 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about why New Year's resolutions simply don't work. Now, we worked in the gym industry for over two decades and every single year in January we would see a 50% increase in traffic. People would just come in to sign up to want to improve their health and fitness. The problem with that was the vast majority of them, something like 92% of them would drop out within a few months. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, hey, I'm going to get back into the fitness and health lifestyle or I'm going to start working out or I want to lose weight, we don't want you to be one of those bad statistics. We want to make sure that you can stick with it. So we talk about all the reasons why they typically don't work and what you can do about it. So we talk about setting goals, how to do that properly. Most people don't set goals the right way. They tend to make the goals too big or too general. We also talk about how to create new habits and behaviors. There are strategies to creating new habits like working out and eating right that will increase the likelihood of your success. We talk about how hard it is, what you're trying to accomplish and how to make it much easier. We also talk about how you focus on behaviors rather than goals because of course behaviors will cause the results to happen in the first place. Talk about changing your environment. That's a very important thing that can make you successful. We also talk about using the wrong metrics, the ways that you tend to gauge your success. We talk about the things you should be using to gauge your success that will lead to more long term success. Now this episode is brought to you by Viori. Now Viori is our favorite leisure wear company. Now they make clothes for lifestyle and fashion, for outdoor use, yoga, sports and fitness and even surf. They have amazing clothes. We love the way they feel. They have a lifetime happiness guarantee. What this means, and this is insane now, you could buy some of their clothes and within the lifetime of owning them, if you don't want that pair of clothes anymore, if there's a hole in it, it doesn't work for you anymore, you can return it. That's an insane guarantee. But Viori can do this because they are super high quality, again this is one of our favorite companies that we work with and we have a mind pump discount for you. All you got to do is go to Viori clothing, so that's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com forward slash mind pump and use the code that's listed on the page for 25% off. Also one more thing I'd like to mention, January of course, a lot of people getting into working out, you may be one of these people. The number one goal is fat loss. Everybody wants to burn body fat and get leaner. Now one of the most effective ways to do this in a short period of time is through high intensity interval training. This is a fact. Now the problem is a lot of people do this the wrong way. They lose the weight quickly and then they gain it back and part of the reason for this happening is their high intensity interval training program is all wrong. It's not programmed properly. Now ours is, we have a program called MAPS HIT. It does take advantage of the science of high intensity interval training but it also does so in a way that corrects muscle imbalances, works on strength. We do this the right way so you get fast, effective, long-term results. Now that program is 50% off. Here's how you get that massive discount. Go to mapshit.com that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code HIT50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for the discount. What are those? Are those viewer right there? Yeah, they are, yeah. What is, what is the, that's viewer right there? Those are the chinos. Remember? Oh, those are the chinos? Dude? No, no, no. I thought, I thought the chinos were more like the, the lightweight. No. Oh, can you do a little turnaround for me? Spin around, let me see your, let me see your glutes in those. Wow. Wow. Those are fantastic. You wanted to see my, my chinos. I don't, I don't want to leave them high and dry. Would you see the, the chinos are the ones you had the most of, yeah? Yeah, yeah. I have three pair. I'm the big Sunday jogger guy. Yeah, Sunday jog, you're wearing, you're wearing the maroon ones. I don't have those yet. Ooh. I would say I have all the sponsors we mess with. Probably we, we rock, use Viori and rock Viori. Oh, it's provided my whole new wardrobe. I don't need to, I don't like buying clothes. Yeah, it's great for me. It's been a good for us that you have something to do. 100%, you know what I mean? Signing with Viori, it's probably why we're as big as we are now. Yeah. That was the one thing. Yeah, it was like, everyone's like, I really like these guys. He's perfect, but just something missing. So last night, my buddy sends over, my three best friends were on a thread. My three best friends. They're my three best friends. They send me over a picture of champion. And my buddy's like, I, my buddy. You're like, oh, you filming me? You're like, oh yeah. No, no, my buddy know this. My buddy prefaces it with, you know, I'm sure Adam, you already know that champion, he's all, but this is just coming across my desk for the first time. He's a high school principal and he's totally out of style. He's been out of style for the last two decades. He's a good friend of mine. And he sends over the champion sweaters. And he's like, dude, do you guys know that these things are away? I was like, yeah, dude, I showed him, I have a bunch of my closet and I was showing him that. And I was telling him, I love it because it's, I love watching companies that make real. Comeback. Yeah, comebacks and brilliant pivots. And I was sharing all these other brands that are like, that have came back. No fear. No. That's it. Like you see? Stussy is, yeah. No, really? Bro, yeah, no. Stussy had one of their best banner years just a couple of years ago. Wow. Yeah, no. So that made a huge, and I'll tell you why. So they had a huge come out. You and another brand that you guys will trip on that you should know and maybe you too because your dad was in construction. So you're a janko guy. Carhart. So Carhart has been around since like 1890. And it's, and if you're in the construction world, you're for sure your dad's have like their gear or whatever. But they are now popular with like the young generation that's coming up right now. And so I was telling my, I want to fuel manly, but not actually be manly. So my two best friends who are completely out of style, like, oh my God, you know, I got a hell of carhart stuff. I use it when I'm fishing all the time. And then my other, and I was telling them about Patagonia making the huge comeback also, which they also wear that. And I said, you know what's so funny? You've been at a style for so long that it's gone away, cycled back around that you're back in style. What's that saying? It's perfect. What's that saying? A broken clock is right twice a day. Yeah, twice a day. You guys, you've seen this, you've seen this, right? Yeah, I have. See, we were gangster, dude. I was wearing dickies and car harts and all that. No, my dad wore whatever he wore and to the point where he would wear jeans until they were basically disintegrated. Then what he would do is he would cut them so that they became shorts for the summer when he worked in summer, except growing up in Sicily in those days, I guess they grow our short ass shorts. So he wears short ass jeans shorts. He was at the booty shorts. Bro, and they were frayed at the bottom. And I was like. Which doesn't style yet. That would do well. That doesn't style yet. I was like, dad, you can't wear that. It's back. It's back. They're here. He's just telling you later. Yeah, you can't bend down and grab your tools and, you know. So, you know, watch out. Point of me sharing that is I think that Viori has saved the podcast. I really do. I think that then getting you in style has helped us. They have. Thank the Lord. Yep, love it. Yeah, anyway. We need to be presentable. Well, we're dealing with the new year rush that we've all dealt with for, I don't know. How many years have you guys dealt with that? It never goes away. Yeah, like, do you guys remember, okay, this is a good one. Do you remember the first time you experienced the new year rush in the gym? Oh yeah. Do you remember that? Of course, January. Very first January. It worked in a gym. But it's really the cardio machines. 