Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 347: How to Encourage Loved Ones to Workout

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to episode 347 of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Mantrenga. And in today's episode, we are going to be discussing how it is that you can encourage your loved ones, the people whom you're closest to. This could be friends, this could be family, this could be co- coworkers. This could be anyone really who you come across who expresses a desire to improve their health and fitness. And even for those of whom you know that aren't directly expressing a desire, how you can support them, tools and tactics that I have found work well for something that I know a great many of you struggle with and are passionate about. If you care about your health and fitness enough that you're going to the gym

on a semi-regular basis, it can be really frustrating if somebody close to you, like a child, a spouse, a loved one, a friend, does not take their health and fitness as seriously as you do. And many times our passion for sharing fitness is misrepresented or misunderstood as pressure and pressure turns a lot of people away. So I'm going to be sharing with you some statistics, some facts, and some tactics to help encourage the people closest to you to take their health more seriously in a time of year where many people are contemplating it to begin with. So I hope you guys enjoy the episode and the tools to help the people closer to you live a healthier life without you having to wear the hat of this, you know, demonstrative finger pointing person that is applying pressure. And oftentimes when

you get put into that frame, it turns those people off. So hopefully you can take this and run with it to help spread health and fitness in the new year. Enjoy. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural

coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin, contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical research supported by robust trials. No filler, just legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light. It's fantastic. It mixes in water. It tastes amazing. And I drink it every day, even as somebody who's lactose intolerant. That's just how high quality this whey protein is. And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet and packaged

in climate friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too. For those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their stim free pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the

amazing, amazing Tropical Punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge, five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not, because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like

to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout, or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Okay, so getting into the episode, one of the things that I have always found rather interesting in my line of work are the kind of questions that appear the most consistently, that appear to have people the most confused. You know, things like how much protein can I eat in a given sitting? What are the health

benefits or risks associated with things like creatine? And some of those questions have very clear, very obvious answers, and quite frankly, a substantial amount of evidence that one can cite and say, look, hey, I understand the concern. I understand maybe not knowing the answer, but we can say with a certain degree of certainty, there you go, a certain degree of certainty that we have some, you know, criteria we can follow to answer these questions quite well. But the one question that I think always comes up, again, it's up there with these creatine, protein, what's the best training routine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Questions is, how do I get my wife, my husband,

my son, my daughter, my children, my aunt, my uncle, my parents to work out? I'm super into fitness and I really want to encourage the people closer to me to be maybe as into fitness as I am. And I really want to encourage the people closer to me to be maybe as into fitness as I am. And that's a question that does not have a concrete answer because every person who may or may not be on their way to getting in shape has different motivations and responds differently to various forms of coaching and instigation. So how it is that we motivate the people around us is really individual. It's really unique. And quite frankly, it makes it pretty freaking hard. And it's a question that gets asked a lot. And it's almost always well intentioned. I mean, even for people who are, let's say you're in a relationship.

and this happens, so there's really no point in pretending that it doesn't happen. You are maintaining your fitness, and your partner's fitness is deteriorating, and their physical shape is changing in alignment with that deterioration, and maybe it's affecting the attraction or the sexual component of the relationship because your partner's gained 50 pounds, and you're no longer as attracted to them as you used to be. And there's a lot of people in the fitness space who will look you dead in the face and tell you like, oh, how shallow, how, you know, pathetic, how, how is it that you could allow, you know, your partner gaining weight to skew your level of attraction towards them. And this is, in my opinion, more common with male partners in regards

to their female partners than it is the other way around. But make no doubt about it. I train mostly women and there are plenty of women who see their male partner gaining weight and who are much too kind to say something about it until that partner is 50, 60, 70 pounds overweight. And I don't want to contribute to any additional stigmatization of being overweight, but having one partner who puts effort into maintaining their fitness while another partner allows their body physique and fitness, as well as their health, of course, to deteriorate is very, very damaging for a lot of relationships. And I would say it's more common that male partners engage or disengage, I should say, with fitness and health-related behaviors than it is female partners in heterosexual relationships.

