Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 2 Psychological SKILLS That Determine If You'll Stick to Lifting and Nutrition | Ep 411

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2 Psychological SKILLS That Determine If You'll Stick to Lifting and Nutrition | Ep 411 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Even if you know what to do, you've listened to podcasts, watched to videos, maybe hired a coach, you know how to eat, how to train, how to lose fat, build muscle, and yet you still keep stopping, you keep falling off, you keep starting over.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna show you why this happens and why it has nothing to do with discipline, willpower, or motivation.
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: You'll discover the two trainable psychological skills that predict whether someone follows through or gives up and walk away with specific tips to build these skills.
• 0:43
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:50
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna talk about the psychology of adherence, specifically what the research tells us about why people stick to strength training and nutrition and why most people don't.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: This is one of those episodes that is about mindset and how you think about consistency.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna go beyond typical advice and probably beyond things that I've even discussed on the show because I recently came across a research review, it was in mass, that examined the factors related to long-term resistance training adherence specifically.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: And they challenged some of my own assumptions, they confirmed some others, and I'm always learning and trying to apply what I've learned for you guys and to our programs and to the Fitness Lab app, and really just make sure we're using the latest uh knowledge from the evidence to help us out, myself included.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: What struck me most from this review is that the psychological mechanisms that determine whether someone sticks to their training and nutrition, they're trainable.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: I guess it didn't surprise me, but it was really cool to see the validation that these are skills that you can develop.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: They are skills.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: They're not personality traits, they're not, you know, stuck in your permanent identity.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: They are skills.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: So let's get into it.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: Let's start with what the evidence shows about why most people quit, but why some people don't.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: And that's going to give us a clue about what we can do.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: So here's the thing about sticking to anything really, but specifically your training and nutrition, is that I think we're focused often on the wrong variables.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like when we talk about energy balance and we talk about calories and calories out.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: And calories in, calories out are variables, but they're usually the wrong variables because most people, even if you understand that, have trouble getting the right calories in and producing the right calories out.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: And it's like, what upstream do we actually care more about in terms of variables that get us to those other variables being what we want?
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: And you've heard lots of these methods.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: You've heard of smart goals, for example, you've heard of finding an accountability partner.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: You've probably heard, hey, you've got to make it fun, you've got to remove friction.
• 3:04
  Philip Pape: And I've talked about all of those.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: And some of it can help.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: These are all, I'll say, tools more than anything, but none of them actually explain why two people, if you put them side by side and they have the same environment, the same program, the same knowledge, one of them sticks to that for years and the other one might quit after three weeks, right?
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: And they may have some of these tools in place and still it's not working.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: So what's going on?
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: Well, the research tells us that the factors that drive long-term adherence, they're not external factors, they're internal factors.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: They're psychological constructs that are operating beneath the surface.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: Now, I want to make something clear up front.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: We don't have a ton of direct evidence on long-term resistance training adherence specifically.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: As is the case with most of these studies, they're looking at acute responses, short-term outcomes.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: Maybe they're looking at aerobic exercise, not strength training.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: And so the research I'm drawing from today looks at psychological models that predict health behavior more broadly and then connects those to what we know about lifting.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: But I am quite confident that to say that, like when we talk about principles, principles apply to lots of different contexts and situations.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: And so these models make a lot of sense to me.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: And that's what we're going to talk about, right?
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: These are I'll say universal mechanisms.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: The same psychological factors that predict whether you stick to walking or running or health behavior should apply to training and nutrition as well, because we're talking about human behavior, right?
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: The principles don't change just because you're doing one thing instead of another.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: So, what are these factors?
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: Well, the research points to a few key items here.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: Positive, effective response is one.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: That's how you feel after training.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: Interesting, right?
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: Positive, effective response.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: Self-efficacy is your belief in your ability to execute specific behaviors.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: That's how much you believe in yourself and your confidence to do something.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: Intrinsic motivation is doing something because you genuinely want to do it.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: And then self-regulation is the ability to follow through on your intentions despite obstacles.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: Interesting, right?
