[00:00:00] 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.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the UFFDA! Podcast. I'm Jordan Rudolph.
And I'm Emily Morris.
We're happy to be with you as we enter in, no, uh, sorry, February. I don't know where November came from.
Oh, it is a heck of a year, and I thought last year was fast.
I'm looking down on the notes here, and I [00:01:00] see 11 on here, and I'm like, oh, it's November, as I'm, like, saying that. Anyway, we're entering in February of 2025. We're already in month two, and we have come to that date. So, uh, That dreaded date where 80 percent or more of New Year's resolutions have now gone by the wayside.
Done.
Kind of crazy when you think about it. If you're listening to this, kind of especially, whether you're perhaps, not to lead in, but perhaps your habits that you wanted to start over the New Year have slipped or perhaps we're still going strong with them. Kind of crazy to think about. Like if you had 10 things, right?
Eight of them are gone by now. Just that visual of thinking about and visualizing what truly 80 percent is on a massive, massive scale, obviously it's not just 10 people doing that.
The more you try to do, the less likely you are to actually do it. And the worse you're going to be at all the things that you [00:02:00] are doing.
So the more that you try to do, listener, you, the less likely you are to achieve what it is that you said you were going to do, and the less likely it's going to be, like, done well.
Yeah.
So the littler, the less that you do, the littler amount of things that you have on your plate, the more you can pour more energy and focus into them, the more likelihood that they'll be done.
And the likelihood of them being done well also increases.
Correct. Well, you start to become a master at those few things, right? We start to really see the impact of the few things that we're doing instead of trying to do all of them, similar to how many New Year's Resolutions start out, trying to do too much too soon, and we realize it becomes unrealistic in the long term as we go, right?
It's a large reason for, especially in health and fitness, a lot of that drop [00:03:00] off, while at the same time, Or on the opposite side of the spectrum, I should say, recognizing if we start to niche down, we start to master a few key things, right, identifying the key, the most important things that we can focus on, the most important habits we can have that will make dividends and pay dividends in the long run in terms of making sure we are set up for the long term success, not just for The first month or four weeks of success from starting something new.
Did we do an episode, excuse me, have we done the episode on the one thing, power of the one thing? I'm sure we did. I think it
might, well, we probably didn't call it the power of, but keep the main, keeping the main thing, the main thing. Yeah.
Remember that episode, that's what it was. I will, uh, I'll try to reference that episode a little bit in here.
But the, the goal of that was to try to keep the main thing, like pick the one thing that you can focus on that makes everything else [00:04:00] easier or irrelevant or unnecessary or irrelevant, because that one thing is so true to you and what that you and what that you want, that you can do it with confidence, with competency, and you can get it done.
And that's, that's essentially what we're going through here, but we'll go through a couple of little different tactics that you can, they can use to get started. The question that I ask people a lot when they're going through a lot of this stuff is like, what's the priority? Like, what's the number one, what's the one thing that rules them all?
One thing that binds them, one thing that in this blah, blah, blah, the Lord of the Rings reference for that quote for the rings and another movie. And, uh, so when, when we go through this, um, We get to the habit. Would you rather have 20 habits that you're trying to accomplish and tackle at the same time Or would you rather have me tell you like you can get 17 habits that have more value for your life And whatever aspect that you want done this year You still have time to get probably 16 of those in [00:05:00] that you can do really really really well And, and I ask you that, like, would you rather be focusing on 20 different things at once and hope that you're getting accomplished in some of them, or do you feel overwhelmed by that?
Or would you rather have me tell you there's still a chance for you to get 16 habits really established and done very, very well, where it just becomes how you operate. It becomes your, your, your, your, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Pattern. There you go. Pattern, routine. Yeah. Like, just, you know. Your operating system.
And that's because if we focus on one thing, it should take about 21 days for that habit to fully sink in and stick and become you there's 365 days in a year. If we divide that by 21, we get 17. 3, blah, blah, blah. So let's just round down. That's 17. We're already a month into the year that gives you 335 days left.
Let's just round up and say 16 and that's where we're at. So if you focus on one of those habits right now, One that will help you in your growth and get you closer to what you want. And you knock that out of the park. It [00:06:00] has to be something that you can ready, willing, and able to do. Ready, willing, and?
Able. You're right. Able
to do. Yeah. Able to do. And you just take action on that. In likelihood, these other 15 habits that might have been on your list, some of them might go away because you've picked the one habit to start with. That will then make everything else unnecessary, irrelevant, or nonexistent easier.
Right.
Well, and that's, it's not, it's where we're placing the focus that matters, right? We're focusing on, and I know we've done episodes on this, exactly. We've done episodes on this before. Where your energy goes,
the mind
goes, energy flows. There we go. But as we focus on that one thing, that one habit, and we take action on that one habit consistently over time, even if it's not perfect, over the course of that time, the 21 days, Over the course of the number of reps that we will get in practicing the habit, right, because habits are skills.
We're [00:07:00] learning a new skill. We're replacing an old skill with something new. So this is a trainable thing. This is a repeatable thing. The more reps we get in and we're focused on that correct thing, it makes the other things either just happen without thinking about it, and then we're not focusing on two things.
