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Welcome to the UFTA podcast hosted by Emily O'Connor and Jordan Rudolph. The UFTA podcast brings you a surprisingly fresh take on everyday topics in health, fitness and everything in between. We want to open the door to explore new information and new solutions in a way that's easy for you to understand and apply to your own life.
Let's get into today's episode.
Introduction and Welcome
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the UFFDA! Podcast. I'm Jordan Rudolph.
And I'm Emily Morris.
We're back for Season 4, Episode 31. Uh, for a live episode for all of you, all of you that have been paying attention.
Recap of Last Year
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We had a recap episode to end the year to help you get started with the new year. A [00:01:00] replay of what we did. Last year?
It was from last year,
yeah. Yeah, still good.
Yeah, I think still applicable.
Short-Term vs Long-Term Goals
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A lot of the things that we were talking about in terms of just setting yourself up for success, whether that be creating an environment, finding a community, anything like that, that really kind of all ties into building what we're really going to talk about today is like that sustainability into the new year and into our health and fitness goals when it can be so easy you To think a little bit shorter term and like short sighted almost, maybe not shorter term, but short sighted in our approach to some New Year's goals, New Year's resolutions.
Short sighted and maybe unrealistic expectations. And as much as we want to push and lean on wishful thinking and hope, like hope is a powerful, uh, feeling. Um, and one that can really transcend boundaries and help you step out of the comfort zones and keep you going. But, there's, [00:02:00] there, what, what tends to happen is people drastically overestimate what can be done in 30 days, six weeks, and they drastically underestimate what can be done through the course of 90 days, six months, right?
So they, they, they essentially, what you just said, they, they go all in a little bit too hot, too quick out of the gate, short sighted on what the expectations are. But here's the thing, like if we know that everybody out there is doing that this time of year, right? As in, almost everybody. Health and fitness goals, typically weight loss are almost, what is it, is the word perennial?
Um, top two, three perennial New Year's resolutions. They clearly have tracked that through data, and it's everything, it's something that everyone's familiar with, but this hard crash course thing in the beginning of the year that everybody jumps into, it's pretty cool. They're 80 percent off of [00:03:00] them are right february 1st We clearly realize this doesn't work.
Right. So it feels like we're spinning wheels going in cycles here.
Well, and logically, we can know that it doesn't work, but also, not logically, if you've ever, like, for example, run a race, it's so easy to get caught up in the excitement and the speed at which everyone else takes off for said race, right?
Which is useful. Which is, can be helpful, but also, can lead to outpacing yourself and halfway down the road, you're like, whoa, I am going way too fast here. This is unsustainable. And in the race, either crash and burn don't finish, or we drastically have to adjust the pace and the outcome typically isn't the same.
Right. So it becomes then a little bit more challenging to almost step back and not get out of the gate so hot. But the first step, what Jordan was just saying there is recognizing like, Hey, everybody else is going out of the gates hot, everybody else is doing these super [00:04:00] extreme challenges, short term things because we need to reset from, you know, the holidays and perhaps some abnormal and perhaps not as goal aligning eating patterns as we normally have, but Is that the best long term or are we playing too short sighted?
Are we thinking only about that first 30 days, that first, you know, six weeks, and forgetting about the six month mark when the birthday parties start to roll back around and the holiday celebrations start to happen and everything like that, that we want to be able to navigate through while pursuing our goals, not instead of.
I think one of the things that happens there as you're describing all that, and my, my brain kind of went in a direction where we bring, it brought me back to the first, the, the, the, the start line of a race again. And just thinking about that and, and through the course of December, Thanksgiving to New [00:05:00] Year, we're busy because of holiday events, parties, gatherings, social.
Everything in between. And there's some extra stress and pressure that comes with that. It's, everybody knows what I'm talking about when I say that. It's an unfortunate thing, but it happens. And then when we get to this new year, like all of that settles down, so there's a lot, there's more relief, there's a little bit more time where I can focus on me, maybe.
All of those things kind of come into play. Um, and there's doses of it that start coming through as we get closer to kind of like that Christmas and New Year, get closer to New Year, and there's past New Year. Doses of this motivation, this extra energy that's coming through. And then when it hits past new year, it's like a jolt.
The Pitfalls of Extrinsic Motivation
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The part that I'm getting to with all of that is a lot of it is extrinsic. We're waiting for a specific date to get here to do something. And as that date hits, we also know that everyone else is kind of doing it. So we're not necessarily out of the crowd anymore. You're almost one. So if someone's not thinking about looking about [00:06:00] a gym membership or some sort of.
Weight loss or health and fitness thing right now. You're you're essentially you're the purple elephant. You're the pink elephant You're you're the unicorn the purple cow.
