Podcast Transcription: Make 2023 Your Best Year Ever Part 3: Can’t Lose Weight No Matter What (And What To Do To Finally Get The Body You Deserve)

Ted Ryce: Many of my clients that sign up with me have been working out and learning about nutrition for as long as I have. But if that's the case, why aren't they in better shape? Why don't they have mastery level results with their nutrition and fitness? After all, they've passed Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour Rule. So, what's going on? That's what we're going to dive into in today's episode. 

So, if you feel like you're listening to all the podcasts, you're reading the books, but you don't have the results with your body that reflect the time and energy you've put into learning about health and fitness, we're going to talk about that today, so you're in the right place. 

What is up, my friend? Welcome to the Legendary Life podcast, I'm your host, Ted Ryce, health coach for over 23 years. And what we do here is, we work with founders, entrepreneurs, and busy professionals to help them lose fat, boost energy, and make this into a lifestyle so that they never have to go on another diet again.  

And my very transparent reason for having this podcast is to teach you my best strategies. I fell for a lot of misinformation on my journey, and I was a professional, so, I'm here to help you get better results, to clear out the confusion so you know exactly what you need to do.  

And the other side of that is some of you are going to want to get great results as fast as possible and level up in a big way, and I want you to hire me as your coach when you're ready to do that. So, let's jump into today's episode. 

When I first started as a personal trainer and health coach at 22 years old, I knew I needed to get good if I wanted to be success. And that was before the internet was as big as it is now. So, I was reading magazines, I took courses, I took correspondence courses, they would send you the VHS tapes, you would watch them, take a test, send it back. I attended live events, I traveled to different countries, all over the place. I got multiple certifications. 

And just a few years into learning everything I could, I developed a high level of confidence about what I knew. Not only could I talk the talk about fitness, nutrition, exercise, physiology, biomechanics, and health in general at a high level, I looked the part too. I was ripped, everyone complimented me on how I looked.  

And while a few people, one client, I can remember right now, he said, oh, you must have great genetics. Everyone else thought I was an expert at my craft. Now, let me tell you, it was great for business, but then something happened. I got fat, and it happened in my mid-30s, my weight shot up from 185 to 210. And although I wanted to believe that it was all muscle, and I was finally super buff, and I had achieved the muscle building results that I had always wanted, I had a rude awakening when I was at a friend's gym in Miami, I was there doing in body scan to measure my body fat percentage.  

And I remember the moment where, it was traumatic for me—I mean, I use that word jokingly, but it was emotional enough that I still remember it quite vividly. My friend got the report after the Embody machine printed it out, and he said, “Oh, it says here you're at 24% body fat.” 

And let me tell you, I was so angry when he told me, I thought there's no way that was true, I was doing everything right, in my mind. And after going home and soothing my bruised ego for a few days, I became determined to figure out what was going on. Now, I want to fast forward to now, I'm 45, I'm not 22 anymore.  

And I finally consider myself an expert at fat loss, muscle growth, breaking bad habits, and helping high performers achieve peak performance. And I want to share with you a few of the lessons that I learned in that process, because it was a hard journey going from being in the business for over a decade, then getting fat and realizing, it wasn't that I didn't know anything, I knew a lot, but I didn't know how to get the results I was trying to achieve. 

And I want to be clear about that, because we're going to return to this in a second, or not in a second, in a few minutes. So, here are some lessons that I want to share with you. Lesson number one is, the 10,000-Hour Rule is wrong, it's just wrong. I mean, I remember when Outliers came out, Malcolm Gladwell's book, where he talked about the 10,000-Hour Rule, and everyone couldn't shut up about it, myself included. 

But here's the thing, the research that he used to base this 10,000-Hour Rule on, the guy who actually did the research came out and said, “Oh yeah, it's a great book, but he's really messing a bunch of things up.” 

So, the same guy who did the research that Malcolm Gladwell cited for the rule said that it's wrong. And why this is important is this: A lot of folks think that they've been doing this for a long time, they've been exercising, they've been reading about nutrition, they've been on a bunch of diets, they've read a bunch of books, they've listened to a lot of podcasts.  

You listen to this podcast, and what I want to tell you is this, what I've learned and what I learned about my journey, is that the people who've been doing health and fitness for a long time, but don't have different results, they're making the same mistakes over and over again. 

And this was a hard moment for me, when I decided that I was going to do something about this and really challenged what I thought I knew, I blamed my age, I was only if like 35 or 36. I blame my metabolism, I thought—and I've shared this many times before—I thought maybe all the partying I did in my early 20s had done something to me, because I didn't really understand aging that well at the time, I mean, I was 35, right? 

