The Uneducated PT Podcast - Roy Ritchie - Former fat IT guy who hated myself

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

In this episode of the uneducated PT we speak to Roy Ritchie who is a fat loss and strength coach from Aberdeen. Roy talks about when he struggled with his weight and body image and the inner work he had to do to fix that long after he got in shape.

Hello and welcome to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. The goal of this podcast is to bring on interest and knowledgeable people from all walks of life, learn a little something from each conversation and for you, the listener, just learn something from each episode. So don't forget to subscribe to the channel, press the box below, show some support, and I'll see you on the next episode. Roy, I'll just let you introduce yourself to the group first and foremost. Tell them a little bit about yourself and how you got into the industry.

Cool, well, my name is Roy Ritchie. I, you could probably tell with the accent, I'm Scottish, but I currently live in Mexico because I got fed up of UK winters and wanted to see what the world was about. I work online, predominantly online as a nutritionist and a, we'll just say, strength coach, but I also help people like build muscle and whatnot as well. I've done that for about seven and a half years now coming up to, which is kind of wild. I previously used to work as an IT engineer for about eight years or something. Genuinely thought it was going to be the thing that I wanted to do, but hey-ho, when you start to hate yourself in every single minute of the day, you've kind of go to listen to that and decide what you want to do.

I kind of got into the, I'm going to be honest, I got into this side of things through, basically I was born with a defective heart valve and it was something that I was always going to have to keep an eye on, but I was given no information or tools as to what to do, and neither was my parents. So as I grew up, when I got to, I think it was 10 or 11, I contracted a virus and the virus punched a hole through the valve and I was in hospital for months.

So if any of you have any experience with cardiology issues, your heart just does not heal itself. So you've just kind of got to take it. So to this day, the heart is still damaged and I was basically told that you're going to have to look after yourself. you know if you don't you're going to run into problems but being Scottish and getting into my teens and early 20s you fall into unhealthy habits i.e. drinking culture and yeah and just not looking after yourself mentally or physically so I ended up becoming obese even though I was playing football once or twice a week. That was my

experience of being healthy. But I blew up to I cannot remember what this is in kilograms or pounds but in stone I blew up to 23 stone. And because I'm 6'3 3, I just became this sausage.

Just wide sausage and yeah, and go to the point where I just really, I just genuinely hated myself. I really hated myself. People calling me. Yeah, well, I'll actually, I'll actually save some of those names. But you can get the idea where like male unhealthy male friendship groups, whenever anything is aimed towards the big overweight guy, it was never

anything nice. So I decided that I wanted to do something about it and go to the gym. did the traditional thing, read magazines, joined forums, like spoke to the local bodybuilders or whatever, and I tried all their stuff. I genuinely exhausted diets. I exhausted training methods. Keto, hit training, bodybuilding splits. They're spending money on fat loss supplements,

spending money on supplements. You know, at one point I was spending £250 a month on supplements alone. Training twice a day, six days a week. I tried so many different things and nothing would ever change. And I just got fed up of it.

And I'm the type of person. I love to understand how things work. So I started to go to seminars and conferences and then when I was there, I would ask lots of questions. And then I started to just change what I was consuming. So I'm sure you're all on social media to some degree. You know, we've all seen the nonsense influencers or the fat loss plans or whatever.

It got to a point where I transitioned to moving away from those. And I started to sign up for research reviews and all these things. And I just started to apply it. And it started to work. hey, like go figure, science works. But then the people in the gym, they saw my changes. And then people started to ask me to help them. And, you know, I was still working in IT.

I, you know, I wasn't qualified. I didn't still know what I was doing. But people were basically saying, look, the personal trainers here aren't helping anybody. You're doing something right. We want to pay you. But I genuinely didn't want to be a personal trainer. In my experience, personal trainers didn't help people because my experience was of the personal trainers that I seen in the gym. You know, people stand in at treadmills or counting reps and all these types of things.

To me, in my short experience, the change really did come down to the mental and behavioral aspects of it. and I felt like, well, I want to be able to help people in the way that I've helped myself, but I cannot do that as a personal trainer. My views have changed since then because I know many personal trainers who are amazing at their job. So again, you can't, even though my view at the time was all personal trainers are this. That's not the case. Just like all online coaches are not influencers who, you know, use imagery and drugs to get followers and whatever.

Yeah, so I mean, it got to a point where I was in my career. Like I said before, I just genuinely didn't like myself. I didn't like my life. I didn't like my career. And it got to the point where I thought, I was looking at my boss and said, right, if I stick to my job, in five years time, I'm going to be doing that guy's job. and he looks like he hates his life. So is this what I want to do?

But then I met, I don't know if you're familiar with him, Carl, but I met Luke Johnson. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. Yeah, so I met him online. And he had literally just started online coaching mentoring. Because at the time, online coaching wasn't really a thing. And he started this small group.

There was like 20 of us on it. And he basically said, look, this is how I. work. This is how you can create a business and not be a personal trainer or, you know, like a shell. So I started to do it for about a year and a half alongside working as an IT network engineer. And then I decided this is what I want to do. I don't want to work for someone anymore. I wanted to really, really help people. And I can, I know how or I had an idea on. how I wanted to help people. So eventually I kind of steered that ship

and, you know, the rest is history. I became a macro calculator to what I do today. You know, I'll save you the seven and a half years of mistakes and everything else that goes along with that. Well, I was just sort of going to touch on that because obviously you see you were just talking there about when you were going on that kind of weight loss transformation and making every kind of mistake in the book

from overtraining to, you know, overspending on supplements and stuff like that. Was there a point when you realized, okay, that this approach isn't working and how did you go about understanding to know better and to change that approach? Ooh.

So I know this now in hindsight, but I didn't 100% know it, know at the time, but I'm a big believer. I'm just kind of listening to my God. If something doesn't feel right, like why doesn't it feel right? And at the time, like I said, in hindsight, it was more like a value thing. And what I was doing just didn't feel right. So everything was always driven. So basically, I've done, before I came to Mexico, I'd worked with a therapist for two and a half years, best decision I ever made, and a completely different person because of that process. And yeah, I, yeah, if you've never been to therapy before, it's something I'm a big proponent of,

a big supporter of. And, but anyway, so back then, a big part of the changes that I wanted to make was for acceptance or a form of acceptance. So I wanted to be leaner or I wanted to change my physique. And it was, you know, I told myself it was, it was for health reasons. Now it was. But the deeper I got into that rabbit hole, it then became, oh, I want to be liked. I want positive affirmations from the regular gym people or people on the men's fitness or the men's health forums or whatever.

and that is what drove me to start just pushing harder. So what I found was, and again, in hindsight, I recognize that my efforts were related to extremities, and I would always push extremities because it was in line with effort and pushing myself punishment, being rewarded for effort by people that I just didn't know or didn't care about. But again, it was for admiration. So when I looked at all the choices that I was making,

I was doing things like keto. And again, keto, I hated it. I pushed myself. People could see that I was trying hard. When I did things like hit training, I would push myself. I would make it very, very clear that I was trying hard. you know all these things became um it would be it would be very very visible and in conversation

that i was trying very very hard and it in reality it was to get admiration that um yeah that i was just putting in the effort and i wanted praise for it but at the same time i i genuinely feel like I attach myself to those things because when people, when you look at things online, people oftentimes gravitate towards extremities. You know, you're looking at things like carnivore or, you know, the greens shakes and all these things.

