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Join me in this solo episode as I dive into some different mindset patterns. We'll go over how to better program your brain to support your efforts in creating healthier habits and positive change. Spinning your wheels over and over get's exhausting, so let's chat about self-sabotage and replace it with a strong mindset!
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To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
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Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. So excited that you guys are joining me today on this discussion about mindset. I would say that mindset is probably like the least sexy, but most underrated aspect of overhauling your fitness and health, or just even starting to make small habits. It all stems from what's going on in your brain, what your mindset is, and oftentimes it takes a lot of work. So I want to talk through. Whether or not your mindset may actually be what's holding you back if you find yourself kind of in these cyclical patterns of just like getting super fired up about something and then, you know, having the tools and not ever actually following through or just getting stuck in the exact same patterns over and over again. This is one that you do not want to miss because my, uh, team. So all of the ladies who are in Mountain Metabolic, we have a little group chat and all of us coaches to. And this past few weeks, we've been doing a book club study on the book Mountain View by Brianna West. Um, this has been such a transformative book for me personally, and I know a lot of the ladies who are reading alongside and doing the discussions, um, have gotten so much out of it, too. And it's not even like a fitness or health book by any means. However, there's so many correlations because it's all about mastering your mindset. Um, and ultimately just mastering yourself because that is one of the biggest, uh, hurdles when it comes to actually reaching your fitness and health goals and then keeping that going for a lifetime. Right? I think so often we talk about like reaching this goal, reaching this goal. Um, but what about once you get there? I mean, I think a lot of us have had fitness or health goals, weight loss goals, whatever it may be at some point in your life, but it's not like things just end. Once you reach that goal, there's still maintenance for the rest of your life. If you want to continue to be a healthy, thriving, lean individual. Right. So, um, we're going to kind of dig into some areas of self-sabotage where we just mentally completely self-sabotage ourselves. Um, and then also just why we tend to get stuck from like a neurological standpoint. What is our brain doing that sometimes is not in our favor when it comes to making changes, leveling up, and becoming our best selves. So. Let's dig into it. Let's talk mindset. Um, all right. So self-sabotage. There are a lot of different areas of self-sabotage that can show up in your fitness and health journey. And a lot of these can also be connected to just other areas of life. Right. Just personal development, growth in any given area, your career, your your, you know, faith, other other areas. Right. But for the sake of this discussion, we are talking strictly fitness and health. So let's go through some of the different, most common types of self-sabotage. So one is resistance. How does this show up? It shows up when you have the tools and the plan, but you simply can't bring yourself to implement. This is a huge one. And I see this in particular, uh, you know, obviously working in the fitness and health space as a coach where I myself have the tools and yet I don't always implement or I'm working with clients who they have everything that they need to absolutely crush this thing and get get a, you know, serious jump start on their goals, but they just get in their own way and don't ever actually implement the changes that need to take place to get to the goal. Um, so first what we need to do to kind of move through this is identify why and really refocus, get clear on what you want, and look for unconscious beliefs that maybe are preventing you from showing up. So we really have to want to work through this when we're trying to work through resistance. Because oftentimes we resist because something is like mentally blocking us, like we just cannot push through something. So a common one I find is overwhelm. So when somebody first starts a program, maybe they're really excited. But then when it comes down to it, the steps to actually start the action items overwhelm them because maybe it's too much. Um, you know, this is something that we definitely have to balance with our clients because some clients, as they start the program, are like wanting to do all the things they want to just go straight into the deep end and hit it hard, and then others are really overwhelmed when they look at, you know, just what it takes to get started, what we're going to be working on, even if it's just a few things. So then we kind of have to scale back. So this is where that, you know, customisation piece is so important because what feels overwhelming to one person might feel like really not anything at all to another person. And that's just their starting point, right? So, um, overwhelm is definitely an area where you can kind of see that resistance, where checking, maybe checking the coaching app is just overwhelming because I haven't been doing the things I'm I feel like I'm falling behind. I feel like I'm failing. So instead of just picking up where I am and showing up and communicating that with my