Ted Talk 159: 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make with Fat Loss (and how to fix them!)

Podcast Transcription: 5 Mistakes That Are Stopping You From Losing Your Belly Fat For Good

Ted Ryce: Are you an entrepreneur who keeps losing and gaining back the same 20 pounds? Well, today, in this episode, we're going to get into the five mistakes that are stopping you from losing fat for good.  

So, if you are a high-performing entrepreneur, if you're a company founder and you want to take your body to that next level, you want to lose weight and keep it off for good, you are in the right place because this episode is for you.  

What is up? My friend? I'm Ted Ryce, your host for the Legendary Life Podcast, and I'm also a coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high-performing professionals. People often ask me, “Ted, why do you market yourself to entrepreneurs?” 

And what I want to tell you is this: back in 1999, when I started my personal training and health coaching career in Miami Beach, Florida, in the Eden Rock Resort and Spa, which at the place was the hot spot of those days back in the late 90’s, I just ended up working with entrepreneurs.  

Most of my clients were entrepreneurs. Some of them were also high-performing professionals. They were attorneys, partners in law practices, accountants, doctors. I used to work with a lot of doctors back in the day, and why I say entrepreneurs is this: people who are high performing, if they're running a business or they're running a medical practice, or they're partners in a law firm or an accounting firm, you're going to face certain challenges that other people don't have. 

And the biggest thing is this: I find that people who aren't a high-performing professional, a lot of the stress that drives the average person's situation, their weight situation, their struggles with weight loss are financial. That's the way I see it, folks.  

And I often tell people, if you're listening to this show, but you're struggling financially and you're hoping that you're going to hear something here that's going to change the game for you, well, here it is. You will never get into the shape that you want until you handle your financial life.  

If stress is constantly coming from your financial situation, then that is the root cause that you need to solve to lose weight and keep it off. So, there you go. That's the big secret. Now, if you are an entrepreneur or you're in a career and you've done well for yourself, like those are the clients that I work with.  

So their issue isn't financial. Their issue is something else. They've figured out the money game. Maybe you're not worth as much money as you hope to be one day, but you can certainly afford to pay your bills and then some. You're going on expensive vacation, you're traveling, you're eating at restaurants, you're hanging out with other people who like to do those things as well.  

And that presents some unique challenges. And I would say the second thing is I see myself as an entrepreneur. I mean, some people get into it, at least on social media, they're like, “Well, what really is an entrepreneur?” And they get into the details.  

But I simply mean this: I'm a high-performing professional who's growing his business. And I have the same challenges that you have, maybe at a different scale. Maybe you're running a 7, 8, 9, or 10-figure company or part or an executive in a 7, 8, 9, or 10-figure company, and we have similar challenges because I like luxurious experiences. I like luxury experiences. I like fine dining. I like shopping.  

I'm in Paris right now for a week. I'll be in Madrid for a week next week. And if you're living that type of life, it presents, again, some unique challenges. So let's get into the five most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs make with fat loss, and more importantly, I'm going to talk about how to fix them. 

And the number one mistake that I see that entrepreneurs make is quick fixes. It's kind of funny because any entrepreneur, any business owner or any partner in a law firm or accounting firm, or a medical practice, if you're doing well, you know there are no quick fixes to running your business. There are solid principles that you need to show up consistently and implement. 

And it's little by little by little, and maybe you get the, every once in a while, exponential leap up. But even if that happens, it usually comes from practicing the basics consistently. However, when it comes to fat loss, people will start to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “Oh my gosh, my health is going away. I'm getting fat, so what's something I can do really quick to fix this situation?” 

And so many of my clients come to me and they've tried keto, they've tried intermittent fasting, they tried paleo, they've tried just going to Whole Foods and buying all organic. They've tried eliminating toxins from their toiletries and they found that the dietary changes, for example, if you're doing keto, it's not sustainable if you want to have a social life. 

If you're doing the Whole 30, it's not sustainable. I remember talking to, actually, a few people who tried the Whole 30. Look it up, if you don't know what I'm talking about. It's a very strict paleo-ish type of diet. And they said, “Yeah, it worked great, but we had to stay home all the time and it kind of got depressing because it affected our social life.” 

