Ep 76 of The Hormone Helper Podcast: A convo with my clients: no more over exercising or using food to cope

Episode 76 of The Hormone Helper Podcast: A convo with my clients: no more over exercising or using food to cope
 
Summary
In this episode, Andrew Costa discusses the types of conversations he has with clients in his coaching program and what coaching and healthy action actually look like. He emphasizes that success in health and fitness stems from the mental aspect and then manifests in the physical. He shares recent examples of conversations with clients about using food as a coping mechanism, activity as a form of stress relief taken too far, and selective blindness leading to fear of failure. He also mentions his intention to provide more content on building a healthy business.

Takeaways

• Success in health and fitness starts with the mental aspect and then manifests in the physical.
• Using food as a coping mechanism and activity as a form of stress relief can hinder progress.
• Selective blindness and fear of failure can prevent taking action.
• Building a healthy business is important for overall success.

Chapters
00:00
Approaching Health and Fitness on a Small Level
03:20
Addressing Obstacles with Life and Mental Aspect
06:11
Using Food as a Coping Mechanism
07:05
Activity as a Form of Stress Relief
08:30
Selective Blindness and Fear of Failure
35:13
Building a Healthy Business

Transcript

0:40

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to share with you guys and gals the types of conversations that I have my day to day in our vantage group coaching program, as well as what coaching and healthy action actually looks like when it comes to working on your health and your fitness. Most people, they approach health and fitness on a very small level where you keep looking back at what you did in the past. You're looking at past diets, you're looking at past training routines. maybe even past work schedules. And you're looking at that past to really find what worked for you then, but then you find that it's taking you where you don't want to be, which is in a place that's not, of course, bringing you results. And this is why I want to talk about our clients and talk about the types of conversations that I have every single day. Most people think that when they're working with a coach, coaching is all about tools. It's all about the meal plan when working with a health coach. It's all about, the training routine. It's all about the mobility program. And yes, there's always tools that are involved in coaching, whether it's coaching for business, whether it's coaching for leadership, coaching on health, there's going to be an abundance of tools and you're probably not going to know or recognize every single thing that you can do with your health or know every tool that exists for health out there. Learning about tools is really important, but 90 % of the conversations that I'm having with our clients are on a level significantly higher than just tools and just the how. And for that, I mean, in terms of being able to achieve and acquire true success, success stems from the mental and then it arrives in the physical. So as an example, every single time we're hopping on our group coaching calls or I'm speaking people one -on -one via Slack, When we're having conversations, a lot of the times they know the tools already. Once someone learns how to eat right for their body type and they understand what foods they need to be intaking, it's relatively easy to like go to the grocery store, follow the process, look at the recipes and you're like, cool, I've got my plan and I've put it into my routine. Now there's a difference between receiving a plan, following a plan or receiving a plan. and you attempt to follow the plan, but life continues to throw obstacles in your way. And whether it's obstacles from yourself or obstacles from life, the reality is you have to address both in two different ways because there are going to be two totally different challenges that arrive with both. Obstacles with life tend to be work schedules, client boundaries, whether it's even looking at routine management. looking at boundaries that you're setting with clients, boundaries that you're setting with relationships, boundaries that you're setting for yourself, because a lot of people who are self -employed or business owners don't set boundaries. And those types of things show up in terms of physical time, capacity, energy, which is really where you almost have to like sacrifice something or say no to one thing. So you can say yes to whatever you're physically trying to achieve. with your health. But the second piece is the mental aspect where a lot of times in life, we are our own blockers, where we get to this point where we compartmentalize too much. We start overthinking what it's going to take for us to be successful. You get very, very focused on the how. And in looking at the how, you not only forget the why, but you really lose the ability to do everything at the same time. So in thinking too small, we can actually only focus on one thing at a time, as opposed to looking at the bigger picture, which the bigger picture in terms of health is staying healthy long -term. It's not being on medication. It's about having a stable metabolism. It's about being able to do anything you can physically want to do. It's about having a ton of energy. It's not necessarily about things like, I want to be exactly 165 pounds or I want to be able to fit into this size shirt. Because when you're looking at those small, small goals and you're thinking too small, you actually start focusing on really, really tiny things that actually don't end up moving the needle forward. Like you're like, Oh, I'm going to change just my breakfast for two weeks instead of literally