coach, I'm just going to avoid it altogether, right? I'm just going to resist. Um, so this is a very, very common one. The next one is hitting your upper limit. So this would be like the amount of good that you're comfortable having in your life. This might not be something that you think about very often. This certainly wasn't something that I thought about much until I went through my own kind of like personal development, um, coaching for business and really started to think about, like, where am I limiting beliefs around business money, my own personal success? I think it's definitely an interesting thing to really be introspective about and say, am I capping my own potential because this is all I've ever done before, or this is what other people think I'm capable of? Or this is what I saw in my family or in other people in this field, or whatever it may be, and kind of really get real with yourself about why you are hitting this upper limit and just feeling like you can't really go and be any better than what you've already been. Right? Um, so we are not actually wired to be happy, but rather to be comfortable. And this is a theme that has just been so reoccurring throughout this book. The Mountain Is You is how being comfortable is so at odds with like actually reaching what we want to reach. But our brain wants to be comfortable. It wants to just stay at homeostasis. It doesn't want to be thrown off or challenged in any new ways. Um, so we really do resist change, even if it's for our betterment, right? 1s Um, so this is where this is kind of the area where this can show up in. So as far as, um, hitting your upper limit and self-sabotaging. You begin to feel uncomfortable with your progress. So you, like, hit a point where you're like, oh, okay. Like, I'm, I'm actually doing better. Like I'm seeing some results. And then you're like, well, this is kind of a new level. I haven't been here before. So you start to revert back because it's requiring a new version of yourself, and it makes either yourself or other people in your life uncomfortable. So this can either be kind of self-imposed where you're like, oh, I just don't know if I can be this new version of myself. Or sometimes it's other people imposed where other people are commenting and they're like, how come you don't do this anymore? Why are you like this? You're so boring now, or you've changed whatever it may be. And other people are kind of trying to drag you back down to the version of yourself that you used to be because it makes them more comfortable. So how you can kind of work around this is by slowly acclimating to your new normal. So instead of massive changes overnight, allow yourself to slowly adjust and adapt. So this is why we don't recommend taking drastic measures in our Mountain Metabolic coaching program. And some people really crave that when they start a program, they want to, like, literally overhaul every single thing. And while that feels very satisfying for like a few days, it is absolutely the worst way to approach behavior change. Um, and that has been kind of really reconfirmed through reading about how our brain responds to change. And we really don't do our best change through big, massive overhauls. We do it in like the daily tiny tweaks, um, so slowly acclimating and not just doing a 180 overnight. All right. The next area of self-sabotage is called uprooting. So this looks like constantly jumping from program to program or saying something that doesn't work for you after a few weeks, instead of just staying consistent with it. And I think that this is a really big one that I've seen in working in group fitness, working in coaching, just working in fitness in general. Um, it's something about like, oh, I've just, you know, I've been doing this for four weeks and it's not working for me. So I'm just going to completely shift and go try this other studio, or the program just doesn't work for me or I. My body just will never respond to this. It can also look like someone saying that they always need to do like a reset, or that they'll begin fresh next month or next week. Um, instead of just like, continuing to try to make the next decision as healthy as possible. And this is a very pervasive mindset in the health and fitness community of like, I need a reset. I need like a cleanse. I need to do these like drastic measures, um, instead of just being consistent with the basics. Right. So, um, always beginning your new chapter instead of never really finishing it as a way that she put it in the book. And I thought that that was really intuitive because I see this all the time. I've definitely been sucked into this at times. It always sounds more flashy and fun and sexy to, like, do something different than what you're doing and just doing it consistently day in and day out for months. And I think also, it's worth mentioning that if you have been in poor habits with your health for years and years, and then you join a program and you expect it to be completely, you know, reversed in four weeks, then that's just poor expectation on your end. And we really need to recalibrate. It's unfair to expect that four years worth of like putting on weight or solidifying poor habits or patterns is going to be completely overhauled in four weeks. Right? So we need to be patient. And I think in a instant gratification world that is really hard and it just takes a lot of mindset work to just stay consistent in the day and day in and day out. 1s Um, so how can we work on this? One is recognizing the pattern within ourselves. If you notice that you are someone who just jumps from thing to thing and always, you're always looking for like