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Creators & Guests

Host
Mikki Williden

What is Mikkipedia?

Mikkipedia is an exploration in all things health, well being, fitness, food and nutrition. I sit down with scientists, doctors, professors, practitioners and people who have a wealth of experience and have a conversation that takes a deep dive into their area of expertise. I love translating science into a language that people understand, so while some of the conversations will be pretty in-depth, you will come away with some practical tips that can be instigated into your everyday life. I hope you enjoy the show!

Transcribed using AI transcription, errors may occur. Contact Mikki for clarification.

00:08
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday and I wanna chat today about some mindset tools that you can use to preemptively change your behavior if you think you're on the cusp of making that bad decision. And yes, I just used the term bad decision. And what I mean is really, decisions that don't make you feel that great after the fact.

00:35
This will be released on the 25th of November. So we are like a calendar month away from Christmas. And if you've been following me on social, you'll know that Monday's Mad at Christmas edition kicked off this morning as well. So I'll certainly be getting the members of my program to listen to this episode, because the diet and the exercise, it's relatively simple. It's not easy, but it is simple.

01:01
because it is laid out in front of you. It is a tangible thing that you can just grasp and run with. But keeping your head in the game, that's the hard thing. And you know, I've gotten several messages from people over the last few months, and not just people in Mondays Matter, but the clients that I have one-on-one as well. And it's not uncommon for people to take themselves out of the game before they've even put themselves in it.

01:28
but then also they let themselves off the hook. I saw this a lot actually, not so much this year, but certainly last year in 2023, a year after, even two years after the worst of the COVID lockdowns, people were still using COVID as the reason why they hadn't managed to get back on track with their diet and their fitness. And we'd be talking about some of the habits and behaviors that they had adopted over the last few years

01:57
the conversation almost always sort of went like, yeah, and then, you know, because of COVID, XYZ. And so it isn't that since COVID, my behavior has been XYZ, it's more like because of COVID. So they are still identifying the stress and the uncertainty of that period of time. And in their mind, it was still affecting their decisions around making better choices for food and exercise for their resilience, their health, their...

02:26
they feel about themselves. And yes of course I have also seen that this year when you know people start a program like Mondays Matter, something happens at the get-go and they never quite find their groove. And I get an email from someone and they're saying I had a lot of stress in the first week so everything didn't go according to plan. And it got me asking the question of why do we just let ourselves off the hook like that? Because I do feel like part of it, yes of course I'm not

02:55
and how you feel isn't a valid reason for not making the changes that you had wanted to make, but we do let ourselves off the hook, don't we? I mean, I let myself off the hook all of the time when it comes to things like probably things in my business. That's probably my thing. I don't actually let myself off the hook. I don't even think I'm on the hook.

03:18
with diet and training. So that's certainly not it. Oh, I probably let myself off the hook with regards to doing the longer runs actually, trying to take shortcuts during my trail runs. It's not that I don't love it, but if you give me a shortcut, I am all for it. So that is probably an area where I let myself off the hook. And then I'm a bit like, well, I'm tired. So I wanna recover better or I can run extra tomorrow. I always regret it. I always regret having to run extra tomorrow if I let myself off the hook.

03:47
for the first run. But regardless, we always do this in areas of our lives and particularly in diet and nutrition. So, letting ourselves off the hook, why do we do it, comes from a combination of both psychological and emotional factors. The first obvious one is the short-term comfort over long-term goals. Our brain is wired to avoid discomfort. When we're faced with a challenge, we instinctively seek comfort.

04:15
even if it conflicts with our bigger aspirations. This can lead to rationalizing why skipping the hard thing, like my example, like the longer run, the more time out, or a tough conversation, we don't face the fear. Second is fear of failure or judgment. This is another reason why we lead ourselves off the hook. Avoiding action can be a form of self-protection. If we don't try, we can't fail, and we avoid the potential judgment

04:44
or ourselves. This fear can be subtle, but it often undermines our commitment. God, don't I know this one. Seriously, I would never train properly for a marathon or a half marathon because I didn't want to get on the start line and then basically prove myself right that I wasn't a particularly good runner. I never wanted to put myself in the position of failing because I wasn't good enough. More than happy to fail because I didn't train properly or I was sick or whatever.

05:14
But if I tried my hardest and still didn't meet my expectations, that would just feel devastating to me. It was mid thirties, Mickey. Now, I mean, I don't actually care. And I would much rather try and train hard for things like marathons, et cetera. But that fear of failure is real. And when it comes to diet, if you don't put in the effort for food prep, for example, and don't make it easy for yourself, then you've got every reason why it can go wrong during the week and you've got a reason for it.

