Podcast Transcription: The Mindset Shift That Makes Me Crave My Daily Workout... 

Ted Ryce: Have you ever asked yourself, how do I need to think about this fitness journey to make it doable for myself, to make myself consistent, to not get on the wagon, then fall off the wagon? Have you ever asked yourself that question?

Well, I’ll be honest, very few people asked me about mindset. What’s the mindset that I need? People always ask me, what are the best foods eat for energy? Or how do I get fat loss? Or what’s the best workout? That said, recently, someone asked me this question. They said, “What’s the mindset shift one needs to make to motivate himself to get fit?”

So that is what we’re going to be answering today.

What is up, my friend? And welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Ted Ryce coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high performers. And we’re going to cover this because I don’t know if you know this, or think this, or realize this, but how we approach things, our perspective, or really, our core beliefs affect our ability to get fit and to stay fit.

And if you don’t deal with the mindset issues, you will sabotage yourself all the time.

Have you ever gotten on a diet, been doing really well, and then you fell off the diet somehow and you had a case of the fuck-its? And you said, “Ah, fuck this, oh God, oh, I’ve screwed this up.”

If you ever did that, that’s a mindset issue. In other words, whatever the situation is, have you ever let your negative emotions push you off track or stop you from getting back on track? And the answer for most people is yes. In fact, the answer for most people is yes, more than once, a lot more than once. In fact, I have a habit of doing it for years, and in some cases, even decades.

I’ve worked with people who sabotage themselves for decades, and then we fixed it. And so, what is that shift? What is that mindset shift that allows you to fix the problem. And I was thinking about this a lot after I was asked it on Instagram, interestingly enough, by the way, by a fellow fitness coach, fellow online fitness coach from India. Ronak, if you’re listening, shout out to you, man, because it’s such a great question.

And people just don’t ask about this. It’s something usually they don’t even know that they need. After thinking about it, and actually asking a few other people, I’m like, “What do you think is really going on here? What do you struggle with?”

And here’s my best answer: the mindset shift that you need to make, so that this becomes a smoother, consistent journey, so that you’re able to get in shape and stay in shape, no matter what life throws at you - whether it’s a good thing, and you’re on vacation, and you’re out socializing, or whether it’s a bad thing, like “fired from my job, someone died in my family” - the mindset shift you need to make is, “I will always do something no matter what.”

Because what most people have is, I’m either 100% on the wagon, or 100% off the wagon. It’s either chicken and broccoli and quarter cup of brown rice three times a day, egg whites and kale for breakfast, water, and no caloric beverages at all. No desserts, no sugar (“Got to get rid of sugar”). Or it’s just a sugar fast, it’s pizza, ice cream, burgers, fries.

And actually, someone on Facebook even said, because I talk about this a lot, right? If you’ve been listening for a while, you’ve heard me talk about the “all or nothing” mindset. And by the way, it’s not something I made up, not something I came up with. In fact, I used to be guilty of it.

Let’s talk about that a little bit. I was super strict when I was in my 20s—with some things, at least.

So, in my 20s, got very into eating organic food, got very into working out all the time. I was in the fitness business—started in the fitness business at 22. I wouldn’t even go out to eat at a restaurant unless it had organic food. And that was way before there was the availability of organic food the way we have it now. And I also eat a very what came to be known as a paleo style lifestyle.

I ordered meat from farmers, which I think is cool. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, the meat that I got in many cases was quite good, quite tasty, for hamburgers and steaks. I wouldn’t buy even from like—it wasn’t called Whole Foods then, it was called Wild Oats, is what we had. Very similar to Whole Foods until they bought them. But I used to do that, I used to live that way.

And then I would like, on the weekends, I would binge drink, I would binge eat—not every weekend, but it was frequent. So, it’s either on or off, on or off, on or off. And I took it to extremes on both sides. I didn’t just drink, I got drunk. I didn’t just smoke weed, I smoked a lot of weed. I didn’t just pop one MDMA pill, I kept the party going.

And then when I was working out, I didn’t just work out, I worked out for hours. I didn’t just eat healthy, I eat just organic and whole Foods and as “clean” as possible.

I was also an emotional mess. The most people who have—I don’t tell people this, but I’ll tell you, I’ll share it with you. I’ll share this insight with you. People who have the “all or nothing” mindset are struggling emotionally.