And I also blame my hormones. I've talked about how I went and got my testosterone level checked, and it wasn't low, and my estrogen was a little high, and it was not what I was expecting. And what I want to tell you is I was making a lot of the same, I was learning things, but I wasn't learning the proper practices, the proper principles, let's say, and applying them in a way that gave me results. 

And so, I started, but I thought I was doing that. And so, when I didn't get results from doing quote on quote, everything right, and I thought about how long I've been in this business, that's when I started blaming the age, the hormones, and metabolism.  

And it's also what I see in the people who either interact with me on social media, or who listen to my podcast, or who end up working with me. They blame their age, their hormones, or their metabolism, like they've tried everything, and they've done a lot of diets, and they just haven't been able to crack the code.  

And they think, “Well, I've been doing it for this long that must mean something,” but the reality is, it doesn't mean anything. Because if you're practicing the wrong things, the wrong practices, if you're not understanding the principles at work, then you're not, you can practice for 100,000 hours, and you're still not going to get results. 

So, let's get into the next lesson, it’s not just about the time that it takes, it's also about the psychological process of achieving mastery. And again, when I say mastery, I don't mean you're like the guru who's making content on social media, I'm talking about mastery over the level of results that you want to achieve. 

So, mastery comes in four stages, and this idea was first introduced at a leadership institute called the Gordon Training Institute. I forget the guy's name who came up with it, but the four stages of competence is a learning model that helps relate the psychological states involved in the process of mastering any skill. And that might be a complicated way to explain it, but the model is quite simple. 

Stage one is unconscious incompetence, this is when you don't know what you don't know. I was here when I thought I was doing everything right, trying to lose fat and build muscle, but I wasn't getting results. I just didn't know what I didn't know. And that's where I blamed my metabolism and my hormones instead of my methods. 

And you're also in this phase, if you're blaming your genes, your metabolism, hormones, menopause, low testosterone, instead of how many calories you're eating and what type, and how much of exercise you're doing. 

And I want to say something else here, because it's not just about an unconscious incompetence about the principles, it's about the actions. For example, some people will say, hey, well, I did try tracking my calories, I was eating 1,200 calories, I was tracking on My fitness pal, eating 1,200, or 1,500 or 2,000 or 1,800, or whatever the number is, but I wasn't getting results. 

And it's like, because you're not doing it. That's like saying, I went out to the golf course and I hit the ball a bunch of times, and not once did it get close to the hole that I was trying to get the ball in. It's like, yeah, because you're not swinging the club right. 

And although you may have watched a bunch of YouTube videos, listened to a lot of podcasts talking about swing mechanics, looking at complicated breakdowns on the biomechanics of a golf swing, you're still not able to put it into action, so, you're missing something, and this is where things get hard. Because then clients join—or they're not clients yet, but they’re potential clients, they join my coaching program, then they get to the phase of conscious incompetence. 

And this part is hard on our ego. It's hard to be in what a lot of people call beginner ship again. It's hard to be a beginner again, it's hard in your 40s, 50s, or even in 60s to, when you had a lot of success in your life to put on the white belt again, and to get your butt kicked.  

And let me tell you, it was especially hard for me, because you might be an entrepreneur, you might be a serial entrepreneur, you might have just sold your business, you might be running a bunch of businesses, you might be working in a business at a high level, and you have a lot of success with what you do. And then you try something and then you suck at it. 

And let me tell you, at least you were, you're not supposed to be necessarily be great with health and fitness, but me, after 10 years of doing this at the time, in my 30, when I was in my mid-30s, after over a decade of being in this industry to be in a place of conscious incompetence, man, it sucked, it was really hard. And it sucked to figure out I had gotten caught in the trap that I had everything figured out when I didn't. 

And there's actually a name for this, this shift, it's called the Dunning Kruger Effect. Have you ever heard of it before? Well, the Dunning Kruger effect, it's when people are starting out at a very low level of competence and somehow their confidence skyrockets. Do you know the guy or woman in this case? They just started, and then they’re like “Oh, well it's just about this, this,” and they're so confident about talking about it. 

And as Aristotle said, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. And then as you start to get out of that novice stage, where you're like, “Oh, I understand, this is all just, it's all hormones,” right? This is where 99.9% of the people who talk to me on social media, it's like they're talking to me about—it's just fascinating, folks.  