05:42
Lack of clear purpose or motivation. When our goals feel abstract or distant, it's easier to de-prioritize them in favor of immediate gratification. Without a strong why, we're more likely to choose what feels easier in the moment. Isn't that the truth? Negative inner self-dialogue. If we struggle with self-doubt or perfectionism, we might convince ourselves that our efforts won't matter or that we can't meet our standards, leading us to give up before we start.

06:12
habitual patterns. We are creatures of habit. If we let ourselves off the hook before, it becomes easier to repeat the behaviour, reinforcing a cycle of avoidance. Overwhelm or burnout. Sometimes we genuinely stretch too thin, and letting ourselves off the hook becomes a way to preserve energy. However, when this is habitual rather than intentional, it becomes a barrier to progress.

06:37
I mean, these are things that we probably innately know, but it's always good to be reminded of them, right? And the reason why I want you to think about this now is that regardless of whether you joined Monday's Matter or not, or any other training plan that you've decided to sign up for, any other eating plan or diet modification that you're trying to adopt, you know, alcohol abstinence, et cetera, it's always really good to almost preemptively think about the reasons why

07:06
things might not go to plan and then trying to put into place strategies to stop that from happening. Especially this time of year where food is everywhere, opportunities to choose things which aren't in alignment with your goals. I mean that's also everywhere. So I really want to sort of put the cart before the horse. So to counter these tendencies, the first thing reconnect with your why.

07:32
What's the deeper reason behind what you're trying to do? Keep this front of mind. This is why in Monday's Matter we have a journal so you can reflect on a weekly basis the things that didn't go to plan and potentially how to preemptively ensure that that doesn't happen the following week. The next thing, focus on identity. Frame commitments as part of who you are. You're someone that shows up, not just as tasks to complete.

08:01
I really love that. And in fact, it reminds me of the Richard Wiseman's as if principle. You act as if you're already the person who's achieved the goal that you desire. What kind of decisions does that person make? What kind of tasks do they complete? What things do they say no to because they're not part of the bigger picture? Always use small wins. Start with small manageable steps to build momentum and confidence. And I think this is really important. And I've talked about this

08:31
a lot in that really big audacious wins in life, a few and far between actually, in everything, right? And so if we don't celebrate the small wins, we're constantly waiting for the big thing to drop, you could spend an entire lifetime not celebrating. And this is so true for goals around our diet and around our exercise. So celebrate the fact that you did your food prep. Seriously, celebrate the fact that you hit those three gym sessions this week, or you completed that training run.

09:01
Celebrate saying no to something that you don't really want anyway, but you were just going to have an obligation. Celebrate the decisions that you're making that are enabling you to progress towards your goal and start small. Anticipate excuses. And I'm going to go into this in a little bit more detail in a minute, but recognize your patterns of self-justification and plan strategies to counteract them. This is something called a premortem.

09:28
to a pre-mortem of your own sort of failure. And I love this strategy. This is something Michelle Martangy talked about in our group call on Mondays Matter, this round, and I wanna share it with you. And then also of course, practice self-compassion. So understand why you let yourself off the hook, but also hold yourself accountable with kindness. And this is really important because if some of your negative inner dialogue is also entrenched with

09:57
language that is self-deprecating, like you talk to yourself in a way that you would never talk to your friends, then it's very difficult to get out of this almost self-sabotage sort of behavior that can occur in an around diet and exercise. So make your lens to yourself, make it kind. So I want to go back to the anticipate excuses and talk about that pre-mortem.

10:23
and this may or may not be helpful for you, hey, you guys might know it anyway, right? So a pre-mortem is essentially a template that you can use to preemptively assess your situation and the typical excuses that come up as to why you're not going to achieve your goal, but then you strategize a different response to help you avoid that in the first place. For example, imagine it's January, 2025.

10:52
and you've not been able to stick to your diet as planned across the next month. So what you want to do is reflect on the potential reasons why this is the case and outline strategies to address these obstacles. So the first thing you want to do is define your goal. For example, you want to follow the Monday's matter principles through to 2025 or whatever your goal is. You want to complete 80 percent of your training program. So you're on track for Poritauranga

11:22
Ironman or 70.3. So first, after defining the goal, you want to visualize the failure. So what are the main reasons for you not to achieve your goal? And this time of year, it could be any such thing. It could be nights out, busy weekends that you didn't prep your food, late nights so you weren't able to get up and do your training. Could be the myriad of morning teas that are at work that are just in your mind unavoidable.