changing your whole nutrition and doing it in one shot. Or you're like, This week, I'm just going to, for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, go to bed at nine, and I'm gonna make changes like that. In thinking too small, you actually put a ceiling and you limit yourself, where then you can't go above whatever you've set, because that's where your head space is. That's where your compartment is focused on. When we compartmentalize, we focus too much on a specific result that... We are not understanding and getting in agreement with the entire process of what health and fitness is. So the big aspect of this, and I'm gonna say it again, success stems from the mental, your thoughts, the things that you're thinking about, and then it arrives in the physical. The physical, the acts of doing, the tools that you're gonna use in health and fitness, the... changing up your food, changing up of activity, your habits and your routines. That stuff is just physical stuff that you do and it's like 10 % of this process. So now here enters in kind of the conversations I experience every single day with clients. I wanted to share this with you because every single time I talk to somebody, a lot of the physical connects mentally and the reason why they become the blocker for themselves is because, they can't pass the mental barrier to then do the physical action, to do the work, do it from a place of motivation, do it from a place of aspiration, of fulfillment, of alignment, instead of just struggling to do random things to get a random result. So from the mental perspective, I'm gonna share with you kind of some examples from this week that we've talked about with clients because... you will be able to see that like food is connected to how you feel and activity is connected to how you feel. There's a lot of stuff that goes on. So first kind of convo that I want to share was earlier this week on, on Tuesday, where I had a client who was talking about using food as a coping mechanism for stress and as a way to reward himself. So it's no surprise to everyone. If you want to lose weight or you want to have a stable weight, you're it. The majority of your, your challenge or battle is going to be with food, portion sizing, right nutrients, right meal times and getting the right food in. That's it. It's, it's very, very simple, but that's kind of the challenge right there. So this client effectively, what had happened is, is we had changed all of his food. He had his plan set. He was super pumped, fired up and ready to go. He goes, he picks up all the food. Everything's fine. His wife is on board too. She starts helping him cook the stuff. Everything's great. So he's got all these prep meals and then through the week he's like, listen, something keeps happening. I'm eating the prep meals, but I'm eating other stuff. I'm finding I'm eating at random times. I'm finding I'm eating late at night. And he's like, this, this is something that I guess I've never noticed, but because I've changed up the way that I've eaten, it's shown me another problem that's existed. And he's like, and I tried to do all of the physical. I tried to change up my meal times. I tried to change up when I worked out, because maybe that was causing the hunger. I tried to shift my work schedule because maybe it was due to work. And although he did all of that stuff and he just got stuck in the act of doing, he was still finding that food kept manifesting over and over again. So when we had our conversation, one of the first things that I said was, Well, if you can take a look back into your past, when it comes to your relationship with food, and it's a strange word, but it is a real word, what is your relationship with food like? I said, has food always been something that's been a part of your life outside of just eating? And he shared with me, he was like, you know what? Food was a way that our family celebrated things. We always had food involved with... some type of a success, a birthday party, an event, even sharing at home. And then he had shared that his parents actually came from a place where they didn't have a lot of food. So naturally for their kids, they want to give an abundance of food. And in recognizing and talking about this, the conversation then comes with, well, are you using food for something than just eating? Are you using it to cope with stress? Are you using it? as a form to rest or relax. So to take a break from work, you take some time to eat. Are you using it as a reward to celebrate something? So when asking these questions, a real emotion came up, a real feeling came up, and the feeling was the feeling of reward. When he talked about the feeling of reward, there was something there. So I asked a very important and powerful question. something that has nothing to do with nutrition whatsoever, is do you celebrate yourself every single day? Like you run a very successful business, you work very hard, do you celebrate everything that you do because of all the work that you are putting in? And his answer was no, I've never celebrated myself in my life. So if he is not getting the acknowledgement, the validation, the celebration and I get it because sometimes running a business when it's just you when you're the visionary when you're steering the ship there's sometimes periods where there is nobody to celebrate you where there's no one to say like oh good job in solving that problem like sure clients and colleagues and stuff will say hey I appreciate your help stuff like that but a large part of entrepreneurship is you having to celebrate yourself because it's something you did that no one else sees. So we started a huge dialogue in a conversation on gratitude gratitude being grateful for things being celebrated and Celebrating himself just like he celebrates