They're the types of training. Let's train six times a week. Let's do this type of class. Let's do training to complete failure. Like I mentioned before, double sessions, like do cardio in the morning. weights in the evening, like nothing, you know, we talk about this online, Carl, like no one likes the idea of unsexy methods, but it's unsexy methods at work. So what attracts someone to

extremities? And this is where, in hindsight, when I look at it, I was a complete sucker for it, and it was based on desperation and some form of acceptance, whether it was self-acceptance or acceptance from other people. When when did it change from okay you losing weight and changing your lifestyle

and you know implementing these behaviours from a point of validation for others to then doing it for yourself? That took a while I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie and when I say a while

I'm talking about years you know what the first, I would probably say this transitions. This transitions into two or three phases. The first phase is when I moved away from physique-based goals. Yeah. And so again, like many people, I became attracted to like bodybuilding and physique and whatnot, you know,

and it's the immediate attraction. Like people, people are visual, so you look at magazines, you look at social, You look at social media. We are, people are naturally driven toward some form of physique. And I was, even though that's not why I initially went into. You know, that's what kept me there. However, once I started to experience red flags, so I went to a couple of bodybuilding shows

and I could see how damage in it it was. I could see the behaviors in people, what people were doing. doing, how they were talking about each other, how they were talking about themselves. And I started to recognize that I was doing the exact same thing. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. No, go ahead.

No, no. No. So that was the first part of it. And the second part of it was people started to comment and say, oh, you look, you look really strong. And I wasn't because when you're looking at bodybuilding only type training, it's not about performance. It's not about strength. It's just about physique. So I like the idea of pursuing strength and being more capable and whatnot. So I started to transition things. Yeah,

just into just improving performance and getting something different from it. But I would say when I went into powerlifting, so that eventually became a proxy for powerlifting and I competed in powerlifting for a number of years. And I really, really enjoyed it because it became more of a celebration on what am I capable of. It had nothing to do with having big shoulders or big hamstrings or quads or whatever. It just purely became about what am I capable of. What can I do? What's my you know, it was yes, it became about me versus other people and stuff, but ultimately it became a control of myself. But I was still very, very attached to my physique at that point because most people in powerlifting don't look like they lift. Yeah. So I kind of became, I kind of became a bit

proud of that, that I was the big guy doing powerlifting and I kind of stood out for that point. I probably say it became, it wasn't until overall about five years. five, yeah, give or take like five years into my own personal this journey that I started to detach and become relatively comfortable with my body and my eating behaviours. And it was because I started to move more towards things like intuitive eating and body acceptance. And anybody here watching or listening and yourself as well,

Carl. It's a very, very niche thing. There's a, there's a large space for these, for these conversations, but these conversations, again, I kind of come back to, they're not sexy, so they get tucked away in corners, but this is where people like us to, people like Amelia Thompson or whatever, they're being more transparent with these conversations and they're making it more normalised. And I think that's really, really important. And people, but they're skisage. conversations as well because so many people aren't ready for them. But by making those conversations available, it's almost like normalising it,

just like I mentioned before about the whole therapy thing. Do you think, so there's obviously a lot of people on this program who initially come into the program because they're not happy with themselves and they want to look better and feel better. But then it can go too far, where you're on the pursuit of looking and feeling better by losing weight.

But then the more you go to lose weight and the more body fat you try to drop and the more obsessed you are about your physique, the actual worse you feel about your body and your body image becomes worse, even though you're smaller or leaner. So when this, so when you look at these types of goals, and I do want to preface this by saying that there's absolutely nothing wrong with, having these goals. Sometimes people like to

really shit on people's goals and say, oh, you shouldn't pursue this and you shouldn't pursue that. Because these types of things are often attached to their own bias or their own echo chambers or whatever.

If you have a goal, like pursue it. It might not be right for you, but if you're aware and you've got your eyes and ears open, I don't know if you can close your ears, but here we are. Then you're going to learn something along that process anyway. It might not be right for you, but you can pick things up.

Now, in terms of as you're saying there with the weight loss example, if you look at the main principles of weight loss, calorie deficit, consistency, and the exercise component to it, Yes, training does play a role in there as well. Now, if you follow those, you will successfully lose weight. How you deem success is completely up to you, because how you deem success is going to be attached to your history with dieting and body image and, you know, your personal values and whatnot.

So, for example, if we ran an experiment and we had two people doing the exact same thing and they both wanted to lose weight. One of them could have a history where they lived in a household where the mother was dieting every few months, doing like Slimming World or whatever on all these things. So they're going to have some sort of attachment,

poor attachment to food behaviours, whereas the other one won't. So even though the two of them may successfully lose weight, the one who doesn't have the history may be able to success, may have a better relationship with the outcome, they may go through the process and say, hey, I learned this about time management. I learned this about food preparation.

I learned this about the enjoyment of training and exercise. And I love being stronger. I love deadlifting. I love going out for walks with my friends and all these things. And they pick up these things. So when they get to their quote unquote, go weight, they can maintain it. they can enjoy it. They can embrace it.

And then they can then say, cool, well, okay, I got to my goal weight here. But now I would like to maybe build my glutes or I'd like to achieve my first chin up or something like that. So they can use a proxy or a stepping stone. Whereas if we go into the first person who's got the history attachment, they won't focus on the process. They might have a goal. Sorry, they might have a coach that continues to say to them, hey, don't forget about the process, you know, doing their check-ins and saying,

oh, you know, you've learned this this week and you've learned that. And they may do it, but they'll always override it because their main focus is I need to lose weight because I need to weigh this much. And because of that, unless something is, unless this is being taken away and saying,

here look let's just let's take away weight loss let's take away the scales let's focus on these behaviors let's focus on these habits let's focus on other things that you can enjoy and by proxy you will lose weight unless this happens their focus is always going to be weight loss and even once they get to their goal weight they're never going to be happy they could they could look they could look amazing. They could get compliments at work from family members, their partner and all these things. The scales may tell them the number that they wanted,

but they're not going to be happy because they've never done the work that is sat from their, again, their history, from their upbringing and their old environment. Because remember, even though that's attached to the past, they may still have a relationship with their mother. Now, I use the mother because evidence and research shows that it tends to come from the mother. If their mother is still pre-existing in their life, then they're always going to have that voice

and they're always going to have those types of comments like, oh, you're on a diet again. Oh, you're looking slimmer and these types of triggering conversations and whatnot. So hopefully there's something you can take from that, but this is why doing a lot of work alongside, changing like weight management or fat loss or muscle gain or something is really, really important. Yeah, I was on a talk there on Saturday, and I spoke about that, about it being kind of generational dieting where, you know, the unhealthy behaviours of your mum or your dad and has passed down.

generation to generation. You don't even realize that you have an unhealthy behaviour with food or your body image. You even touched on there. So, like, essentially, you can get what you want and still be unhappy, so you can lose all the weight and still feel empty or,

or like it was for you, going a huge weight loss journey and still not feel whole. And obviously, that's where therapy came in for you to kind of help figure that out a little bit. do you think that that would be it's a good approach for let's say a client to you know it's more than just coaching them into a calorie deficit that you know they should be working with kind of a personal trainer but also doing that kind of head work as well with a with a therapist yeah um i do i 100% do and the reason for that is even though even though i have personally i have

specific skill, a specific skill set. It's not related to Liam Neeson in any way. So I'm not going to give you the whole speech. If you've never seen taken, then that joke is completely lost on you. Anyways, even though I've got a specific way of working and different pathways and I like to work very, very closely with clients, I am not a therapist. I am not a qualified counselor. I am not a qualified therapist. It is something I would like to do in a future, and this is to support clients on a different level. However, I've, I've, I've work with some clients who have, who work with therapists alongside me for different reasons. So I've got two clients at the moment who have eating disorders, who came to me with pre-existent eating disorders, and they were already

working with a therapist. But what I've done is I've communicated with their therapist and knowing, you know, right, okay, well, this is my understanding here. So how do we work on that? However, sometimes, so for example, I actually parted, stopped working with the client last week in a good way because we recognized that we were doing a lot of work and we were having a lot of conversations. But this specific client just kept going through self-sabotaging cycles all the time.

