E6: Solving Your Health and Fitness Struggles in 2023

"Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome!"

If you are making (and not achieving) the same health and fitness resolutions year on year on year...listen to this.

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Website: https://linktr.ee/lifestyle.legacy_ben

Transcript

Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Johnson, mental health and exercise coach, private gym owner from Newcastle Online, coach of the Revival program, and outnumbered dad of two strong independent daughters just like my wife, and I can't get a word in with them at home. Here's my chance. Welcome to my podcast. This show is a combination of my own personal growth, life experiences, and experience.

Speaker B: Of coaching people for over a decade.

Speaker A: To help improve their health, happiness and life fulfillment. There's a lot of people struggling to find sustainable physical and mental health solutions, so I want to provide you with some key insights and key tools to help them. If you find this information useful or even just enjoyable, it would be absolutely amazing if you could hit the Share button or leave a comment. You can also follow me on any of my social media platforms that can be found in the description text of this show.

Speaker B: Happy New Year. First episode of 2023, episode six for this podcast. Hope you've had a nice festive period and pleasant to get going again this year. And what I really want to do with the information that I'm going to share in this podcast throughout the year is, as the title suggests, finally help you solve your health and fitness struggles. And the struggles that I'm talking about, from my experience and I'm guessing, are inconsistency and no sustainable routines. Or on the flip side of that, just nonexistent routines. Two quotes that the people that I coach often hear me say throughout the year, and I think it's even more important to be said in January are number one, madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. And number two, you can't solve your problems with the same level of thinking that caused them. With those quotes being said, I want you to honestly think about this. How many years have you made the same mistakes? How many years have you made the same failures with your health and fitness? How many years have you followed the same patterns, plans, programs? Can you actually put a number on that? Like, how many January's have you been in exactly the same position with your health and fitness, potentially, and probably making the same resolutions year on year and never really achieving them? Can you put a number on that? The reason I ask is because I've coached people who initially had the same struggles for decades, potentially even 2030 years, which honestly, actually saddens me to think that there's so many more of you out there who are in exactly the same boat but aren't seeking the right sort of help. When I'm talking about seeking the right sort of help, are you seeking help that is just giving you the same outcome over and over again? Like I said, that court's madness. Are you seeking help? That not solving your problems. You're going back to old ways. It's not leveling up your mindset. So those are the things I just want you to have a little think about. And I get that this time of year, January, depending on when you listen to this, it's a very popular time for people to try to make health changes. I understand that. I'm not against that. I spoke about it in episode five. I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to that if you haven't already. About making New Year's resolutions. I gave some tips and advice on that. The thing that I am against is that for most people, this is the only time that they'll reflect or do some planning around making changes. That's the thing I'm against. You should be doing this regularly. It's something that we do regularly with the people that we coach. We'll do it every probably three months. But with that being said, if this is one of the only times of the year that you do do this type of thing, I want to use this podcast, this episode, to offer tips and advice around common problems. And common mistakes that I've witnessed over the past decade in the industry and unfortunately a lot of which are promoted and even encouraged by personal trainers, by coaches, by boot camp instructors and even by your average jewel or average sue down the road selling these detoxes that are basically going to have you on the verge of **** in yourself every day. And that's the truth, unfortunately. So let's have a look at these common mistakes and common problems that I advise you avoid run away from in the opposite direction. The first one is going from zero to 100 miles an hour, aka seeking the quickest fix, whether that is a diet plan, a meal plan, whatever, a detox, an exercise program, a fat loss camp. Doing this, going from zero to 100 miles an hour is basically trying to change everything within two weeks. I've seen seven day ones as well. A week, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks even, which unfortunately a lot of rapid fat loss services are going to do. They're going to pull on your heartstrings at this time of year. They're going to pull on your emotions. Things like make sure you're working out three to five times per week. Get 10,000 steps in straightaway, only eat 1200 calories a day. Cut out all sugar, all alcohol, all carbs. Make sure you drink in three liters or more of water every single day. Make sure you're not having any social occasions in your week. Make sure you're prepping every single one of your meals. Like, wow. All of these habit changes that have been thrown at you, that have not been present in your life at all for probably potentially the last six months, a year or two years or more or what now just expected to all be done straight away. It's a recipe for burnout, it's a recipe for overwhelm, it's a recipe for stress, worry, anxiety, all forms of poor mental health. It's a recipe for illness and injury. All forms of poor physical health. And then what happens? You'll give up. You'll feel like a failure again. And that will lower your self worth and your own self belief to ever be able to master this in the future. Again, forms of poor mental health. Sticking with this as well, actually, even worse, in my opinion, is making you feel like a success. So say you've done a four, six or eight week, I don't know, fat loss, camp, detox, whatever, but it's all based around fat loss. And then you complete it. You feel like you thought you looked brilliant, but really deep down you felt ****. You had low energy, you had low mood, you were probably starving, you probably felt fairly, fairly bored. And you start comparing yourself when two to three weeks down the line, a month down the line, when you've gone back to your old ways, you start comparing, thinking I looked amazing, then when you didn't, by the way. But anyway, you start going into comparison mode and then you start to believe that that process is the thing that you need to do. You attach yourself to feel like it worked and I'm going to do it again in the future when I want to lose some body fat again. And you're continuously doing this cycle over and over and over again. Stop, start. Because you thought that it worked. News flash, it didn't work. It's exactly the opposite. It's