other people So the big question then came into well, how does this play with food? Well when it comes to food Food is not just a digestive mechanism. There's also a hormonal mechanism that comes into when you absorb food. So when I eat, a part of the signal of fullness is dopamine, and dopamine makes me feel good. So if I'm searching for a feel -good feeling, and I eat something and I get a feel -good feeling, the body's probably gonna want me to eat more, more frequently, more food, more often, because that's what makes me feel good. If I don't have other things in my life that... get me excited, if there's nothing else that increases my level of dopamine, then naturally your body's gonna ask for more food. And it doesn't really care about what the food is. You could celebrate by eating an orange, or you could celebrate by eating a bag of Doritos, the act of eating and feeling full is what's gonna trigger dopamine and the feeling of happiness and success. And that's when he came to that realization, holy crap, the reality is, is, This is a mean thing. And he said, you know, I've taken the time as I was explaining this to him. He's like, I can literally pull five, six, seven different things in the past two weeks where it was a reward, where I had a tough conversation with a client that I worked through. And then I immediately went and I grabbed a snack just because, or at the end of a long day, I said, I'm going to go here and pick something up because it's a treat. and all of his verbiage reflected reward. I wanted to be celebrated. I wanted a treat. I felt like I deserved. This was something really hard, so it gave me release. It was good to feel that way after I ate. So of course, when it comes to a food perspective, he had all the right tools. He had a nutrition protocol. He had a plan that was in place. He had a process in which he could follow. And it's not that the tool was broken. He wasn't doing anything wrong with food. But in terms of where his head space was, there was a subconscious mechanism. There was a work at play behind the scenes that prevented him from staying on track. If we had never had that conversation, he could have gone through a million different nutrition programs, processes, and tools and still would have never changed to help him with his weight loss. It would have been the same. So in looking at the why and the gratitude, the way that we changed that for him was we literally worked on being grateful every single day. I said, every day you're going to send me an email with things that you're grateful for. And I also want you to start the day saying this and end the day saying this. And we put this in place for a week and it was about a week and a half in where he goes, you know, it's crazy. I haven't picked up a single snack. And it's something that is not tied to food, but in fact is tied to food. It's something that's so direct and so, you know, uh, congruent with in making that decision and in being grateful every single day, not only was he happier, but he got the dopamine. that he was searching for, which really was validation. So from a food perspective, tools, headspace, you need both. Now, another conversation that I had this week was talking to a client about activity. So she's the type of person who does activity. This client, totally different client, um, was looking at activity as a, like she, a first did activity. She loves running and running was great for her. So she did the runs, runs were great. Went from four times a week to five times a week, to six times a week, to two hours a day. And then she started running about three hours a day. And guess what? The activity actually stopped helping her. She started to feel like crap. She started to feel super fatigued. She wasn't recovering. Her legs were incredibly sore. So when we were looking at the activity in the process, the first thing that I, I was looking at was the activity. had her tone down when she started to work with us a few weeks ago was the activity piece. I said, listen, there is such a thing as over training. It's not good for your body. It's actually counterintuitive to the goals that you're setting. So we're going to have you do less. The tool, very simple, change up her routine into a strength training routine, make sure that she's only doing three times a week to start so she can get a recovery in and start to feel better. She lasted about a week. And then was like, Andrew, I can't do this. I got to train five days a week. So I said, okay, let's unpack this. Why do you feel that you need to train five times a week? She goes, well, I feel like doing more is better. And I said, okay, well, there are aspects in what you do for your career that you know that there's a point in which you can't keep doing more. You just have to be consistent. She goes a hundred percent. So I was like, okay, so is it that doing more is better or is it something else? Because a lot of times when people, especially people who do a ton of activity, most people do activity either because it makes them feel good at the beginning or because it relieves stress. And then this is where she brought up the second piece where it was like, well, I feel like I'm driving myself crazy because I don't have anything else. but the activity. She was using activity to release stress. And in doing so, that works temporarily until there comes to a point where you can't keep exercising. You can't exercise three hours a day. So every time she was stressed, she would use activity because she had nothing else. She had no hobbies. She had no other, she's very, very career focused. So, Friends group is very tight, so it's not like you can hang out with friends every single day. So in making that a realization, I then asked a very realistic question, a question in which I would ask every