2001. 2001? Yeah, because I got hired in 2000, but I got hired in, I think it was like August. So, it wasn't until 2000, until the year came around. And I remember getting hired and everyone telling me like, oh, just wait. Because August, September, October, November, if you're in fitness and you're working for a big company, those are like the down months. Yeah. So, it was probably November and December. Which was probably one of the best things that happened for me, because I was a new guy coming in and I didn't know any better. And so, I was working to try and drum up business and everybody else is probably checking out. You know, all the other trainers that have been around for decades are just like, fuck this. Yeah, it'll come back. Yeah, this is where we take vacation. They don't give a shit. And I'm over here like hustling, like trying to build my business. And I think that August, September, October, November, December, working like that and really trying to like learn the ropes was probably what set the table for a lot of the success that I had because then you hit January. And January, you could be blind and hit it out the park. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? People walk in like, I need a trainer. Yeah. I need tripping over each other. Especially back in 2000 before the big crash. Before the big crash. Yeah, so I don't remember exactly when I started. I think I started in, it was 97, maybe towards the middle of 97 because that's when I turned 18. So right when I was 18, I went and got a job at the gym. And everybody would talk about January and how crazy it was. Now nobody told me that the first week of January is basically an extension of December. Right, right. So nobody told me that. So everybody's like, oh my God, January's crazy. I remember this too. And you're like, where is it? Now statistically speaking, gyms will see about a 40 to 50, sometimes 60% increase in traffic and revenue. And that's pretty consistent. That's what I would experience in all the gyms that I ran. You would see a 50% jump over what your normal sales would be, which is massive. That's huge, right? So everybody's like, January's crazy, January's crazy. December's slow. So January 1st comes in, I come into the gym. I'm a kid, right? So I don't know any better. I show up and it's dead. Second, dead. Third, dead. Yeah, but do you remember, okay, so it's dead. But then the following week, the first sign was I go to get my normal parking spot. And I get there at the same time every time. There is not a parking space to be had. Not only that, everybody's fighting each other for it. And they're all fighting their way through to the front. And then you see lines waiting for the treadmill. That's, I'm like, what's happening? Yes, I remember I would walk through the gym and there were point, especially prime time, which is busy anyway, but prime time in mid January when it's starting to kick into high gear, I'm walking through certain portions of the gym the same way you walk through a nightclub. You know how you walk through a nightclub where you gotta walk sideways and kind of squeeze through people? You kind of just shimmy through everybody. And I was like, wow, this is exciting. Or shoulder them, right, Justin? Yeah, shoulder them. That's usually what I did, yeah. But I remember thinking this is noob. This is really exciting. February, also pretty busy. A little bit of it, it goes down a little bit, but still pretty busy. February, all the way to March, I feel like. And then all of a sudden in April, you see this, it really starts to slow down. And it's a pretty dramatic slowdown. By the time you get to summer, most of the crowd that you saw in January was gone. Was totally gone. Now as a new trainer, I experienced this as well. And I always did well getting new clients, but I remember how easy it was in January. People would walk in with their wallets in their hands, please train me. I wanna get in shape right away. I wanna lose 30 pounds or 40 pounds. I wanna get in shape. And you would just sign them up and you do your typical, well, if you buy 40 sessions, you gotta do, well, I'll buy 40 sessions, whatever. But then you would see in the summer, you'd have to start working again. Now I had to go through probably, I'd say three or four years of that cycle to start to realize that I was a shitty trainer. Like I'd sign all these- You're just a piranha. Yeah. Praying off these people. I would just sign up so many people and then they'd all stop. I'd sign them and they'd stop. And I'd sign them up and they'd stop. And I'm like, wait a minute. I'm not helping anybody at all. That's because New Year's resolutions don't work. Statistically speaking, less than 10%. It was like 8%. Yeah, actually stick with the New Year's resolution. That's crazy. So more than 90% of what everybody is saying right now that they're going to do in 2020 doesn't happen whatsoever. And I think there's reasons behind that. 100%. And it took me a long time to really put that all together to realize that that's just not, because when I first was training for the first five years or so, that was what I thought got people in shape. I thought it was all about making a big goal, getting motivated, getting inspired, coming in, getting crazy, making a big decision. And let's change everything today. You know, that's the way I thought about. Now, part of the reason why I thought about that, thought things were that way was because fitness came easy to me because I loved it so much. So for me, it was like, of course, that's just the way you gotta do it. You just gotta change everything. Yeah, but don't you think that's fine? Don't you think that's one of the biggest problems in our space is that so many trainers approach the way they train clients and the way they speak to clients the same way they think. 100%. And you're into it. Like you fell into it as a career. Therefore, you like this shit. And the reality is that the majority of people, especially in January time that are coming in to hire a personal trainer or work out, don't really fucking wanna be there. No. You know, and the reason why- It's like punishment though. Right, and the reason why they hire you is because they don't wanna think about anymore. It's like, I did the hardest part, I got here. I got here, I know I need to make change in my life. It's my new year's resolution. Here, I'm gonna hire my personal trainer. And then the trainer goes about their approach in a similar fashion that they probably taught themselves on how to get fit. Yeah, they're there because it's like, I feel like I'm supposed to be here. You know, it's like, everybody tells me I need to change this and that. And a lot of times it's not even their own idea. It's like, they fall into this, well, I probably should do this. I should sign up. But they haven't really owned that specific goal that they're trying to achieve. I remember there was a moment where some of this really started to click to me because I would, and if you're a trainer