But man, you want to talk about a tax on your relationship, gain 50 to 75 pounds and see what happens. I'm not recommending this for anybody. And I'm not saying to be so shallow that if your partner begins to gain weight, you start withholding love or affection. But there are some natural changes in attraction when somebody who you initially pair bonded with gains a substantial amount of weight. And a lot of that has less to do with the weight and more to do with the communication of, hey, I'm not investing in my

health. And what does that say about my desire to work towards having a future together? If I'm not investing in being here for the long haul because I don't take care of myself, people pick up on that pretty quickly. And so these kinds of dynamics appear all the time in relationships. They're very difficult to manage. They're very hard not to take personal. They take tremendous toll on our relationships. So I want you guys to listen to this and try to take in from both sides of the equation. If you're somebody who wants to get in shape for your partner, if you're somebody who wants to get in shape for your partner, if you're somebody who wants your partner to get in shape, if you're somebody who knows you have a partner who's in better shape but don't know where to start, I'm going to try to unpack all

of this for you. Because I have seen personally, I'm very thankful that this has never happened in any of my relationships. And I'm honestly in many ways apologetic for some of the pressure that I might have put on partners I've had in the past to maintain a certain physique. You know, my wife and I have had very candid discussions about how we want to manage our health. And I do the best I can not to put any external pressure on her, but she is fairly self-motivated to maintain her health. But I can imagine dating somebody who's a fitness trainer, a coach who runs a fitness company, who has a platform, that in and of itself puts a little pressure. And so what we want to do today is come up with habits, tactics, techniques, talking points that let us stay away from these places. Let's not let

our relationships get here to begin with. Let's find ways to live healthier together and encourage the people closest to us to make better decisions with their health. So first and foremost, let's just look at the prevalence of obesity in adults. So the data set that I like to often cite is pre-pandemic. is pre-pandemic. Specifically, this is CDC data, but in 2015, we saw obesity rates in adults. It's honestly disturbing how much higher it is with children, but higher than it used to be, I should say. But let's just talk about adults because these are discussions you're probably going to have with your adult contemporaries. If you have a child who you are struggling to get on board with food, that's probably it's a podcast in and of itself because how it is you motivate and how it is you communicate with children really depends a lot on their age, their development, your parenting style, whether or not you co-parent, whether or not you parent in a two-parent household, etc.

But in 2015, we had a 36.9 adult obesity prevalence. Let's just say that's 37%. And then in 2018, another pre-pandemic data set, we see that number at 42.2%. So on average, we see a net increase of about 1.75 or one and three quarters points of obesity per year in adults. I think that number trends pretty on par with where the data is now. So if you extrapolate 1.75% per year, that puts us right now around 49 and a half, 49 and a quarter percent. So about 50% of adults, you're going to see some numbers that come back lower than that, mid 40s. But I think obesity and overweight is probably between 45 to 70% of US adults. So that means approximately 45 to 70% of US adults are in a

partnership where one or more partners is overweight or obese. That is going to, in and of itself, set that partnership up. We're speaking specifically about romantic partnerships here, but you can extrapolate this to friendships, to parents, to anybody. That means that in any relational dynamic, there's a 45% to 75% chance that just via obesity alone or being overweight alone, somebody you're close to is at increased risk for cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular disease. That would be, of course, heart-specific and circulatory disease, cognitive decline, things that are really challenging and really, really affect relationships. So the odds that you know somebody or are close to somebody or are somebody who's in an increased risk position

because of the lifestyle habits, behaviors, and weight gain that is so prevalent is super duper high. And I think that if ever there was a reason to get in shape, if ever there was a good reason, it's probably kids, family, and loved ones. A lot of us struggle deeply with engaging in behaviors that are foundationally good for us, but we're substantially better at engaging in behaviors that benefit the people around us. I'll give you a really good and interesting analogy. The rate at which people administer medication to sick animals is higher than the rate at which they successfully take their own medication, which is to say, if you got pills for your dog from the vet and you got pills for your diabetes from your physician, you would be