They're talking to me about nutrition, and I'm just like, listen, I don't even talk about nutrition anymore, because I already have that figured out a long time ago.I don't even focus on nutrition that much with my clients. I mean I do to, of course, that's part of what I do. But that shows the level of misunderstanding of this, because what I mostly do, it's coaching on stress, it's coaching on mindset, and I don't coach on stress and mindset…  

Let me tell you something, okay? This is behind the scenes stuff, so I want you to pay attention, I don't coach on that stuff, because I'm trying to be different or trying to be cool. I'm coaching on it because I had to, because I put food on my table and pay my bills through coaching. And just telling my clients how to track their macros and what workouts to do—not eat, don't eat your workouts, please. It wasn't working. 

And I was like, man, there's something, I'm missing something here. And so people are arguing with me about carbs make you fat, and metabolism and hormones, I'm like, “Okay, look, people pay me to talk with them, but I'll have a conversation and at least put it out there to see if you're a reasonable person, and maybe I can shift your thoughts to, at least thinking you might be wrong about this.” But the level of confidence and cockiness really, that's that first stage of the Dunning Kruger Effect. 

They think they're supremely confident, and for me, I'm like, I would never pay you… I mean, I feel like I should be getting paid right now, and I know I'm making silly jokes, and perhaps it's coming across a little cocky, but I don't mean it that way. I really mean it like, hey, this is…I mean, it's like me arguing with an attorney for 23 years, or arguing… 

Like, I'm not great at running a business, it's like me arguing with one of my client, one of my entrepreneur clients. Hey, you really don't know what you're doing with running your business, I mean, I might have some good ideas every once in a while, but they're experts. How do we know they're experts? Because of the results they get, it's so simple folks. 

So, this is a hard stage, when you transition into the conscious and competence. And I see this every week when a client joins my coaching program. I'll teach them how to track their calories, and they shift from, “Oh, I don't know why I'm not losing the weight, I hardly eat at all.” 

And you know what they start saying when I have them track their calories? How the hell am I eating all these calories? “Whoa! I go over my calories all the time, I didn't know there was 600 calories in an Acai bowl, I thought it was pretty healthy. I didn't know that there were 500 calories in my yogurt granola parfait, I thought that was pretty healthy too.” 

And the thing is, this is the part where you want to give up, because you make mistakes here, and you realize how much work you have to do to get into a place of competence. And the stress starts to rise, it's hard on your ego, especially if you think about, man, I've been doing this for decades, and I've been listening to the wrong people and doing the wrong things. I know that's what I thought when I first got here, and that's when, by the way, again, I put on my Obi-Wan Kenobi robe and coached them through it, use the force. 

And so, here's the thing, this is when, there is good news here, but you got to make it through this part, and this is the hardest part. This is like, man, this is tough, I don't know if I want to do this. And again, this is where I step in and help my clients, stop from quitting. I hesitate to even share this sometimes, because people are like, oh, what are you going to do for me with your coaching? I already know what you're going to say, it's just about being in a calorie deficit. I'm like, if that's the case, then why aren't you able to get results? There must be something else to it then. 

You're not able to do it consistently because you're overweight, or you're obese, you're not getting results. And so again, this is when I have to coach my clients through it or when other members in my group coaching program step in to help a newbie through the emotional rollercoaster being a beginner in something that they thought they had a lot of knowledge about.  

And again, the mistakes that you make here, you think you're doing it right, some clients do better than others, but some of my clients, they have a lot of challenge. Again, there's a silver lining here, this is when the greatest leaps and skill take place, but you have to manage your emotions so you don't quit, because you'll want to quit.  

And if you manage your emotions and push through the feelings of quitting, you'll make it to the next stage, which is “conscious competence.” Now, conscious competence, this is a good place to be, you develop new skills and you're getting results. The issue though, is that it takes a lot of mental effort to keep it up.  

I've talked about this on previous episodes, the effort of cold cognition. In other words, you have all these habits, where like maybe you are a low carb. I work with a lot of people; they were either coming from keto or low carb. And now they have to use their minds to break patterns of thinking, and patterns of behavior related to their days as a low carb or keto follower. 

Or if they want to follow keto…Actually, I want to tell you this, just a really quick note. When I show my clients that they can eat carbs, most of them choose, and lose fat, most of them choose to do that. But again, it takes energy, it takes mental energy to focus on this, and that's when you feel the drain on your time and energy, you're like, “man, I've got to make some time and energy to focus on this stuff.” And that's why stress management is key, if your stress gets too high, it blocks learning, stress makes you default to your habits. 