We just have to focus on one or It doesn't matter. Like Jordan was saying, it becomes irrelevant. We don't have to focus on it because whatever we are focusing on is taking care of it for us. So the mental energy that we have to expend in order to change our habits becomes less when we identify the appropriate one thing to focus on at a time and then start to stack them on top of each other creating kind of that, uh, compounding effect as we go.
Well, habit stacking is kind of something else, but that's why I tried not to say that. I know.
What, what we're referring to there is like once you get a habit established, it's easier to build something in with that to [00:08:00] help get that habit established quicker than 21 days and to make it easier for you to transition to that.
And that's, that's more like next level. This is what habits next is 101. This is how we get what habits next for you. And, and as you get those new habits, your new habit, and then habits will drive what happens next in your life or what habits next in your life. You might have different priorities that change.
I think the biggest thing is for people to identify and understand. You, you, you just alluded to this. I'm like, our habits are just what we do, what we are. Mm-hmm . It's, and, and, and that's what it is. There's a lot that happens that habits in our day-to-day that we're not even aware of. And when we can key in on that, become more aware, become more mindful, become more intentional, and identify those.
Once you have identified something, you cannot not know about it. It's true, it's what is, and you can just let it be what [00:09:00] is. But when you, when you've come to that point, you can then take the action to go through it, because your brain's in a loop. Your brain, something happens, then it creates X feeling, And this is like emotional eating, right?
You get stressed throughout the day, and all of a sudden you go home at night, you can't take care of business, and it's time to wind down, and your habit is to have the glass of wine or the sweets, whatever it is, before bed, and then you go to bed. And it's just, it continues that loop over and over and over again.
Well, let's look to see what's happened here. And you're worried about the sweets. When it's actually the thing that happened at 2. 30 PM because your blood sugar crashed and you got stressed and you went to caffeine Or something happened at work that you took out on Yourself because you didn't acknowledge what it was and then that led to I just need time alone Which then your time alone to I just want to feel better Which then you thought the sugar the sweet the alcohol whatever it was did that but then it was just a quick dopamine hit Which then turned out to be alcohol which then helped your gut Halted your goals and then actually had to be more of a detrimental effect to what you wanted and then it puts you [00:10:00] right back in and the next day is here and you don't care about it anymore.
I hope everybody followed that.
If you didn't just go listen on point five speed and slow it down.
That happens. I just had coffee. So here we go. But autopilot is essentially how your brain wants to operate. We are trying to insert new habits in there to create the new autopiloting system. It makes this very difficult when you're trying to do a thousand things at once.
But if we do one, it's much more likely for that new autopilot system to start operating and to start making significant change. Because remember, like if we're subconsciously thinking about things and our body and our brain wants us to be following these habits and it wants to unconditionally just go without the day without taking any more brain power and any more energy than it has to.
Everything that we do is about how we think about the thing. Everything we do is about how we think. And how we think about anything is is how we think about everything. So if we can start thinking differently, we can start doing things differently, a. k. [00:11:00] a. new habits, which therefore will lead to new actions, which will drive the next thing.
Mm hmm. And when you were just talking there, I was thinking about, not to use your thinking, but I was thinking about how as we identify What that one new habit is, it really has to identify and correlate and correspond. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for with the actual root cause of what's going on, right?
A lot of times those symptoms like emotional eating are kind of the surface level thing, right? We know we want to change this habit, but we don't necessarily always dive deep enough to address the emotions behind The emotional eating. And that's where we should start. That's where those thinking patterns come into play most.
When they core, they dive in and attack the root cause of what's going on. What the habit is.
Here's three crazy examples that I can [00:12:00] give around the same situation that relates to what you just said. And then we'll wrap up, um, the podcast. But if I go back to the emotional eating piece, okay? And, and the, and the sweet happens at night.
Uh, it is, it is not. I'm not just saying this, it is known, females tend to have more of a sweet tooth, and it happens to be more at night. Em, do you want to, do you want to let our listeners know from the female and male side of things, why maybe sweet tooths might be more of a craving for females than males?
It, it can be, very tied to hormone health and hormone, Fluctuations throughout the day over the course of the month, etc. And this does apply to you regardless of where you are in Pre menopause or post during or post menopause as well Just feel the need to know that everybody has hormone fluctuations regardless of where you are including males as well Who do not obviously have a menstrual cycle.
So hormones affect a large thing [00:13:00] females Especially those looking for weight loss can also tend to be a little bit more affected because it can also tie into just overall low energy throughout the day, right? So if we're trying to under eat throughout the day and then we get to the end of the night and we eat everything in sight, we probably need to be eating more prior to.
So a huge tie to that. Uh, large
Two things right there. Yeah.
Large tie. to, I don't know how many I look for, but large tie to also sleep quality and low sleep, high stress can be involved. And.
Drum roll, one more, one more, one more. Iron.
There we go. I was like, I know there's another one.
So the, the, the, that was, that was one of my two, one of my three, and I just nailed all of them right there.