How do you go and socialize while staying on something so strict? And I'm stopping myself from going off on a tangent about what I think strict diets are really about, and just in two words, health anxiety, because I've been there, been down that road, but I'll stay on track here. 

And the short story, the short version of this is that my clients couldn't stick with the intermittent fasting. They couldn't stick with the keto. It was hard to stay on the Paleo or the Whole 30 because following those things strictly, led to a lifestyle that didn't excite them to live. 

And so that's what you'll hear people say, “Hey, just live a little.” So, a quick fix, by the way, in case you're wondering, well, is keto really a quick fix? And it depends. Here's how I define it: It's any strategy that you know, you can't keep up with. For example, maybe you say, “Oh man, I'm going to go on keto.” 

You lose weight, but you're like, “I'm doing this and I like the weight loss, but I don't see myself keeping this up.” Maybe you might be one month or one year into it. And we even have data showing people just give up on keto. People give up on most diets. The vast majority of diets, especially if you extend that timeline, people can't keep up with it. 

So, here's what I want to tell you, here's the action. Do the 10-year test. It's very simple. Ask yourself, am I getting results right now? Hopefully, the answer is yes. If not, then you and I, we need to talk. You need to book a call with me right away so we can talk about that. But ask yourself, are you getting results? 

If the answer is yes, then you need to ask yourself this. Do I see myself using this for at least 10 years? 10 years, folks! You don't want to be in shape for 12 weeks or 16 weeks, or even one year, or even five years. You want to have this handled. And so, if you fail the 10-year test, in other words, you're like: Yeah, I'm doing keto right now, or I'm mixing keto with intermittent fasting. 

And yeah, I wake up and I drink coffee in the morning and wait until 1:00 PM where I'm kind of starving and irritable. And I didn't really get that much done because all I could think about was eating at 1:00 PM. And you know, you can't keep that up. All you want is to eat breakfast and have a slice or two of toast. 

Then, it's not the right solution for you. It's not the right strategy for you, and you need to find something else, which, again, I can help you with. So you should book a call with me. So, the action there is use that 10-year test. Number two, too much stress. So few surveys, we know that men tend to drink too much when they're stressed and women tend to overeat. 

And the reason is this: stress, when it's chronic, it makes you feel uncomfortable. That might show up as, you can't turn off your mind. It might show up as just feelings of anxiety. It might show up as irritability. It might show up as so many things, but it's a negative state. Chronic stress is a negative state, and as a result you're like, “Man, I need to do something to make myself feel better. 

And the thing that most people choose to medicate their emotional state is what? It's food and alcohol. Food and alcohol. Well, food and drugs. Alcohol is a drug just like cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, and that's what people tend to do. Men tend to drink more alcohol. Women tend to eat more food. We also know that food helps change your brain chemistry, it makes you feel better, just like alcohol and other drugs do.  

The thing is this: if you're constantly finding yourself in a stressedout state and your only coping mechanism is food and alcohol, then that's going to have an effect. So, let's just stick with food. Let's say you're feeling stressed and you eat, you feel better, you're feeling stressed, you eat and feel better.  

Eventually, what happens is you're trying to do something good for yourself. You're trying to say, hey, listen, you're feeling stressed. Let me give you some pleasure. Let me take the tension away by giving you some pleasure, some reward. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just had a croissant today, because it croissants are delicious.  

But if it becomes a common thing, a consistent behavior to deal with your stress, then what happens? It starts becoming a source of stress, it starts becoming a source of stress in two ways. Number one, overeating leads to a bunch of issues, putting on fat, which makes you feel bad about yourself when you see the results of your behaviors in the mirror.  

It also messes you up because overeating causes inflammation. People think that if they just eat healthy foods, like acai bowls and green juices, and, you know, name whatever, a bunch of nuts, whatever you think is healthy, that there won't be any negative health effects from that.  