single person listening here. What is your way of relieving stress? If you didn't have activity, literally starting tomorrow, how would you relieve stress? What would you do? to cool your heels, to get back your time, to fill your cup. And her answer was, I don't have anything right now. So then the focus became over the next week, not how do we get in more activity because she's already doing activity. The focus became what are some things that we can put into your routine that fill your cup, that make you excited? Do you like to paint? Let's get you painting. Do you want to go for a couple of coffee dates with friends? Let's plug that in. Let's rearrange your schedule to give you time to fill your cup up. Maybe it's meditation. How about taking baths? Something other than activity. Because any type of thing that you're using to cope, stress specifically, many people have tons of different coping mechanisms for stress. Some people stress eat. Some people over exercise. Other people tend to sleep a lot. Some people try to distract themselves where they have a hard time getting stuff done in their day because they're always jumping from task to task. In doing that, you don't actually deal with the stress. You're just almost stepping around it long enough for you to deal with just a little bit more. So the focus then became, how do we relieve the stress? and then we took a look at her routine, the clients that you're working with, the way that you have your day scheduled, what is stressful about it? Are there things in your routine that we can actually start to nail down and that we can start to minimize the stress? So one of the things that she said was she felt like her mornings were too compressed, that she was starting right out the gate at 6 a .m. and that's not for everybody. So I said, well, why don't we move your activity to first thing in the morning, give yourself a half an hour opening for you to kind of sit refreshed, sit and be focused, be present, maybe do some journaling. And she left herself a half an hour buffer. She thought that by starting later in the day that she wouldn't get the stuff done, but in starting at seven 30, she got all the stuff done. Not only did she get all the stuff done, but she wasn't starting off the day being super stressed. So. When you don't start off stressed, you build up less stress, which means at the end of the day, she didn't have that urge to go try to vent, to go try to use activity for something else. And then the best part about that is when you can be present in the moment, when you can actually focus on the tasks that you're doing, then it's very easy for you to have and set times for yourself, for you to be present with your friends. for you to do painting and not feel guilty about other stuff. So we work less on the activity and she's been doing the three days a week and seeing 10 pounds down already is really great, but the most important thing is she has her energy back. She's not exhausted anymore because the exhaustion came from the act of overdoing and trying to over cope with stress. A conversation like that, is at a level in which two things happens. Okay. One, you, you have to take yourself out of the place with, with where you are. We're always looking right in that center moment. We always have almost like our visor head down. We're only looking at the single thing. And sometimes we have to lift our head and we got to come up for air and breathe. We have to. Breathe and observe and be aware and be conscious of why we're feeling these things and where we are in this moment. Her being open to that process and saying, you know what, I've never considered that it's actually not activity that's dealing with my stress, that maybe it's just a poor coping mechanism and we found a solution for it. So now, now that her energy is back, She can do the exercise three to four times a week, not over train, feel really great, but also deal with the real issue with stress. The whole reason why she started the running in the process. And here's the ironic thing about running. If you are a chronic runner and you run to relieve stress, what are you running from? That is a huge, huge question that you should ask yourself. And I say that because I, used to be that guy. I would run 10k four to five times a week. I'd run until my knees literally felt like they were going to explode and I was trying to outrun my problems instead of actually looking at them and saying to myself why am I feeling this way? Because you should do activity because it's healthy because it makes you feel good. Whenever it starts to feel bad, whenever it doesn't you don't get that same feeling. Again, going back to this kind of first conversation of that hit of dopamine, you lose the dopamine on it. And that's when it starts to feel worse. I'll share with you one more conversation because this is really, really important when it comes to the habits and the routines. There's a gentleman that's been in our vantage program for, I think it's three, I think like three and a half months now. One of the biggest reasons why he joined. was accountability. As someone who reads every single book, who's always looking at leadership stuff, he's always reading the how, he knows 99 % of the how. Very smart when it comes to food, very smart when it comes to activity. He understands and picks up things very quickly. Okay, this is why we have these types of foods in the routine. This is why we're eating at these times. Very, very clear on that. But yet, One of the things that always happened was he would set all of his workouts into his routine. He'd set all of his nutrition in. He'd set his meal prep times and he would spend an hour to an hour and a half just like he would with his business. He would block every single thing that was going to happen