They would make specific amounts of progress for two, three weeks, and then just completely, just, yeah, just, yeah, just completely ruin it. And it was it was things that they knew how to do, but we can never understand it. And then the questions from their standpoint would be, oh, how do I do this? How do I do that? And there were avoidant-based questions. So in one conversation with her before Christmas, she was asking specific questions. And I says, you've not gotten to the place where you can ask those questions,

because you can't string four weeks together. Like we need to put four weeks together. And we're not asking much. It wasn't like, oh, we need to be very, very specific with calories and protein and training and steps. It was basically, can we have three portions of protein a day? Can we do three training sessions a week? It was very, very simple, like entry level stuff. And I says, if we can't do this for four weeks, we haven't earned the right to do more.

So what we eventually did was I recommended, you know, the idea of working with a therapist or a counselor. And that's exactly what's happened. So she's actually going to wait to start working with a counselor so she can then eventually come back at a certain stage. It is scary. I'm not going to lie. I don't know what your experience with therapy and counselors like Carl, but it's in mind. You have to be very, very ready for it. You have to be very open to opening yourself up in a very vulnerable and difficult way.

But if you are, then you're going to get the best out of that process, just like if you are working with a coach. Because when I start working with clients, the main thing I say to them is we have to work on communication. Like if we've got communication in place, then we're going to. to have some form of success. But if you're unwilling to communicate for whatever reason, I can't help you. And the only person who can help you is yourself in that perspective. So, you know, if you feel like, because if you look at it this way,

sorry, one last point on here, if you feel like you've been doing dieting for years or different diets or different training methods or whatever, if you feel like you've been doing those for years, you're not going to get those years back. Like they're gone. You're not going to get them back. How long, how many more months and years are you willing to lose doing things that are not for you

because you're avoiding looking in the mirror and doing the, like working on the underlying layers and underlying factors that will just, will actually propel you forward in every area, you know, that's... I think for me it shows like, for a lot of people, it's not an information problem. Like they know, yeah, I should be probably consuming this amount of calories and yeah, I need some protein on my diet, I need some fibror, I need to do steps, I need to do resistance training. But like, that's not the issue for them.

So if they keep on resulting back to that, you know, it's never going to work. one thing that I quoted you saying so you said there is one thing you need to change to be successful and it's how you talk to yourself what do you mean by that? Yeah well that was that was my post this morning

but you look if you it's quite stunning how people will intuitively lean towards negative talk self talk I mean you know if you're looking at someone who's

successful. You know, like if you're looking at things like affirmations, like whether you believe in that sort of stuff or not, I'm, I don't. But, you know, you get people who stand in front of the mirror and say, you're great, you're going to get this salary, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's cool. But for me, you've got to do the action. Like, do the action and get the feedback.

But people don't intuitively do that. Like, if you're looking at that, that's an actual. thing. It's an actual thing that people practice positive affirmations. It requires effort. So it requires effort for someone to actually talk positive about themselves. Like that's wild. Like in my view, I mean, and if someone is openly positive, you know, on things like social media or in social circles or whatever, then shit people will tear them down or take chunks out of them. So, but we find it very, very easy to sabotage ourselves. We find it very, very easy to dismiss our efforts.

You know, like, for example, if I, if me and Carl was doing something, I don't know, let's just say we were doing CrossFit or something. And I recognize that he had been putting into work and, you know, he'd really improve his cleans. And I'd say, like, oh, my, like, yeah, your performance of the things. the moment, mate, it's amazing, you know, it's, you could really see a difference out there. Now, he could do one or two things. He could say, thank you. I have been working on it. Thanks for noticing. Or he could say, ah, you know what? It's not that great. I still need to do this. I still need to do that. He just dismisses it because he's focusing on what it's just not good

enough. It's still not good enough. So if you come back to the whole weight thing, if someone loses a specific amount of weight and it's clearly making a positive impact on their life, it's just not good enough. If someone notices it in the workplace, like if you go in and someone from HR says, like you're looking amazing at the moment, like those genes look great on you, but, you know, but I still don't this. I'm still bad at that. do do do do do even though someone has gone out of their way to recognize that you are doing something good for yourself we just intuitively like negative talk about ourselves in a negative way why do you think that is why do you think some people struggle so hard to accept a compliment have you ever heard

of um tall poppy syndrome so if if none of you have any of you haven't heard of it it if i'm right it comes from Australia, but I genuinely believe it exists, like it definitely exists in the UK and Ireland. It definitely exists in America. So basically, from an Australian standpoint,

if someone from Australia becomes a Hollywood star, like Hugh Jackman, and Australians are proud of him, they're like, oh, he's one of us, he's one of us. But then Hugh Jackman becomes more famous. He becomes Wolverine. He starts turning millions. And then all of a sudden, he's not one of us.

So let's attack him. Let's attack Hugh Jackman. Oh, who does he think he is? Oh, look at his stupid haircut. Look at this. So they tear him down instead. Now, again, you see this in day-to-day living. Like I said, UK and Ireland.

I see this a lot in America. A little bit of, from Canadians. It's okay when you're doing well. but when you're doing too well, too well, people are willing to, you're exposing yourself and you're leaving yourself open to be attacked. So you've got two choices there. You can take it and grow from it

or you can go back inside and just say, ah, you know what? I did quite well, but it's not good enough because I'm not good enough. So if I'm not good enough, then I stay safe and I keep myself from being exposed to criticism. But therefore, if you think that way, then you're never going to achieve the things that you really want to achieve.

And the example that I use in my post today is someone going for their dream job, their dream career, and they don't go for it because of criticism, that they're not good enough. I was just trying to look up there to find out So in Japan they have a similar one And it says the nail that sticks up gets hammered down Oh, I like that And it's sad though

That's an intuitive behavior, you know Do you still struggle with negative self-talk? Sometimes Not as much as you used to You know, I spoke about this in a Q&A last week someone asked me about body image and whether I still experience it. Of course I do. I mean, I'm human at the end of the day.

And the part of the answer that I gave there was, yes, I've done a lot of work and I have a lot of tools, but I'm human. I'm still going to have days where I'm stressed or I've had a poor night's sleep. And I've opened myself up to, what's the... inclusive thoughts of I open myself up. But the difference is when you equip yourself, when you do work and you equip yourself of different pathways of thoughts, pathways of thought and to a toolbox, building up a toolbox. You can recognize it and say, hey, where does this thought come from? Is there any truth here?

