody is coming to calls and participating and asking questions, and it's really one of the best groups that I've ever had. I'm just enjoying it so much. The Facebook group is so lively and just everything so.
This topic today that we're gonna talk about, this is something that, how to increase consistency. That everybody knows that if they can be more consistent in these things that they know, support them, achieve their goals, that they're gonna get great results, right? It's like, okay, we know it's consistency and really sticking with it, but how do you do that? When it feels like you always quit on yourself, it's those micro quits, right?
You never really complete the things you never achieve as much as you think you want to. And today I really wanna go over how to increase consistency. I first wanna go over the definition because this is where I think we're gonna first start to put a few cracks in this. Here's the actual definition. When I looked it up, it's. Acting or done in the same way over time, especially so as to be fair or accurate, let me repeat that.
Consistency is acting or done in the same way over time, especially so as, to be fair or accurate, the way I would think about this more is there's a certain cadence to it. You can predict it, what you don't see here is the word perfection. No errors, no days off. Does that blow your mind a little bit? Because I think when people think consistency, I always hear people say seven days a week, seven days a week, the meals are planned and done perfectly.
Seven days a week, they're being active seven days a week. There's no meal where they ever overeat. It's the super unrealistic expectation and with consistency. I just like to think that it's, there's some type of logic that's going into it. It's not a hundred percent based on emotion. There's a system that's built out, right? You do it no matter what.
So consistency, the, the best example I can give here is if you're someone that's still working right now and you're not retired, you go to work if you committed to it. Most people, they're gonna get themselves up in the morning. And even though they might not be super excited to go to their job, you do it. You might have kids. A lot of the time you are not excited to make the meals and do the things, but you're not gonna abandon your kids. That's consistency.
Now when it comes to ourselves, somehow we just throw ourselves in the dumpster and we don't take care of ourselves. Right? So today, let's go ahead and talk about. Three factors that I see increasing consistency. Now I really want to help all of you to increase this. So I have made an accompanying really nice kind of little workbook that goes with this. You can get access to that for free. It's a free resource, how to increase consistency.
The link to get that will be in the show notes, right below where you're listening right now. So if you want that, that would be the way to do it or you can get it. In the show notes on my website, if you go to rent clinic.com/blog, that will be the first one that pops up there, how to increase consistency. You can look through the writing there and we'll have the link for this. This will be a really practical companion to what we're talking about today, how to actually go do it.
Alright, so step number one is this, and you've heard me say it before, small. Steps. So this is that 1% upgrade that James Clear, the author made it super clear in the book Atomic Habits, and here's how I like to think about it.
Whatever your goal is or whatever it is that you are trying to do, I don't care if it's you're trying to drink more water, you're trying to eat less processed food, you're trying to be more active, you really need to break it down to about a 10th of the goal of what you think.
So when you do that, You are gonna have to overcome this human gut reaction that I see where you think that everything's broken and you need radical transformation, this radical overhaul to get it done and that doesn't last. When you do small steps, You are actually more likely to stick with it. We know this, so you do not need to do these big fancy moves. We know they don't work. We know that the small things end up being able to be things you can actually implement and stick around with.
So that's where I would recommend that you start is with really just small 1% upgrades. My registered dietician, Michelle and the clinic, she says something really great. She often says small, better choices. And I really like when she says that because I'll often say to patients, Hey, What you are doing right now is an improvement from what you did before. And they, and if it's, if it's yes, then keep doing it, right? So notice we didn't need to get rid of all the processed food at once.
It was an upgrade. If you maybe brought in some rotisserie chicken or some Greek yogurt or some cottage cheese, maybe you weren't getting enough protein before. That's an amazing first step. It doesn't need to be. Everything gets thrown outta the pantry and I never again eat a cracker. There are steps to you doing this. The, the example that I always come back to, it's drinking water, right? Everybody wants to blow past this step.
It's like, if we can get you drinking enough water, And again, I usually say again, assuming you don't have like a heart or kidney problem or something where you're fluid restricted, most people, at least 64 ounces of water or more per day are gonna be great. So non-caffeinated things, if we can do that small step. Maybe you're not gonna have to work as hard at all the other things, but it's like starting with that first, those little 1% upgrades are gonna get you so far.