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: Your ability to follow through despite obstacles.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: And so these four things are working together in a kind of like a system, and they interact, just like many things interact, right?
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: You can't necessarily separate them.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: And when we understand that, then we can engineer our approach to try to maximize them.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: So I want to start with the one that surprised me a little bit in the research.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: And this is this is the emotional payoff of training.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: What the data shows us that people who lift weights usually feel better afterward.
• 5:47
  Philip Pape: All right, that sounds obvious, and that I could get on board with.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: That's not the surprise.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: I agree.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: I tell people that all the time.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: Like, you may not feel like lifting.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: It may feel, it may be hard.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: Once you do it, you're gonna love it.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: You're gonna do it, you're gonna feel great afterward.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: But in this case, there was a there's research, right?
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: So a 16-week study looked at recreational adults, and it found that uh feeling scale, uh, a score on a scale of how you feel, right?
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: How good you feel, increased consistently from before to after training.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: The interesting thing though is the highest positive feelings came after strength-focused sessions like deadlifts, squats, etc.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: Compound movements produce the most positive emotional response.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: That's pretty cool.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: Now, what does this mean for you?
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: Well, if you've ever felt like training should be a slog or punishment or suffering, you know, you have to suffer through it.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: Research is telling us otherwise.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: You don't just have to take it from me anymore.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Training, especially heavy compound lifts, actually make you feel good, better than before you started.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: I can buy this for sure.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: It's not until I started lifting that way that I really started to enjoy lifting.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: And I try to get that message across to people who are like, well, I don't like to work out, I don't like to, you're not doing it right.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: And I think this matters a ton because of something called hedonic theory.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And that's the idea that people are going to repeat behaviors that feel good at the end, right?
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: It's an incentive.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: There's a there's a famous study where people stuck their hands in cold water, and one of the conditions was cold water for one minute, another was cold water for one minute, plus an additional 30 seconds where the temperature was raised slightly.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: And then when they were asked which condition they wanted to repeat, most people chose the longer one, even though it involved more total cold exposure because it ended better.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: And this has implications to our training because if you're crushing yourself to the point of feeling awful at the end of every session, which I don't recommend, you're fighting against your own psychology.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: You know, you might think I'm being hardcore and this, you know, I think of my CrossFit days.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: Man, I was like, at the end, I don't know if I felt great or not.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: Like maybe hours later I did, but right afterward, I felt pretty terrible.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: I like I wanted to die.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: And we often put that on a pedestal.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: But you're actually programming your brain to not like training when you do that.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: So the takeaway is leave the gym feeling good, not destroyed.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: Whoa, pretty cool, right?
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: Like research supports this, where you know, progressive overload matters, training hard matters, but there's a difference between a challenging session where the weights are heavy and one that like crushes and destroys you and demoralizes you.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: There is a difference.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: And usually the former is going to end up being the more effective workout anyway.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: So that's that's feeling capable after because you've done something.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: But now let's connect that to the next factor, which maybe is the most important factor, at least in my opinion.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: And that is related to self-efficacy.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: I think self-efficacy, it comes up a lot.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: I hear people, well, I guess I don't hear people use the phrase a lot.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: I've used it a lot since I met Dr.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Eric Helms years ago and he used it.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: And there's something called self-self-motivation theory that it's part of.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people, I think, confuse self-efficacy with motivation, and they're definitely not the same.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: You know, motivation is wanting to do something.
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: And I heard someone say recently, hey, anytime you do something, you were motivated to do it.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: So if you're doom scrolling on your phone on the couch, you were motivated to do that.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: Motivation gets you to do something.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: Whatever, it doesn't matter.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: Good, bad doesn't matter.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is believing you can do it.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: Specifically, it's believing that you can execute the next step successfully.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: It's a level of confidence, isn't it?
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: And here's how I like to think about it.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: So motivation is saying, do I want to go to the gym?
