Turo Virta: 1:07

Welcome back to the Fit Me Turo Fitness podcast. A lot of people don't fail because they don't know how to exercise. They fail because real life interrupts the plan. Work gets busy. The kids get sick. You travel. You sleep badly. You miss a few workouts, and suddenly this story becomes: I have fallen off. I will start again Monday. My guest today is Willy Grady, founder of Vanity Strong, and someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about what makes fitness sustainable when life doesn't go according to plan. One of the ideas Willy shared with me before this conversation really

stood out: 1:43

a disruption. Disruption is information, not failure. And today we are going to talk about all or nothing thinking. Why people keep restarting and what the bad, weak version of fitness should look like. How shame makes returning harder, and why the identity of someone who comes back may be more useful than trying to become someone who never misses. Really, welcome back to the welcome to the podcast.

Unknown: 2:14

Thanks, Turo. I'm glad to be here.

Turo Virta: 2:16

So, before we get into the behavior side, can you tell us a little bit about your own background and how Vanity Strom started?

Unknown: 2:27

Yeah, absolutely. And so, originally, I was in the technical field of things, marketing. And one thing about being on the marketing side is because we're such a connected world, we spend most of our times on our phones these days. And most people are a lot more honest. They share their struggles, the things that they're dealing with, and so I've worked. I've worked with several fitness brands, but I've worked with a global fitness brand for a number of years. And one of the things that I was exposed to was what people were talking about as barriers when they were dealing with fitness in their own lives. And the fitness brand that I worked for at the time, like most fitness brands, they market with young, good-looking people who look like they got out of bed chiseled. They're they look like they they're perfect, but most of the conversation in the comment section, the emails that we were receiving, the communications I was receiving were from people who were over the age of 40, people who are dealing with real life, who have real life circumstances, and when you're constantly being fed things on your social media, on your phone, and you see these people and it looks like they're perfect, but you're dealing with life, you start to you start to second guess yourself. You start to think, okay, what am I doing wrong? I'm not like this. I'm not like that. And so, one reason why I found it vanity strong was because we we place this negative idea on the idea of vanity, the idea that people want to look good. I think vanity is fine if that's the motivation that gets you there. I'm not worried so much about the motivation that gets you to be fit. If it's more so the result, or is that what motivates you? There's nothing wrong with wanting to look good for yourself because sometimes that's just as much of a benefit for your emotional and mental state than it is just even just for your natural physical fitness. And so, I noticed that a lot of people were being left out of the conversation, and some of those people were women over the age of 40, because they're going through perimenopause, they're going through menopause, and there's this idea that consistency means that you have to stick to this strict plan, and that's not the case. That doesn't account for real life. It doesn't account for life events, and so I came up with the philosophy, and this was a philosophy that I gained through years of talking with people and going to different countries. I used to do a travel documentary, and with my travel documentary, I used to go to different parts of the world, and so I go to Colombia or Japan and Puerto Rico and different places, and the one thing I notice about those countries is that they approach-they all approach fitness at a very different from a different angle. But they all take fitness seriously, no matter what country you go to, no matter what region. Fitness is a part of it. It's inside the culture in some form or way. But we, because we have grown up with different cultures, different experiences, we approach it from different angles. Well, that's data, and that's the same way we have to look at our lives. Because one thing for me, right right now, I'm I'm going through I'm going through a hurricane because I live on the coast of the United States. Well, I have a hurricane plan, and that's the same way that I believe you have to look at life. You, when you when you're dealing with fitness, at the end of the day, it's not about perfection. It's about consistency. It's about showing up for yourself and giving yourself credit. We can give ourselves credits for a lot of things. But a lot of times we focus too much on the scale, and we don't look outside of it. And I think that's the problem. And so, something that I say often, and I'm probably going to end up repeating it a little bit quite today, is consistency is not never getting interrupted. Consistency is getting better at returning, and and that's the thing because rather than focusing on, I used to be at this level when I was in when I was 20. I used to could do these exercises. How about giving yourself credit for returning? Because the problem is we don't want you don't want want returning or I didn't have a great week to turn into abandonment because that's often what can happen. People go on vacation, people have children, people go through some kind of health event, and then there's also grief, which is another very important aspect. And what I talk about in terms of returning is try to create less friction. And so what that means is have a plan for returning. Understand that life is going to get in the way. It's inevitable. None of us are perfect. Life happens, and then you don't have to blame the event because the event is normal, it's just I can't blame a hurricane because I don't have any power over that. You can't blame the events that happen in your life. We're all going to get older. You're going to have events such as menopause, perimenopause, health scares, some you know think moving, job stress, things that happen. So my thing is, you should always have a plan for returning. That plan does not have to look like the plan before you left. When you go on vacation, you generally have a checklist. But do you ever have a checklist for when you return? Because are you going to jump back in? Are you going to jump back in at the same intensity? Are you going to be grading yourself on that same scale, and so there's benchmarks that I'm always telling people to look at because people will come to me and they will say, "Well, I used to weigh this much, and I used to be able to do this amount, and now I just feel like I'm failing myself because I'm not able to do this. And it's like, okay, well, let's look at things. It's not that you're getting. It's not that you have to see yourself as getting older, and that I'm old, and that I I can't do the same thing. It's more so your life has changed because now you have a family. Instead of having to cook one meal for yourself, you're having to cook one meal. You're having to cook a meal for four different people, and so you're having to take those things into account, you're having to consider your your your job, your schedule, and things like that. And so you have a what we do is we have a gentle lane, you have a normal lane, and then you have an intense lane. And that way, you give yourself grace because rather than saying, "Hey, I can get this perfect workout for 90 minutes today. Did you do 10 minutes? Were you able to do 15 minutes? Did you come back the next day? Are you consistent? And that is where I believe people have that problem with returning. One reason we never return is because the barriers feel so large, and it's one of those. If you're laying in bed and you just don't feel like it. We understand anyone can understand because we've all had those days. It's a lot easier for your brain to process. I can come back and do just 10 minutes today, and if that 10 minutes becomes easier, it can motivate you. It can motivate you to do another 10 minutes. It can motivate you to do another 10 minutes, you get to you get to lower the bar, but it's not lowering it's not lowering the fact that you showed up. It's not lowering the the benchmark. There are other things to look at. You have to look at your measurements, and so I tell people, kind of get out of the scale. The scale is one thing, and I know I know it's tempting, but how did you feel? How are you? Is your energy the same? You know, are your is your sleep quality the same? Are you how do your clothes fit? Are your clothes fitting better? And so there's other ways to gage success, and I think it's because we've been so drawn to looking at one side of it, that we kind of become consumed with tunnel vision.

