Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 47: What you say to yourself, matters.
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversation podcast. In today's episode, I want to talk all about why what we say to ourselves matters. And this is something that I, as a coach, definitely picked up on more as I got deeper into my coaching career. And I think it is something that is incredibly impactful, but is often missed. It's missed by sort of ourselves, right? We're not maybe self-aware of the kind of things we're saying to ourselves, but also even by other coaches. I don't necessarily think it's something that's really talked about. I've not really heard it talked about. much at all. And it's this idea that the way that you talk to yourself matters hugely. And I see this all the time, is you can sort of tell when someone is trying to make a change, the language they use often kind of indicates, and it's not 100 % success rate, but it does tend to pretty well indicate whether someone is going to make that change or where they are in that kind of journey to that change. So I'm gonna make a specific example so you know what I'm talking about. So let's say someone is struggling with their evening snacking, right? A super, super common problem. And they sort of say, ⁓ you know what, last week was pretty crappy for evening snacking, didn't do the best job of handling that, I'm gonna try a bit harder next week. Hopefully things aren't so stressful. So, let's pick that apart a little bit. Okay, there's a bit of intention there. There's that kind of, I'm gonna try a bit harder. That's great. So there's a bit of intention there. But there's almost this like term. It's on this term of like, well hopefully work's not so stressful, hopefully life's not so stressful next week. And it kind of starts to give you a little bit of insight of, okay, well what we're not saying is we're not saying, do you know what, work was really, stressful last week and I let that slip into my snacking and I've not done so well on that front, I'm gonna make a change next week and here are the one or two things I'm gonna change. I'm not gonna let myself get stressed out from work and then go straight into the cupboard to deal with that stress. It's not particularly specific. but it's also not particularly confident. And I think that can be really, really important is you've got to back yourself a bit. And there's all sorts of examples I could pull up for this, but I'm just gonna take this one a little bit farther. But this is a great example of where I'm listening to that, I would, the first thought in my coaching brain is going to be, okay, do they know specifically what they need to do to make that change? So for me, what I might think is, and this is a simple example, I might think, okay, Do you know what, last week wasn't the best week for evening snacking. So what I've done is I've gone and bought some more berries or strawberries, for example, because it's getting to that time of year, just about, almost there, where I might think, right, I'm gonna have a couple of pundits of those in the fridge. And I know when I come home, I've got a healthy snack to have, or for the later evening, I've got a healthy snack to have that I can have a handful of strawberries and it's barely any calories at all. That's gonna keep me on track. That can be super, super useful. that's a very practical solution. So that's something around the intention there as well, is okay, it's quite specific, it's quite deliberate. That's always a really positive sign. The more broad something is of like, I'm just gonna try harder, or I just need to have more willpower, I often pick that part and be like, okay, well, willpower sounds great, but what else could we change? What structural things could we change? And then getting an idea of that certainty as well, because if someone says to you, Right, next week, this is what I'm gonna do. We're gonna make this change. That's a really good indicator that they're fairly confident in doing something. Whereas if you get that kind of, sort of, I'm gonna try a bit harder at this, I just hope that, or hopefully things settle down, or hopefully my sleep's a bit, or, you know, what starts to happen is it makes it conditional. And I think that's something that we kind of need to watch. And I've done it myself before as well, where it's like, yeah, I'm hoping I can have a better week of training next week. Well, hoping means very little. right in this case, but there's a practical solution to that. Look at last week, what went wrong? What would you change about it and make a plan? For example, if it was a training related sort of issue, I hadn't gotten to train as much as I wanted to the previous week, I'd be looking at, okay, when was there that time that I could have gone to the gym, but I didn't? Do I then schedule that into my calendar? Do I plan it in? Am I really deliberate about holding myself accountable to that? So rather than be bit wishy-washy with the language you use, that can be really, really helpful too. And it seems like a really minor thing. You might be thinking, well, does this stuff actually matter that much? And it tends to, because what happens is if someone says, I'm gonna make this change, it kind of gives, you almost give yourself a bit of confidence, right? And that's obviously my job as a coach, is kind giving people that nudge. And be like, yeah, you absolutely can do this. And there's lots of