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: Self-efficacy is saying, can I complete today's workout successfully?
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: There's a difference, right?
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: Do I want to go to the gym?
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: Motivation.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: Can I complete today's workout successfully?
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: That's self-efficacy.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: That's more on the confidence side.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: And the research is clear here as well.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: Higher self-efficacy is associated with more positive feelings after training, as well as greater intention to continue training or exercising, and even better self-regulation around food choices.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: So it is a predictor across multiple domains.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: And what I find super powerful about this is that self-efficacy, it's not just believing you can achieve some umbrella long-term massive goal, right?
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: It's not.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: It's granular, it's down to the process level, skill level.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: It's can I hit my protein today?
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: Not can I master flexible dieting?
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: Can I do this workout?
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: Not can I become a competitive lifter or can I get jacked in six months, right?
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: And the cool thing here, we're going to tie it into the first thing I talked about, is what the research found that lifting heavier loads was related to great, greater self-efficacy.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: And if you think about it, it makes logical sense because every time you add weight to the bar, every time you hit a PR, even if it's Rep's PR, yes, you're making physical progress, but it's also psychological progress.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: You did a hard thing and you've done it.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: And now you say, your brain says, I can do this because I did it before and I can do it again.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: You're collecting data points that reaffirm your efficacy.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: And this is also, if to take a highly relevant tangent, this is why progressive overload is also so important beyond what it gets you.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: It actually builds that self-belief.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: Because every time you have a successful extra rep or higher load, when you complete a planned workout that you intentionally designed to be slightly more challenging than last time, that is like a deposit into your self-efficacy bank account.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: And that's what's also really powerful, where I see people change from I hate working out to, oh my God, I can't wait for my next session because I want to see if I'm stronger.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: There is a difference there.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: Now, you have to build this intentionally.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: It's a skill.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: You have to engineer your wins.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: You have to bring them from nowhere into existence, not fake wins, but real wins that are achievable.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: So that means they have to be something you can achieve because you have to start with the self-efficacy, self-efficacy you have right now, which if you've never lifted weights at all, is going to be quite low compared to somebody who's even done one gym session and knows that they can do a lift.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: So you're starting where you are, and you want to guarantee what I'll call technical success, which means starting with a minimum that you absolutely 100% can hit rather than some ideal that's like you're not sure how challenging it's gonna be, and then there's a chance you're gonna miss it.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: This goes back to the always get your reps philosophy that I originally learned in starting strength.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: And it's a super powerful psychological model because it means you need to track in a way that shows that you progress to give your brain evidence that you did progress, but you have to progress.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: So rather than fail, because it kind of breaks the loop or breaks the chain, if you will.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: And that's starting with a target that's slightly above where you are now.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: That's why I'm a big fan of the small wins and the small steps.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: Same thing goes with protein, calories, whatever.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: If you're not eating very much protein, don't double your protein.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Pick a goal that's a little bit more than that, and then a little more, and you hit that, and then a little more and you hit that.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: And then within weeks, it doesn't take long, guys, it doesn't take long for any of this stuff.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: Within weeks, now you are at a level that you thought in the past was impossible, but now you totally believe you can do it because you've done it.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: It's like when your squat goes from 95 to 135 to 185 to 225.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: And a few months later you look back, you're hitting 275, and you're like, oh my God, remember that time I did 95?
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: That seems like nothing.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: 275 would have felt impossible.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: And now you're like, when am I getting a 315?
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: And your brain is gonna predict success based on past data.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: So you have to feed it good data, good meaning data that emphasizes you can do this and have the self-efficacy.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: So quick break here because we're talking about self-efficacy and self-regulation.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: Today is Wednesday, December 10th, and we are just kicking off our three-week strong finish challenge today.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: If you haven't had a chance to grab a spot and sign up, you can still do so at live.witsandweeets.com and you can get the replay from our kickoff two days ago and all the resources, the strength training templates, the custom nutrition plan, access to our coaches, accountability, all of it.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: And that challenge is designed around what we're talking about today, about proving to yourself that you can maintain or even progress with your training, your nutrition, your recovery, even in the hardest weeks of the year.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: And this is exactly relevant because we're gonna show you how to have that achievable level of success rather than a wishful thinking that you fail at.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: And that framework is what we call the flex framework, right?