It’s not even something I would even argue with. I’m not arguing with you, I’m having a conversation with you. I’m telling you how it is. And I’m not telling you to be a jerk or to rub it in your face, or to say something bad about you, if you happen to be in this “all or nothing” mindset. I’m saying it with love. I’m saying it so you get awareness.

I’m saying it because someone’s got to tell you, because nobody told me, “Hey, man, listen, what you’re doing is fucked up. You say you’re all strict and eating organic food, but then you run yourself—you stay up all night on the weekends—and this my case, right? You stay up all nights on the weekends doing drugs, how is that healthy? That’s not a balance, you’re extreme, you extreme to the exercise and nutrition side, but then you’re popping street drugs, in the case of MDMA, or molly or ecstasy, whatever you want to call it. And I was a mess.

And so maybe, hopefully, you’re not doing street drugs and up in the Miami night scene every weekend. But if you’re alternating from really strict dieting, really hard workouts, really almost punishing yourself with it, and then falling off track with that and going to the other side, then feeling guilty. That’s an emotional problem. That’s not necessarily an education problem. It’s an emotional problem.

Partly in education, I mean, I guess it depends on the person. I’ve worked with high performers who have this, and they’re not emotional messes. They’re running eight figures, nine figure companies sometimes. You can’t be a total emotional mess and run a successful company. I mean, maybe it’s possible. I’m not the expert in that, certainly. But the reality is this: it’s an emotional issue.

And so, what we need to shift over to is: “I will always do something, no matter what.” “I don’t have time.” “Okay, but you really have zero time? Do you have five minutes? Do you have 10 minutes? Can you drop down and do a set of push ups until you’re close to failure?” “Oh, but that doesn’t do anything. That’s not even worth doing?” “Oh, hell yes, it is. Oh, hell yes, it is.”

In fact, that’s one of the shifts that if you make, you can start to enjoy more consistent results, instead of riding that roller coaster. And the better able you’re...I can’t even state this properly. Forgive my lack of English-speaking skill. I don’t know how to say that either.

Anyway, the point is this, the more you can approach your situation with more flexibility, is the sign of a person who is—well, who has good emotional regulation, let’s say.

And I can do this now. But I wasn’t able to do it before. I was really extreme. And so, some days, you know, like the other day, I’ll tell you, I had carrot cake and a cappuccino for breakfast. Because I wanted to, not because it was healthy, not because I’m trying to show off to you. If you’ve been listening for a while, you know I’ve had a crazy life. I’ve been through a lot of what people would call trauma or tough situations.

And so, maybe I don’t have the healthiest lifestyle what you could say, but I’ll tell you—or make the healthiest choices, right? There is no world that would—nobody who would say like, “Well, what do you think about a piece of carrot cake for breakfast, is not a healthy choice?” But what I would tell you is I’m in a pretty good emotional state right now. I’m also getting leaner.

And so, I’m getting leaner. And we do those things, and teach my clients to do those things because I come at this coaching process or behaviour change process from a place of love and acceptance. Not trying to tell people, “Oh, how did you do that? You’re such a disgusting...” Where does that harsh criticism come from? I mean, we wouldn’t tell our kids that, we wouldn’t tell the people that we love that. But yet, we tell ourselves that.

And I certainly don’t do that to my clients. I’m just like, “Hey, man, we’ll make it work. You know, hey, make it work.”

So, you have carrot cake for breakfast. Or one of my clients went out and went to some steak house and had like some... I forget the name of the wagyu steak, but it’s like, super marble, just basically a piece of fat, with a little bit of muscle meat in there, but it’s like a piece of fat, right? Real buttery steak, I guess. That kind of sounds gross to me. But hey, he went out and did that, and he had a few drinks.

And why do we take this approach? Because it seems like some of us, we have this—and I used to be this way too—we have this: “Well, we need to be purists. We need to be pure and clean, not dirty and drinking alcohol and eating the sugar and the carrot cake, right? We’ve got to be pure and clean.”

But what happens with these pure and clean folks or the period clean approach, we end up not being able to do it, not being able to stick with it. And people repeat this cycle for years, like I said, at the beginning, or decades. It just doesn’t fucking work. And beating ourselves up doesn’t even help.

I mean, maybe for some of us, we beat ourselves up, we get back on track, but for the most part, what happens is we beat ourselves up and we’re like, “Yeah, we’re a real piece of slime, real scumbags. We went off and ate some pizza, had chocolate cake, real scumbag. Like, I just worked so hard, and I just do it all down the drain. Real scumbag, you know?”