different ways of doing that. It's not a surface level of you can do it and cheering them on. Sometimes it's a little bit more subtle than that. and just giving them that confidence and being like, do you remember when we made this change before? You were really struggling with getting your steps in and look at your steps now, they're bloody brilliant. So we just need to make that same kind of sort of gear shift, right? And giving someone that bit of confidence built on something else that changed before or some progress that they've made, that's what we're looking for. But I cannot stress how important that is. We can't be wishy washy with these things because weight loss is a slow enough process, even if you're doing it 100%, right? You can see big changes in a month, two months, three months for sure, but nothing really changes overnight. It's not instantly gratifying. You could have the best day ever of nutrition, the next day not much changes. So if you go on with this kind of slightly more wishy-washy approach to it, or you're kind of like, yeah, I'm gonna try a little bit harder on this, or yeah, snacking's quite hard right now, just finding it a bit tough. And it's like, that's fine, absolutely fine to feel that way. But we need to be deliberate about how do we get a handle on this? And I think that intent is really, important. Because like I say, weight loss is a slow process, so if you're going at it 60%, it's gonna take you forever to get where you want to be. If we are trying to pull off half a kilo, .6, .7, .8 kilos a week, and you're putting 60 % effort in and you're getting 60 % of that result, that means that your timeline for dieting is way longer than it needs to be. And this happens a lot. This is one of the things as a coach I'm always keeping an eye on. So I think when it comes to the way we speak to ourselves, we want to be very intentional. We don't want to be wishy-washy. and that's gonna allow you to kick on. And the perfect example for me is definitely there's a period of time where I've always trained like two, three times a week without fail. I've been very consistent, but I wanted to train more than that, but I was finding I just wasn't getting it done. I'd get two or three in and be like, but work was really busy. This was really busy. But then I'd sort of sell myself, oh, hopefully next week isn't so busy. But of course, life fills up your cup. You're always going to be busy. Yeah, some weeks are. Objectively, you've maybe got more scheduled in and you're more stretched for time. But you kind of know, right? You know that the time will be filled anyway. So the thing that made a change was like, I'm gonna plan this in for next week. I'm going to get four sessions done. That's the standard I'm holding myself to. And I was a lot more intentional, deliberate, and firm almost with the languages using around it. And then I very quickly got into that. And also something that I think is worth talking about is a kind of second part to this, and this brings me on to point two, is. the words we use, the way we talk to ourselves really, really matters when it comes to being positive about positive things we do. Because one of the things that's really, really interesting is how much of a negativity bias we innately tend to have, right? Even if you're quite a positive person, a lot of the time if you ask them how they got in the last week, they'll kind of open with, yeah, I did quite well on this, but this wasn't so good, this wasn't so good, this wasn't so good. And they can often list that, and sometimes I will look at a client's nutrition for a week and think, they've done a brilliant job there. and they have hit all their steps, or almost bang on their steps, and also they've hit all the gym sessions and made good progress. But what the focus might be is like, see that hamstring curl, I didn't progress on that this week, and it's like, okay, but look at everything else you progressed on in your training. Look at the fact that you said to me you were super, super busy with work, you were stressed and you were stretched, but you still managed to get three sessions in, that's amazing. And when we start to focus on those things, we start to kind of build a little bit of confidence in ourself. We build that confidence that we can do things that are difficult when life is busy or stressful or whatever, or we can get around obstacles, right? So if you sort of say to yourself, oh, do you know what? I'm really chuffed with myself that I've gotten for that gym session. I do this quite regularly, which sounds kind of lame to say, right? But I definitely like, me and my girlfriend ever train, I always very deliberate, I'm really pleased we got in today. I'm really, really happy that we got in for that session. I had a great session there. And even when it's an internal dialogue, very much like, I go on a, I think this week I was traveling up on a Thursday night, right? So I was traveling two hours back in the car. I had a lot of work to do when I got back. I knew I was working late. I knew I needed to stop at the shop and the gym was really, really close to it. So I was like, right, I'm gonna go and train for 20 minutes, 25 minutes, think it was like 22 in total. But the point was, is that I made myself go, but I didn't come out of it and think, oh, right, need to rush to work, blah, blah, blah, which I did. I needed to get on and get stuff done. but I also made sure to kind of be like, I'm really proud of