What can I do about it? And you can own it and move on where you could just stay there. So kind of coming back to your original question. sometimes now I experienced this a little bit recently when I first moved here I came close to applying for another therapist because there was one night I was really really struggling I felt overwhelmed I felt very exposed and I found myself on my phone and I was going through an application process of a therapist and then I got about two thirds through it and I thought hey what you're doing like where's this coming from and it was basically

coming from I'm doing something very very new yeah and I've never done this before like I've traveled in the past but it's never been more for four weeks but I've actually left Scotland now Like there's no going back. Well, there is, but, you know. So it was that. And it was basically, hey, like, where is this conversation coming from? And then I don't know if any of you or if Carl's ever shown any of you, but if you Google it, there's something called the wheel of emotion.

Therapists use it. I use it sometimes with clients. So if you Google it and go into images, it's basically this wheel thing. and it's got three different layers to it. And the main one has got like a core emotion. And you basically choose which one you're feeling. And then it goes into a second layer, which goes into sub-emotions. So what you're doing is refining the actual feeling that you're having at that moment in time.

And there's been twice around that period where I woke up in the morning. And I just said, hey, like, we need to look at this. what is it your feeling? And then once I narrowed it down, I was able to sit down and journal about it and just say, right, where is this coming from? What do we do about it? You know, and I think,

I think anybody who says they don't experience any of these things. I think they're, they're in complete denial or narcissistic or they're just lying, you know? So obviously, using journal for helping you create perspective. of, and just to touch on another thing someone said to you. So a client conversation you had and the client said, people that haven't worked with you before won't know this, but having a way of seeing perspective that I never could have on my own.

So can you just talk a little bit about that in terms of helping a client create perspective around what they might be struggling with? That's actually my client, Laura. So I worked with her for a couple of years up until she went into, to third trimester. She has an 18-month-year-old now, so we started working together again. And I basically said to her,

you have the tools. Like, you know what you're doing. So why are we having this conversation again? And that is what she said. And she's done therapy and all that, but she said there's a way, she said, she actually said, me, I would pay you just for our conversations because you have a way of just hearing me

and seeing what, you know, seeing the data and whatnot and being able to see like the smallest gap, you know, articulate something that, because if you look at it as an individual, we're always, you know, I was going to do a post about this, maybe this week or next, but no one's ever too good for coaching. Like no one's, no one's too good for it. Like I've got two coaches. You know, I've got my coach Tom who does my training. I could do my training, but I've become lazy. I would do the easy thing. So I would do, I wouldn't go to the gym. And I love training. I love training. But I pay Tom and he knows my goals and he does it and I get on with it. And, you know, and I've got my Spanish teacher, you know, and I used to have a business coach. So again, no one's too good for a

help, but the reason that people struggle is because two, I feel like there's two main reasons. One, they're too close to the problem. And the second one, they may lack certain gaps of knowledge that minimizes their thought pathways. Now, what I mean by that is, you know, some people talk about flexible diet and I prefer to look at it as flexible choice. You know, so if you've got flexible choice, then let's just hypothetically say, you've finished work, you've had a nightmare, you've had about a million shit emails, and it's cold like it is at the moment. Well, it's not here, but I'm not going to rub that one in. but it's cold and all you want to do is you know you forgot to prepare your food so you're going to go to ASDA and you go in and again so all your intrusion everything is there all the triggers are there

tiredness stress you might be feeling a bit lonely because you've not seen any of your friends for like a week or something so all the triggers are there to lean toward chocolate but if you've got flexible choice, you can challenge that thought. You can say, hey, I'm a flexible dieter, so I can include chocolate in my diet. But if you have flexible choice, then you can question that and say, do I really want the chocolate? Or do I really need this chocolate? Or do, am I just being lazy? Could I grab something that I can throw in the microwave for 10 minutes, but also buy a different chocolate that? They can. can come afterwards. So what I'm what I try to do there with clients is is encourage them to

create different thought pathways and ask themselves key questions as opposed to just fall into biases or you know, like I said, some form of excuse. Like I'm not going to I'm I'm a bit tired today. So my workout isn't going to be good. Therefore, I'm not going to go to the gym. But if you, you do that all the time, you're never going to go to the gym. Yeah. You know. And that leads me on to another one that I wanted to ask about. So you said, you, I'm also quoting you saying, if you're doing four workouts a week,

the chances are you'll only be motivated to do two of them. Yeah. So I actually stole this. Or a form of it. That's all right. I'm going to steal it off you. So there's a coach, a medicing coach, Dan John. Oh, yeah.

And I went to see. him talked about five or six years ago and he's a he's a really really big in the strength area but he used five so there's if you actually look at there's actually a thing in an olympic weightlifting they call it the power of three so what i'm going to say i'm going to give both examples so dan john's example was if you've got a client who does five workouts a week two of them they're going to go in. Feel amazing. Hit one or two PBs.

Great. Something that goes on Instagram. Tell their coach, whatever. Two workouts is just going to be punching the clock. There's nothing dramatic. They're just going in, get it done. Maybe the numbers are the same. There's nothing to celebrate. They're showing up.

Again, punching the clock. And then you've got the one workout which is shit. You know, you probably go to. to you're, you're not there, you're not there mentally, you're not there physically. You probably have to lower the weight on a few different exercises. And you just don't want to be there. I've had plenty of those. But you just say, you know what?

What can I do here? And then just make it happen. Now, if you transfer this over into the power of threes, an Olympic weightlifting, they've got one, which is if you've got three workouts, one of them should be again similar idea one of them should be like PBs amazing one should be punching the clock

and one should be terrible now in the Olympic weight lifting example if all of your workouts are consistently getting PBs and feeling amazing or consistently shit then there's a programming problem

there's either a programming problem or a behavior problem when I say behavior problem I mean effort. So if all your workouts are amazing, then you're clearly like pulling your punches somewhere. But if all your workouts are crap and you're having to lower weights and stuff, then you clearly have like a dietary problem or a recovery problem or you're pushing yourself too much in your workouts. So that's what I mean there. If you've got like a fine balance, yeah, it kind of should fall into some form of category like that, you know.

I'll just one more and then I'm just going to open the floor to the client to ask you a couple of questions. So the body you want will be a pain in the arts to maintain. What do you mean by that? So this is kind of twofold. So the first one, the first part of this is the board, this is my, this is my, this is my, my personal view and I still believe that is the body you want probably has more muscle. You know, because people, so many people who pursue weight and fat loss, and like I said, I kind of come back to the start of the conversation where I said some people will be unhappy.

And one of the reasons that they can be unhappy because they've just got a smaller version of the body that they were unhappy with in the first place. Yeah. But then if they want, I don't know, bigger glutes or bigger shoulders or whatever, then they're going to need to build muscle. So kind of coming on to the second part is, like I said, body you want is going to be a pain now to maintain because life isn't straightforward. You know, it gets easier the work that you do when you become more experience in your training,

progress in your training slows down with experience. I've been training for 15 years now. I'm not building any more muscle. Like, I'm not. Unless I start taking steroids, which is not going to happen. Like, I'm just not. So then some people would think, well, what's the point? But you've got to find different reasons to keep doing it.

But I don't train because I want to build more muscle. I train to get stronger. I train for enjoyment. I train for energy and the like challenge, the constant challenge. Now that's the training aspect. And when you come into the dietary aspect of it, again, you're looking at all these things. There's principles you need to take off. You need to be a big, you know, you need to be an adult and go to your bed at times.