But what we know is that your food quality and how many calories you eat, are just as important if you're eating the 600-calorie acai bowl and having a 300-calorie green juice, and then having 300 calories of nuts, and then getting a 16 ounce 1200 calorie ribeye, but hey, it's grass fed and it has healthy fats in it, you are going to end up stressing your system.  

We know that people who are overweight and obese, they tend to have even more problems with stress. Because it's difficult for your body to have that much body fat, it leads to increased inflammation because your fat cells start to secrete inflammatory chemicals, this can mess up your mind as well. 

We know that—there's some research, it's still being worked out but there's some research showing that high body fat levels, especially if you're obese, affect your prefrontal cortex. In other words, that part of your brain that's connected with planning for the future, impulse control, working memory. So, a few key things, especially if you want to succeed in business or succeed in other areas of your life.  

Another thing is this: stress affects your appetite and it affects your memory. So even if you're not a stress eater…Well, I shouldn’t say that. Stress can cause cravings, especially if that's…For some people stress, especially very strong acute stress, it can make you lose weight. That's another subject we're not going to get into.  

But chronic stress, especially from your business from other areas of your life, it affects your appetite, and it also affects your memory, your ability to learn. So I want to tell you a story of a client. I was working with a client, or I'm still working with him, actually. And we had a conversation a few weeks ago. And this client told me, he's like, “Ted, I'm doing all the right things. But you know, I'm eating the right things, but I'm still not losing fat, you know, are you sure it's not something with my metabolism or hormones?” 

And I said, “Okay, so you're telling me that you're eating all the right things and not getting results? Is that true?” “Yes. That's exactly what's happening.” “Okay. So how would you know you're eating the right things? Are you tracking it like I showed you?” “Oh, no, I've been really stressed right now and so I haven't been tracking.” 

“Okay, so you're telling me you're eating the right things, but you don't have a record of it. But you're sure that you're eating the right things? Let me ask you this: What did you have for dinner three nights ago?” “I have no idea.” And then we started laughing.  

It's like, you're telling me you're eating all the right things, and you don't even know what you ate for dinner three nights ago. That's what stress does, folks. And granted, I mean, you know, you may not be able to remember what you had for dinner three nights ago when you're not stressed. And that's why I have my clients track their nutrition.  

But the real problem here is stress. Stress knocks you off your plan, and you have to manage your stress to bring yourself back on to the wagon. It's not always stress that knocks you off. It could be something like a vacation. But in general, what I find is running a business is very stressful, being part of a practice, a medical practice or a law firm is very stressful, and it gets hard to be on top of what you're doing.  

And so while you're focusing on solving problems, you're automatically grabbing handfuls of candy when walking through the office or eating more than you think., and you don't even realize it. So here's the action I want you to take, I want you to schedule one stress-reducing activity on your calendar every single week.  

And even beyond that use high feelings of high stress to trigger doing something to bring those stress levels down. That's what I personally do. This is how I live my life. The hustle and grind culture is working against your biology. So whenever you're highly stressed, also your productivity is going to drop down.  

I know I'm talking a lot about stress here, but I just feel like it's the big thing that people just don't appreciate, and I don't think enough people talk about. So schedule one stress-reducing activity on your calendar every week. Number three, trying to do too much.  

So this is kind of interesting. Because if you're a high-performer, you don't want to do small things, you don't want to make small changes, you want bigger results, and you want them yesterday, and that's okay. I'm the same way. It's just, it doesn't work that way.  

And here's how you know, are you consistent with your plan? Are you consistent with the number of workouts that you do each week? Are you consistent with the number of steps you get each week? Are you consistent with your food choices each week, because if you're not, then you're trying to do too much, especially if you're in the first few months of the journey.  

This is about consistency, folks, this is about establishing habits, it is not about anything else, it's about habits, are you doing the right things consistently. Because if you're not, that's the first thing to dial into. If you hit your five workouts per week one week, and then you only do one, and then you feel bad about it, you beat yourself up about it, feel guilty about it, then you're approaching the whole situation wrong. 

You're doing wrong, there's no other way to say it. You know you're doing it right, because you're consistent with it. And adding too much is the enemy of consistency. It doesn't mean anything other than just making sure that you approach your behavior changes from this framework of starting small and building on that.  