the next diet or the next group fitness gym or the next concept, um, to get you to where you want to be. Um, then that this might be something that you kind of need to look at within yourself and then take a step back and gain clarity on what you really want when the moment comes, when you would typically kind of like jump or flee from the thing that you're feeling like you're failing at, confront the discomfort and keep going until you actually reach where you want to reach. Okay? And this is hard in any situation, like a relationship that has a lot of hiccups all of a sudden, um, or, you know, a business plan that's absolutely not going as planned. And there are so many roadblocks, it's really hard to stay the course. It's easier to just bail and try something different. But if it really matters to you, then staying the course is going to be the only option. 1s All right. The next one is perfectionism. Ooh, this is a big one, you guys. And this is something I've talked about on here before a little bit. Um, so this would look like kind of expecting the impossible from yourself. Really expecting perfection when you start a program or are trying to do something for your health. So like, oh, I can never miss a workout. I have to eat quote unquote perfectly every day. Um, I'm not, you know, letting social engagements or travel throw off my schedule. I have to be 100% consistent. Always. Um, so the issue with this is that when we take on this mindset for a program or for like a 30 day thing, or like a really good example of this would be the 75 hard program. And I know that this has definitely been like very beneficial for some people, but it definitely is kind of of that all or nothing mindset you're supposed to work out twice a day in 75 hard, have no days off for 75 days, and like also alter all of these other behaviors like no alcohol, no sugar, drink a certain amount of water, which you know, you know, some of these things are great, but it's the extremity of it. It's the intensity that I don't love because it really is setting up for failure because it's that all or nothing mindset. You can't have any days off. Perfection is required. Otherwise you have to start over. And in my opinion, working as a coach now for ten years, that is the most unsustainable approach ever, because then you feel like a failure every time you do have a day where you can't work out twice a day, or if you need to take a rest day, or you want to have some sugar because you're celebrating your friend's birthday or your birthday. I mean, it just is not allowing for any leeway, which just isn't life. And it's not realistic. And it really gets people into this on or off the wagon mindset, which in my opinion, is the most harmful mindset that we can have when we're looking for a life long pursuit of health and fitness. 1s Um, so that's my that's my thoughts on that. Instead of perfection, focus on progress. You know, we get in our own way when we give up just because it's not perfect. Um, so one um, analogy I really like to use with clients and just with myself when I'm having bad mindset days, is thinking about health efforts like a bank deposit or withdrawal. Yes. Obviously you want to build the bank account, but it's going to happen in daily efforts. You know it's not going to happen overnight. Um, you want to just slowly deposit more than you are withdrawing and. In the case of 75 hard. What I see most often is people go really hard for the 75 days, and then as soon as it's done, they literally flip a switch and go right back to everything else that they couldn't do because they're like, oh my gosh, finally, I can have alcohol, I can have sugar. I don't have to exercise anymore like I did it, I'm done. And then all of the progress is gone. So that would be like, you know, depositing $100 in your bank account one one day and then withdrawing it all again the next day. You're not getting any gain from that. So it's so much better to just do slow, steady deposits, you know, day after day for the course of years and years, um, versus just trying to do it all in one fell swoop and then going to extremes. The next area of self-sabotage is fear of failure. So this one is can kind of show up in not actually giving 100% to something, because deep down, you really don't believe in yourself that you can actually do it. And I really loved this quote from the book. It says there's a difference between failing because you are trying something new and daring and failing because you are not showing up doing the work or being responsible for your actions. And that was kind of like a gut punch, you know what I mean? Like, how often are we failing because we're not even putting ourselves out there? Um, it's so much better to fail and then gain the experience, gain the wisdom and the grit from learning along the way than to just completely not even try. And then you're back at square one. You know, I think one thing I've really started to look for at the start of every new year is am I any different than I was at the start of last year? Did I change anything that was important to me to change, or did I just make excuses that I just withdraw? Did I just kind of keep myself in this safety net instead of failing enough to reach a new goal and put myself out there and do some scary stuff? Um, you know, I don't want every single year of my life to look the exact same if I if I just live the same year on repeat for the rest of my life, to me, that's a bigger failure than like having some major fail moments in between. But they actually teach me something and propel me towards big, scary goals that are hard for me to try to put myself out there for. Um. So