There's a great quote that I've said many times, and I'm going to say it again, it comes from Archilochus and what he said was, “You don't rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.” Another way to say that is, you don't handle your challenges like you think you're going to handle them, you're going to default to your habits, that's what happens under stress.  

That's what causes people to struggle with fat loss. Stress hijacks your focus, pulls you away from anything that isn't considered the priority. And if you're not careful, you'll end up quitting before you get to that place of automaticity. 

And this is where it's really important to have some flexibility with your approach, this is where following workouts and hard workouts, long workouts and rigid diets, that's when it leads to quitting, because they just aren't flexible enough to fit into most busy people's lifestyle.  

And this is one of the most important parts of my coaching program. We tailor the program to fit a client's lifestyle no matter what the challenges are. And again, there's great news, because if you see this journey, if you pass through this phase of conscious competence, you'll get to the next phase where you'll spend very little effort to keep it up. 

I don't work hard on my fitness, it's easy for me to stay 15 to 17% body fat. I eat what I want, I do what I want, I work out and everything, but I run on autopilot, is what I'm saying. It's just like driving a car, and talking on the phone, or walking and chewing gum at the same time. It's not something I have to think about. And you can get there too.  

That's what the next stage is all about, and it's called “unconscious competence.” And again, this is the place where you want to be, it's when your habits are on autopilot. It's when you've gone through all the stages of using your cold cognition and mental, using that mental to turn your skills, the principles and the skills into hot cognition, hot cognition is your default, your habits. 

Learning how to drive a car for the first time, cold cognition, driving home for the ten thousandth time, hot cognition, you don't even, you may even hop in your car and you're talking in a conversation, you get lost in the conversation, and you just end up home and it just felt like time disappeared, you just ended up home somehow. You didn't even think how to do it, you just ended up there. 

This is also in terms of health and fitness, where you start to feel weird if you skip a workout, or in my case, in my client's cases, you don't track a meal. It becomes so habitual, there's almost a slight negative emotional experience when you miss one of your habits. And I hesitate to say it that way, because it might come across as sounding kind of bad. I mean, does that sound bad to you? If it does, I blame my communication skills, but it's also because you've never been there, because it feels effortless. 

You just do things without needing discipline or motivation. Like, I'm going to go work out after I finish this, I don't need motivation, it's not discipline, it's just automatic, like it's something I feel compelled to do for some reason, and I wouldn't even name it motivation. I'm not like, “Whoa, I'm so motivated to work out,” because I'm not, I'm lazy, I want the easiest path to achieving my goal.  

And I've just ingrained these habits in myself for such a long, it just feels like, oh, I have to go do that. It's like, I don't know, I took a shower today, I wasn't motivated to do that, I just did it, just running on autopilot. 

But here's the thing: this process that I've delineated for you, it feels harder at first, it's not as easy as saying well, I'll just cut out the carbs, and I don't know how that's going to work in the holidays when I'm on vacation, and seeing the family. But it's hard, but it's easy to do now. What I'm talking about is hard at first, but it leads to you looking and feeling the way you want with minimal effort. 

The hard part is spending the initial months to generate the momentum and pushing past the phases that we talked about, going from that unconscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to conscious competence. That's a bit of a journey folks, and it feels rough, but then it's easy for the rest of your life, all you got to do is spend the six months to a year to get there. And I know, and some of my clients, they do it in four months, but me, I worked with a coach for 6 months. 

And that brings us to lesson three. Mentorship is the fastest path to mastery. The biggest shift in my body didn't come from the live events, the seminars. Now look, I learned a lot, especially about exercise, but when it came to fat loss in particular, the biggest shift in my body came from doing six months of coaching. I hired a coach, we worked together for about six months.  

So even with all the books, like I said, the books, the podcasts, reading the social media post, years of experience has still made the biggest leap with fat loss when I committed to half a year of coaching. 

And one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't work with someone earlier, sooner. And not only did it make the process so much easier, I developed a level of expertise to where I'm traveling to a different city or country every one to three months, and I'm still able to stay in great shape. Let me tell you, the food's very different going from Bangkok, Thailand, to Medellin, Columbia. Or from going from Medellin, Columbia, to Vero Beach, Florida, or from going to Vero Beach, Florida, to actually to Orlando, Florida, that was not too big of a, not such a big shift. 

But when I going to Orlando, Florida to Lisbon, Portugal, and then going to Brazil, that’s very different. But I've been able to stay in shape despite those changes. The food changes, the gyms change, but my results, they stay the same or get better. Now, every once in a while, I'll take a slight step back, but in general, the results stay about the same.  