So if you say to yourself, I don't think this is gonna work. It's so small, I always say, you struck gold. You know that that's the thing that you need to do. All right. Number two is this. And this is number two, and three are my favorites. Number two, dropping perfection. You have to be willing to quote unquote fail and just come right back and see what else will work. So how can I change this? How can I make this even easier?
There's no version of you getting through this without learning this skill of perfection not being needed. I'm going to link in the show notes. One of the best episodes, uh, podcast by Carol Lowenthal, and the title of this episode is called Perfectionistic Fantasies. And my interpretation of this episode, you've gotta listen to it though, it's that it's this constant, like you're planning, you're sort of fantasizing with what it's gonna look like.
You keep building up these really idealistic images of what it's gonna be, but you're not actually doing it. You're not actually executing on it. You're not actually crossing it off your list. I know all of us have been there. Like, I'm gonna take a walk every day and the meals are gonna be all planned and everything's gonna be perfectly prepped.
And it's like this really big vision of what's gonna happen and it's a perfectionistic fantasy what I really wanna say is that consistency is not, I'm perfect, but it's, you're willing to come back to it. You're willing to keep seeing what can work. One of the biggest examples I want to give here is, let's say that you do journaling. You might do this three outta seven days, but you are a journaler. You embody that. That is who you are.
Same thing, for example, if you maybe have worked on the belief of I don't overeat for fun, it doesn't mean it never happens. It doesn't mean that you're never gonna blow past enough that you're gonna be perfect with every single food. That there's not ever gonna be something that you eat where your brain is so excited with it and you're in such a state with it that you have more than you need. That's not what that means, but you can still be consistent in someone that doesn't overeat.
Even if once or twice you blow past it. Perfection is not synonymous with consistency. You can still embody the identity without being perfect at it. I always come back to this example with people that have a thin build that don't have to work on it. They are not making it mean anything when they overeat one time. They, they're like, oh God, it doesn't feel good moving on. They don't make it mean anything. So with consistency, there's no perfection.
So it's just willing to let days pass if you have the common cold, all right, you know, that's a day I'm not gonna work out cause I don't feel good. Maybe your kid is sick, maybe you get to work late. But it doesn't mean that then I just throw everything away permanently. I just come right back to it because majority of the time I'm consistent. It doesn't matter if there's a day or two or three or a week or two where everything doesn't happen perfectly.
All right, so that is number two, dropping perfection. And I really think that it's helpful to redefine what consistency can look like for you if you're not being perfect. So I'm gonna give you some examples, a lot more examples in number three here coming down. But I had to really let go of this vision of exercise, being in a gym and for an hour and all those kind of things. It really came out of a time when I was in college and I had. Luxury of time on my hands. Right?
Didn't have kids, didn't have a family, didn't have a job. It was like I went to class and, and your job was almost to work out, to not go crazy. And then you were studying, and so I really got this fixed in my mind, like, that's what an exerciser looks like. Well, I'm gonna show you a number three. How that's not anymore the way I think. All right, so number three, how to increase consistency. It's being willing to keep making it easier and easier and easier on yourself.
I mean, these are all really versions of the same thing that we're talking about, right? But a lot of what we do, and I dug a lot more into this in my metabolic and mindset Mastermind, but a lot of what we do is really dictated by this motivational triad. So it's seek pleasure, avoid pain, conserve energy a lot. Majority of our life is run by this, and the trouble is that if you're not making it easy, you're not gonna stick around with these things for life, right?
So I like to ask questions like this. What am I willing and able to do? You do not benefit from hard. Let's just have a real moment here for a second. When's the last time when you were on the hard road and you thought, man, that was really amazing. Like, that was really good. Like, I'm glad the entire experience was hard. I don't even feel good right now. It kept being hard and every day you were like, I want it to be just as hard tomorrow.
Like imagine at work every so often, you have a horrendous day, but you know, every day's likely not gonna be like that or you leave that job. This is a huge thing I see as a doctor. People wear, I. Their mental health is really suffering. If the jo, if the work environment's not conducive for them. You can handle some hard days. You cannot handle every day being a hard day. Same thing when I was in medical school.