be introspective about that one. Am I failing because of lack of implementation, lack of putting myself out there? Um, that's that's really all we can do is just be honest with ourselves about are we kind of standing in our own way out of fear of failure? Um, and then the final one is being too busy, so this looks like starting something, but then always allowing busyness, um, to get in the way to the point where you really don't ever get anything out of it. Like maybe you have a gym membership that you pay for every single month, but you literally go once every three months because you're too busy, and that's always your excuse for yourself. So work towards getting comfortable with simplicity and routine. This is kind of tough in a hustle go go go culture, but this is something I've been working on a ton in the last few years is just being comfortable with like just not having a ton going on, not always being the busiest person in the world, and really finding appreciation in the simple day to day actions and routine, and noticing when you actually tend to gravitate towards chaos. If you're someone who like lives for the stress, you live for, like high anxiety moments, you always feel like there has to be a crisis that you're working on. Um, then this might be something that you're gonna struggle with. 2s Okay, now let's talk about why we tend to get stuck as far as our brain. And some of this will be kind of going over some of those same things we just talked about as far as self-sabotage. Some of it will be new. So why we tend to get stuck? Our brain is designed to resist what we really want. So when we imagine our goals, we imagine that our lives will be elevated, much improved from what we are now once we achieve set goal. And when. And we will then be able to like, you know, quote unquote coast. This is kind of like the fantasy that we have. However, this does not actually happen in real life. So once we get what we want, we end up wanting more. This is the way that our brain works, what we once wanted and once what was once our like end game goal. Once we get it, it tends to not be enough anymore. So then we're just always climbing and climbing and searching. So studies on dopamine actually show that once an individual is introduced to something they highly desire, the dopamine surges and then it diminishes. So dopamine actually gives you the constant desire for more rather than happiness as was previously thought. This is so fascinating to me, but it totally makes sense, right? If you think about our behavior as humans, this is why, you know, we set a monetary goal for our business, and then once we get it now we have to set a higher goal or we set a weight loss goal. And then once we get it, we're not happy with that. And we still have body dysmorphia and we still don't like ourselves. There's always going to be like another high that we can search and, and our brain is actually kind of not on our side with this. 1s Um, so because we are so accustomed to wanting to the like, you know, the process of wanting something new, it's hard for our brains to shift to actually just having that thing and being content with that. We also tend to romanticize the end result or like the process of starting something new. So when inevitable setbacks or failures happen, they kind of trigger us to stop trying. 1s But with most things in life worth having, we have to fail in order to succeed. Um, so within myself, I've kind of noticed this as far as like romanticizing potential situations when it comes to career milestones, having certain things that are like societal norms bind the house, reaching a goal weight. Um, and I always think that I'll be, like, complete or happier. I will have arrived once I reach said goal. And I've realized through reaching a lot of goals that that is not the case. So I've really had to shift my mindset where I'm not relying on arriving at those places in order to be happy. Like, if your happiness is contingent on reaching your goal weight, you will not be happy when you reach your goal weight. I'll tell you that like you might feel more confident in your body, you might feel healthier, you might, you know XYZ, but that is not going to be the one thing that provides happiness for you. Same thing with like buying a house or having, um, you know, getting married. All of these things that we think are going to provide this never ending happiness for ourselves. 2s Um, another thing to think about here is it's also hard to shift from surviving to thriving. So if if you're in a position where you are so used to everyday, then the struggle just to get by, it's really hard to handle when we reach a place of peace and flow and ease. So any change, even good change, will be resisted until it becomes a new comfortable norm. Like I said, our brains don't want change, they want comfort. So even if something is going to bring us to a better place, even if it's better for us to be in a place of thriving versus surviving, if you're so used to just surviving, it's hard to to come to terms with a life that's more peaceful. Um, so my, you know, personal takeaway from that is I do find myself kind of being restless or looking for issues when my life feels really peaceful. And it's so funny. I have to just, like, kind of kick myself on the days where I'm, like, feeling like, jittery. Like I should be doing more. I can't just sit down and relax like I should have more on my plate. Like, why don't I have more on my plate? Why am I able to sit down? It's because for many, many years I had to be go, go, go. A lot of areas. I was kind of in survival mode. I was in building mode, and now I'm able to find a place of peace and ease in a lot of different areas, not all the time, but in this particular season. And that's been hard for my brain to grasp. Um, so it's just kind of interesting when you start to notice these tendencies within yourself. 