Ted Talk 103: When I lose weight, I’ll be happier. When I lose weight, I’ll be confident. When I lose weight, I’ll… start living… Here’s What To Do Instead…

Ted Ryce: Let me know if this sounds familiar. You got to a point with your weight, with your body fat, your clothes fitting tight, and you got sick of it. You got motivated to change, and what did you do? Started to get it together, started making better decisions with nutrition, started dialling in your workouts, or maybe you’re showing up more frequently.

And you know what? It worked. You started getting better results. And beyond just looking better and fitting better into your clothes, more importantly, you started feeling better and you felt like you were in the zone, you felt like, “Wow, I’m in a really good groove right now, I’m in the flow, I’m in the zone right now with this,” but then something happens.

It could be bad; it could be some bad news. But it could also be good, it could be hanging out with your friends for a few days, having some drinks, relaxing, it could be a vacation for a week that you’ve been putting off because of all the Coronavirus craziness and you enjoy yourself. You come back from that, and you step on the scale, and you’re a few pounds up.

And what do you do? I want to ask you, what do you do in that situation? What do you do? You listening right now, I know you’ve been in that situation before, what do you do? If you’re like the vast majority of people that I’ve worked with in my 23 years, you get a case of what I like to call “the fuckits.” In other words, since you fell off track for a day, or maybe several, or maybe even a week, feels like you ruined everything, you have these negative feelings come up and you’re just, “Ugh, fuck it.”

And so you give up and you lose that zone you were in, you lose that flow you were in, and you go back to what you were doing before. The weight starts creeping back up, but you don’t even care. I mean, you do care, but you’re still in “fuckit” mode. And then you wait until it builds up again. And then you get sick and tired of yourself and start taking action. And you repeat the cycle again.

Does this sound familiar? That’s what we’re going to be talking about: how to stop beating yourself up when you fall off the wagon, how to break this cycle of self-sabotage, is what it really is. 

So welcome back to the show. Especially if you’re new, welcome to the Legendary Life podcast. I’m your host, Ted Ryce. I’m a coach. I’ve been doing this for 23 years, I work with entrepreneurs, executives and other high-performing professionals to help them transform their body and ultimately transform their life.

One of the things that people don’t get that I wish they understood—and nobody asked me about this, they’re like, “Hey, what are the special fat loss foods? What’s the best workout for losing fat?” Nobody ever asked me, “Hey, how do I stop self-sabotaging myself? How do I stop having this behavior?”

And today, I want to talk a little bit about that, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some issues in my business. And some of them were mindset related. They were my perspective, they had to do with my limiting beliefs they had to do with how I looked at things. And when someone told me that, I was like, “That’s stupid. It’s not about my mindset. It’s not about...That’s just, you’ve just got to tell me what to do and I’ll go do it.”

But the truth was, I had a mindset issue. And the truth is, you probably have a mindset issue. Well, the truth is, we all do, right? We’re all growing. But specifically, to fat-loss, if you resonated with that story I shared, that cycle of sabotaging yourself. Why? Because you went off track for a few days? My mindset is that’s not off track at all. That’s just called life.

So many times, we want things to be perfect. And when they’re not, we struggle with it. But the problem is perfection; that’s a bullshit idea. It doesn’t exist. That’s an idea. That’s like, “it’s a perfect world,” right? Like, that doesn’t exist, that doesn’t really exist. It’s an idea, an imaginary... 

It’s a fantasy land, it’s Lord of the Rings. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s a guy chasing a woman on an airplane at the last minute to say, “Hey, I really want to be with you,” that shit doesn’t happen in real life. The TSA tackles you and you get thrown in jail for a day and probably, you know these days-- you know where I’m going with this, okay, it’s fantasyland. 

That’s just life; things come your way and you’ve got to be flexible. Today, I want to share the story of someone that I’m working with who had a big breakthrough. Now, they’ve been working with me for a while. They’ve lost a little over 10 pounds, which is great.

But we had a call the other day, and what he said to me was so fascinating. He’s a busy entrepreneur—and by the way, I asked him if I could share this story; I always ask—and he’s a busy entrepreneur. He has a lot of social obligations, has groups of entrepreneurs that he hangs out with, he belongs on the board of some things. And he goes on vacation and takes trips a lot.