Yes, I studied hard, but I had some Netflix time, I had some time to go and take a walk. I had some time to do this, to do that. I was not doing hard 24 7. I couldn't mentally, I couldn't do that. I wanna give you a prime example with making it easier and easier. And this is had, has been my own journey recently. I really decided over a year ago, I'm someone that's gonna be more active. I came from a background of.
I don't even know that you could be more sedentary, truly it would be at work, seeing patients and then sitting on the couch. And then I had my, my son, and as my son's grown up, my son is four now, I realized you kind of gotta be active as a parent if you wanna be involved. And that became important to me. And so I decided, all right, I wanna work on things. I want to be able to go to an amusement park, a water park, and walk around all day and not have a problem.
So I decided, I want to get active with things like walking, things like that. Now, I was spoiled because in our last house before we moved, we had a treadmill in the garage, so no matter what the temperature, whether it was too hot, too cold, we had a fan there, we had a little space heater like I made it work. Well, here I don't have that and it does not matter because consistent Mateo who moves, I have not put qualifications on what it looks like.
So for me, if it's raining here and I can't get outside, and I'm not gonna lie, there's a lot of bugs around here. So sometimes I don't wanna walk in the middle of a day. I just don't wanna do it. What I do is I literally walk around the bottom of our house, there's this little loop. It is totally fine. I talk to my friends. Do you know I am getting as many steps doing that compared to as I did on the treadmill. There's not a requirement on it. I have found other videos online.
A different membership that I like that has some videos. I'm finding ways to stay active with some free weights that I have. The reality is I'm getting just as good a workout here as I did back home. And what it takes is me just saying, how can I keep this easy? Because at first I thought, oh, it's hot outside. It's this, it's that. I don't have a treadmill. I. And no, I just don't wanna get a treadmill right now. Like we're not, we're not gonna move that other treadmill.
I'm not getting a treadmill for here at this moment. Let me say that I reserve the right to change my mind in a week or two. You might hear that I have a treadmill, but the reality is this, I. With what I have, no matter what the size of the room, the location, however this is looking. I'm gonna be active, but it's because I'm making it easy.
I don't need to get in the car and go to a gym where it takes me a half an hour to get there and back, and then the time that I'm there and then I can't watch my kid. These are requirements that I just don't wanna deal with at the stage in life. And I used to love going to the gym. And so it's like wherever you are at that definition might be different. But what is easy for you right now? And let's do that and let's build from there. You don't need a fancy setup, but it can be easy.
Okay, so James Clear, he says in this book, atomic Habits, something along the lines of this, I didn't pull the exact quote, but I love what he said. Something along the lines of every action. It's a vote for who you want to become. I love that saying because what I want you to think is, no matter how long you've not been doing what you think is supportive, what will you do today?
If you're gonna take one vote for the person you wanna become today, one action to get you closer to that, what will that be today? So what can be small enough today? What's the 1% upgrade? Can imperfect still work? I mean if you asked me when I was going through those college years, if the version of how I'm moving now, if that would be good enough, I would say, oh no, you need to get in the car.
You need to, you know, very like righteous me that hadn't had a kid, wasn't busy, didn't have any life obligations. But nowadays I literally asked myself, what can you do if it's five minutes, 10 minutes? Can imperfect still work for you? Can easy be on the menu. I ask myself this all the time, can you allow it to be easy? You don't need to sign up anymore. For the version where it's insanity, you think that that's required, it never ends up lasting.
You do not maintain consistency doing that, and you just don't need to sign up for it anymore. I wanna help you to practically implement these things. We'll have some of these things written out. A lot more sort of a roadmap in it. So if you want access to that, that's the How to Increase consistency worksheet. Again, the link will be in the show notes, or you can go to rent clinic, R E N T E a clinic.com/blog, and we will have the link right there as well.
I hope you all have a great rest of the day, a great rest of the week, and start out by redefining what consistency means to you. Break that one goal all the way down into 10 pieces. What's the one thing you're gonna do today And start there. I hope you all have a great rest of the week.