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: It's about setting minimums and then also having bailouts.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: And even the bailouts give you a psychological win that you're not manufacturing, but you're actually achieving.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: And that helps you build the evidence that you can do this and follow through no matter what's happening around you in the hardest time of the year.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: And that's exactly how you build self-efficacy, aiming to prove that you have a floor that you can always count on no matter what.
• 15:09
  Philip Pape: There's still time to join.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: The challenge runs through the end of the year.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: So join now.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: If you're seeing hearing this a couple days later, it's we're just getting started.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: You have plenty of time.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com, register, jump in.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: You'll get all the resources.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to go over those again.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: Just go check it out.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: You can read about it.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: If it doesn't look interesting, don't have to join.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: Live.witsandweights.com.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: And then by the end of the year, you'll know what your sustainable baseline is.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: Not what you hope you can do in some random perfect conditions, but what you can actually maintain when life gets super, super chaotic.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: And that knowledge is so invaluable.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: That is the self-efficacy that we want to build.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: Live.witsandweights.com to join our three-week strong finish challenge, whether you're trying to lose fate, fat, or just maintain your results.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: Let's get back to the psychology of adherence.
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: And I'm going to talk about the second trainable skill that determines whether you follow through.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: So the first one was self-efficacy.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: I know I talked about feeling good after a workout.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: That wasn't really the skill.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: The skill was tied to self-efficacy itself.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: The second one, so self-efficacy is about believing you can do something.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Now I want to talk about self-regulation.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: So self-regulation is actually doing it, but when life gets in the way.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: This is the whole point.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: Think of it this way: self-efficacy is the foundation.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: Self-regulation is what keeps the building standing up when the wind starts to pick up.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: It's doing it when life gets in the way.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: And the research defines it as the ability to control your behaviors, your feelings, and thoughts in service of a goal.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: So self-regulation is the ability to control your behaviors, feelings, and thoughts in service of a goal.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: Notice that's not a habit.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: A habit is automatic.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: This is a skill.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: It's what allows your behavior to match your intentions despite obstacles.
• 17:01
  Philip Pape: And that despite obstacles part is the crucial part.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: It's what we've been talking about since day one on this podcast when we talk about sustainability, flexibility, and all of that.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: Because here's the reality.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: You're going to have days where you're tired, you're stressed, you're busy, you're traveling, you're dealing with family stuff, right?
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: And the older we get, the more of that stuff there is just it's not going to go away.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: Work emergencies, in my own case, a surgery a week after a colonoscre.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: Come on.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: Come on, world.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: Self-regulation is what allows you to make a useful choice in those moments.
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: A useful choice in those moments instead of abandoning ship.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: So, what does this look like in reality, in practice?
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: Well, it looks like choosing a shortened version of your training when time is tight instead of skipping the training.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: Or moving it out a day instead of skipping it.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: It looks like logging your food even when you don't eat like you intended, because the data still matters.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: It looks like adjusting your dinner because your lunch was bigger than you planned.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: It looks like lifting while you're on vacation, but using a minimalist plan in a local gym instead of pretending the gym doesn't exist till you get home.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: Now, that last one's a little of if you choose to do that, right?
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: That's if your goal is to continue training on vacation.
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: Now, the research, as always, shows these cool little insights that if you're not paying attention, you don't realize this stuff, and then you just hear the same thing everybody else says on podcasts, which isn't always reality according to research.