and the activity, the meal prep, the eating times, that shit just never happened. It, there was always life always found a way. to like move that thing or always go over the time or always have him skip a meal. And at this point, it has nothing to do with any of those things, but he was asking himself a very important question. He became self -aware first, which is why he reached out to us for the group coaching program is he said to himself, why is it that in this place right now, why is it that I keep focusing on the how, but the how is never, the actual action never happens. I never actually do the thing. I set an intention and it never actually manifests into reality. I want a goal. I know I want to be able to lose the weight. I know I want to have a steadier metabolism and he wanted it bad, but he was like, if I want it bad, how come it just never happens? So having the conversations every single week, week over week in our group coaching calls, we're sharing what worked, what didn't, and you're talking and you're learning from other people who are experiencing the same challenge. But also we're going through the mindset, the habit shift, and we look at something that I call selective blindness. And I really should do a podcast episode on this. And when I said selective blindness, he was like, holy shit, that's me. Sometimes we can want something really bad, but have such a fear to it that whenever that actual thing tries to manifest, we become blind to the next step because sometimes we're scared of going there. A lot of the times we know, and I'll simplify this, we know the next step that we have to take. You know it already. Whatever you are avoiding in your life, you can look at it and you can say, if I'm struggling with something in my health, I know what the next step is. Maybe the next step is talking to a doctor, reaching out to a coach, getting your blood work done. Maybe you've had a requisition sitting on your counter for 15 years. Whatever it is, you already know the next action. But the selective blindness is the fear of what happens afterwards. Sometimes we want to see the whole destination. The whole journey because we want a hundred percent guarantee that what we're going to do, what the next step is, is going to work a hundred percent. So when talking about selective blindness is we spend a lot of time in the planning stage and a lot of entrepreneurs are really guilty for this too. Not just people who are working on their health. They spend a lot of time in the planning stage, thinking, planning, thinking, planning. And because they're afraid of failing, When it comes to act, they start becoming blind to the steps. Oh, what is the next thing that I have to do? What was my plan again? Oh, I have to rewrite it. It doesn't work. And they become so obsessed with focusing on selective things that they're becoming blind to what's in front of them, which is you already know the next step. You don't need to know the rest of the full how, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but you just need to actually do the thing and do it at a very, very small level. Do one thing at a time. And when you set an intention, you do it. So the gentleman, he had heard this and he was like, Holy shit, I've been selectively blind effectively the past four to five years of my life. And I said, Okay, now that you've realized selective blindness, what is it that you're not willing to look at? Because that's what selective blindness is. So the conversation became not about what are the types of foods we eat, what time do I go and put my meal prep? Because truthfully, none of that mattered in that moment, but what was he being blind to? And a lot of the aspect was, He was like, look, I've tried like 15, 16 diets at this point. I don't want to fail again. I don't want to do this work and feel at the end that failure might be looming around the corner. And I said, but what if there was success? What if there was success looming around the corner and you being selectively blind was you having the solution in front of your face, you having the ability to pull the cord on the light to illuminate your room. And yet you just keep searching for every other light source, but the cord that you know is in front of you. The act of not seeing because failure might exist was a matter of shifting his mind to say, where does success lie? What is the potential of success? What does success look like to you? How do you envision that success to be? And in looking at that, I said, If you truly want this success, would you be willing to do just this one thing literally right after the call? So he made a commitment. The commitment to, all right, I'm gonna take this next action step and I'm gonna do it. And took him, I think it was like two weeks, but it started slow. He made the commitment and he was like, food, I'm gonna start on food first. That was our agreement. our agreement that we made together and the accountability that he set on the call. That's another great thing. And the reason why the group coaching program is so powerful is when we share with everyone, it happens because you've told everyone what your intentions are. You shared everyone, your collective dream, your vision. And that's when he was like, it's happening. Cause I already told you it was going to happen. Not only would you feel kind of stupid if it didn't. but also you want it to happen. You want to be able to succeed with the commitment that you made in the group. And so all of the sudden he kept the same routine. He had the same meal times. He had the same workout times in his schedule, but I kept getting messages like, Hey, remember how I said that I was going to work out at seven. It happened. Hey, remember how I said every Thursday was going to be my meal prep day. Well, it actually