I remember, I just signed up a client recently. And I always ask my clients, okay, so how many times you want to work out per week? I want to work out four times. You tell me how many times. Okay, well, I think you should work out four times if you want to change your body. And by the way, that's my advice to you, don't even need to hire me for that.  

And then what happens is I ask them, “Okay, cool. So, you're going to work out four times a week, let me ask you, on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you that you can hit all four workouts for the duration of how long we'll be working together? Let's say four months?” “I'm probably about a seven on that.” 

‘Okay, so you're a seven. And let me ask you this: on the weeks where you're not able to hit all four workouts, let's say you miss one, or maybe missed two. Let me ask you this: how are you going to feel about yourself?” “Oh, I'm going to feel like such a loser.” 

“Okay, cool. So you're going to feel like a loser. So 70% of the time, we know that you're going to hit these four workouts, but 30% of the time, just estimation, you're going to miss this. And every time you miss it, you're going to feel like a loser. Let me ask you this: when you feel like a loser, does that help motivate you to get back in action and keep pushing forward with this program?” “No, it kind of makes me want to quit.” 

“Okay, so you're basically asking me right now, to give you four workouts that you're going to certainly miss 30% of the time, and you're going to feel bad about it. And you're going to want to give up. So basically, you're asking me to sabotage you.” Are you listening right now? And I don't mean… I'm out of the conversation. And I'm asking you, who's listening to this right now, do you see how that works? Because if you fall short of your weekly target, and you feel bad about it, and feeling bad, doesn't motivate you to step up, it makes you feel like oh, man, I'm never going to get this, then you are setting yourself up for failure.  

So here's the action I want you to do. Start with small habits that you can't say no to. And my clients, they hate doing this, but they love the results. For example, I had a CFO client, he started with five-minute workouts before work, and I know what you might think, you might think, “Oh, five minutes, that's a waste of time.”  

And let me tell you something. This is the reason I get the result and you're not getting the results, because I've made these mistakes already. And I'd figured this out, it's not a wasted time, because if I can get someone consistently doing five minutes, then I can bump that up to 10 minutes, then it can get bumped that up to 15 minutes, I can bump that up more and more and more if I start small.  

And as a result, that CFO client lost 20 pounds in three months with those five minute workouts, we eventually added more, and tracking his nutrition. That is how you get this to work, folks, this is how you get sustainable change, you make it so easy. Someone cannot say no to it.  

I also had a client, Barbara, a partner in an auditor firm, I think that's how you refer to it. She's one of the best people at what she does in the country. And I told her I'm like, “We're going to start off with 10 minute workouts, and they're going to be in your office,” because she said, “Well, I've got this time where the Zoom meetings are going to go on and I don't have to participate, but I have to be there and I have to listen to him.” 

I said, “Perfect.” And you know what, she lost 40 pounds. I think maybe it's right under 40, like 38 pounds, 40 pounds in nine months. And you know, nine months we went through tax season together, what do you want me to tell you? She plateaued a few times, otherwise, the results would have been much better. And again, going back to that stress situation.  

But what we did is we focused on habits that she could be consistent with. And we started with 10-minute workouts and tracking her nutrition. She didn't even track that accurately, and boom, she was down almost 40 pounds—changed her life. So let's move on to the next, not changing your environment. Here's a big…This is the thing.  

It's nearly impossible to lose fat if you're surrounded by unhealthy food. And it's unlikely that you're going to achieve your fat loss goal if you're surrounded by people who drink and eat too much. Discipline isn't the big issue. It can be. But what I find for high-performers, it's much less the discipline issue and it's more actually the mindset.  

But something that they don't realize and that they end up taking personally is that everyone fails in an environment that is constantly working against them. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or what your degree is, or how much money you make, or you know how fast your company is growing, if you don't change your environment, you won't be able to change permanently either. This is crucial.  

And the action here is you have to build an environment that makes doing your healthy habits easy. And I want to even share something personal about this. So I travel a lot. I can't always guarantee that I'm going to have a gym. For example, I'm in Paris, France right now; next week, I'm going to be in Madrid, Spain.  