• 18:36
  Philip Pape: Self-regulation can transfer between domains, going back to our idea of principle, our idea of principles and universal mechanisms.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by this is improving your regulation in one area like training can improve your self-regulation in another area like nutrition.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: Pretty okay.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: Now this is interesting.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: I didn't mention when we were talking about self-efficacy, a thought that I had, which is that the more I've become confident as a lifter, the more I become confident in other areas of my life.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: Same thing applied to my confidence of public speaking.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: And self-regulation is the same thing.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: It's connected.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: It's like upward spiraling.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: When you build the muscle of following through in an area, that strength, that confidence carries over.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: The person who learns to adjust their training when time is limited is probably more likely to adjust their meal when their circumstance changes.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: It's the same skill, which is super powerful because it means you don't have to learn 20 different skills.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: You learn one skill and you apply that principle to multiple areas.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: So, how do you do that?
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: How do you build self-regulation?
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: Well, again, we're going to look at the research.
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: What does it say?
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: Because I'm not an expert in this area.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: I'm learning like you guys, but then I try to bring this to my clients and uh, you know, the app that I have, Fitness Lab, I actually put those principles in this app so that you can benefit from it.
• 20:00
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna give you four tips to build self-regulation.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: The first one is to use action plans and implementation intentions.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: So, what do I mean?
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: This means deciding in advance what you'll do when an obstacle arises.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: This is the if-then strategy.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: That's all it is.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: It's not figure out when I get there.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: It's if X happens, I will do Y.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: If I'm traveling and the hotel gym only has dumbbells, I will do this dumbbell workout.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: If I wake up late, I will do a 20-minute session instead of my full 60-minute session.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: Now, not every scenario has to be accounted for, just the ones that you feel are common to you.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: And what I like to do with clients is say, what scenarios have hit have bothered me a lot?
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: What have gotten in the way a lot?
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna make strategies for those first.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: That's the first one.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: So implementation intentions, if then.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: Second, it's is something called pre-commitment.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: It's like pre-planning, but you're actually doing something, like you're actually doing a thing.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: For example, packing your gym clothes and your gym bag the night before, right?
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: So you're doing something to make the situation easier, lower friction, et cetera.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: Pre-logging your meals in your food app and then just executing.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: Same thing with your workouts.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: Setting up your environment so the default is the best choice for you, like your kitchen, your cabinets, your fridge.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: That's what pre-commitment is.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: You've already committed to the thing by taking action ahead of time.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: The third tip I have for you is habit strength.
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: Habit strength.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: Now remember, I mentioned earlier, habits are automatic things.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: Working out is not a habit.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: Working out is part of your lifestyle.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: It's a series of habits and intentions and behaviors, et cetera.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: But a habit is automatic.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: So the more automatic a behavior becomes, by definition, the less self-regulation it requires.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: This is why I love systems.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Systems are always going to be superior to a decision.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: Decision can be, can cause fatigue and stress and can interfere with your emotions, et cetera.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: A system, I won't say makes it automatic, but it helps all the automatic things happen on a regular basis.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: So if you're training at 6 a.m.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: and that's just what you do because you've you've done the pre-commitment with your gym bag, you've developed the habits of just getting up at 6 a.m., it all leads to you ultimately training, being the person that trains at 6 a.m.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: Do you know what I mean?
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to regulate yourself into it.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: This is a little more complexity when we talk about habits and how habits build up into behaviors.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: And then the fourth tip I have for you is tracking micro winds.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: Very common theme on this show.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Every time you successfully do anything where you've adapted in some way, and that could be physical adaptation, but more likely psychological or habit adaptation.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: Every time you do one of these intelligent pivots because you have high self-regulation instead of quit, you know, you find a way around the obstacle.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: That is data and that is evidence.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: And you should track that in some way, whether that's a habit streaker, some sort of app.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: This is, I love my app for this.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: I'm just gonna toot my own horn.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: Fitness lab is all about this because you get little microactivities every day and you can build wins.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: And it's always asking you, like, what do you feel about your choice?
• 23:09
  Philip Pape: What would you win here?
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: What would you win here?
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: And then it reinforces that for you.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: And that builds that self-regulation as well as the self-efficacy, right?
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: So, self, what is self-regulation not?