And every time he would take a trip, his progress would stall out, and he would come back, or maybe even put on a couple pounds. He would come back, he would be so frustrated, “Oh, man.” And thankfully, he made it to the calls. 

Because what we needed to do is something called cognitive restructuring. That is just a fancy way of saying, you need to change the way you think about this stuff. Because the way you think about it now it’s not the right way. It’s a negative thinking pattern. Thinking that because you did something that was different than what you’re supposed to do to lose body fat is terrible and failure.

But we’re not going to get into where this stuff comes from, because I think it’s a little bit different for all of us. But we need to do what’s called a little cognitive restructuring. 

And what is that, like I said, the—let me give you a scientific explanation. It’s a technique that helps you notice and change your negative thinking patterns.

Because when thought patterns become destructive and self-defeating, you want to get rid of them. And I think the thing here that needs to be pointed out, if it’s not already obvious to you, is this takes some awareness. So many times, we lack awareness about, hey, this pattern of thoughts that I have that come up every time that I go on vacation - which is a good thing, which is a necessary thing, taking time off of my business, I work so hard - but I feel these negative feelings when I come back and I’m not the same weight that—at least the weight that I want to be on this scale. 

And we really struggled with this at the beginning, not struggled with it, but we worked on it. I think he struggled as all people do with negative emotions. For me, it’s quite normal to see that. 

I think one of the biggest things about coaching is that when you work with a coach or a therapist in a therapeutic situation, coaches see the same thing all the time. Now, I’m not a therapist, I’m a coach, but we see the same patterns of behavior over and over and over. And I think so many people feel like, “Oh, I’m the only one who does this. I am supposed to be perfect, and do everything, ‘right’ and when I fall off, I’m failing. And nobody else does this. The people who get results, they don’t do it.”

And I want to tell you right now; the people who get results, have gone through this, we all fall off, we all fall off. I have fallen off multiple times. I was ripped in my 20s. I didn’t realize it was because I was broke so I didn’t go out to eat a lot. And I was out all the time talking to girls, you know, going to the clubs and dancing, so I was burning a lot of energy, and I basically lived in a gym.

But as I got more successful, I got more sedentary, I went out less, got into relationships, wasn’t out running around, I started getting more stressed too. I started drinking a little bit more. In the past, I would binge drink, but I would burn it off. And then I finally got it together. And then I got thrown off multiple times, is what I’m trying to tell you. 

So, life will always throw you these bins in the river, these curveballs. The only place that a straight line exists is in something that was designed by human being, because they don’t exist in nature. And when we have these negative thought patterns, when we sabotage ourselves, because we have this fantasy—again, this Lord of the Rings, and I love Lord of the Rings, but it’s fantasy. Hobbits don’t exist. Neither do Orcs.

So we’ve got to learn how to deal with reality, instead of our fantasies. We’ve got to get more dialled into the truth about the situation. 

And so back to this story. What happened was after we worked on this for a few weeks, he came back recently from going away again, and he said, “You know what, instead of feeling really negative about not making progress, or even putting on a couple pounds, when I went away, I came back and I just got back on track, because I know in two days, I’d be back to the same place I was before, and so it wasn’t a big deal.” It wasn’t a big deal anymore.

Now, I want you to pay attention to this because he didn’t have to use effort, cognitive effort to say, “Oh, I’m feeling those bad feelings.” But listen, let me talk through it. It’s not a bad thing, or just feeling this way. But it’s really a negative thought pattern, just calm down. “. He didn’t have to do that. It happened naturally. 

And I want to talk to you a little bit about how to create that for yourself, if you can. And there’s a few things here.

So, number one, which we’ve already talked about is the awareness, the awareness that you’re self-sabotaging, the awareness that you’re having a lot of negative feelings. It could be when you step on the scale, it could be when you come back from a vacation, and you’re clothes are a bit tight, or you don’t like the way you look in the mirror. 

But awareness about the feelings, the negative thinking patterns or negative feelings. Especially when they influence your behavior. You step on this scale, you see a number, and that number triggers a negative thought, which triggers a negative feeling, which triggers negative behavior and you’re in your self-sabotaging.