more likely to administer the veterinary medicine to your animal than you would to take the diabetes medicine prescribed for you. And I think this is because we foundationally have an easier time doing things for others, many of us, than doing good things for ourselves. And the same thing is true for engaging in health-promoting behaviors like exercise and healthy eating. If you have a partner on board or you have somebody who's doing it with you or you have somebody who needs help, we will often divert our energy towards the people closest to us. And having trained a lot of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who occupy this matriarchal role in a relationship, I can tell you for a fact, there's a ton of people who put their health on the back burner so that they can

enhance the health and quality of life of the people in their family. And I would make the argument that not only is putting your health on the back burner to put other people's well-being first dangerous for you, it's also dangerous for them if you play an important role in that family. Which brings me to kind of my first point in all of this, which is accepting responsibility for your role in these relationships, whether you're the encourager or you're the person who's trying to get in better shape. The people around you, the people who love you, the people who maybe might not have the best tact when bringing, you know, hey, I would really help if you started going to the gym and maybe

lost some weight. So oftentimes those conversations are fumbled. They're screwed up. They're messed up. I want you to think about difficult conversations you've had with a spouse or a parent or a child where maybe you tried your best to bring it to them in the right way, in the right context, with the right tone, and you just butchered it because it's really hard. Those can set you back. Sometimes a bad conversation goes a lot further in the wrong direction than a good conversation goes in the right direction. But more often than not, the people closest to you, the people who bring this to you, whether they do it right or wrong, are the best reason you have for making these changes. And so as somebody who's maybe looking to have these conversations, making it about yourself can be tricky, but try to make it about the group dynamic,

the family dynamic, the relationship that you have with the person. And the first way you can do this is to acknowledge how much you love that person, how much you care about that person. Acknowledge that independent of their weight, their health status, their wellbeing, their physique, how that may or may not, you know, limit or detract from your relationship. The person inside that body is what matters. And when we try to encourage loved ones to work out, this is a super common mistake, which is we make it all about the fitness, the physique and the body. And very rarely do we make it about the person inside that body. If you're in a relationship with somebody and you prefer that they lost 40, 50 pounds,

and your initial point of conversation is the 40 to 50 pounds, and it's not the person, it can really drive that conversation off the rails really quickly. But if you make the conversation around, hey, I know that you need to lose some weight, but it's so much less about the weight. It's about the relationship we have and how living healthier will enhance the quality of that relationship on so many different levels. It will give us more energy, more time together, a greater opportunity to do things we love and see things that are exciting in this world, that'll go a lot further than, hey, you gain 40 to 50 pounds and I don't like how you look anymore. It really is

all in the delivery with a lot of this stuff and making it about the relationship, the quality of the relationship and making it about enhancing the relationship through health because you love this person, that will go a lot farther than making it about the aesthetic, the appearance, the sexual component, the dynamic that is in many ways considered to be shallow and superficial. So just first and foremost, make it about love, make it about care, and acknowledge that you might be further along than them and that where you're at is not where they need to get. You want to get them somewhere where they feel healthy, empowered, fit, and just doing something that works for them. They don't have to be like you. And I think that a lot of

fit people, some of the fittest people I know, the people who are in the best physical shape, the best physical condition, they respond very well and very positively to shaming, which is actually rare. Many people are like, hey, if I get out of shape, I want you to tell me I'm getting fat. I want you to let me know so I can dial it back in. But the number of people who respond well to that is substantially smaller than the number of people who respond poorly to that. And I think a lot of people who are fit, who are in shape, who have a great physique, they benefit from being able to hear that criticism and that condescension and sometimes that hurtful direct comment about their body and internalize that and use it as

motivation. A lot of the fittest people I know, they were small and they were sick of being made fun of for being small, so they get a ton of muscle. Or they were overweight and they got sick of hearing about it, so they just got super militant and lost a ton of weight, got in great shape. But that is a much smaller percentage of the population than the percentage of people for whom shame-based tactics elicit defeat, make them feel terrible, kind of just completely debase them and set them back. And so I would really encourage you, if you're somebody who responds well to shame, that you ask yourself, is this just a gift, a tool, a speciality, if you will, that I have that most people don't? And I bet you'll find the answer is yes, because truthfully, most people do not respond particularly