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: It's not white knuckling your way through life.
• 23:22
  Philip Pape: That's not what we're doing.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: It's building a system that reduces the willpower that you need in the first place.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: All right, so in my notes, I was gonna start going over some different psychological models behind all of this.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: I don't want to make this episode longer than it needs to be.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna quickly list them out.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: There's actually seven of them that explain health behavior and adherence.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: And you can look them up and look, if any of these are ones that you want me to dive into on a future episode, reach out to me on Instagram at Wits and Weights or go to wits and weights.com slash question.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: Reach out to me and let me know.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: Here they are.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Self-determination theory, that is, that's what I meant to say before when I said something else.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: I said it wrong.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: Self-determination theory.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: That's when you have autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: And that helps you develop intrinsic motivation and that leads to greater adherence.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: Okay, related to what we talked about today.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to get into it, but self-efficacy is related to competence and capability.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: So it's very important here.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: Second is the theory of planned behavior.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: That's when you have a strong intention to do something and increases your odds of doing it.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: The third one is the integrated behavior model, which takes that further and says, hey, external factors can get in the way.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: So this is where you have to use self-regulation to control your environment, resources, context, everything like that.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: The fourth one is social cognitive theory, which emphasizes self-efficacy and your belief in something.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: And when you believe in something, you're going to more likely do it.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: And then there's three more.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: Those are, or what are how many?
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: I mentioned four.
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: I'm just going to stop it though.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: Those are my four favorite.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: They all overlap with what we've already talked about.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: You don't have to pick any of these models.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: I just thought it'd be cool to understand that there's hard science behind a lot of this.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: You just have to build competence through these winds.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: You have to create autonomy by giving yourself choice within this structure.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: It helps to find community that can reinforce this identity of yours as someone who trains and eats well, and ultimately design a system that makes it easy to follow through, easier to follow through than not follow through.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: You're stacking the deck in your favor using this psychological knowledge.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: So the last thing I'm going to mention is how do you put this into practice, like literally practically?
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: Self-efficacy, you want structured wins.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: You want things that are repeatable, which we already alluded to when it comes to your training, of picking something achievable, but that's still growth.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: That's an example.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: For nutrition, self-efficacy again comes to wins like hitting your protein, eating one more serving of vegetables than usual.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: Some sort of micro win like that.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: So that's self-efficacy.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: For self-regulation, you just want to reduce friction.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: So that's pre-logging, that's packing your gym bag the night before, that's doing meal prep, that's having your workout template ready to go, or you know, your training template ready to go.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: The less that you have to decide the moment, which means less to regulate by definition.
• 26:11
  Philip Pape: And then what are your fallback plans?
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: What's your minimum viable when something happens?
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: What's your bailout, which is what we talk about in the flex framework, which we're what what our challenge is all about.
• 26:21
  Philip Pape: And then all this connects to your identity.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: Seeing yourself as someone who trains, someone who prioritizes good food and protein, someone who adapts, who doesn't quit.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: That's a very powerful thing.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: So if you're if you're gonna take one thing out of all of this to start from, I'm gonna say look at your strength training.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: If you're not already doing strength training in the way that we've alluded to today, focus on that because it's a backbone of everything.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: If you can start training and making progress and building strength and muscle, it's gonna give you self-efficacy and self-regulation that translates to all the other stuff.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: It's pretty powerful.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: And then remember, if you want to put this into practice right now, during the hardest three weeks of the year, join us in our three-week strong finish challenge.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: It's still open, live.wits and weights.com.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: We are building these skills, your self-efficacy, your self-regulation, using a structured challenge that have minimums, bailouts, and of course, community and coach support.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: Prove to yourself that you can maintain and grow through the holidays.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: Enter 2026, knowing exactly what you're capable of.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com or click the link in the show notes.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: And remember, self-efficacy and self regulation aren't gifts that you're born with.
• 27:31
  Philip Pape: They are skills that you build.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: One rep, one meal, one successful adaptation at a time.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.