listening right now, this is how you know that you're not approaching this the right way with your clients. If it just doesn't make any sense, okay? And here's, let me explain what I mean. I would talk to people who come in who would need to lose, you know, 40 pounds of body fat or who had terrible movement patterns or had poor health. And I would think to myself, how this doesn't make any sense. How can you not do this? How can you allow yourself to get to this poor health? And to me, it was just insane. It made no sense whatsoever. And at one point I thought to myself and I said, hold on a second, this is most people. I need to figure this out. I need to figure out why this is so hard. I need to figure out, I need to get in their mind rather than trying to get them into my mind. I need to understand the behaviors and the psychology around what's going on. Otherwise I'm never gonna be able to help these people in a real way. So let's list the top reasons why New Year's resolutions are not successful and then let's give the solution to those. Okay, number one, 100% is your goals are too damn big and too damn general. We talk about this on the show a lot. Yeah, we do. We do a lot. You know what needs to be talked about a lot. Now, first off, before we get into why that doesn't work, let's talk about why that happens in the first place. If you're in a motivated, inspired state of mind, the goals you're gonna set tend to be lofty, big goals. So it's like, if you watch this motivational film on business or you go to this like business summit, you're gonna set some big ass goals right when you get home. That's it, I'm gonna become a millionaire by the end of the year. I'm gonna work 80 hours a week. That's the worst. What you have to do is judge the goals based off of your lowest amount of motivation and inspiration. So we have to be honest with yourself. Am I super motivated and inspired right now? Yes, okay. I'm gonna put myself in the mindset of how I can be, which is very low motivation. Now let me set a goal based off of that. Not only that, but they're also too general. So they're lofty and they're vague. Yeah, people don't realize, yeah, get in shape or eat healthy is not- How are you tracking that? Is not specific enough. It's too vague, too big, too general of a goal for you to have a lot of success. And that's not to say, because there's about 8% people that it does work for. But the 92% of you, that's a problem. And you gotta figure out how to be more specific about exactly what your goal is. Right, right. And in fact, as a trainer, when people would come to me and say, and I'd ask them, what's your goal? What are your fitness goals? And they would say things like, oh, I wanna get in better shape. I would have to ask a lot more questions. I would never let that slide. In fact, one of the funny things I used to do to kind of loosen people up is they'd say, I wanna get in shape. And I'd say, well, a circle is a shape. Does that, what do you mean? What do you mean you wanna get in shape? And the Meeba is a shape. And we would start to go, okay, how does that, how does that- You recite a lot of clients like that. Yeah, totally. How does that look for you? What exactly does that mean? Does that mean you want to lose weight? Does that mean you wanna be stronger? Does it mean, now let's prioritize all of those goals? I'll go even further. Why? Right. You know, I think understanding the motivation behind your general vague goal is even more important than first figuring out this. If you dig deep enough, you can figure out why their motivation is what it is and why they're there, which I think is important that you unpack that all the way down to your deepest insecurities. Then from there, once you first recognize that, which I think is extremely important, then you set very specific, small, obtainable goals to build momentum. Absolutely. So before you can lose 30 pounds, you lose five pounds. Why don't we set that as your first goal? Before you can jog on the treadmill for 30 minutes, you need to be able to jog on it for five minutes. Why not set that as your first goal? Set very small, very, very realistic, you have to be honest with yourself, goals and start there. Now, why is that more effective? It's more effective because it builds confidence. It builds a lot of confidence. I mean, I even like to distill it even further than like a pounds on the scale thing and say things like, hey, I just came off of at least, most people right now that are rushing into the gym, bare minimum have been off for a minimum of one to three months, the holidays, right? Bare minimum or longer. Most is years. Right, right, right, exactly. So I even like to start with, let's forget about the total weight loss goal that you want or the muscle or speed or whatever you're chasing. How about just like I said a goal that, what I'm gonna do is every week, I'm gonna dedicate one to three hours of fitness, whatever that is and it can encompass the gym, it can encompass a hike, it could be taking a class, it could be anything but set it so realistic that you're keeping in mind that this is something that I could do forever for the rest of my life. And if three to five times a week, you say to yourself, well, I've never in my life consistently worked out in a gym three to five times, why would you start there? That's the worst thing you could do if you already know your own patterns and behaviors, then distill it even further down and start with something as basic. It has to be somewhat familiar. It has to be something that's not too foreign. Like I mean, if you are trying to press yourself out, do it really slowly, really gradually. So that way you're really finding yourself more inclined to go in that direction. I think if you're trying to do something completely different and you have to approach it as, I need enough time to really understand like what that looks like in my new lifestyle. Nobody makes, it's actually quite rare to make massive, fundamental, long lasting, lifelong changes in who you are in a very short period of time. The only times that that tends to happen when you actually look at the literature is either a spiritual, people have a spiritual experience or they have a life altering, traumatic type of inexperience. So it's like the person who's 40 pounds overweight has a heart attack that may actually serve, by the way, I've met a lot of people who that's happened to and it still didn't work, but that may for some people be the impetus for dramatic lifestyle change. Other than those types of things, the spiritual, oh my gosh, I saw God or oh crap, I almost died or almost killed someone or whatever, changes happen gradually over time. Transformations happen, like when you see a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, it goes in a cocoon. There are gradual changes that happen. You at the end, you see the emerging of the butterfly, but what you don't see is the gradual changes inside the cocoon and that's how most changes happen. Adam, you talked about changing the types of goals. I call that pressing behaviors. Rather than looking at the result and pushing the result, why don't we push the behaviors that lead to the result? By the way, that's a very effective strategy, regardless of what your goal is. I don't care what your goal is, if you press the behaviors, you're far more likely to achieve the goal than if you just press the goal. So rather than saying, my goal is to lose 30 pounds, you say my goal is to make it to the gym twice a week a week, every single week. Or my goal is to eat vegetables twice a day, rather than once every other day like I normally do. Rather than saying I'm just gonna eat healthier or I'm just gonna change my whole diet type of deal. Another mistake that I see is