So awareness is the number one, education is number two. I’ve had clients who are getting great results in my coaching program, but the results were different than their expectations. Do you know what I mean? 

So, in other words, let me tell you, if you lose one pound a week, that’s really good fat loss, if you average one pound a week. So, if you lost zero weight for the week, for one week, but you lost two pounds in week two, one pound in week three, one pound a week for that still, like an average of one pound a week, right? Are you with me? I hope so. basic math, I know.

So, it’s an average of one pound a week. I had a client who was getting that, and they were unhappy, and I said, “Listen, why are you unhappy?” “Well, I should be getting better results?” And I’m like, “according to who? According to what?” “Well, I don’t know, I just felt like it would go faster. It’s like, “Yeah, but who told you that? Where did you come up with that idea? Did some guru tell you that online? Did you read something?”

And they couldn’t recall anyone saying or reading anything that put this idea in their head; it was completely on them. And then I started to show: “Look, we have information on what’s acceptable here, one pound a week is good.” Now, I get better results, where—let’s say I can get better results than one pound a week.

It really depends on the person. If they’re not willing to do what it takes to get more than that, then they’re not willing to do it. But I certainly know how to get that. I know how to make that happen. You know, 15 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds, if you’re in the overweight category, or obese, especially if you’re a man and you’re on the heavier side, we can make that happen.

But you have to understand what is good, what is not good. And to be honest, education goes beyond just the number of results because sometimes people put on muscle. If you lose four pounds of fat in a month, but you gain three pounds of muscle, what is going to be the change on the scale? Sorry to throw more basic math your way. But hopefully, you’re not too tired or stressed out. The answer is one pound of change.

Not everybody puts on three pounds of muscle in a month, though. But if you’re behind on your consistency with your workouts, that’s totally possible. I have a top client who put on four pounds of muscle in a month, or lean mass, as DEXA calls it, because some of that is going to be water.

So, we’ve got the awareness part, the education part. So awareness is what’s going on, what are the negative thinking patterns? How is it affecting my feelings and behavior? What’s triggering it? Then you get the education, well, how does this match up? How do my expectations match up to what experts say, to what people who live and breathe and sleep this say, and what the data says?

And then we’ve got to take a look at, “Okay, well, now that we know that, we’ve got to put in the reps,” meaning you’ve got to go through the experience of—well, I want to say it like this, let’s use my client as an example, so he initially felt triggered every time he would come back. Because his expectation was, “Oh, I should lose weight on vacation, because it’s just that. I should lose weight no matter what the circumstances are.”

And while that’s possible, it takes a high degree of skill and work to make that happen. It’s totally possible. I’ve got clients who’ve gotten leaner throughout vacation, but it depends on how hard they work and what their skill level is, it takes skill to do that. You’ got to be dialled in. And if you’re not dialled in, you shouldn’t expect that from yourself, you should expect – when you’re a white belt or a blue belt, which is after white, if you’re going by Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, you shouldn’t expect purple belt or brown belt results. 

And everybody who comes to me, they are white belts or blue belts, there’s no purple belts, there’s no purple belts, everybody’s got a blue belt.

Everybody thinks—that’s not true, but a lot of people think that they’re higher up, they have more skill than what they really have. But the truth is this, and this is what I love about Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, by the way, you only get a belt, if you can prove… you’re not getting a purple belt if every white belt is tapping you, and you can barely hang with the blue belts.

If you can only be white belts, and you’re getting your butt handed to you by blue belts, you’re not getting your purple belt, you’ve got to prove it, you’ve got to be able to hang. Not talk the talk or even just show the techniques, you’ve got to be able to spar with the people who are at the same level and get the results, in other words, and you’ve got to put in the reps for that.

And so back to my client’s story, he would come back, he would feel triggered, but then he get back on track. He’d go away, come back, feel triggered, get back on track. And if you do that enough, you start to create a new belief, a new experience that wipes away the other experience.

The new experience, the new belief, the new core belief is: “Oh, it’s not a big deal when I get off track on vacation, because when I get back in two days, I’m back to where I was before, because that’s the level of skill that I have right now. And he told me he shifted his expectations. He shifted the way he looked at the situation.