11:52
could be that the delicious Christmas cake that your dad sent up to you, which you just bloody love, and you can't help yourself but continue to indulge in it. Like all of these things, these could be reasons for you to have not met your goal. And then we go into more details when we're identifying potential obstacles. So that's number three. So the first one, social situations and events, like going out to eat, family gatherings or parties, et cetera. The next.

12:19
Common obstacle is emotional triggers and stress. So high stress days at work, or stress eating, or reaching for comfort foods. Lack of meal planning and preparation, all of these things which I mentioned, time constraints, physical cravings or hunger. Now, once you've identified these common obstacles, you want to try and analyze why each obstacle could occur. For example, social situations and events are.

12:45
pressure from others, lack of healthy options available, lack of planning. These are all reasons why you might not eat the way that you intend. Emotional triggers, using food as a comfort, lack of stress management techniques, deadlines at work, the obstacle of meal prep, not setting enough time, not prioritizing, lacking meal ideas, running out of ingredients. So you can see that not only have you identified the obstacle, but

13:13
putting down reasons for why that obstacle could occur. And of course, the next phase, and this is the important part, all of this is important, but the mitigation strategy. So for each of those obstacles, identify at least one strategy to mitigate it. So for social events and occasions, you might pre-eat healthy snacks or meals before going out, like a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a protein shake, something like that. You might

13:42
Practice saying no politely if pressured. And what I would say is saying no is an underutilized skill. Just saying no thank you and not providing an excuse. That's really important. As soon as you offer up an excuse as to why you don't want to eat something, you've given someone some ammunition to then try and solve that problem for you. But it's not a problem for you. You've said no thank you. So any justification beyond that just can add some fuel to the fire.

14:12
It's not what you're after. Obviously with emotional triggers and stress, you wanna identify stress related activities that are not food related. Drinking herbal tea, brushing your teeth, focusing on breath work, something like that. Lack of meal prep, what are some strategies here? Prioritize that meal prep time weekly. Plan and shop for meals in advance. Consider batch cooking and freezing. So there's loads of ways around some of these common obstacles for you doing what you truly wanna do this holiday season.

14:41
but having this preemptive approach with your food decisions and your exercise habits can really help solidify in your head where you wanna be come January 2025. And develop an emergency plan. If you feel that some of these strategies that you've put down here aren't working in the moment, you need to reevaluate them. So pause and reflect on why, review your list of strategies.

15:11
Implement just one small action immediately to get back on track. For example, if you've accidentally had about six chocolates because they were sitting in front of your desk because someone left them there at work, go and brush your teeth. Move the chocolates. Do these little small things that can just adjust and make you feel like you're back in control rather than the situation is controlling you. And always reflect on how it's going for you. You might note some new obstacles that occur.

15:40
you might notice some strategies work better than others. So you wanna focus on that. So this allows you to create this detailed map of potential obstacles and solutions that helps you stay more resilient in moments of challenge. And anyone listening to this who thinks, oh, this just sounds a little bit OTT, I don't have the time to do any of this homework, I'm just gonna trust that I eat well, I'm gonna just sort of like lean in more on my willpower. I mean, kudos to you if you can.

16:10
but this stuff does take work. I don't know why we think it's easy. Is it just because we all eat that we just all expect once we've made the decision to eat in a different way, it's all just gonna flow seamlessly and we're gonna be amazing at it? Eating well is a skill. There are so many skills involved. The skill of food prep, the skill of saying no, the skill of understanding our emotions and how they're tied to food, the skill of setting your alarm to get up for your exercise program, you know, so.

16:38
Almost all of these things are learned behaviours, yet for whatever reason we think they should come naturally. So therefore when they don't, we beat ourselves up and we're like, well, we clearly were a failure because we can't do it, but 99.9% of the world can. Well, I mean, to be fair, if that were true, we wouldn't have an overweight or obesity problem, would we? Anyway, just a bit of food for thought for you. In the calendar month before Christmas...

17:04
These are things which often are in my mind. And so this is what I love about Mini Makipedia. I get to share them with you. You are welcome. If this resonated, please reach out on Instagram in my DMs @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition. I'm also on threads and Twitter @mikkiwilliden as well. Or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com. Book a call with me before, after Christmas, whenever you feel you.

17:31
could most benefit from my expertise in helping you sort your food decisions. All right, team, have the best week.