people not attaching this to another current habit. And I love to teach this because it reminds me of the mistake that I see people making business. A lot of times people make these massive pivots from a type of business they're running to doing something completely opposite or different than what they're currently in. And when I see people that are doing this, I recommend to them a lot that listen, if you're thinking about making a shift from your current industry, try and make a pivot that allows you to still do kind of what you're doing and build off of that. That way it kind of protects you. And the similar psychology applies to when we're trying to lose weight or build muscle. Instead of just trying to create something that's a brand new habit that you've never done, try and build upon something that you've already currently done. For example, let's say you're a business person and you're really good about getting up an hour and a half early every day to have your coffee and read the newspaper, when nobody reads the newspaper anymore, read your favorite article. Right, that was a terrible analogy. Read your iPad. Write your Brontosaurus. Yeah. Yes, sorry, terrible analogy. Put you, for me, like I get- Riddle some sticks and make a fire. When I'm on fire, I feel like I get up a good hour and a half, two hours before I had to be at work and I read, I meditate, I do all these things that enhance the current business, the current thing that I do. It has nothing to do with my fitness. It has everything to do with being better at my job and making more money at which some people have already created good habits and that. So look into the things that you've done really well and you've created good habits like that and now start to attach something that's going to benefit you in the health and fitness world. So for example, if maybe I'm somebody who wasn't very fit but I've been really good about getting up early in the morning and doing this, meditating or reading or preparing my work day, maybe now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do those same similar things but with a half hour or an hour walk. So now I'm gonna put in my ears an audio book or maybe listen to the Wall Street Journal instead of reading it on my phone. I'm gonna put it in my ears and I'm gonna go take a walk for a half hour hour. What's beautiful about that is you've already created a habit that you were doing already consistently. It's become a behavior of yours. You're just attached to it. You've now attached something that's related to health and fitness or just attached an additional 10 to 15 or 30 minutes to that already time that you've already started to schedule out for yourself. You'll have so much more success. Another example would be like if you walk your dog every day, maybe go an extra 10 or 15 minutes every single day. Exactly. Just adding to, or you brush your teeth before you go to bed. Maybe when you brush your teeth, right after you brush your teeth you do some pushups and some crunches. Marketers actually have identified that this is a very powerful strategy. This is one of the- Yeah, they call those cues too. It's a part of creating and establishing those better rituals. So it is like, yeah, if this, if I'm doing this in this specific environment in this place, I'm gonna do this many pushups. It's like finding those opportunities in your house and seeing, I'm in this room so therefore I'm gonna do this specific thing every time I pass this room. This is a very common tool along the lines which you're talking about, Justin, that I had a lot of success with is I used to go to like staples and buy a bunch of circle stickers and they have this, I'm pretty sure they still have these. They're just like colored circle stickers, red, blue, green, like all these different circles. And each one of them I would, and for the client, depending on who they are and what I want them to focus on, I would make a color sticker stand for something. So like, you know, blue for them would be a one minute plank. You know, a red sticker would be 10 squats. And I'd have these things that I want that client to do that are very simple, only take them maybe a minute or two to do. And then I would have them strategically place it throughout their house, especially if I had a client who worked from home or in their office and you have them, oh, the refrigerator. So every time you walk by that and you make eye contact with that dot, I want you to do 10 squats. You know, simple things like that because these are habits, behaviors you've already created, you do all the time or your computer screen every time you log in to a certain page or whatever. You make sure that you do whatever exercise or movement pattern. A lot of times I love to address correctional stuff with this. If I have a client that has upper cross syndrome and I'm trying to work on their posture and maybe band pull apart to something I'm trying to get them in the habit of doing multiple times per day, I have them put these stickers throughout places. I know that they're going to be traveling and seeing multiple times a day and that just makes them do that. It's especially effective. I've had clients do that when like, they're waiting for the shower to warm up and they're just doing like a wall test and like simple mobility things with their shoulders just to get them prepped for then, promoting them to do activities and exercises as a result of after going through their morning ritual. Yeah, some of the greatest success I've had with friends and family members was doing what you guys are saying and what that led to was them eventually going to a gym. So what we're talking about are behaviors that you can attach to current behaviors and most of these don't involve you going to the gym. So if you're just getting started, if you're not working out at all, you do these like, if you tend to watch TV at night, for example, it's every night I like to watch, you know, an hour worth of TV. Well, while you're sitting there, why not do some foam roll or do some stretches or do some exercises while you're brushing your teeth? Why not do some squats or attach? And this is scientifically proven by the way, this is a very proven way to create new habits. And you think to yourself now, here's what may be happening. You may be listening to this podcast and may be thinking, well, that's not a lot. That's not enough. I'm not doing anything. Bullshit. Yeah, first off, it's way more than what you're doing now. So it's more than you're doing now. Number two, this is how you lead yourself to the point where you are doing more. It keeps adding up. It keeps adding up. Now what'll end up happening is at some point, if you're consistent with these behaviors, at some point, you're gonna wanna go to a gym because you're like, I think I wanna do more. It's funny that back half of my training career when I would train clients, I would talk them into only coming to see me once a week if they'd never worked out. That was often, that was a conversation we'd have. And then I'd wait, I'd train them once a week and I'd wait, I'd wait for them to tell me they'd wanna come in more. And inevitably after five or six months of that consistent once a week, that said, you know, I think I can do one more day a week. Well, when you think about one of the number one objections that people have to getting fit is time. And making time separate from what their busy life already is. Yeah, it's adding more. So a really good trainer figures this out that, okay, if that's a number one objection and I'm constantly seeing it all the time. And if I'm constantly arguing with those people like some young trainers do like, you can make time. Okay, well, that's not the approach. And that you see that you always can