And so what should you take away from this? And what I want to ask you, first of all, what are you taking away from this right now? What are you taking away from this right now? What is the lesson? Do you resonate here? What is it that you’re doing? In what way does my client’s story resonate with you? Or even if it doesn’t resonate, what is listening to it bring up for you.

And what I want to tell you is this; the key to really everything, whether it’s learning how to play golf, getting better at tennis, doing Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and going from blue belt, purple belt, or losing fat, it has to do with the experiences, with the training that you go through. You’ve got to go through the training. You can do it with me or another coach, you can do it on your own if you feel like you’re up to the task, and you feel like you can get results.

But there’s no getting around doing the training. And the reality is, I don’t know about you, but I’m not the type of person who does very well without instruction. I just hired two people last week to help me with social media. One of them, I hired to help me with writing on Twitter.

That’s how specific the coaching is now; I got a Twitter writing coach. And you know what, it’s already changed the game for me, and I’ve only had one session with him. And it was thousands of dollars to get this guy; it wasn’t a couple hundred bucks.

So if you’re the type of person who can do things on your own, and you’re happy with the results that you get, great, but otherwise, you’ve got to have someone to teach you, you’ve got to have a sensei. I’ve got a business coaching sensei. I’ve got a Twitter tweet writing sensei. I’m going to Mexico next week.

But actually, by the time that you listen to this, I’ll be in Mexico. I’ll be working with someone who is a breathwork sensei, because you know what, I don’t do breathwork on my own. I’ll do meditation on my own. But there’s just certain things that I won’t do on my own. I’ll work out on my own. I don’t need a coach for that. I can write my workouts. I track my workouts. I’m not saying that there’s nobody better than me. But I’m saying it’s just not a weak point for me.

So, knowing yourself is key here. If you’re happy with yourself, great. If you’re like me, and you’re good at some things, but you know in other things, you really need a sensei, you need someone, you need an instructor. I didn’t tell you my secret how I ended up winning the Florida State Championship in jui-jitsu. You know how I did it? By showing up to class, the same class that everyone else was going to?No, I’m not that good. I’m not that smart. I’m not that talented. 

But you know what? You know what I am smart enough to do? I got my Jiu-jitsu instructor, I paid him for private lessons, because I was tired of getting my ass kicked. 

I think we need to know this about ourselves, too. So we need the training.

Now again, you probably think, “Oh, you’re going to be pitching the coaching at the end of this?” Well, you know what? You’re right. But I’m not saying everybody needs it. 

I’m not even saying it’s for everybody because I don’t think it is. I’ll give you an example, personal example. I’m not ready to spend $100,000 for a year-round long coaching with Tony Robbins, his Platinum Business Mastery. I’m not ready for it. I wouldn’t do the work, I don’t think.

Now, in a year? We’ll talk about it then. Right now? No. So we have to know ourselves. Also, it depends on what our focus is. And even if you don’t work with it—let’s say that you’re a person who does believe in coaching, right? If you’re not, if you don’t believe in coaching, if you don’t believe in hiring experts to help you get to the next level, that should be your kind of thing that you work on.

And that’s not going to be with me, I’m not a beginner coach, right? I’m not a coach for beginners. You need to be really into this idea. And if you’re not, I’m not going to talk you into it. Because everyone who I work with, they have therapists or coaches or go to seminars, belong to entrepreneur groups.

And if you want to become a high performer, I want to challenge you to step up in that way, start challenging yourself. 

But now let’s talk to the high performers, what area do you need help in. Because one thing I’ll tell you, to be honest, I get people on calls with me sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m what they need.

It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got a really bad relationship.” I’m like, “Well, then what is losing fat going to do for you? I’ve asked people this: “why don’t you try marriage counselling? I’m not going to help you look leaner, I can show you what works, I can get you results, but it’s not going to fix your marriage.” As much as I promote getting fit, getting healthier, I want to shoot you straight.

And losing body fat and looking better in the mirror and lifting more weights, there’s a good chance that that’s a distraction from what you really need to do. Maybe you’re here listening to this podcast because it’s a distraction from what you really need to do. 