myself for doing that because I know that historically I might have skipped that. That's the one I would have missed. Not the other sessions in the week. I still would have ticked the box there, but the one where I was a bit time pressed, I could have not gone. The reality is, is that when I felt really bloody good for it, because I've been in the car for two hours anyway, sat in bloody awful traffic, Edinburgh traffic classic, right? I felt much better for it. I'd moved my body and I felt much happier for it. So it does matter. You know, we've kind of talked about point one, which is like, you have to have a bit of certainty. You have to back yourself. I sometimes think this when I was, oh yeah, I kind of want to make a change, but I'm like, right, we need to have a bit more confidence in ourselves that we can do this. And it's understandable why someone lacks confidence in that because if you've failed at dieting multiple times or exercise, you've never been able to stick it. It's normal to feel that way, but that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Is that if you just kind of talk that back into yourself, that uncertainty. So that was kind of point one. Point two is like actually we need to be quite positive about, do you know what, it's bloody good effort that you got to the gym this week twice when you had such a busy week. You've smashed your steps every day despite the fact it was blowing a hoolie, know, it's cold and wet and miserable like it was yesterday. Like these kind of things matter. And the third point that I wanted to make is a problem that a lot of people have. And it is that they are really negative about things. And I kind of touched on that a little bit there, that negativity bias and how we want to approach it. but where they will pick themselves apart for every little flaw and mistake that they make or things they perceive to be a mistake. So the classic example is that I will get someone, so I work with a lot of my clients on like average calories, right? So we will have a calorie target we're aiming towards and we'll look to have an average calorie that's in about the right place across the week, right? That's what we're looking for. The reason I do that is because, well, real life, right? It's very difficult to hit. you if you're on 1800, like hit 1800 on the button every day, and you might have some socials on at the weekend, and you know what, maybe you do want to have a little bit more room. So saving 200 calories from two or three days then gives you that flexibility. So it's really important that allows that flexibility. But what I sometimes see is a client will say to me up at Cameron, you know, I went on the weekend, my calories were a bit higher. And I'll kind of go back and be like, right, well, was that planned? Was that intentional? go, yeah, I kind of banked my calories. So why are you beating yourself up for being? over on one day, even though it's accounted for across the week and it was deliberate. And it's almost this kind of like nitpicking and being like, ⁓ but it would be good to have every day perfectly. When we start to try and look for perfect, we very much, it's like kind of the enemy of progress a little bit, right? We start to put so much pressure on ourselves that we feel like we're failing when you're not. In the same way that I have a few clients that we work on kind of a sort of optional additional session. So they have a baseline, minimum two sessions. They're gonna hit those two sessions. If they have time, they do that extra homework or they do that extra workout in the gym where it's maybe an extra bit of arm work or whatever specific body part, they're just doing a bit more and it's a shorter session. And sometimes a client will say to me, like, ⁓ I didn't get in that this week, I was a bit disappointed by that, blah, blah. And I'll kind of go back and like, we made it last week, we made it the week before, and it's an optional sort of extra, right? It's a bonus session for us. The core of our training was all done. So what are we beating ourselves up about here? Because what starts to happen is it puts pressure on it and it makes training feel like more of a negative thing rather than feel like, do you know what, this month's been really good. Two of the weeks out of the month I managed three, two of the weeks I managed two sessions, what a brilliant week of training. I'm really, really happy with that. That's really important too, is to challenge that negativity. And I'm gonna give you another example of where that comes up because I think this is quite important. Is within the kind of nutrition sense of someone will say, oh, well, I had a good week but. you know, I had this on this particular day and they'll pick a food that they quote unquote think is bad. And that often comes from previous dieting history, right? And I will very much like, I will be on it, absolutely on it. I'll zoom in on that. If someone kind of puts loads of pressure, like I have a perfect example and this is something I'm truly passionate about, even more passionate about coaching and it's ice cream. It's ice cream. I bloody love ice cream. One of my clients in the summer months last year was talking and they had a brilliant week, dropped loads of weight. They had a really good week, steps, all the rest of it. Everything's going really, really smoothly, but they said, you know, on Saturday I ended up going 40 over my calories or 50 over my calories. because I