happened. We focus nothing on the tool because tools are important when either the how is not working or you need to know something in order for that how to manifest. This is why action is still important, right? We still need to row the boat, so to speak. We can't just let it like, you know, row itself. We have to move on things. So if you don't know how to do the movement, just like activity, if you've never done an exercise before, boom, we teach you form, we teach you function, we show you the movement pattern, we get you to do it. Now you know how to do it. So at this point, the tool gets to a certain point and then nothing changes with the tool. This is why, and a lot of coaches will do this though, the trick in thinking it's the special diet, it's the special activity. I have a special process. That's not true. I'm sure nutrition will be nutrition everywhere. The reality is, is when we look at why is it that we're not doing those things, it comes down to that disconnect, the disconnect where you become the block. The majority of the reason why people have challenges with their health and people have challenges with their business is because there was a block within you. not within what you're doing. The moment you recognize the block, you can move it out of the way. And that's when everything falls into place. You're like, you know what? I'm doing the same things, but this time I'm actually seeing a result. I'm seeing change. I'm seeing things that are starting to shift within my life. So I share this with you guys because... Our group coaching program is literally so much and this is the, and it's called the Vantage program for a reason. Vantage is viewpoint. Besides the fact that it's virtual accountability, nutrition training, accelerating growth through education, purposeful naming, it's also Vantage, which means viewpoint. Looking at it through a different lens, considering something different, stepping into a different mindset and head space for you to go, holy crap. This is the direction. This is what I have to do and being confident with what you're doing every single day. So I hope in sharing some of these conversations, not only did you learn some of the things that I shared with them, not using food as a coping mechanism, not using exercise to deal with stress because that's another way of tackling it. Instead of trying to redo your routines all of the time, start looking at, why your current routine is never happening. Those things are very real and they go beyond just nutrition, just training and just accountability. It's really about making sure that each and every step of the way your success is leading head first. Mentally, you are there. So then physically it shows up for you, shows up in your actions. shows up in connections, shows up in the tools that you're learning, so you can start to accomplish this. So that's what I wanted to share on today's podcast. And another thing as well too, and I'm sure you guys and gals have noticed this, in speaking about the podcast, I've worked with so many people. At this point, I've had the pleasure of like, I think it's close to 4 ,200 people over the span of these past, well, like, I think it's eight years at this point, which is wild. The past two years, 95 % of everyone that I've worked with is either self -employed or they're business owners. And it's not that being a person who has a career works for someone else, like you can't be healthy or you can't listen to this podcast, I'm honored that you are. It just, I don't know, I guess it just happens that. with me having such a passion for business and talking business all the time and helping teams stay healthy. Like my big focus now is not just gonna be bringing the nutrition, the accountability and the mindset to how to live a healthier life. I'm actually gonna start doing more podcast episodes on how someone can build a business in a way that is also healthy. not talking business strategy, like there's not going to be, you know, this is how you sell a client, but I want to start talking more on the podcast as well. Like this is how you show up as the healthiest version of you in your business or when you're working for yourself, because a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, CFOs, COOs, you put the back burner of health, you put that on the back burner because you feel that by taking time for yourself, you can then reallocate that and see a greater level of success in your business. But success is not being successful in one thing. Success is being successful in every aspect of your life. So regardless of whether you run a business or not, okay, like successful is being able to make a lot of money, being able to run a successful business, being healthy, having stable relationships, all of those things have to coexist at the same time. If you are successful at building business, but it comes at the cost of your health, you're not successful. And I feel a huge pull and a huge calling to start to add in more of that type of content in this podcast. So you're going to see it more. You're going to see me mention more using business examples, using examples of how someone can run a company, not to say that this stuff is not going to be valuable. for people who don't run businesses, it will be still hugely valuable for you. But I feel that not a lot of people are talking about this in the business space. We have this area of hustle culture where we are taught the only way to succeed in life is we have to hustle, grind and sacrifice our way through everything. And you do not have to do that, especially when it comes to building a business and when it comes to maintaining your health. So that is all for... this episode of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening and we will catch you on the next episode. Bye.