And I’ll share a personal story with you. I needed business coaching bad. I’m decent at business, I wouldn’t say I’m even good right now. Let’s say, I’ve got a blue belt with stripes, to keep rolling with our Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. I just love that analogy because it’s such a powerful analogy. For me personally, but just that perspective, as well, in general, it’s like, you don’t get to be a black belt, you’ve got to earn it, there’s no amount of money you can throw it someone. You’ve got to put the work in, there’s no...I mean, actually, you could buy a black belt.

But the point is, if you go up against other black belts, they’re going to know right away that it’s bought and paid for. And I’ve actually seen that on YouTube. I’ve seen that before. Someone gets just totally demolished on the jujitsu mats, because they didn’t belong there; it’s something you have to earn.

So we’ve got to have training to get to the next level. We can be our own senseis most of the time, unless you’re extremely talented—and, by the way, you don’t even have to be extremely talented, but I think this is even more the key. You’ve got to be happy with your results.

If you’re happy with your results in your career, your wealth, your relationships, your health, then I’m cool with that, and you should be cool with that and there’s no need for help. If you’re trying hard in an area and not getting those results, you need better training.

And also, like what we were talking about just more recently here is you’ve got to go for the right area. If it’s relationships you’re struggling with, go there. If it’s like, oh, I remember what I was talking about now. Sorry, I had a little bit of a rough night; I just woke up.  One of those nights where you wake up at three, you’re like, “why am I awake now? I don’t need to be awake now, I need to be back to sleep.”

So, I’m decent with business now, but I really, really needed help. And I was putting all my attention in the wrong area. I was trying to learn more about health and fitness and about nutrition about supplementation, and I was hoping I would learn enough that my business would just start magically doing better. But guess what? That magic moment never happened. I needed to switch gears, I needed to focus on business.

And actually, my business partner, when we met in Miami, she was the one that created the big shift, because she was a marketing professional. And she took me and showed me “you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” She didn’t say it that way, but basically, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing you. You have a lot going for you, but your marketing sucks, it sucks bad, oh, it’s just terrible. It’s no wonder you’re struggling because you have a great thing going, you’re a great trainer, you know a lot and you have a lot of experience, but you’re not able to convey in a way that inspires people to hire you and to refer their friends to you.

So, I didn’t have my act together business wise, but I didn’t want to learn the business, I had a big resistance to doing it. And my point of bringing this part of the conversation is this: what you really need to be listening to? 

Because I’ll tell you something, if you’re struggling financially, you’re not going to make more money getting in better shape.

Now, if you’re an entrepreneur who’s already doing well, and you’re like, “Man, you know, I feel like I got brain fog, I feel like I’m drinking too much alcohol, I feel like I don’t have my health together. And if I had my health together, I would be making more money,” that’s different. 

But if you’re a mess financially—and I was a mess, financially, too, all in my 20s, in my early 30s, I would make more money, and I would just spend more money. I was a mess. I wouldn’t invest it in the right things.

So maybe you should be listening to a podcast that would help you with your finances. I’m here trying to help you. And I’m even telling you that maybe you’re listening to the wrong podcast, and to go find what you need to listen to, and go take action on it, most importantly of all. 

But if it is your health, and you’ve answered that question, and you know this is the right place. And you’ve also realized that you’re not happy with the results that you’re getting on your own, and you are putting a lot of time into this whole health thing, fat-loss thing, trying to figure it out on your own, or maybe you’ve even hired some people.

I’ve changed this guy’s life. Shout out to you Errol, I don’t know if you’re listening, or even need to listen anymore. This guy just killed it. He hired a nutritionist to help him lose fat, guess what happened? He gained 10 pounds. Now the good story is that he gained 10 pounds of muscle, but he had a lot of fat to lose, and gaining 10 pounds was not the right direction.

Or there’s nothing wrong with gaining 10 pounds of muscle, that’s actually awesome. But for him, it was the wrong direction. He wanted to lose body fat, he was already a strong guy, this guy’s a beast in the gym, lifting heavy weights, killing it in the gym. But he wasn’t getting the right results with that person. So, even though they were friends, he parted ways, ended up hiring me, I changed his life, according to him.

We worked together until he broke through, not just the limiting beliefs around what he needed to do to lose fat, but also some of the mindset issues and he got it. And he was just like, he’s losing anywhere from two to four pounds a month now. And he’s like, “Ted, I got this.” He worked with me for three months, totally changed the game for him. And that can be you too.