tell a really young trainer when they do something like that when it's like, you know, oh, they mathematically figure out the time and they say, oh, you could make the time. The better approach is, how can I look at your current lifestyle? What are you doing right now that you already have habits? And how can I start to attach little bits of health and fitness and things that will make a positive impact on your overall big goal that you set for yourself and then build upon it. And because what will happen is exactly what Sao was alluding to, which is, you know, I know they said when they first came to me, oh, I want to go five days a week or whatever. But you're like, no, no, no, no, let's, let's start with something slow, one, two days, whatever. And eventually they come to you like, because they're on fire. They've been going for the last three, four weeks consistently, they're seeing progress. They feel great. They want more. All skill, by the way, working out consistently, regularly, having a healthy diet, think of it as any other behavior or skill. If you've never ridden a bike before, you're not going to jump on a mountain bike and go downhill. You're just not. You start with training wheels, right? That's the only way to progress to the point where you can do the downhill mountain bike riding. Same thing with fitness. You got to start very, very slow, which takes me to the next difficult thing or challenge, which is people pick the most difficult things to do, the most difficult goals. It's like, okay, you know, you haven't worked out for 10 years and your goal is to lose 50 pounds. Okay, that's really freaking hard. Why don't we start with something really easy? Fast and quick results, it's just so attractive. You know, like everybody wants to get there the fastest way possible. And that's like just a condition that your average person has. And this is a very hard mentality to break. That's one of the first disciplines. Now, here's the deal. Theoretically, you could get fast results and then keep those results, theoretically. Behaviorally speaking, it just never works. Almost, I have, I can't, honestly, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single client among the hundreds that I've trained and the thousands I've trained my party. 90%, 92% don't. Yeah, yeah. It's already there. It's already there. Yes, there is a 8% or so that actually do that figure it out for themselves for whatever reasons, but the other 90 plus percent don't. I would bet that those 8% are the epiphanies that I talked about earlier. Of course. The people that came in with the health scares or the big things or, you know, they had grandkids. Real life changing events or something that had changed course. Exactly, exactly. So it's that slow and steady approach and start really, really easy in order to, you know, make that happen. Oh, what's that say, Doug, up there? Oh, yeah, look at that. That article, six years after The Biggest Loser, people's, the people on The Biggest Loser's metabolism is slower and their weight is back up. I'm glad you brought that up, Doug, because that brings me to another part of this, which is, and not to scare you, okay? I don't want to frighten you, but if you're in the lose weight fast and then gain it back, which is what happens to most people when they do it real quick, here's what happens to your body. When you lose weight fast, you lost the body fat, your metabolism adjusts, it starts to adjust, right? And it's called metabolic adaptations. Your metabolism will slow down a little bit. There's not a problem. Now, if you're lifting weights, this is very minimal. Sometimes you may even speed it up, but now let's say you go off your nutrition, you go off that diet that you were on, you stop working out and you start gaining weight back. Each time you do that, your body actually captures, starts to create more fat cells, makes it more difficult each time you do this. Now, the reason why your body is adding fat cells, the theory is that it's trying to figure out how to capture all those calories. It's starting to become more efficient at gaining the weight back. Each time you do that, it becomes more efficient. Oh no, we're in a state of famine. Let's make sure we keep all this energy. Well, they're gonna start themselves again. So your body attempts to capture more and more calories or actually becomes better at getting fat. So not only are the odds that you'll gain the weight back higher if you do this super fast, crazy, all-out approach, but you'll actually make it, when you gain the weight back, as like we said, 92% of you will, you'll gain the weight back and each time you do that, your body gets better at getting fat and it gets worse at getting lean. Well, and this is the biggest bone that I have to pick with the high-intensity group classes is they attract these people that want something hard because hard they equate to faster results and they gravitate towards the orange theory, the F-45, the CrossFit classes. Does that mean that there's a small percentage of people that could have success with that? No, of course, there are some people, the anomalies that it ends up being beautiful for them and a lifestyle and for years later, those are the people that end up drinking the Kool-Aid and then preaching about it to everybody else why it's so great because it worked for them. The problem is they're the fucking minority. The majority of people, it's an awful way to start your fitness school, to go into some intense class where you sweat like crazy and you push really, really hard because you feel like that's what you need to do. And it's this punishment thing that I think a lot of clients fall into when they feel guilty for all the weight that they put on over the holidays or not working out for the last couple of years and so they gravitate towards these classes and it's like a misery loves company where we're all suffering together to go after this goal. And the reality of it is, even if you see pretty good results for the first few weeks, it's not a good strategy for long-term results. No, it's funny. In fact, if you run classes or you have a gym and January comes around, what you tend to do is increase the amount of, so here's what you think you would do, right? You think knowing you're gonna get a bunch of new people in, you're gonna boost the amount of beginners classes and you're gonna boost the amount of trainers working with, doing like kind of low intensity getting people started. One-on-ones. The opposite actually happens. Gyms actually boost the amount of high-intensity classes and the trainers who are advertising the hardest workouts are the ones that tend to gather the most attention because the attitude is I'm inspired, I'm motivated, I'm sick of myself, I need this to happen tomorrow. So really what we're talking about is a change in mindset because if your mindset is going in the way that we're talking about, your chances of success are actually very, very low. And the opposite of that means you're just gonna get, you're gonna fail. So you wanna start off very, very slow. I wanna go back to focusing on behaviors rather than goals. So I think that's such an important, that is such a key thing to learn to do to achieve long-term success with fitness and health. Really, rather than saying I'm going to bench press 300 pounds, it's better to say I'm gonna practice bench pressing twice a week. Rather than saying I'm going to lose 30 pounds of body fat, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna eat one-fourth less food. I'm gonna keep my food. That was a great strategy I had with clients. In fact, I would not have them change their diet and once we were at the point where we could start to cut calories, I would say, hey, we're not gonna change your