Yeah, you're
the one standing out, right? So everyone's it's easier to do it because everyone's there So again, all of these extrinsic these external motivators are showering you right now Guess what else you're seeing in social media and everything else a ton of more Ozempic Um, the, the challenge ads, like all of these things are coming out because it's the time of year when we know that this stuff happens and again, all of this becomes an external thing and we miss a little bit of that intrinsic, that internal motivating factor, which we absolutely need when we talk about sustainability.
The Importance of Intrinsic Motivation
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Well, I think we've talked about motivation in a previous podcast before, and I think you, initially used the, um, like analogy, if you will, of the [00:07:00] extrinsic as more of like the kindling. It's the quick starts, the quick burn kind of fires. quickly, but then the intrinsic are like the bigger logs, right? We need those to catch fire
gas.
We, we have to have that intrinsic part. Yes, we can use the extrinsic to help push a little bit and to dive in and it can be useful and it can be helpful, but it can't be the only thing. That lights the fire. It can't be the only thing that keeps the fire going sustainably for a long period of time because we know that it won't write that extrinsic.
We've seen it like the research shows it from a New Year's resolution standpoint, but we know that that extrinsic motivation won't necessarily last. The event will come and then it will pass. And if we're only motivated by the event at the end or the deadline at the end, then it won't last. There will be then the crash after that, and wherever that might
be.
It's, it's the same reason why 80, 90 percent of our supplements out there don't work. They're, [00:08:00] they're meant to supplement what we are supposed to be already doing well. And when we think about this extrinsic motivation, it's meant to get you to, if you're sitting on the fence, which essentially I deem everybody always on the fence until they tell me they're not, right?
So if I assume that you are sitting on the fence, The external motivation is the little bit of push that you need to come over to one of the side or the other to make your decision. But sitting on the fence long term, one of the worst places you can be in your life. It's total comfort. It's total, I'm just going to get by.
Everything's fine. Everything's okay. This is just what it's supposed to be. There's no control. There's constant compromise. And there's no advantage that you have. There's no change until you're forced into a change from. whatever else, right? So this external motivation, this extrinsic motivation is supposed to help you get the little extra step, the little extra advantage, that little extra push that you need, that you need in a specific [00:09:00] moment, or that you need to start, but it's not supposed to be the thing that keeps you going.
That's where we flip this over to the big logs, the extrinsics, intrinsic stuff, internal stuff,
right?
So that's where we have to really find out more about what you truly want. And that continues to go. And what happens when this external motivation is high, we already talked about everybody's doing it. I see all these things all around.
If I'm the one not doing it, I'm going to be left out. I'm going to have FOMO. I'm going to be the one out of the crowd. I don't like that. I like to do what everybody else is doing. I like to be part of the community. We talked about that last week in our recap.
Challenges and Sustainability
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So when you see these challenges, for an example, like 75 hard or something else that's making you do, don't eat any carbs because those are the devil.
Or something else that's saying work out two to three times a day and you're going to do this. Those are unsustainable. There's a reason why 75 hard people don't know what to do when they're done with 75 hard besides do 75 hard again. And how are those people doing now? They're not doing too well. [00:10:00] They have to wait for this moment where the life is perfectly matched to do the 75 hard and they don't know what else to do for themselves because they have zero intrinsic or internal motivation.
They need something so extravagant, so huge of an external motivator to get them to even start to stay disciplined, to stay consistent. And as soon as that's done, what happens on day 76?
Usually we go right back to what we were doing on day zero. Boom. Yeah.
Or they have zero idea what to do next. Right.
They're lost. Because it was all part of.
Anything, right? It was, it was all external. Like it, it ties back as you were talking about that. It ties back into the two episodes we did back to back, like the who not how, right? We focus a lot of that external stuff on the hows. And we can externally motivate ourselves into a how.
We can externally motivate ourselves to do the things, if you will. If there is a strong enough motivator there, To do [00:11:00] two workouts a day and track your food every day and take progress pictures every day and read 10 minutes of a book every day. All the things, those are what 75 part makes you do for those listening.
And there's probably other ones too, but those are at least the ones that I know that quickly. But, If you do all of those things, those are all the how, but you get to the end and you don't know who the person is that you want to be. You don't know who you want to actually be for your life, but you might know that it's not that, and that's where you become lost, and we didn't really avoid the work that we should have done in the first place to figure that out.
We just prolonged it.
Yeah, very, like, thanks for bringing up two of the things. A, our previous episodes on B to have, and, and that part of it, and then B. Or two bringing up the part of the criteria of 75 hard for an example like the idea of it is awesome Like all those habits that are in there
amazing
crazy amazing.
Yeah, except for the two workouts a day
Yeah,
except for a couple of them, right? There's a stretch of it, but I get it I get [00:12:00] why they're doing it right, but let's put yourself if you're thinking about doing 75 hard And this is why I feel like our challenges that we run here, like we're going to end up running one newsflash for anybody that hasn't seen the ads yet.