And people haven’t said that language. I’ve got to ask some of my clients like, what do you call yourself when you do that? Probably it’s worse. Probably it’s like piece of shit, or fat fuck, right? It’s probably worse. I need to ask my clients, what are the words some of the words you’ve called yourself? But if you’re using that language with yourself, that’s a red flag that what you’re doing is not the right approach.

And this isn’t about like, you know, we’ve got to be like positive and self-love. Although I think that’s important. Even if you’re not into that stuff, it just doesn’t work. And so, what does work is like, hey, listen, when you have the carrot cake for breakfast, or the wagyu steak, whatever else you end up having for dinner at the steak house, just get back to what you were doing before.

Don’t create any drama. Don’t call yourself terrible names, just get back on track, because it really doesn’t matter that much. I mean, it’s so strange, right?

A day of healthy eating isn’t going to move the needle much with fat loss or your health. And conversely, a day of indulgence isn’t going to move the needle much in terms of fat gain or worsening your health. It really, almost literally does not matter at all.

And it’s all the psychological drama that happens after we indulge, that is really the thoughts that we have initiate these negative feelings, which influences our behaviour. And that’s what throws us off track. So how do we never get into that trap at all? That’s the question. That’s what I work on my clients with. And if you don’t get this right, you’re going to be stuck here. You’re going to be calling yourself the names. You’re going to be whipping yourself and cat o’ nine tails. I don’t know.

And it’s not going to work, most importantly. We just don’t see it work. Maybe for some people, some really, you know, maybe just they don’t have a sweet tooth, but for most part, we just don’t see it work. And if it does work for you, and you’re listening this, you’re not who we’re talking about, okay, keep doing what works for you. I’m not trying to tell you that what you’re doing isn’t working, especially when it’s working.

And when I say it’s working, I don’t mean that, oh, it works when I do it, but then it’s really hard to keep doing it and so then it doesn’t work when I don’t, you know, and this keeps happening again. That’s not effective. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the Yo-Yo. Yo-yoing is not effective. But if you are able to keep it up for years and years and years and years and years for decades, let’s say, then cool.

But if you’re a person who’s trying this approach and it’s not working, and you’re beating yourself up and falling off the wagon, start committing to always doing something with exercise.

If you have 90 minutes, great, go bang on that 90-minute workout. But if you only have five minutes...One of my clients right now, we’re doing two one-hour workouts over the weekend. And then I have him doing five-minute workouts during the week, four- or five-minute workouts during the week.

And we make that work along with the nutrition strategies. And with one of my best clients, Jeff, the guy made a tremendous transformation. The guy is rip now. He just walks around ripped. He was saying, “I’m just never off track is never off track. I’m never off track. When I go and indulge, it’s something I enjoy, and then I get back on track and I’m still lean, I’m still healthy,” and the same thing for me.

So, Jeff and me, that’s what I try to coach my clients to, Jeff’s results, and it works. And you can coach yourself on this. You should be right now coaching yourself on this. No need to work with me. You should you be doing this with yourself.

If you find yourself saying, oh, I don’t have the time. Well, okay, do you really not have the time or you do not have an hour?

Because if you don’t have an hour, what do you have? Do you have 30 minutes? Do you have 15 minutes? Do you have 10 minutes? And if you find yourself saying, “Oh, but I don’t feel like that’s really worth doing,” then you’re wrong. You’re a non-expert trying to give an expert answer and you’re wrong, because anything’s better than nothing. So, if you find yourself doing those things, catch yourself and correct yourself.

I want to talk about habits in a second. But before we talk about habits, let’s talk about the nutrition. And when you’re off and eating the things you “shouldn’t be eating,” enjoy that and then get back on track, say, “Well, that was great, time to get back on track.” And when you can do those things and get results and be lean, then that is winning, my friends. That is healthy.

Because the truth about a lot of people who look like they’re in very great shape—or perhaps someone listening right now, the truth is there are a lot of people who are like me. I was really lean in my 20s I had abs almost all the time. There was a point where they were starting to disappear a little bit because all the alcohol I was drinking, but I had abs all the time. But I was an emotional mess, right? And people came to me and trained with, worked with me, because of the way I looked, but I was a total, total emotional mess.

So, when you when you can start to shift your behaviours and there’s not that drama that happens, that is winning. This is a non-scale win that isn’t talked about enough.

So, let’s shift a little bit, let’s talk about habits. It’s like, “Yeah, but Ted, I have a habit of doing this. I have a habit of talking really negative to myself every time I get off track with my nutrition. It’s like, how do I get past that.”