diet at all. I just want you to eat one-fourth less. Let's just start with that and see what happens because I felt like that was an easier way for people to reduce calories. And that was a behavior. It wasn't, hey, we're gonna get you to lose weight. It was, hey, let's, rather than eating till you're full, why don't you eat until you're just satisfied which usually resulted in about a quarter less intake. Those behaviors are what caused the results and the goals. Focusing on the goals does not change necessarily the behaviors. This is where I really liked, and this took me at least a decade before this really came together. And I've said it on the show multiple times is I even like when looking at the nutrition is instead of restricting or taking away is like just a goal of adding something. So much easier. Everybody I've ever naturally replaced things that way had them track for a week or two and assessed their current eating habits. Everybody is missing somewhere. Like when you eat a lot of processed foods or eat bad food or drink alcohol or do these what we call empty calories, you're going to be missing somewhere else that you need something nutritionally. Yeah, most people don't drink a lot of alcohol and drink a lot of water. Right, right. Or a lot of, you know, a lot of ho-hos and a lot of vegetables. Right, right. Or get a ton of fiber while they're eating all this other crap. That's mastery level. So you look at the, as a good trainer can look at a diet or look at the way somebody is consuming and see where they're missing nutrients. Not where they're over. They know they're over. They already know they're over consuming. They're eating fucking alcohol or drinking alcohol all the time or they're eating fast food all the time. They know they're overeating. That's not, you're not going to enlighten them by doing that. A good trainer can look at their diet and see where they're lacking nutrients. Maybe it's fiber. Maybe they're not getting enough healthy protein. Maybe they're not getting enough healthy fats. Like, and then go, okay, let me pick a meal or pick a food group that this person's not getting enough of. And I'm going to give them a goal of inserting that daily. And what's beautiful is that when you do that instead of taking away or restricting them what ends up happening is it does replace something. You tell somebody who never, never drinks water and only drinks copes, juices and alcohol that, hey, you got to drink a gallon of water a day. But I'm not going to tell you anything else. Like, before you know it, they can't consume another fluid. Yeah, it's just like protein and fats. Like it's more satiating. So like, if I focused more on like going out to make sure that I'm rotating these different types of meats and things in my diet, a lot of times that's going to take up a lot of the calories just because they're so satiating. Oh, just tell people to hit their protein targets and watch them naturally. Because eating adequate protein for muscle building, which tends to be about half a gram to a gram per pound of body weight and average weight individuals, you just, it's more food. It's a lot more food. You're not going to be able to eat as much of the other stuff. Now I'm sure there are all the occasional people who are like, I'll do it all. But typically from our experience, it changes that. Then there's also these types of behaviors. I like to go even a little bit deeper and I'll say things like, don't watch TV while you eat. That's all. Let's just start with that. Don't watch TV while you eat or don't be on your phone. It's that mindless eating. That's it while you eat or sit down, chew your food very, very well, put your fork down in between bites and just do that. Oh, I love the after you eat, make your 10 minute walk. I love, I mean. See, there's attaching a habit to another habit. Right, you habitually, obviously we all eat on a regular basis and most people have a specific dinner time, give or take, 30 minutes to an hour. They always eat dinner. You've already, that's already a created habit in your lifestyle. Now, instead of the current thing that you probably do at the dinner, which is lay on the couch and click the clicker and look at TV or whatever it is that you do or lay down and take a nap or whatever afterwards. Instead of that, now attach a nice 10 minute walk and start there. And maybe that 10 minute walk eventually turns into a 30 minute walk and maybe an hour minute walk or maybe that ends up going to a gym or doing something else down the road, but start by attaching to already, again, a behavior of eating dinner every single night, some sort of health and fitness thing. Well, along those lines too, I found myself, like I created this own goal for myself to not try to wash down every bite with something, you know, water, you know, beverage, something like that while I was eating. And that just forced me, like, naturally forced me to chew my food down to its bits so that way, you know, I could get it down because I had a problem where it would like, I would choke and, you know, I would like really shovel it down fast. I know I'm not alone. I know there's a lot of people that will, you know, have that mentality when they go to eat, they're just kind of shoveling it in. And, you know, that was like huge for my digestion. I mean, at night I had a whole lot less, you know, gastrointestinal issues. Like it just, it helped things move along much better. That reminds me of the switch hand method that I used to have clients do for that exact reason. And really what this is, is just becoming more self aware and a stranger. Yeah, not that. Not that. No, for eating. Yes, for eating. The stranger for eating. That's right. You eat with your right hand, then the next time you eat with your left hand. So every time you shovel food into your mouth. You know what's funny, people, I guarantee you people listening right now, like that's silly. It is proven. It is a proven strategy. And here's why. Because most people are mindlessly eating and so unaware of how they eat. And just pay attention the next time you eat, how often you're already got the next bite ready while you're still chewing the last bite. Oh, that's the hallmark of mindless eating. That's the hallmark of even binging, is it's not about the food that you're enjoying. It's about the next bite. It's always about the next bite. So think about that right now. Think about the last time you ate too much of a meal. Think about the last time you ate too fast or you over ate. Now think about that. You weren't enjoying the food as you were chewing it. You had the food in your mouth and you were like, I need to get the next one in. And so it was about how fast I can get this bite down, which is what Justin said, wash it down so I can get the next one. So it's really not about enjoying food. It's really about this impulsive behavior for getting more and more. Slowing yourself down by switching hands, placing the fork down, not drinking. That was a big one for me, Justin. I don't drink water when I eat now, which forces me to chew. It's tough, man. It actually causes you to be more mindful. And here's the side effect of that. You enjoy your food more or you actually pay attention to it. And you're less likely to overeat. Totally, 100%. And these are the types of ways that you, these goals, these are so much more obtainable and realistic and the beauty of it is you become more aware, you start to attach it to other things and this becomes a lifelong thing that you do that ends up adding. It may seem so silly to somebody who's super motivated right now to go to the gym and crush it. Oh gosh, I'm gonna switch hands when I eat or I'm gonna stop drinking water. That's stupid. Nobody's advertising this. How many calories does