Sometimes you don't want to. You need to eat more protein and veg. but sometimes you don't want to. So it can be easy to stop doing those things. It can be very, very easy. If you stop going to the gym for two weeks, you can quite easily just not go back. If you decide to stop increasing your protein intake

and your fruit and veg intake or doing some form of calorie management, it's easy to just eat pot noodles and chocolate and just not bothering with your diet. You know, looking at things like steps and sleep, all these things that require us to be healthy and to maintain or progress in a body that we enjoy being in. It's easy to go back the way.

But we still have, regardless of your experience and regardless of your knowledge and your community, location, all these things, it's easy to go back the way. which is why you've constantly got to keep doing some form of checking and to say, hey, am I doing these things? And I'd relate it to that emotional wheel thing, you know, hey, what's going on here? Like, what have I let slip?

Okay, I'm going to open up the floor there to the clients. If any is one to ask a question before I call you out, you can unmute yourself or you can put it into the chat box. I'll give you 15 seconds before I just call us one of you so. Who has the balls? The balls to ask a question. To be fair. To be fair, they're actually not a bad group for asking questions. They were all asking questions last week as well,

but they just need to be pushed in the direction. So I'm going to push Annalise in the direction to ask a question. Yeah. I knew you were going to do that. Okay, so what I'm struggling with is I'm over 40 now and always been a healthy eater. I have a nutrition background as well, an avid workout person. But then all of a sudden, this past year redistribution of fat on the body, training, not building muscle like I used to.

So I don't know if you have any experience with training women over 40 or any recommendations. Yeah, I mean, I do. I guess it depends on where your focus is, you know, because the same thing happens from a male perspective. I'm also in the Fortis Club trying to embrace it as much as possible. But as you said, from a female standpoint, it can drastically change. You know, if you distribute, it can go from, like you say, like the upper back to the hips, and whatnot. The first thing I would come back to is,

how much does it bother you? Now, I know, because if something does bother me, but sometimes, sorry, if something does bother you, it's to the degree, why does it bother you? Is it dictating your other choices, as you said, is it dictating your dietary choices or your exercise choices and whatnot? Annalise answer the question. How it makes me feel.

I mean, it's hard. It sounds really bad because, like, I mean, I haven't had kids, so I haven't had my body go through changes like most women will experience when you have a baby, right? So for me, going from being 120 pounds, even gaining, like, like 10 pounds and everything redistributing, like, and like feeling like I could eat or drink water and gain five pounds right now. Like it, it is hard. I'd say definitely it's a change in life that I didn't expect. It would be worse. I don't 100% know the evidence in this, but I have heard.

So don't, I'm going to preface this by saying I don't 100% know this. But I have heard it by training, changing how you train in certain areas can support stubborn areas. Now there's all we know that there's no such thing as like spot reducing. Yeah, spot reducing. But what we can

do is put place focus on where we want to gain muscle or change how our body looks and feels in that area. So what you could do from that perspective is as you say in different parts of your body you could always place focus and even

in changing the goal in terms of like changing your shape in terms of like muscle gain or even some form of like conditioning or strength and seeing how your body responds to that. Like I said, I don't 100% know the evidence on it. So I would have to go and pull that up and throw some links his way. But then I've all, I've equally heard, I've come across a couple of times as well with clients, as you said, who are in their 40s and 50s where an aggressive diet approach can be useful because again things change you know we we like this idea that our body we know our bodies we know how our body responds in certain way shape or form but again unfortunately like whether we like it or not age does change things from a hormonal

standpoint so what may have worked for us in our 20s and our 30s may not work the same it may require us to push a little harder so to to make some change of as you said from a fat distribution in a certain area, it might actually require you to be a bit aggressive, like go through, so whenever I do any aggressive diet to my clients, I rarely do it for more than four or five weeks. So you could always say,

hey, why don't we do like two or three bouts of aggressive dieting and see if we can force some changes and change the, what's it called? oh, it's going to annoy me now. There's something that's called set point, our body's set point. So we would change that. And again, we're forcing it by just saying, hey, this is what I've been traditionally doing, but it's not working. So therefore, I'm going to stay in dietary or body weight, whoa.

But it's like, well, okay, well, we need to change something here. and if nothing's changing by using traditional methods, then maybe we need to just push the boat a bit harder. Maybe we need to go into like kind of fifth gear for a little bit of a period of time and seeing how your body responds. And again, similar to the training thing, your training might, your body might respond differently from a different approach with your training as well, you know.

Also, even what you touched on, Roy, when, you know, getting old is shit and your body, he's going to change regardless of whether you can accept it or not but like even when Roy wanted to improve his overall body image and how he felt focusing on performance over

appearance probably puts you with a little bit more mental rest in terms of you know stressing out about how you look all the time and I know that's a dude I know it's obviously more difficult said than done but you focusing on

you getting stronger and gym your PB's going up um rather than this constant pressure to try and you know stay as lean as you can yeah at this point this doesn't mean like if you go going through the menopause you can still lose weight you can still lose body fat but it can be difficult when your body's changed and to be hyper focused on that the whole time when you could have goals that are just as important or not more important that will probably benefit your well-being as well One last thing I would say on this is if you don't already do some form of journaling, then it would be worth doing that and doing something, you know,

because there's actually evidence that shows, I know this sounds a bit like, oh, okay, Tony Robbins, being grateful and stuff, but there is actual evidence that showing that if you do some form of like gratitude journaling, it can change like how you feel and think about yourself. Now, if you piggyback that onto some form of gratitude on your body, you know, so as you said, if you're unhappy with your body in some way, shape, or form, there's got to be something about your body that you enjoy, whether it's how it looks, how it moves, how you wear specific pieces of clothing, you know, there's going to be something about your body that you enjoy.

So again, it kind of comes back to what we were saying before about negatively thinking about yourself. If you place a focal point on one thing, you're potentially dismissing like three, four, five things that you actually really like about your body, you know? I'm going to call out, train it. I knew you were going to do that. You know, you haven't been there in a while. Hi, Roy. Thanks a while for being so open. I had loads of things written down.

And so there's lots of things, but I'm just going to not nutrition for a second. You touched on your career change earlier on. And I think it comes back to a confidence thing for a lot of people. But what actually pushed you to take the leap and go for something completely different to IT? Oh, you know what? The first one was I hated working for people. I found it I was going into jobs and I worked for people that were just incompetent

you know it was like this is how we do things you know type thing like no one challenged the norm no one wanted to be progressive or whatever but I also leaned into why am I unhappy really because I spent four years at university and expiry years doing something that I thought I was supposed to love but you know if you're genuinely

watching the clock every single day and you're going home unhappy but then telling yourself to get to to pursuing your career you should be doing this certification or that certification and stuff and you're not doing it like really lean into that I really really admire folks who do did like i've read stories or listened to podcasts where people you know they listen to that voice very early

they would maybe get into like second year at university and go hey this isn't for me i'm like i legit went through university and seven and a half years of a career before asking those questions you know but at the same time that's that's my journey you know i can't compare it with anybody else the most important thing for me is I made the change because again I don't want to kind of come back and joke about the whole Tony Robbins thing so many people just stick out those things so many you know I mentioned before about the diet like do you really want to spend your entire life dieting do you really want to spend your life in the marriage that like there's no sex and you know because of the sunk

cost analogy. Like so many people are slaves, the sunk cost analogy. What's the sunk cost analogy? Are you asking me? Yeah. It's if you've invested in something financially, emotionally, time, whatever, to the point where it's easier to just stay with that, then admit that it's not for you and you leave.