well to shame-based critique. And I think one of the worst things that you can do if you want to help people get in shape is to start out with condemnation, to start out with shame and to start off with debasing them. If you completely undermine somebody's confidence, because you're like, how is this going to be any different than when you tried keto? Then when you tried fasting, then when you tried being vegan, then when you tried F45 or orange theory, if you bring out the list of all the things they've failed on, when they're trying to tell you, I want to try, or I'm open to trying, or they're showing some effort, or when you do bring to them, hey, I want you to get in shape, but I don't want it to look like the last five times you failed. For a lot of people,

bringing their failures out and putting them on full display is extremely dehumanizing. And it actually doesn't help at all to revisit all the times they failed in the past. It just works better to start fresh with encouragement and positivity. So those are two big things. Those are like the foundational components for helping people get in shape. Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female

bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels.

You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. You cannot drag out the past, remind them of their failures, tell them, oh, this is just going to be just like the last time you failed? And you must lead with love, affection, the relationship, the person more than the way their health is impacting you. You just can't make it about yourself. You have to make it about the dynamic you have with the person. Another thing that people really struggle to do with this and in these difficult conversations is they don't put things into context. Um, so remember like

who you are and what you have to work with is different from who they are and what they have to work with. And I'll use myself as an example. When I first started fitness training, I was 18 years old and I'd say the average age of my client was, or let me put it to you this way. The average demographic of my client was 45 to 50 years old, female, paramenopausal, one to two kids, 40 to 50 hour work week. Okay. And my demographic was 18. I work in a gym. I go to school. I have very few external responsibilities other than homework, training my clients. And that's about it. So contextually, you're talking about a trainer and a client who are completely different from one another.

And one of the things I really struggled with early in my training career is how did I balance that? And this is one thing the fitness industry is terrible at. Like I said, when I first started training, I was 18 years old. I worked in a gym all day long. And my only real responsibilities were my undergraduate kinesiology work and my clients. And most of my clients were 45 year old women with at least one to two kids who are working 40 to 50 hours a week. That's a huge disconnect. But what did I do to fuck this up? I started telling them what I do to be successful, stay lean and build muscle. I didn't think about the context. I didn't think about the differences between our lifestyle. I tried to kind of fit a square peg into a circular hole. I said, this works for me and I'll be damned if it doesn't work for you. And that is one of the

biggest disconnects in fitness is people trying to apply tools, tactics, and strategies that work for them that are not the best tools, tactics, and strategies for the people they're working with because of the context in which that person is living. You have to try to meet people where they're at. So if you're in a relationship and you're the 30-year-old child of a 65-year-old parent who's 100 pounds overweight or doesn't work out, and you're like, hey, let's go to the gym and lift weights five days a week, hardcore, just come with me. That's probably not going to work. You've got to meet people where they're at, which again brings me to another point, which is don't expect people to start exactly where you are

at. That can be really problematic. With fitness, there's no step too small. And a lot of times for people who are not engaging with fitness, friends, family, loved ones, whoever, uh, smaller, sometimes better. I'll use golf as an example. Uh, I picked up golf at the beginning of the pandemic. It's not something I love, but it's something I can go and do with my friends. Um, and when I first started, I couldn't even get the ball in the air. Um, and I would go to the driving range and just smack the fucking deck before I could hit the ball. Eventually I started hitting the ball, eventually got the ball in the Eventually, I got the ball in the air. Eventually, I got the ball in the air with some straightness. Eventually, I could hit it with a little draw or a little fade. That was really enough. What did not make me any better at golf was going out and playing golf with

my friends who were already good at golf. I know that seems counterintuitive, but what made me better was when my friends were meeting up to go play golf, I would go to the driving range for 30 minutes before we would meet up. And if they were playing 18 holes, a lot of times I would just join them for nine, but I would spend 30 minutes playing by myself at the driving range, getting a little better. And then I play the front nine with them, stink it up. Then they go on to play the full 18. And what I noticed is if ever I were to play the full 18 with them, I would get really sloppy. My technique and execution would be particularly bad. I would be too focused on how they were