decided to have an ice cream in the sun and I was like, well, first off, you live in Scotland, it's sunny, 3.2 days per year or century probably. Like we need to have a little bit of perspective on this. Your average calories are in the right spot. Like you've done all the right things, but they felt bad because they had something that they felt was. sugary or whatever it was and they were almost like putting a bit of pressure on them and I was like, well, hold on. Let's take a step back from this. Like you've stuck to your average calories, your weights drop, you made all this progress. So it hasn't interfered with progress. And from a nutrition perspective, when I'm looking at things, I'm saying, okay, well the quality of your diet is really good overall. It's not like they'd had no fruit and veg that week. So I'm kind of thinking here, right? 80, 90 % of your nutrition's bang on here. We've then got that margin of flexibility that we need in real life. Yet you're picking up on that key point. Whereas really what we could have argued is that other word direction is like, you know what Cameron, I did really, really well. I was buying on all my calories and I managed them so well, I could still fit an ice cream in in the sun, which I really enjoyed. Now, if that person says that, they're more likely in the long term this is to have a better relationship with food, to feel more relaxed around food in a good way, but to also feel like they are winning, that they are good with their nutrition, right? You know, if I ask someone what the relationship with nutrition is, I would hope that six months into coaching, five months into coaching, it would start to be much more positive than it was in the first place, right? I would want them to be more likely to be the person that says, oh, do you know what? I did really well overall. I had that and I was quite pleased I could fit it in and that was great. Rather than be the person that, I did really well, but I had this and I was sugary and it was bad and blah, blah. And have this sort of negative dialogue because it's a specific food. So this is something I want you to kind of think about. And to kind of summarize one of my kind of... Well, the key way I think about this as a coach is I often ask clients or challenge clients on it and talk about it because it's important, right? I'm not, you when someone says like, oh, I've just had a, like, if someone says to me, I've had a cheat day. Now I don't do cheat days with clients because I don't believe they're good at all for your relationship with food. And they sort of say, I'll kind of talk to them about it. Usually not in the first couple of weeks, so make sure they're settled. But then I'll maybe kind of challenge them and say, when is a cheat day? What do you mean by that? And we'll kind of talk about it and challenge that language because actually, A lot of the time they don't mean that right, but it's just something they've heard and said or said before where they previously have had that very restrictive, then have a daily go over. So they feel like if they have that day where they've banked calories, let's say I've saved 600 calories during the week for the weekend, they're like, oh, I enjoyed my cheat day. It's like, it's not a cheat day. It's just a day. It's just a day you eat normally. Like you had some flexibility that was deliberate and intentional. Like these things are really, really important. So we will pick up on all these language, bits of language. And the reason I say this matters and the kind of summary bit is this, is that if you wouldn't want to pass it on to your kid or to a good friend of yours or whatever it was, or whoever it was I should say, that's a really key thing. If you wouldn't want someone else kind of speaking to themselves like that, like a friend of yours, or as I say, a child, then you kind of think that's a good place to start, right? I'm not gonna say like, just have a cheap day today, too. My kid, right, you wouldn't do that, so why would you say it to yourself? If you had a bloody brilliant week and you managed to squeeze an ice cream in, in the sun, and actually you've been bang on your targets, why would you be picking up on the negatives about that? ⁓ you had something sugary, well, yeah, like that's real life. So I think it's really important that we do delve into the things we say to ourselves, the language we use, because actually it can be really, really impactful. So if that was helpful and you would like to hear more, then please just. leave a review, because that's always very, very welcome. And if you are interested in one-to-one coaching and you want to have a better relationship with food in the long term, you want to lose a bunch of weight and get into the best shape of your life, and some ahead of the summer months, depending on when you're listening to this, you might be in the summer months, if we get summer, then just jump into the show notes and the link is going to be there. And I will have a chat with you, no pressure of course, I'm in a very, very lucky position to be able to kind of say if I don't think you're the best fit, I'm going to pass you to someone. or nudge you in the right direction, probably more accurately, of where you might want to go, because I want to make sure we're the best fit. If I think I can get you great results, then we can figure out where we go from there for one-to-one coaching. But otherwise, have a fantastic day and speak to you soon.