Like again, we kind of come back to this is where it's good in the fitness industry because many people will diet or pursue some form of like training method or whatever and they've spent a year doing it and they it's not working but they'll go, well, you know what, I've spent a year doing it. So I may as well just keep doing it. yeah I mean and like I said the first one would be I'm very I love learning and I find that whenever I try to be useful in some of my companies that I worked for I was just shut down and I just thought yeah I find I find that as well that's that's the thing that it's it's not that I don't enjoy the job itself I'm just in a situation where somebody has come in above me because I didn't push myself to go for that role. And it's kind of now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because I'm doing her job, but she's getting the recognition for her. Why didn't you go for her? Because I didn't have the confidence, Carl. That Irish thing, I actually wrote it down there when you were talking about it early on,

but not being able to take a compliment. I think that's, I thought that was an Irish thing, but it's obviously across the board. If you've never, if you, sorry, I'm interrupting, but if you've never read it, there's a really good book called Quiet. Now, it's about introverts. I read it because I'm an introvert. And it basically, it's not like a woo-woo sort of thing. They actually look at signs of, and it's really interesting. So when they look at the data and everything attached to, say, success and come.

companies and stuff. People tend to award, reward extroverts, but they actually show that extroverts actually do less work. It's the introverts that do more of the work. But because they are there to, yeah, they don't push themselves forward or go for it. The extroverts will go, yoink, I'm going to take that and I'll talk about it at the meeting and get the promotion and the praise. And that's it. Like you just have to be, you have to be out there. And That's the thing. You know, I kick myself now. And even some of my colleagues say to me, I just can't believe you're still in the situation.

You're in. But I'm like, look, it's my own fault. And that's probably another side of it is. Yeah. You know, I'm still blaming myself. So. I would always use it as a, like you're talking about it here. You've asked a question.

I would lean into that. You're clearly frustrated by it. So you can be frustrated. you can talk you can this could be a story this could be a story you tell at parties or whatever or you could say right well what do i do i do i push myself forward or do i take the next chance or whatever it is or it can always just be a story you know yeah yeah yeah christin i asked you the author was but i just found her um oh i don't want to uh so i don't have a question but I do want to say that I definitely feel called out by all of this because I also can't take a compliment.

I feel like I have to be a perfectionist and everything I do, so I just don't do it. But yeah, I have severe, avoidant issues and self-sabotaging habit. So it's like, this is a good reminder. I guess it's how, for me, it's how you respond to that. you know you're clearly in a good environment where people are encouraging because so many people aren't you know some people are in quite volatile or destructive environments and with narcissism and whatnot so they may feel that way but they may feel trapped at the same time but i mean you know who comes on to you know alive to talk to like a

a large, bald, Scottish guy. At this time on a Monday night, you know, you're, you know, there's a number of you here and there's a number of you that will watch this later. So that says a lot about you as individuals and you as a community. So, I mean, what I would do is, I would honestly encourage you to keep expressing yourself that way, you know,

because someone said to me once, you know, because we, it's almost like a narrative where people say, oh, your, your feelings are valid or whatever, like everything's valid because it always comes back to the individual. But if the individual is not willing to express it and share it because of fears, I don't know, like when we look at fears, we always fear the worst case scenario always. Like, ah, you know, what if the hurricane hits? What hurricane? What are you talking about?

you know and all these things we fear the worst thing but you probably find it kind of coming back to that the job that you um that we were speaking about before the worst thing is you don't get the job and it's like cool no problem like we'll move on from it or if you're asking someone out in a day it's the worst thing they can say is no okay no problem like i'll just get on my life so there's nothing lost by being expressive if anything, you know, when you look at the male, like men at the moment, it's the whole like toxic masculinity thing of, oh, we just get on with things like hammer, hammer, like lift, lift, be strong, whatever, we don't talk about emotions. And they think that that's a form of strength.

And it's like, no, you're scared, you're hiding. Like, you're hiding. Like, the real strength is. what you've done here is just being expressive, like put it out there. It can be, you know, our worst fears are always going to be how that's received. Some, like Carl, you'll see sometimes on my Instagram stories. I had a couple of questions last week on therapy and whatnot. And at the end of my answer, I said, ultimately, it comes, I have a strong level of trust and love for myself and that is the most important thing. Now, I know that so many guys all read that and they'll be like,

oh, a man is talking about love. Like, what is, what is, this is not, this is weird. And it's like, no, no, no, I'm talking about it because I'm comfortable with it. Maybe if you're feeling a certain way, maybe you should lean into why you feel the way that you do. So maybe that's an alarm bell that maybe you should lean into that. Now, I'm going on loads of different pathways here, but the fact that you've just expressed yourself, like keep doing that, you know? Person, do you think that you have evidence

that you have, you know, pushed past that and put yourself out there in the last six months? Oh, yes. So since I started this program, thanks to Carl, I have put out stories for public. three of them have been picked up and published. As most of you know, I applied to a PhD program and was accepted the day after my application went in,

and then I actually my old therapist just hired me as a book editor for her book. I mean, that's a pretty big deal. It's a big deal. I mean, do you feel proud? Yes. Yeah. Of course I'm still going to have, I mean, I still do because I grew up in a very emotionally abusive household. So I still have the, oh, well, you know, maybe they're just doing it to be nice. Or maybe they just wanted money from another student. And I have to like constantly be like, no, that wouldn't, that wouldn't happen. They're not just going to accept you because they want money from you. It's a PhD program. It's, you know, you have to be, I guess, worthy, not really is the word that I'm thinking of. But like, you know, you have to fit the bill, basically. Yeah, it's really interested. If you've never read it, there's, I kind of read it,

but I felt like I picked up most of it in therapy was, oh, is it, I think it's called attachment. It's not attached. It's a book called Attached. But it basically talks about attachment styles, like avoidant, anxious. Yes, that. related to relationships, but if you're looking at the behaviors attached to each of those styles, it's interesting where you see the behaviors filter into different areas of your life,

you know? I am going to ask Dominica if she has a question. Hi, so I'm currently very struggling with nutrition, you know, so it's easy to say. to someone like meal prep or everything. But right now, I'm just in a busy moment, going through exams. And just picking on everything I see, you know, like first meals at 1 p.m. My second 7 p.m. I'm just trying to study and take all the time I can. So what would you advise about that?

And obviously routine is going to be huge for you. Yeah. You know, I would look at creating a strong list of negotiables and non-negotiables. Now when you're talking about non-negotiables, if you're looking at your diet, for example, do you need, like I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but this would be like a pathway of questioning that I would go through is do you need to do tracking? Like, realistically no. So let's downgrade this too.

My focus would be satiety and satiety and I don't know, like energy, because obviously you need energy to study and function. So again, you would answer those questions. Come further down, okay, well that would require, let's just hypothetically say three square meals a day and like a snack, for example. Now, from there on, I would then look at, right, how do we simplify this even more? So again, coming back to what is your priority at the moment, you've said studies, that is, like, nothing is more important than that. So anything that you're doing has to support that.

So I would look at how do we simplify your nutrition to support that? The first thing I would do is create routine. Now, what I, I know I said that before, but go into another. layer of routine on having structured meal times. So if you've, so if you say, right, I'm going to have my breakfast at this time works for me every single day, like 8.30, lunch at 1 p.m. dinner at 6.30. If you create consistency there, then that can fit into your timetable. So you're not going to go through, oh, hey, I've not ate since my breakfast at 8 o'clock and it's now 5 p.m. I want, I wonder why I'm procrastinating because I have no energy and I'm hungry, you know?