But I’ll tell you Errol had a high level of motivation. When the guy kills it; has a business, but also does other things, just really doing well, financially. And I say that, because people who are operating at that level, they’ve got what it takes to make big change. And if you feel like that’s you, if you resonate with what I talk about on this show, I’d love to hop on a call with you.

Now, again, I want to be clear about this; this isn’t for everyone. You’re not a high performer, this isn’t for you. If you’re a person, you’ve got too much on your plate, you can take action, don’t feel like I’m pressuring you to get on the call. I’m telling you, get rid of that pressure, focus on those other areas of your life that you need to get handled.

And maybe if you did that, you wouldn’t even need me because you just, you know, change your whole life. Or maybe you would, I don’t know. But those are the things that you need to focus on. I’m talking to the person right now who knows that this is what they need to do. You know your body, your health, this is what you need to focus on.

You also know you are high performer, you know how to follow through, if the plan is tailored for you, if the plan gives you results month after month. No weird diets, no killing yourself at the gym, no special foods that you’ve got to order: Himalayan, goji berries that were blessed by the Dalai Lama, none of that.

But a program that’s crafted to you, eating the foods that you already eat, dialling it in, so that you see results every week. In fact, the first week, my clients lose four to six pounds. I know that’s a big claim. I know that’s hard to believe. 

But if you go to the Success Stories on legendarylifepodcast.com, you can see my clients and they all say the same thing, four to six pounds in the first week. Sometimes it can take 10 days, 9 days, 8 days, but most of them, they all get results in the first week.

And the only reason why it takes a little bit longer for some people is because they have to like figure out: “Okay, well, how am I doing this? How am I doing this?” and there’s a little bit of a learning curve there. But imagine that, imagine in less than 10 days, you could be four to six pounds down. I show people how to break through. There’s no fat-loss plateau.

Look, if you’re not lean as hell, if you’re a competition bodybuilder, okay, I’m not your guy, you know? You only see one vein on your abs, but you need to see the three veins, you need to get to that level of leanness, I’m not your guy. I work with busy professionals. And if you can’t see your abs, so easy to get results.

If you’re not 15% body fat, I can help you get there. And what we do is we hop on a call together, and we outline a strategy. And if I feel like it’s a good fit, then I invite you in to the program. 

And I’ll tell you, what I do work so well because I’ve been working with people for 23 years, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And I’ve had my own ups and downs with my body, and I dialled it all in, so that the worst I get is 15% body fat, which is where I’m at now.

But I’m able to keep 10 because that’s my belt level. I wouldn’t say I’m a black belt, but I’m like my black belt coach. But you know, when dealing with all the stress in my life, I’d say I’m more of a brown belt. 

But the point is, if you feel a connection with what I do, if you’ve listened to some of the client’s success stories, listen to my clients, from engineers from England to business consultants, to Singapore to entrepreneurs in America, you name it.

Look, this is the fastest body transformation system out there. And no matter where you’re at, or how many times you struggled in the past, failed in the past, I can make it work for you, I can take you to the next level. So if that sounds good, go to legendarylifeprogram.com/apply . What do we do? We jump on a phone call for about 45 minutes, you tell me everything you’re trying to accomplish, and I’ll help you craft the perfect strategy to get there fast.

And if you’re a good fit for the program, I will invite you in and if you’re not, I’ll tell you straight up. 

So that is how it goes. If this resonates with you, if you’re a high- performer, take action and if you feel like I’m the guy for the job after what you’ve heard, book the call at legendarylifeprogram.com/apply.

And to give you a finishing thought, or final thought, rather, here, what I would tell you is this: keep getting more clear on what it is that you need to do to get to the next level in your life, keep getting clear on where you’re self-sabotaging, on where your negative programming is showing up when you get triggered in that particular area of your life.

And get the education that you need, get the training that you need, put in the reps, and anyone can get great results if they do that, in every single area, in every single area. 

That’s what’s in between where you are now and where you want to be. What’s in the gap? That awareness, that education, and then putting in the reps. 

That’s a thought I want to leave you with. Hope you have an amazing weekend. Love you lots, and I’ll speak to you on Monday.