I can't guarantee… I don't have a gym to go to; they're too far and they open too late because Paris is like one of those places. So what I've done is I've brought my band system. I teach this to my clients as well. I bring my band system, it's just a little bag that fits right into my luggage, even my carry-on luggage. And I do my workouts at home, so I set my environment up for success.  

Oh, I don't have a gym. Okay, cool. Well, I can go walking and I can do that band system. I also track… well, I shouldn't talk about the tracking because that's more of a habit, not the environment. I also make sure that I stay in Airbnb or hotels that have preferably a kitchen—definitely for Airbnbs, I'll stay in a place that has a kitchen and at least a refrigerator so I can go buy 0% fat Greek yogurt or whatever type of food that I can find that is low calorie to help me hit my calorie goal. 

So I set myself up for success. I make sure I stay in a place where I know I'm going to get good sleep. I stay in Airbnbs and hotel. Hotels usually have blackout blinds, but some Airbnbs don't. I look for Airbnbs that have blackout blinds, I build an environment that I figured out that works for me.  

So, what you can do is build an environment that makes doing your healthy habits easy, okay, build an environment that makes your healthy habits easy. Number five, focused on the outcome, not the process. Let me ask you this: have you ever started a weight loss program and you're doing great? This happens a bunch in my coaching group.  

A client will be crushing it; there'll be losing10 pounds for the first month and then the second month, they step on the scale and one of the weeks, their weight doesn't change, and they get upset. And I want to ask you, have you ever had that happen? Maybe you've been making some progress, and you step on the scale, and you don't see progress.  

Or maybe you don't see progress fast enough, at least, to your expectations, and it makes you feel bad. It makes you get a case of what I call and have talked a lot about on this podcast, “the fuck it's” like, oh, man, fuck this, and you want to stop. This is one of the things that makes people quit even before they get started. And we work with clients, we were on top of this, we have to ask our clients, “Hey, listen, how many times can you weigh in per week? 

We need at least once per week? But do you feel a strong urge to quit if you step on the scale, and you see your weight going up or staying the same?” And based on their answer, we help them figure out a schedule of weighing that won't lead to those struggles, right?  

Because the more of those moments that you have, where you're like, “Oh, I want to quit, I'm tired of this. I'm not seeing results. I feel like I'm doing everything right. and the number on the scale isn't changing, and I want to quit.” The more times you have that, the more the more likely you are to give up.  

And here's the thing: if you give up, you're never going to fix this. You have to stay in the game. But most people, what happens is the way they go about their program. I mean, let me just say this, if I can: people think it's their hormones, their metabolism, come up with all these complicated my genes. It's like, “Do you know anything about genetics?” ‘Well, no, I read a blog post about it once five years ago.” 

“Okay, then why are you talking about your genetics? What do you know about hormones? Even doctors don't know this stuff that well.” What it really is, folks, is psychology, people try to do something that becomes very stressful, or very hard to do. And then once you're doing the…Here's how it happens: “Oh my gosh, look at me, I'm getting fat, I need to change,” and high motivation to change.  

And then you start going to the gym seven days a week, twice on Sundays, and you do your keto diet with intermittent fasting, and you start to see results. And then you're like, “Ah, wow, that negative feeling that I felt from seeing myself in the mirror and feeling like a fat ass, now I'm in the zone and getting results, and I feel good.” And then as time goes on, you weight initially. And then the results come slower and slower, or maybe even hit a plateau.  

And then the negative feelings start to build up, you're like, “Man, I'm eating zero carbs, I'm not eating until 1pm, and I’m stopping my last meal by 6pm. And I'm working out seven days a week and twice on Sunday, and I'm not getting results. And this sucks and I hate this, and this is too hard.” And then they quit.  

This is so easy, folks. It's not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. And the most complicated and challenging part is psychological. So, you have to remove your focus from the outcome and put it on to the process. Now, when we first sign up our clients, we put them on what I call the phase one, if you're a client right now you know exactly what I'm talking about.  