So even though that you're not dieting, the diet structure is supporting your studying. Sorry, Roy. Dominica, do you think that, let's say you're only having two meals a day at the moment because you're busy with study, do you feel that, you know, opting for that third meal or it just, it's taken second priority to you? studying obviously, yeah? Mm-hmm. Okay.

So do you think then it would be wise to attach you having them meals to the productivity of your study? Probably. As in, okay, you know, eating for how you want to feel later that if I have this meal now, I won't be hungry and therefore I will be more productive with my study rather than looking at it like it's a, a chore or it's getting in the way of you studying more. No, because it feels shitty. Like, for example, my breakfast was a cinnamon roll and you don't have energy of it, I would say. So it's a bad area right now.

And I know what I need to do. It's just I can't seem to do it right now. That's the best problem. Second thing I would say here, if you're not aware of it, you could always employ a form of a habit stocking. so when I work I use the Pomodoro method yeah so I mean so what I tend to do is in those bricks I'll go and do the things that I don't want to do like hang up my washing

you know and clean the bathroom or whatever okay it takes longer than five minutes but it's better than leaving it into the evening where I really don't want to do it but by taking those micro bricks, I'm like creating some form of like refocus. So what you could also do is say, hey, I've done like three pomodoroes today, but each time you could go, right, I'm going to go and have a glass of water and like a skier, yogurt or something like that, kind of come back. But you could so you would be breaking up that way. Now the other part of it is you could do, like I said, the form of habit stocking.

So, you know, whatever, however you look at food preparation, sometimes when I work with some people that are really, really busy, I'll do, I'll recommend some form of like micro food prep. So on a Monday, let's prep food for Monday and Tuesday and maybe Wednesday morning. But what you could do is your Monday dinner could be Tuesday's lunch, Tuesday's dinner could be Wednesday's lunch. So what you're essentially doing is just creating two simple meals using something like, I don't know, like an air fryer or a slow cooker or something.

So you're not actually invest in time preparing these meals. So again, you're just using miniature time blocks to go here. I'll do this, I'll do that. And you're essentially just have it stuck in your day to then make some form of meal prep like a lot easier. A second, another idea as well as even just grabbing meals, like your health meals from supermarkets and stuff, you know, all these supermarkets now, you've got like fitter food or whatever, grab a bunch of them and just throw them in a microwave and just say, hey, I'm really tired tonight.

I cannot be arsed making a meal. This is going to go in the microwave for 10 minutes and it's got an adequate amount of protein, calories, whatever, and it ticks those boxes. Again, so many people fall into this idea that you've got to cook everything from scratch or it has to have X amount of grams of this and that. And it's like it doesn't. It really doesn't. I mean, it's great if it does, but if by doing that, it takes away from other areas of your life, then it's, yeah, it's not useful, you know. Yeah, probably will try to have some sort of a habit right now. Yeah. Even you were talking there about the cinnamon. Yeah, my mom made it this morning fresh at the oven. So that was my

practice. Yeah, because again, you could always look at things like the classic like overnight oats. You know, that takes like five minutes to prepare. Do it just before, I don't know, you watch like an episode of Reacher or something and then goes in the fridge ready for the next day. So again, you're just, you're, you're setting up, like, future version of you by doing micro actions. It doesn't need to be grandiose. Like, when I see these people who are, I don't know, who are, like, obsessive about their physique or whatever, and they're like, hey, I spent four hours on my Sunday doing food prep. And I'm like, I don't know about you, but I've got. better things to do on my

Sunday than being in a kitchen making a row of Tupperware of the same meals that I actually don't even like, you know? All right, we're going to have one more question. Does anyone want to ask a question before?

Hey Roy, I've a long history of dieting in my short 23 years. Wait, hold on, I have to open that. I'll have to open that one. Hey, Roy, I've a history of dieting in my short 23 years. I have been regularly eating for the last few weeks really well but my relationship with my body is definitely

holding me back from my full potential. Zoom that down. On and shoot of eating. I feel the last part, I feel it the last part of years of dieting but it's the hardest to work through. I'm at a normal weight but just can't seem to accept how I look. advice. I already butchered that question but I'm sure you got the J-S. The first thing I would do is why do you feel like you need to look a specific way?

Now I remember speaking to a coach, I'm not going to name them, a number of years ago and they said that one of the exclusive on the skill fitness, no, I can't. let's just say we don't talk anymore so they basically said when they had a new client come on board for a consultation they asked them if there was a specific celebrity or whatever

that looked like how they wanted to look and they would go like hey Jason Mamoa I don't know like Lady Gaga or whatever I said to him I was like so you're setting that person up for failure. In their mind, they didn't see it that way,

but I was like, you're getting them to compare their body with another body who has completely different genetics, different behaviors, history, like long list of things. Like their body is their body,

yours is yours. Now, the reason I bring that up is if you've got an expectation on how you want your body to look, you're never going to be happy with it. Because regardless of how much you change it, there's always going to be something else.

You know, you might, oh, my waist doesn't look good in this or I don't have a vein on my bicep or I don't like, you know, whatever that is that you're focusing on. And you've also got to be mindful of influences. So you're kind of coming back to what I said before. We're human at the end of the day. We all have social media. We are influenced.

Whether we like it or not, we are going to see somebody or something. And depending on how we're feeling at that time, we could attach ourselves to that and think, kind of coming back to the I'm not good enough or my body is not good enough or I will never be there or whatever. So I would kind of come back to the, you know, if you're not familiar with it, like processed goals, you know, so many people struggle because they're their outcome focused. I want to weigh this much. I want to lift that much. I want to run this pace, you know, and they forget about what they've actually got to do to get there. So I would kind of come back to the focus, the process-based goals. So if you want to change your body, there's absolutely nothing.

wrong with that and nobody should ever tell you anything otherwise. But if you would like to change it, let's just hypothetically say, again, I'll use the glutes because I've spoke about it before, but if you want to grow your glutes, cool. Let's change your train in to put more volume into your glutes and then let's complement it with other things. But let's not focus on the glutes. Let's just put the things in place. Let's focus on enjoyment of training, you know, enjoyment of the process, all these things. If you're doing all these things, your body will change. But kind of coming back to what we said at the very, very start, you cannot rush behavior change. Some people's behavior change. I've seen people, I've worked with clients before with a behavior,

like very, very deep-rooted negative behaviors were changed very quickly. I'm thinking she's actually now a very, very close friend of mine who's training to be a therapist, funny enough, my mate Deb, and she used to be a client of mine. And she was very, very adamant that she had to change and she was committed to it. And she changed some very deep things in a short space of time. However, I come back to that client who I mentioned before that we did a lot of work for a year and a half and they are now having to work with their counsellor. So this is why the expectation thing needs to come my way when if you have a desire to change something I it's important that you remove the time scale you know because when you look at these things on social media where they go hey 12

week challenge cool if you've got a lot of work to do that's probably not for you um so remove this time scale but like I said if you would like to feel a certain way or look a certain way then I would would steer the ship toward that, but I would also remove any form of expectations that, hey, when I get there, it's going to look this way or is going to look that. Now, I'm going to use one example, and I'm going to pass the mic, but because I'm very, very aware that I can keep finding examples. I am a few, a bit three or four years. I am a few, I'm three or four years ago, there was a photographer that always went to the beach in the city where I'm from, Aberdeen. And I used to go to the beach every weekend and go in the water for a dip. Love it,

still do, miss it because the water here is not cold. And he put a thing up on his social media and says, hey, if anybody's at the beach tomorrow morning for a sunrise, would you like a free portrait, portrait photo? And I thought, you know what? That is. That would really be cool. And it would push me outside of my comfort zone. I would love to do that. So I messaged him and said, hey, what time? Do do, do, do, do.