better than me and I wouldn't actually do the small things that I needed to do. So when it comes to encouraging people to get in shape, offering to do things with them that are on their level are oftentimes substantially more effective than having them come do things that are on your level. I want to give you an example, like, and this is something that a ton of fit people screw up. If you have, like, let's say you are in incredible shape and your spouse is not, and you want to help them get in incredible shape. So you say, I'm going to have you join me for my workout and you're going to train how I train. That almost always works substantially worse than the fitter party saying, hey, I'm going to have you come to the gym with me. Now I'm going to do a workout as the fitter

party that's actually more appropriate for you. Even if it's super easy for me, even if it doesn't progress me at all, instead of just destroying you and annihilating you so you can't walk for three days so I can stand on my high horse or my soapbox and say, do you see what it takes? I'm going to go to the gym and I'm just going to meet you where you're at. And I'm going to join you on a workout that's objectively too easy for my current fitness level, but I'll provide support, encouragement, accountability, and just be there with you. That works a lot better than dragging your spouse, your friend, your family member to the gym and just putting them

through a hellacious workout that you as a seasoned fitness veteran have worked up to. I swear it. The reason I know this to be true is because I've actually trained real people. And when I first started, I was extremely unsuccessful at driving results because I just made people do what worked for me. And as I got better at training, coaching, and meeting people and just engaging with them and realizing that you will catch a lot more flies with honey than you will with vinegar, which in this context means you'll get a lot more people to move further along their fitness path by kind of taking the easy road to the top of the mountain and being like, Hey, let's scale up the face. Cause I'm in super good shape. When you are trying to get somebody to take this

seriously, if you use that as an opportunity to flex, for lack of a better term, it almost never works. So that kind of brings up the point of reducing expectations. Be reasonable about what that person can and can't accomplish. And remember that nothing is probably more likely to lead them to suffering a setback than an injury, then tons of pain, then annihilating them, emasculating them, just, you know, completely dunking on them. And that happens way more often than it should. One more thing to talk about before we kind of start breaking down some statistics, some more tactics, some things that you can do to make exercise fun and encouraging and just get people in the rhythm. Understand that it does not have to look anything like your current routine. Even if objectively your current routine is really good, it probably

just has to look like something. So I'll give you a good example. I think I have a pretty optimized program. It's got some weightlifting for strength, some hypertrophy work, multi-planar work, low-intensity cardio, high-intensity cardio, plyometric work. I'm actually building another app- based team. So we have elite physique, which is a women's bodybuilding program. We have a home heroes, which is a home training program for novices. I'm going to be launching forever fit, which is a training app that emulates my exact training. It's a training act for both men and women. Elite physique is more for women. Home heroes is again for both men and women.

Forever fit is basically my program, a hybrid program for strength, hypertrophy, athletic capability, aerobic fitness, mobility. It's what I do. And in a perfect world, everybody I train, my wife, my friends, I would just be like, Hey, just follow the app. We'll all train together. That might not be exciting enough, work for them or get them where they want to be. And you know, my lady, for example, she actually does F45 a couple days a week, which I think is in many ways an inefficient subpar workout, but it works for her. She can go with her sister. There's community. She'll work out at home at the home gym and do something a little more similar to what I do. If she can't do that, she'll go on hikes, she'll go on runs. And the best thing I can do is encourage that, reward that, support that. The worst thing I can do is be like, well, I wish you would just do what I say you should do. I wish you would just train how I train, which is crazy because even

knowing that I still make this mistake. So just keep that stuff in mind. Those are things that work and things that don't work. Let's talk specifically now about some additional tactics that might be helpful for you. So number one, always lead by example. You have literally no business telling people this stuff if you're not working on it yourself or willing to take steps with them. The Journal of American Medicine found that partners are more likely to make changes when another partner is already exhibiting said changes. The study used smoking cessation, physical activity, and weight loss as measurements. So different behaviors all respond very well to having partners lead the way, which is a long way to say, if you want to have a partner change their behavior, a family member changed their behavior with fitness, with weight loss,