In fact, I've been traveling a lot this year, I've been all over the place, I've had more international flights than I think I've ever had in one year, and I'm getting lean folks, I'm about to annoy you with talks of veins on my abs again, for those of you who remember that time back in 2020, during the quarantine. 

And it's not just me. My client, Dan, recently told me that joining my group coaching program was the best money he ever spent. He also shared his regret that it took him so long to hire me, he had been listening to the podcast for 5 years, and he told me, “I wish I had done this 15 years ago.” And when he told me that, I nodded my head in agreement, because I felt the same way, why the hell did I wait so long? 

But the truth is that it's a tough transition to go from the mostly American mentality, to “I'll figure out how to do this on my own, I'm smart, I can do this,” to, “who do I need to hire to teach this to me to save time.” So, I can relate if you're skeptical about coaching and coaches, and I've even gotten clients who've worked with other coaches who've done other programs. My client, Glen, had a bad experience with a very well-known coach. My client Ryan had mediocre results in another coaching program and killed it with us. And Glen's had huge breakthroughs with me. 

So, I understand the skepticism, but I'll tell you, if this resonates with you, this mentorship, this idea that it's not that you can't figure it out on your own—and I want to make it as clear, because sometimes I feel like I don't say this the right way. I'm not saying that you're not smart enough to figure it out, I'm saying, you're too busy, and there's too much misinformation for you to go through all the trial and error to figure this out on your own.  

Because if you're working a 40 or 50, or I don't know, crazy, whatever crazy hours you're working, hopefully you're not working crazy hours, and then you're trying to figure this out on your own, after you're taking care of your family, that's a rough situation. So, it's not about you not being smart enough to figure this out, you're probably smarter than me, it's about, this is all I do, and this is something you're dabbling in after you're doing your expertise. And that's why I save my clients so much time, they get results in four months that they didn't even think was possible in a year. 

Dan's an example, he's been with me, I think, in between five or six months, I think. He's lost 50 pounds. Shout out to you Dan, if you're listening. Glen's finally dealing with the deeper reasons why he overeats, Ryan has made he's lost about 30 pounds, I think, I didn't look up the number, so I could be wrong about Ryan. So, if I end up, I will have Ryan do a testimonial, so forgive me if I'm wrong about the number. But he's gotten great results, he looks like a different person. 

And so, if this is something that you feel, you know what? I'm tired of doing this the slow way, I want the fast track to success, and you are also a high performer, a person who takes action. A person who's coachable, you're running a business, you're successful, you're working in a high level in your business, or someone else's business.  

You're a person who knows how to get stuff done, and you don't let excuses hold you back. And you're doing well in your career, you're doing well with your relationships, but this is a way for you to handle your health. 

If that sounds like you, and you want that fast track, hop on a call with me, hop on a 15-minute call with me, and let's talk about your situation, and I can tell you about the program, then we can see if it's a good fit. Now, let me tell you something else, we're doing well right now, this is going to be our best year ever, 2022, and 2023 is going to be even better than 2022. 

Not because of magic, but because I hired a coach to help me figure out the business side, and it's worked. So, why I share that is that we're not looking—this isn't a high-pressure call, this is a call so you and I can talk and see if there's a good fit, to see if you're ready for this type of challenge, and that I have the right skills to help you through it. Just to see if it's a good fit.  

So, if you've been waiting, and you don't want to be like Dan, who's been listening to the podcast for 5 years before he signed up, and then wished he would've done it 15 years ago, which I didn't even have the podcast then. Then go to www.legendarylifeprogram.com/apply.  That's www.legendarylifeprogram.com/apply.  

So, let's do a, a recap here. The big theme of this episode is you need to push through those times where you want to quit, the other theme here is, you need the right approach. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, 10,000 hours, 20,000, 40,000 hours, what matters is you're getting the best principles, and how do you know? because you can get results with them.  

And I don't mean results for a week or a month, or even a year, but something where you feel like, oh, I could do this for the rest of my life. And once you have that, you need to go through those stages of mastery. 

You need to realize you don't know what you don't know, then you start to learn what you don't know. And then you get into that conscious competence phase where you've got to use that mental energy and time to develop the skills, to apply the principles until you get to where it feels automatic, that stage of unconscious competence. And to do that, mentorship is the fastest road.  

And it doesn't matter if you're talking about body transformation, or growing your business, or fixing your relationships, or taking your relationship to the next level, mentorship, coaching, counseling, it's the fastest way there is, provided the person or group you're working with is excellent. 

So, that is it for today, I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'll speak to you on the next one.