that actually burn and how much muscle is that actually going to build? I find that so funny. It's like, imagine if you're a 25 year old, 35 year old who's never done karate before and you walk into a karate school. Are you an idiot because you have to practice the very basic moves before you can move up to the next moves? Of course not. But everybody progresses. So don't compare yourself to fitness fanatics or to your fitness ideal. That's a, you're not being fair to yourself. It would be like me going to a karate gym and I'm like, I'm gonna be Chuck Norris tomorrow. Not gonna happen. It's not fair. It's a slow process and doing these small things that we're talking about as silly as a sound. And I'm gonna say this right now, trust us and try to train people for over two decades. This is what leads to long-term success which actually leads me to another thing that again, this took me a long time to put together which is change your environment. One of the biggest mistakes people make with these New Year's resolution goals that fail is that they fail to change their environment. So what does that mean? Well, that means a lot of different things. Here's one of them. If your environment involves you being around a lot of heavily processed, highly palatable foods and wrappers and bags, good luck. Good luck making those changes. It's gonna be very, very difficult. Yeah, it's like an alcoholic. It's like those meetings that you get locked into and everybody's got the donuts and all this like shit. Or it's like the alcoholic who's gonna be a bartender. Yeah, I'm not gonna drink anymore. Yeah, that's not a good idea. But I'm still gonna go to the bar. No, you gotta change your environment. Get those foods out of your house. Don't let them be there. Now, if you have family members or roommates that like to eat those foods and hopefully these people are cool with you, you talk to them and you say, look, I'm trying to change my eating behaviors. If you wouldn't mind, can you keep those foods away from me and just keep them in different cupboards or whatever so that I'm not exposed? And it's not a sign of weakness. Okay, again, you have to change your environment so that you can create these new behaviors. At some point, eventually you'll be in a point where you can be around those foods and make better decisions. Yeah, making like an extra step for you to have to go out seeking those foods is a really big bonus. So that way it's like, I will still have cravings. I will still have these things I'm kind of working through in terms of like palatable food like that where I'm just like, middle of the night, I'm like, oh my God, I really want some cookies, but I have to actually drive to the store. I don't keep them in there readily at hand. I'm glad you waited this long to bring this one up because I also think it's one of the most challenging and it also includes the people you surround yourself with. And this is a hard one to really to own up on, to make change with and you really have to ask yourself how important these goals are for you or how important it is that you make this healthy lifestyle change. Is it as important that you may have to change the circle or the network of people that you have around you? That's fucking really tough. It is and it sounds tough because I think what people hear right now is that you have to get rid of your friends and family to change your environment. No, it's not true. Your real friends, the people who really care about you and your family members will be a part of this. They'll help you with this. If you have friends that connect with you over eating junk food and that's all you guys have a connection over, you're probably gonna have to change that. Well, a harder one I like because a few people meet up to eat junk food, right? But alcohol, this is not roommates in college. Alcohol is a hard one. How many clients have you dealt with that have built relationships around parting and social drinking and to try and tell them that you know it's not serving you for this ultimate goal. And it's always one of the hardest things as a trainer to tackle is the client who walks in and they're like, here's all the goals I want. I wanna look like this. I wanna do this. I wanna lose this. I wanna gain that. I wanna do this. But I don't wanna give up Sunday fun day with my girls. I don't wanna give up my wine at night. Nine days in mimosas. I mean, come on. And it's not that you can't have balance and you can't have alcohol in your life. That's not true whatsoever. We drank over the holidays. Alcohol is definitely in our lives. But I think that when you've solidified these relationships and these behaviors that don't serve the goal and then you're attached to them so much, it really conflicts with what you're trying to do. Especially if that's, you know, I remember having friends in high school that we connected over immature things. Like we'd go out and we'd try and start fights or whatever. And at some point I grew up and I'm like, well, I don't wanna do that anymore. And I tell them, I don't wanna do that anymore. And then I realize that's the only thing that we have in common is that we do those things together. So I've outgrown you. This may happen. You may have friends that the only way you connect with them is to go out and eat pizza or go out and drink. And that's the only way you connect with them. Those are the people you might have to change out your life. But here's the thing. A lot of your real friends and family are gonna be totally fine with you saying to them, hey, I know every once in a while we go to- If they're not, they're not real friends. That's right. So I know you say, hey, I know I'm gonna come over for dinner tomorrow night and you like to make me that big lasagna dish or whatever, but you know, I'm really trying, I'm changing my life. And say this to your friends, just because, you know, as a trainer, I had to learn how to communicate really well to clients. But then later on I had to learn how to teach my clients how to communicate to their family and friends better as well. So this is the ineffective and then there's an effective way of doing this. So here's an ineffective way of doing it. Hey, look, tomorrow night, I'm not coming over for lasagna, but can you make something different because I'm on a diet? Not effective. It's not effective, diet is temporary. Your friend may do it once or twice, but eventually they're gonna get annoyed with you and be like, I get off your diet already. One time's not gonna hurt you. Instead, say this, hey, I'm changing my life. My lifestyle's gonna be totally different now. So please, can we, you know, let's have something else together I'd love to. Let me bring some food this time. Much better approach. I would say I would go about the, do you mind if I bring something because what I'm trying to do right now is this or what I'm going to do is this. So I think that's a better approach. Totally, and what you're doing is you're communicating a little bit more effectively to them. Now your real friends and family are not gonna have a problem with this. Now here's the other thing. Don't push your new goals onto them. Allow them to be themselves. Here's what's gonna happen. If you're strong in what you're doing, they'll actually many times come around. I've influenced quite a few of my friends and family. Not by pushing it on them, but by being consistent with myself, asking for their help. Eventually they see what's happening with me and they say, hey, you know what? I wanna do a little bit of what. Yeah, it's interesting. Cause I mean, a lot of times you get really excited about these goals and you wanna tell everybody about it and you wanna build this whole accountability for yourself, but you're just, you're really