And the way to get past it is to literally work through it. Meaning, you’ve got to catch yourself and when you find yourself either thinking, saying or acting in that way, you need to catch yourself and right your behaviour— not easy to do. Why do you think I have a job as a coach? That’s the type of shifts I create for my clients.

Some people don’t need me, they probably need a therapist. You might be one of them. I don’t know, worth exploring. Some people come to this show and they’re looking for fitness advice, but really, you should be working with a mental health professional. Again, I don’t know you, I don’t know your situation, but that’s something to consider.

Some people’s weight problems or fitness problems aren’t related to weight or fitness or nutrition at all. It’s related to what I’ve talked about in the past, where it’s like these negative emotions create negative behaviours, negative thoughts create negative emotions, create negative behaviours, which create more negative thoughts, which create more negative behaviours, and so on.

You get trapped in a cycle. And then just how it’s showing up is overeating or maybe overeating and overdrinking and the weight is a side effect of that. But it’s really this struggling with these negative emotions that is the root problem. So how do we bust a habit?

Well, let’s talk a little bit more about this, then I want to wrap up. What is the habit anyway? Any idea? There could be a lot of these answers to this question. But the way I like to think about it, is that a habit is a group of neural connections in your brain. Oh, where are we going with this, Ted, right? Stay with me. It’s a group of neural connections in your brain.

It’s like, imagine trying—what is speaking English? It’s a group of neural connections in your brain. You have these connections, you understand what the word, you’re listening to me speak right now, the words go into your ears, creates a signal that goes down the nerve—I forget the name of the nerve—from the ear into your brain. And the brain interprets the vibrations of the air, and you hear words, and then your brain makes meaning of them based on what you were taught, right? That’s a habit, a skill.

And so, you know, when you’re trying to learn a different language—like I have a habit of thinking of things in English and translating to Spanish before I speak them when I’m here in Mexico. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’m like, thinking of it in Portuguese and getting really confused. But just to keep the example simple here, you know, it’s a habit.

So how do you break that habit? Well, you’ve got to work through it. It’s training. You can’t read a book, you can’t listen to this podcast. You have to do the work, is what I’m trying to say here. That’s how you...I don’t think I did such a great job with that. Forgive me if that didn’t make that much sense.

But I’ll try to say it different way. Smoking is a habit. How do you break that habit? Because it’s really strong in people, if you haven’t noticed, when it takes four to five times for a smoker to finally quit for good, four to five times?

And if you’re a smoker, I mean, you’re a social pariah, at least in Miami and most major cities in the United States. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re a smoker? Disgusting. How can you do that to yourself? Go…” you know?

So anyway, the point is this: there’s a lot of social pressure to not be a smoker, and it still takes them four to five times to quit. Compare that to obesity, how socially acceptable is it to be obese?

Well, 70% of the population is overweight or obese, that should tell you everything you need to know. And that’s with BMI, Body Mass Index, we’re not even talking about the people, the other 30% who aren’t overweight or obese, but their muscle mass and their body fat percentage is really high, and their muscle mass percentage is really low. Their lean body mass is really low.

So anyway, what I’m trying to say is it’s very socially acceptable. So, the point is, is going to take a lot of—it may take more times than four or five to nail this. And you can’t listen to a podcast, you can’t read a book. You might be able to. It might shift you in the right direction. I shouldn’t say that. But for most people, if you’ve been doing those things, and it hasn’t helped you break the cycle yet, you need the deeper work.

So again, the mindset that we’re talking about here is moving from one where you’re on the wagon, off the wagon. “Oh, I’m on the wagon again, but it’s New Year’s, got to get in shape. Oh, summer time’s coming around, back on the wagon, got to look good for summer. Oh, someone’s getting married. Got to look good for that wedding. Oh, yeah, nothing’s going on right now busy at work. Things are stressful, driving the kids around, whatever. I’m off the wagon.”

Now shift from that to always doing something. And the less negative emotions that you experience while you’re making that change, or getting yourself to do something, the more emotionally healthy, that you can say that you are, and the more healthy physically and fit physically, you’re going to be as well.

So that’s where I’m going to wrap up, folks. It was kind of a tricky question to answer, but I would ask you what is the one thing that you can take away from today’s episode to use in your life?

What’s something that you can use to move the needle? That’s what I want you to focus on.

Love your lots. Have an amazing weekend, and speak to you on Monday.