et cetera, you better lead by example because it's damn been proven to actually make a difference. And I think that's pretty obvious. It's pretty self-explanatory. We all know this intuitively that nobody likes a hypocrite, but just a reminder, this has literally been proven. Another thing that I think works very well is to be diplomatic and to make trade-offs. If you want your partner to live healthier and they want you to spend less time, let's say, watching football, maybe you can make the discussion or the, you know, commitment that, Hey, you know, there's games I'm on the West coast. So there's games at 10 AM, 1 PM. And then there's the Sunday night game at 5 20 PM. Um, and then there's a Monday

and a Thursday night game. And if you're on the East coast, there's games at one, four and eight. And maybe you say, you know, babe, my team plays or our team plays at one o'clock. And instead of burying myself in the fantasy app from 10 till eight o'clock every Sunday, I will skip the morning games. We'll go on a hike or we'll skip the first half of the morning games and we'll go to the gym. And it has to be some form of concession. So this works really well if your partner has already communicated to you that they want to see some change. So if the outcome you would like to generate from your partner is that they engage more with exercise and there is something that they would like from you, maybe that's watching less football, again, to use this

example, be diplomatic about it and make the trade-off. If you're not willing to make sacrifices, it's very unlikely that they are going to make sacrifices for you. Another hugely powerful and effective tip is recognition. Give people recognition, acknowledgement, and encouragement when they are doing the behavior that you are hoping that they would do in the first place. Which is to say, if they go to the gym, if they make a healthy meal, they go for a walk, if they say no to something like a drink or an appetizer, or they just make a good choice. It doesn't have to be like a dog where you're like, good job and give them a treat. But maybe later in the day, you're like, hey, you know what? I see all the effort you're putting in. And I noticed that today you made a huge

adjustment and said no to that drink or said no to that snack, or you went on a walk. Positive reinforcement works very, very well. And I know it sounds silly, and I'm not trying to compare humans to dogs, because the psychology in humans is substantially more complex. But I have found that rewarding the positive and just kind of ignoring the negative or the setbacks is substantially more effective than micromanaging the setbacks and expecting the positive. Some other quick tips are to make it fun. Choose activities that are enjoyable and entertaining that encourage laughter, smiling,

and connection. Just set realistic goals to begin with. Don't be too crazy with it. Team up, join them, you know, do as much together as you can, whether it's a spouse, whether it's a parent, whether it's a family member, a kid. You know, variety, I think is really important, especially for newbies. Like a lot of people who are very connected to their fitness, they can deal with the drab and the monotony of it all. But for people who aren't quite as connected with their fitness, the drab and the monotony of it all but for people who aren't quite as connected with their fitness the drab and the monotony of it all can be a little bit kind of boring and maybe

Set them back so engage with some variety keep things fun Um always try to make it social that can again be in the form of teaming up or getting multiple people together to do things that are active Um make it more about the health and the connection, things like mood, sleep, and energy and stress rather than things like weight and the way it affects your relationship. Try to put things on a schedule. This can also be huge. Try to live in the absence of judgment and lean more into support. try to live in the absence of judgment and lean more into support. These are all tools,

folks, that will help. And I think the hardest part is just having this set up conversations, right? Like having the challenging conversations around why this stuff matters, how this affects the relationship, you know, why you want this person to stick around for the long run and how much you care about them. So I hope you were able to get some tools from this. I hope this conversation was helpful. These are just things that have worked for me. I don't purport these to be the only ways in which you can change behavior. But I do think that if you listen to this, these are all things that will help drive the right outcome in your relationships and with the people who you care the most about. If you did enjoy the episode, maybe share this with somebody who's struggling with this or who's looking to get in shape. Commit to making some of these changes. Be sure to tag

me and share this on your Instagram story so I can say thank you. If you have any questions, DM me or send me an email, danny at coach dannymatranga.com. Thanks so much for tuning in guys. I'll catch you on the next one.