then like creating this environment where you're depending on people. Like this needs to be about you and your intentions and you know how you wanna like carry yourself from there on forward. And that needs to be the nexus of what you need to focus on and not focus on how everybody else is gonna be affected around you. Yeah, here's another example of changing your environment. I had a client who every morning would drive to Starbucks for coffee and she would go there and she would get a, I don't remember what coffee it was, but it was a, Frappuccino one. Yeah, it was like a high calorie coffee, plus she would get, You need a quarter of a frappe. Plus she would get like a breakfast sandwich. So I said, okay, you can have your coffee in the morning, but why don't you order it ahead of time, make sure it's black or whatever and go pick it up or make it at home. Change the environment. Get rid of the foods in your house that you know aren't gonna be conducive to your goal. Park further from your job. That's your environment. Change it so you have to walk. How about you take your chair at work when you're sitting in front of your desk, take it out of your cubicle or whatever, move it to the side. Now you have to stand. Change the environment around you because if you don't it's gonna be very difficult to make long lasting permanent changes. Now one more thing, and this one's a big one for me. This is people who focus on one metric or one measurement in order to gauge their success. Usually it's the scale. Yep, weight. All they care about is how much weight I've lost and if I lost weight, if I'm losing weight, I'm succeeding. If I'm not losing weight, I'm failing. This was one of my favorite ones to tackle with clients because people would come to me. Of course I'm a trainer. I know what I'm doing. I'm training them properly and they wouldn't lose weight initially because like we're talking about in this podcast, it's a slow process and they'd say to me, what's going on? I've been working out with you for six weeks and the scale's only gone down one pound. Why am I not losing weight? And I'd say, okay, well, that's one thing that we're gonna measure is the scale but let's talk about some other stuff. How do your clothes fit? Oh, they fit a little bit looser. Okay, that's a good thing. How's your sleep been? I think I'm sleeping a little bit better. Great. How's your strength? I know you're stronger because I'm training you. You're lifting more weight. How's your digestion? Actually, it's a lot better. Phenomenal. How's your mood? It's great. And I'd make a checklist and I'd show them. And I'd say, look at all these phenomenal improvements you've made in the last six weeks. So focusing on all of the beneficial effects of positively changing your lifestyle, not just on the aesthetic or not just on the scale. Cause oftentimes the scale will start to reflect all those other things, you know, well, not to mention it's an actual terrible way to measure your success. I mean, when a client comes into me and they say, I want to lose 50 pounds on the scale. That is my goal. I want to lose 50 pounds, Adam. I don't want to see five to 10 pounds go off on the scale, especially for the first month or two. My goal is actually to see if I can kind of maintain their weight. Can I introduce weight training and start to manipulate their diet to where their weight stays exactly the same. And in a month's time, I haven't seen the scale move at all. And that is a mind fuck for somebody who walks in or started their New Year's resolution with I want to lose a number off the scale. Because what I know is that that person to make their journey much easier to getting to their ultimate goal of 50 pounds, speeding their metabolism up is the number one focus that I want to do, which what I know about that is building muscle is going to do that for them. So I don't want to see a bunch of weight come off the scale. Now what's awesome, and it would take a lot of convincing for these people to just trust the process and trust what I'm doing with them, is after a month's time, the scale may not move at all, but they feel different, you know? And to your point of all the different markers of energy level, sleeping better, hair, stool, skin, all these things moved, you know, relationships, all these things are positively affected. And then on top of that, they've maintained their weight and maybe even seen strength go up in the gym. What I know as a trainer that even though their ultimate goal was to lose 50 pounds on the scale, we're flying. We're heading in the right direction, although it doesn't seem like that because it hasn't changed in the direction that they thought they need to go. I hate the scale as a metric for success. I really don't like it. In fact, I would tell clients to take their scales at home, put it in the closet. Yeah, don't weigh yourself. We're not gonna weigh you. I'm not gonna let you weigh yourself for the next 60 days. If you had to pick just one metric, if you had to pick just one measurement for success, I would go by strength, strength in the gym because now it's not perfect, okay? You wanna look at everything, but if you had to pick one, here's why I like strength. You can't do things wrong and get stronger. You can't have poor health and get stronger. You can't have a shitty, terrible sleeping pattern and get stronger. Getting stronger usually means you're doing a lot of things right. Maybe not everything right, but a lot of things right. Not only that, but it also carries over to all goals. If you have a performance goal, if you have a fat loss goal, and obviously if you have a muscle building goal, strength is the foundation of all three of those. It's protective. I mean, it's protecting you from potential diseases and different things down the road, too. Strength is the pinnacle for you to focus on. Yeah, yeah, so when you get started in the gym for your New Year's resolution, one of the best things you can do is say, okay, my goal, these are the behaviors I'm gonna push. I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna go to the gym once a week. I'm going to, before going to bed, or when I brush my teeth, I'm gonna do 10 squats. I'm gonna add an extra 10 minutes to walking my dog or whatever. And then here's the goal. Here's the goal for the next couple months. I wanna get stronger. I wanna be able to lift 10 more pounds on this exercise, five more pounds on that one. Even if you wanna lose 50 pounds. Especially if you wanna lose 50 pounds because that muscle contributes to a faster, hotter burning metabolism. And nothing makes fat loss easier than having a fast metabolism. Obviously, think of that one friend that you have who seems to be able to eat whatever they want and doesn't gain a single pound. Wouldn't that be wonderful, right? Wouldn't that be great? If you could automatically burn more calories. Well, strength is a great way to measure whether or not that's happening. If it goes up, tends to mean your metabolism is probably getting faster. If it goes down, it might mean your metabolism is actually slowing down. So now you go to the gym and you're just getting stronger. And this is what I would tell clients. When they'd come hire me and say, okay, I know you have a weight loss goal but we're not gonna focus on that first. What I wanna do first is get you strong. Now, this conversation would be a little longer. Sometimes I'd have to really convince people. But once I got them to focus on getting stronger, the success that I would have with these people was so much, so much higher. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com. Check out all of our guides and resources. They're all totally free. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon, Adam at Mind Pump Adam.