And our clients lose, on average four to six pounds in the first 10 days of the program. So from when they have their onboarding call with me and 10 days later, they lose four to six pounds, and we get people dialed in. They're like, “Oh, this worked and it wasn't that hard. And I thought I was going to be hungry, but I wasn't hungry, and I'm not killing myself with exercise. I'm in this program. I'm in. I'm all in now.” 

But we also make sure to tell them, “Look, you got great results when you first started, the results are going to slow down some weeks, you may not lose any weight at all. Either way, you're going to have to be consistent with your habits.” And that's how we get sustainable results with our coaching. And whether you work with me or not. That's how you break the yo-yo diet cycle. That's how you get out of the going extreme, then giving up, going extreme, then giving up.  

So you start to become focused on the weekly habits you start to focus on: Did you work out as many times as you said you were going to? Of course, we've already talked about setting the target low enough to build the habit. And let me ask you this: when you start to focus on the process, you're always winning. Did you work out the three times for 20 minutes that you said you were going to?”  

“Yes, I did it.”  “Great. How do you feel?” “I feel amazing. Give me more.” That's the change that we're looking for from our clients. That's the change we're looking for. And if we can get that, we know a client is going to win big. But I'll tell you, it's a process. It's a big process. It is so simple to lose fat, it's just eating fewer calories than you burn. It's that simple, folks.  

But it's how do you do that in a way that doesn't use strict diets, that doesn't use workouts that keep you in the gym for four or five hours a week? How do you do that in a way that allows you to enjoy your social life and makes room for vacations and anniversaries and having that anniversary dinner or birthday dinner, or sharing a slice of chocolate cake with one of your kids for their birthdays, and there's a lot of ups and downs in that journey.  

I would even say it's the same like building a business. My entrepreneurial journey. I'm a great coach. I've been doing this for 23 years. I have some challenges occasionally. But most of the time, I mean, I just crush it with clients. And even when the clients aren't crushing it with their goals, they at least understand why and what needs to change.  

And the challenges just in creating the change, usually, it becomes really challenging when a client is under high amount of stress. But when I'm talking about growing my business, man, it's an up and down roller coaster, I'm just never going to quit because this is why I would have to find something else to do. And this is my mission in life, to help people with this.  

I could do other things for money, folks. But I choose this because it just, I feel like we go to battle together. We're on SEAL Team Six together, we're an elite force together, and we win together. And I love that feeling. I love helping people win with this.  

And so let's recap. Number one mistake is falling for quick fixes. And a quick fix is any fat loss strategy that you know, you can't keep up for 10 years. Number two, too much stress. And the action here is schedule one stress-reducing activity on your calendar every week. 

Number three, trying to do too much. You know you're doing too much if you can't be consistent on a weekly basis. And the action here is to start with smaller habits that you can't say no to, start with small habits that you can nail every single week. Four, not changing your environment. If you're surrounded by healthy food, you come home and you have to constantly tell yourself don't eat the ice cream.  

If you got to spend your hours at home, telling yourself like I would, “Don't eat that ice cream. Don't eat that ice cream, Ted.” Oh man, you just got some news that kind of bothered you emotionally, “Don't eat that ice cream, Ted,” you're going to lose it, you're going to eventually cave in, because you'll have bad days and you'll give in. And when I have those days, the ice cream disappears. So build an environment that makes doing your healthy habits easy.  

Number five, focus on the outcome, not the process. And the action here is focus on the process and the outcome will take care of itself. Maybe not every week, but it will eventually take care of itself. You've got to focus on those habits and eventually, the habits will come become automatic, they'll take so much less effort, and then it'll be easy to make changes that deliver even better results.  

So hope you enjoyed this today. And I would ask you, what is your big takeaway from today's episode? What is the big change you can make in what you're doing and how you're approaching fat loss? And if you're an entrepreneur who feels like you're making these mistakes over and over again, you are writing that all-or-nothing extreme, then gain the weight back pattern, then consider booking a free 15-minute health audit call with me, all right?  

And you would go and do that at www.legendarylifeprogram.com/apply. All right folks, hope that helps. Have an amazing week and weekend, and I will speak to you soon.