Got there. And, you know, he kind of told me where to stand and where to look and all these things. And the sky was beautiful. The sky was like purple. And it just looked incredible. So in my mind, I was thinking, holy shit, I'm going to look amazing. You know, this is going to be such a good photo. Do, do, do, do, do.

and when he sent it to me I hated it because I had an expectation that it is going to look a certain way all these things and when I got it I hated it because immediately all my body image issues completely came to the surface and I was like oh there's no way I need another photo

this is terrible that is not how I look I thought I looked differently you know and I went into a spiral but I challenged it and I actually posted the photo and I spoke about and I spoke about this so Roy just to touch on that do you think that happens a lot of people that kind of

go into the dayden phases so they can like go on holidays and get the perfect picture by the pool or have a wedding coming up and so on and so forth yeah without a doubt without a doubt because again you look at if someone's not been working with a coach

for a long period of time. If they just, let's just hypothetically say someone works with myself or yourself and says, right, I'm getting married in three months. This is how I want to look. Like three months isn't a long time. Three months isn't a long time to do a lot of work. You know, if they want to look great in their backless dress, three months isn't at a long time to shave their back to do that.

you know what insert like outcome you could do something and if you're if you're if you're if you're aware of if you let them know this so they're aware of it then that's great you keep checking in with it so that they're reminding themselves of that then that's great but i just think i think people are again it kind of comes back to why are people always changing like program hopping diet changing it comes down to expectation. You know, I mentioned it before about the 12-week program. You know, I've been dieting for years,

so I'm going to do this 12-week thing. You're not going to fix a lifetime of issues in 12 weeks. I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen. Yeah. Do you think also, let's say they are expecting to, you know, be on the holiday, get that perfect Instagram picture or further wedding or whatever the occasion is? and you know they're working for the next three or six months up to that occasion

but they're not really embracing the the journey throughout like embracing the small wins and actually just hyper focused on you know one big event and then you know not enjoying the six months previous to it and it's like I'll be happy when you know you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna I've just as you were asking that question I was challenging myself because I knew what my answer would be as you were, but I'm going to challenge it and say, you know what,

if someone knows that that is why they're doing it, if someone wants this perfect picture in six months' time on this holiday and they envision this look and this feeling or whatever, and they don't give a shit about the process or sustaining it or keeping the results or whatever, If they're okay with that, then is there a problem? Well, is there a problem if they do that six months and then get to the end of the six months and get that picture and they're still not happy?

Is there a problem then? That's their problem. That's, that's, and I'm, you might be a bit weird hearing a coach say that, but it's an expectation problem. Yeah. I mean, so let's just hypothetically say they've worked with a coach in that time period, then that's a relationship problem because the coach should have been doing work with them. Yeah, between, yeah. To do that.

But if they have won about it solo, then they may not know. They won't know that, you know. But if they've done it with a coach and they've gone into that, then to be honest, that's, yeah, that's a relationship problem. it's not 100% the coach's problem because that's a communication problem do you think it also comes down to understand

and why you're doing what you're doing where a lot of people just go blindlessly into goals yes yeah well if if you look at the fitness industry right so I did a post on this I think it was like six months ago I can't remember exactly what I said in the post but

fitness goals tend to be the only goals where we set ourselves up for failure. Like, let's just hypothetically say we don't go into a relationship with, well, not a healthy one anyway, but we don't go, we don't go into, I don't know, like Bumble and say, hey, I want to make this person to get this, to get that, do-do-do-do. I'm not interested in dating them or enjoying who they are or getting to know each other. Or, you know, sharing memories and growing together and learning and making mistakes. I'm not interested in these things.

I just want a ring on my finger or something. I just want that. Or no one goes into their career. And again, same thing. No one goes into their career thinking about the huge salary or retirement or whatever. They go into the career. Well, realistically, they should show up to progress. to get better at it or whatever.

But insert something, like anything that we do in a healthy degree in our lives, there's a process, there's a commitment, there's voluntarily, we are voluntarily communicating and pursuing and learning. But with their fitness goals, we don't do that. We dismiss doing the work. Like you see this every day.

folk will say how many calories do I need do do do cool well I can give you the calories but you're going to need to do this this no I don't want to do that just just tell me the calories oh I want to build my body or I want to get stronger cool well a progressive training plan where improving your technique and you know changing a volume I'm not interested in that just give me a just give me a 10 week training program they you know give me the end result they don't want to do the work And it's like, but it's you, it's you. This is the body that you've got to live in. This is the body that is going to steer the ship of your life.

How you feel day to day for every single second. Energy levels, mood, movement, pain management, all these things. And we dismiss it because we cannot be arced. How are at a toy, isn't it? Well, not us, but, you know, whatever. in. Yeah, misunderstood of what you're chasing. Okay, we'll leave it at that.

Do you have any final words or comments for the gang as they go on their health and fitness journey? Any last pieces of wisdom for them? You know what? Enjoy it. Honestly, I enjoy it. Be too many people. Too many people do...

Too many people do things, like I said before, in their health and fitness because they think they have to. They view it from a form of punishment, dread, I can't be bothered with us again, I want to cheat, I want to ovary, I don't want to go to the gym, they look at it from,

as I say, a negative perspective. But there's always positive outcomes to it. You know, always, you know. Yeah, we don't want to count calories sometimes. But we shouldn't be doing it forever. But so use it as that experience of, Well, how do we not do it forever? What do we learn from this process?

It's the same we're going to the gym. You know, like right now, the gyms are busy because it's the time of the year. Oh, I can't be bothered doing it. Cool. Well, are you looking forward to your workout? Like, pull out your workout. Pull out your phone. Like, I'm buzzed for this workout.

I'm looking forward to do my squats or whatever it is. Just enjoy it, you know? Like, you cannot. you cannot win fitness. Like no one's, there's no end. There's no finishing line. No one's going to hand your trophy and say, you won.

You've won fat loss. You've completed it. Like, there's always something to enjoy to get better at. And it's like anything. I like to gamify these things. If you're playing a game, the more you progress in the game, you learn skills.

You get new weapons or tools or whatever. and the more you do, the game gets easier. You get to do more cool things and interest in things or whatever. Health and fitness is similar, you know? Yeah, I completely agree with that. A line I always use is like, it's not about what you get,

it's about who you become. And so there you go. You can keep that one, Roy. All right, Roy, you've been an absolute gent. I really appreciate your time. I know we're about 40 minutes over what I said we would be. I appreciate it.

I know the group appreciate it as well. I appreciate you all staying on as well because I know it's late so thanks a meal to everyone and Roy, big thank you to you as well. No, thank you. Thank you for the invite and thank you for the questions

and again, your attention. I know that it's a different time for each of you and like I said, it's commitment and I said it before if you're willing to commit a time and effort and you can only be doing, it says a lot about you individually, you know, and that's cool.

Thanks for watching. If you like that episode and you want to see more content like this, make sure you're subscribed, and I'll see you on the next one.