Unity's Approach to Sustainable Habits
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We're running a nutrition one that's totally based on habits and behaviors, that has a 100 percent success rate for people that start it to finish it, and also beyond, right? So we, we create more of the sustainability through the habits and behaviors through our specific stuff, because all of us know what to eat and not eat.
But we don't know who we need to be, and we don't know all of the hows of how to do it, beyond. The challenge or beyond the days, right? So that's why I feel like ours are so good But think about yourself if we just use 75 hard again, we'll just keep trashing it for a little bit to an extent kind of In a way
the unsustainable nature of it.
Yes Put yourself at day 76. So let's go 76 days from from let's just say we started today, right? Is that person who you are in day 76 going to be able to keep doing all of the things that the day Of the person that's [00:13:00] at 1 through 75 we're doing Does that seem like the life that you want to live?
That's where you kind of have to ask the bigger questions. How can I make this more sustainable? How can I make my life better by the end of this year, not just by the end of this challenge? What's after me? And we think about something in the horizons, like we think about like when you kick, when you, when you cross the finish line of a race, you don't just get to the finish line, you have to go through it.
When you kick a field goal, The, the, the ball doesn't go through the up or just to the uprights, it has to go through the uprights. If you look out into the horizon and you're chasing something like a goal, you actually never reach the horizon when we focus, especially when we focus or are, are, are being focused on by extrinsic or external motivators.
The horizon's always moving. People miss the journey. They miss the process. They miss the happiness in that. They miss the joy of that. They miss the gratitude of all of that. Which puts [00:14:00] us in this position that we are in right now. Because it's also filled in the other side of this fence, if you will, of this, feelings of gratitude, joy, happiness, shame, depression, right, unhappiness.
Like, those are the things that people end up going into because they're so intrinsically led.
Certainly. Well, and that's, that's a good point. It's focusing then, and we've talked about this in another episode, it's COVID then deals into focusing on what we're most afraid of instead of focusing on the outcome that we would like to have in the life that we would like to live.
in the long term, like Jordan was saying, at the end of the year through the end of the 75 days, it focuses more on than the short term and what we're so worried about happening, right? A lot of times in those short term challenges, people are so worried about messing up, we're so fearful of something, we're so rigid that we have no choice but to focus on that.
But, [00:15:00] If we can flip it and we can focus on like, no, what would be sustainable? And sometimes being sustainable means having pizza, even if that's not the most healthiest of foods. I think we can all agree that it probably isn't. But if that's your sustainable thing, and that's what you do, and that's where we want to build that in.
Amazing. Let's build something that builds it in to your long term. Maybe it's not every day, maybe it's not every even week, but let's build in those things so that when we encounter them you know how to navigate it. It's not something that totally throws you off of a box that you were trying to fit yourself in for this short term challenge.
And those pieces, those components of all that coming in, like we're not saying we knock these things, like we use them to help people make this extra step and we know that there's extra results that come with this. But the goal is what happens after. Our, our whole premise to how we [00:16:00] run these here at Unity is to make sure that there's an after in place.
And that doesn't mean it's just with us. This means that we help the person guide, educate, and mentor them to make sure that they're ready for the after. There's, there's pieces of this that we need to make sure are sustainable and not unsustainable. Doing zero carbs a day is not sustainable. It's not the carbs.
It's maybe the types of carbs, maybe the frequency, maybe the volume, maybe it's the lack of inactivity because there are people out there that are eating 500 grams of carbs a day and don't gain a pound because of the activity that's with it. So there's a lot of different pieces that can go through this and we can skin the cat if you will.
Our biggest thing here is understand the power that's currently being pushed towards you and that's within you already. To make these next moves to be sustainable and understand what these challenges and what these different components are from a stability and unstable standpoint for you to be long term or short term.
If you're a person that just wants short term fixes, have at it. [00:17:00] Tackle it. Knock it out of the park, but understand that it's going to be a little bit of a roller coaster. And understand that every year it's going to be a lot of the same thing until a lot of the same thing doesn't work anymore.
Consistency Over Short-Term Fixes
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So, could you do 75 days hard, or could you do, to quote you, Emily, could you do 365 days consistently?
Look for the consistency piece. The people who are most successful, the ones that you are most envious of around you, are the ones that are doing the boring, unsexy, little things consistently. And they're knocking them out of the park. Those are the people that you're actually envious of, that you're wondering what they're doing.
And then they do the 75 hard to just give them a little extra jumpstart to give them a little extra, something of a little pep in the step, a little bit of a different focus, a little bit of extrinsic motivation, external motivation to just get them over a hump or over an edge of maybe a lull moment, but they continue to do all those little things.
Right. Certainly.
Absolutely.
Conclusion and Farewell
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I think that about wraps it up. As always, thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode of the UFFDA! Podcast. Share this with someone who you think [00:18:00] will find it valuable. Leave us a rating, a review, subscribe, download, all the things that help us to grow organically, and we'll catch you next episode.
Bye everybody.
Thanks everyone.