2s Um, okay, so another final thought on why we tend to get stuck is kind of going back to the all or nothing mindset. It's that we don't change in breakthroughs, we change in micro shifts, and we tend to gravitate towards big breakthrough moments. Um, so I loved this quote from the book. It says, if you're stuck in life, it's probably because you're waiting for the Big bang, the breakthrough moment when all your fears dissolve and you're overcome with clarity. This moment will never come. We won't ever wake up to zero problems, struggles or complete transformation. Breakthroughs or quote unquote clicking moments should act as tipping points to guide us towards micro shifts, restructuring our habit. 1s Oh my gosh. It's so good. It's so good. There's so much here. Um, because it's very true that we tend to look for like, these big breakthrough clicking moments where everything is just going to flow and everything's going to be easy. And really, what those clarity moments can be for us is a tipping point to shift our habits and behavior. It's not going to be a massive overhaul overnight, but it should get you to the point where you're ready to make some changes in your day to day life. So micro shifts are tiny increments of change in your day to day life. So changing what you eat for one meal and then doing it a second and a third time. So if you want to change your life, it's really about those tiny, almost, almost undetectable decisions that you're making until they're just habit, right? Until it's just part of who you are. And this is kind of the unglamorous part of behavior change and and sustained results is that it really does take overhauling what you're doing on a day to day basis. And that's going to be what makes up your week and then your month and then your year and then your next year. Right. We are the sum of like what we're doing on a day to day basis. And I think that that can also really be comforting. You know, if you get kind of stuck in the mindset of like, oh my gosh, I had such a bad weekend, or I went on a vacation and I threw all my progress out the window. No, you did it because you are really the sum of what you're doing most of the time. So if most of the time you are being really mindful with what you're eating, you're focusing on protein. You're not, you know, just always gravitating towards fast food. You're trying to get a couple workouts in a week. You're walking daily. Then a few days of not doing those things is not going to completely change the trajectory of your fitness and health. Um, so that has always been very comforting to me when I realized that if I'm making the efforts on a daily basis, week to week, month to month, year to year, and I'm not relying on these like breakthrough things where I'm doing this super intense effort for, for 30 days and then falling off again, like I can just maintain fairly easily for the rest of my life. And that's a really awesome place to be. But so much of that stems from having a healthy mindset around this stuff. 2s Okay. So. 2s This all to say? I think that this is why following a self paced program or just trying to piece things together on your own when it comes to your fitness or health, it really makes it difficult. Especially if you've been doing this for months or years with no success. Um, then it's probably not the right approach. It probably means that there's some underlying mindset things that you need to work on before you're going to be able to just like, do this on your own, and it's going to become habit overnight. We often must work through and talk through some of these patterns and areas of self-sabotage and mindset block to actually discover why we are stuck in order to get through and have some breakthroughs. For me personally, I didn't see progress in my hiking in like my balance of eating and fitness or my weight loss until I shifted my mindset in so many different areas. So if if this is something where you're like, hmm, yeah, I'm resonating with a lot of this, or you have been trying to do this on your own for a while, and you are still kind of not seeing the results that you want to see. Definitely recommend our coaching program. That's what it's there for. You invest for a few months and then you have the tools to do it on your own. But you've got to start with the mindset. It can't just be like, oh, I'll just buy a new workout program and hope for the best if that hasn't worked for you in the past. Um, so if you are interested in coaching, we, um, are always taking applications whether or not we have availability or not kind of changes from month to month, but you can always apply and we will reach out when we have availability. So you can check the link in the show notes to apply. Um, and I will reach out to connect with you. So I hope that this mindset chat has been helpful. I know that it has been very transformative for me of just looking at my own behaviors, my own patterns, why I do the things that I do, and how to kind of work through some of those blocks. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you guys have some topics you'd like to have covered on the show, please send it to DM at Fit Underscore for hiking our Instagram page. And then we can, you know, see what you'd like to hear. And I'm I'm always open to suggestions. I love hearing from you guys. So thank you so much for listening and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.