But low iron can also cause you to have a sweet craving. Okay. So females, because of their menstrual cycle and because of hormones again, could be low on iron, which a lot of females are. Could cause sweet cravings. Those are things that we just know that there are, they are just what [00:14:00] is okay. That could be something like you said M that causes that.
Let's go back to the other two things. You alluded to one of them, blood sugar as a female. Again, thank hormones is more vitally important to understand as the females aging to control blood sugar than it is. Maybe anything else as they are going through to understand weight loss and fat loss and how a female body works.
Managing blood sugar might be the simplest, except for strength training, uh, the simplest and most key factor to helping with fat loss results. A lot of that, like you said, doesn't happen. So then they overeat and overindulge at night. The third thing is maybe how you're handling stress. And it might not come back to food at all.
It might come back to because you simply don't want to ask for help because you view it as a sign of weakness. Okay. And there could be another reason on here too, but I bring this one up in particular because it's something that I've handled, uh, in consultations before. This is where we take a deep dive [00:15:00] and, and dive into the habits and behaviors and understand the person.
But there's been times when I've worked with people and they, and they work at a job and their job stresses them out. There are 10 out of 10, almost all of it's from their job, from the stress level, 10 being the highest. And what happens is they're getting too much on their plate. But they're not asking for help.
They're not saying no. They're trying to take it all on because they want to be superwoman or superman. This happens for guys too. But those are three things that then play a role in to boosting up the stress and all they want to do is something for their self, themself, or herself at the end of the night.
The one thing that that becomes then is I want to watch my show, I want to decompress, and I want to have something to eat because I'm bored or I just want to do something for myself. And it's all because of how we've maybe viewpoint, like somewhere in your head, we've, we've, we've told ourselves X, Y, Z is true.
And when did we decide that to be true? I decided that asking for help is a sign of weakness. When did you decide that to [00:16:00] be true? I decided that saying yes to everybody will make me more likable and maybe make me more popular from people and maybe make me feel more valued. If I say yes to everything, when did we decide that to be true?
This is deep. But this is the shit that we work on with people to help with habit formation. This is where sometimes we need to go. When we establish what is, like Em just did and I just followed up with. We tackle this type of stuff
Well, and it helps remove the emotion. I know we're talking about emotional eating Yeah, but it helps to remove the emotion from it, right?
It becomes less of like, oh my gosh, I am Such a bad person because I can't stop doing this and puts it into perspective of like oh This is why I'm doing this if I can address this part that won't be as challenging for me
And that might be hard for some people right away. So it might not be very much habit Right.
Right. But. Yeah,
we really picked a big heavy
hitter here. Right. Right. But it's, but it's something that we can acknowledge that's what's coming. And maybe it becomes something that we don't [00:17:00] even have to mess with someday. Or when it becomes the time to thing, maybe we look at how to say no when you feel like you can't say no.
And we help people with that. That doesn't sound like a nutrition thing at all, but it has everything to do with nutrition if you're stress eating. And that is a habit. For sure. That's the one thing that we're doing. For sure. How do we help the person come up with boundaries? How do we help the person come Uh, have more intention with their time.
How do we have the person, how do we help the person say no? Maybe, I don't know, taking the thing that they're saying no to and depersonalize it and just use it at the thing. So you're not actually telling the person, no, you're saying no to the thing that they're asking you to do. Uh, maybe that's a way, I don't know.
But these are the type of things that, that really come into play and, and create that positive habit formation. Again, that's like a third, fourth level type of thing. Um, But I wanted to give you those examples for the listeners, uh, because those are relevant for what, these are the conversations Em and I are having, on a weekly basis, with people.
Yeah, for sure.
It's a real life [00:18:00] thing.
I mean, and just that alone, right, when we're thinking about changing habits, and I know we've touched on this before, but you aren't alone in changing your habits. Most people want to, to some degree, change something, right? Like, most of us aren't going through life with no purpose, Desire to change and if you're listening to this you likely have a health and fitness goal or are in pursuit of one So knowing that you aren't alone there Can be such a nice reminder as well in just reminding yourself of like, Oh no, like it's not just me.
Like we, we are all in this together. Even if the habits are different, it still requires that deeper kind of thinking about things that we might've not expected or that maybe feel uncomfortable at first as well.
Yeah. Yeah. There's going to be, there's going to be many out there and it's different for everybody because it's individualized, but there are some that maybe the person next to you was doing as well, that worked really well from them that actually would like completely.
not work well for you. Like it would, it would actually derail you. Um, but the goal is to figure out what that is. What's [00:19:00] the low hanging fruit. Start with that. Do something that you're confident that you can build confidence in. You might not be confident right away. Pick something that the habit is formed around something that you want.
So there's that emotional tie and bringing it back to what you said earlier. Like it should have some, some meat to it, right? There should be something there. Uh, and then give it 21 days. Be that the only thing and see what happens. It's crazy how life changing that becomes, and when you start stacking those things on top of each other and you get 16 new habits done in a year, 17 in a year, that is a totally different person.
That is a, like, you get to that next year, you are, you are completely changed.
Absolutely. 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 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 in the next episode.
Bye, everybody.
Thanks, everyone.
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