keeping you every time you do this type of thing, it's actually keeping you and putting you further and further away from your longterm goal. You want sustainable health methods. You want your health, both physical and mental, to be at its optimum for as much of a year as you can. Yes, you're going to get illnesses here or there, part of life. Yes, you might have certain times where you're not doing as much as you want it to in terms of your routines. That's life. But your goal is to be as healthy physically and mentally as possible and fit as possible for year round. So every time you do these short term quick fixes, you go zero to 100 million mile an hour. It's actually putting you further and further away from that longterm goal. So my advice with this, instead of doing that, instead of throwing everything in at once, is actually just to make small, gradual changes. Pick between one or three habits as a focus per month maximum. So yes, mebby's drinking two liters of water per day, one habit trying to do between one to three workouts per week, two habits, try to go to bed before 10:00. Three habits, focus on that alone, forget about everything else. And then once you ingrain those habits as part of your lifestyle, over a month or the next six weeks, two months, once you've ingrained those, once you've installed them. And then you only move on to further changes that you want to make. And again you do it gradually. You pick another one of three habits and then you ingrain those. You make those as part of your lifestyle. What you've got to do, you've got to start switching your mindset from thinking I need to achieve X by February, March 2. I need to achieve and sustain goal X by this time next year. That's a big mindset flip to help you overcome this really, really common problem. Think about each small habit change being like a rung on a ladder. You're going to feel way more in control taking just one step, one rung at a time. But if you're standing on that bottom rung looking all the way up the top, that can be really overwhelming thinking about that big change and actually it can cause paralysis of action and you don't even start at all. Or if you're trying to jump from that bottom rung all the way up the top, the ladder is going to fall over. You're going to fall. Think about this. When you're changing your health, when you want to create a healthier lifestyle, if you do it right, you'll only need to do it once more. You don't need to be making the same health and fitness resolutions year on year on year. If you do it right, you can create this healthy lifestyle change and then that's in the bag. That's with you for the rest of your life. That's the change that you need to be thinking to make. The second common problem and mistake that I see this time of year is people expecting change to be plain sailing. Then when the inevitable curveballs, life pops up. Things like illness, holidays, work, stress, having poorly, kids, bereavement in the family or close friends, friend members, house moves, new jobs, relationship problems and the stresses that that can bring. Or even just thinking that you want to live an enjoyable life, not a boring one and socialize. When all these things pop up, **** then hits the fan, pessimism kicks in, selfdoubt kicks in, and you start to talk yourself into believing that the original discomfort that you were in before making the changes is actually easier and more comfortable than the discomfort of just pushing past these current challenges that are going to get you to that change for good. Here's the thing. Health changes to your habits and routines are never going to be plain sailing for absolutely anyone. Anybody that you might aspire to or anybody that you might think is a bit of a role model for your health and fitness. They're going to overcome challenges. It's not going to be peace, easy, it's not going to be play and salient. You can do it as well though. With the right support, the right education and the right tools, you can overcome those barriers. And when you do, you level up your thinking and you're going to build more optimism and you're going to build motivation again. And then that's going to lead you on to succeeding with that change that you wanted to make. This process of change, it's actually a great idea to get used to it and get more experienced in it because then it can be transferred into other things, other areas of your life that you want to change and you want to improve as well. It's actually a really important skill to have and it's something that I'm going to continuously drive home with my two girls, basically setting goals, failing learning, leveling up your mindset and be willing to do so, be willing to find new ways and then build an optimism again and then succeeding. That is a really, really important skill to have, in my opinion. If you can avoid these two common New Year mistakes, you're going to be on a much better track for being in a better position with your health and fitness this time next year. That's the long term goal. Remember, achieve X and sustain it by this time next year and beyond. In order to do that, it's probably likely that you're going to have to block out the noise of anything that's distracting you and anything that's going to lead you down a problematic path. Aka things that are going to take you back to seeking that quick fix or things that are going to make you believe that it's going to be plain sailing for this change. Ie. Social media adverts, other friends and family members, magazines. What they are doing can then distract you. You can start to think that it's the only way. Again, it's not. You need to start blocking out that noise, doing a social media audit, unfollowing things that are going to take you down that path again. Having barriers with friends and family members around, conversations you're having, if they're doing certain things that you know aren't going to take it away, you need to be stop reading magazines that are going to distract you. You need to do all of these things. And then finally, my biggest tip is seek help in the right places. Make sure you do your homework. Ask yourself good questions before signing up to anything. Things like will this program plan coach help benefit me in six months, twelve months, 18 months from now, not just the next four, six, eight weeks? Is this going to take me closer to my long term goal? You've got to ask those good questions before you sign up to anything. Before I sign off on this episode, I just want to let you know about a couple of things. If you're local to Newcastle Gateshead, we're going to start holding regular free open days at our gym facility. You can find out more information in the future dates that are coming up in the link in the text caption. And then secondly, I'm also running some free challenges to help promote positive mental and physical health. These are going to be regular as well and they're going to be joined from anywhere in the world. Again, you can get more information. You can get the upcoming dates in the link in the caption as well. Thanks for tuning in. I wish you a healthy 2023. I hope this information has been useful buzzing that I've got our first guest episode lined up in February as well, so stay tuned for more information about that. Thanks for tuning in. Or as always, please share if you found this useful and I'd love any feedback. Take care.