Turo Virta: 10:31

Yeah, why why do you think people or so many people are so good at starting fitness programs and so bad at continuing them?

Unknown: 10:44

There's a newness to this idea. When you get started, you're excited. It's kind of like the first day of school or the first day of going on a trip, and you have those endorphins going in your brain. You're excited, and we love starting something new. I think that's just part of just the

human experience: 11:02

is that we love to get started with. The idea of I'm gonna buy this and I'm motivated, but the thing about it is, is life starts to evolve and we never kind of prepare for the eventual way. We never prepare for the things to to kind of get stagnant, and so you never prepare for something getting in your way. You never prepare for okay, am I just not going to feel it? Most of the time, we assume that the people who stop working out is because of is is is because of something that we're not going to deal with. It's because of oh, okay, well maybe this happened or or they're just lazy. No, what it happens to all of us. We can all have bad days. One bad day can multiply as contagious, and that's one of the things that I tell people is staying because the consistency part is one of the things that I think most people struggle with, and it's because we have this cookie cutter idea of what fitness is, which means that it has to be script, it has to be hard, and it doesn't have to be script. It doesn't have to be hard. I tell people also when I used to work at a particular fitness company that had they had plans that were, and it was it was a very kind of just standard generic plan. Well, the problem with that is a lot of people have different circumstances going on. They can't do the same exercises. They can't exercise for the same length of time, and they feel confined to do it. If I don't do it exactly this way, if I don't complete it, that means I failed, and so they drop out because they say, "Well, it's too hard, or it's not for me, and maybe I'll just revisit it. When somebody says they revisit, they're going to revisit something. Oftentimes, they don't because they forget, and life gets in the way. They get busy, but the thing I have

told people: 12:52

you always have to be able to make things flexible. So, if you have a workout that's not working for you, there's nothing wrong with adjusting it. That does not mean that you're lazy or that there's a problem, and it doesn't mean that there's a problem with the workout plan. It just means that that workout plan is not meant for you at where you are right now. Let's say it's a customized plan. People get customized plans all the time. Well, you when you get a customized plan, it's considering where you are right now. It's considering what what your weight is, what your goal is, what you can do, what your capacity is, but two years from now, a year from now, several months from now, things can be very vastly different in your life, and you have to be able to make those adjustments in order to keep the consistency. We get into we have these bad weeks, and bad weeks turn into bad months. Bad weeks just drain us, and when you feel drained, you just feel like you can't do anything. It's always getting restarted that's harder than starting. Starting, you're it's easy because you're excited because you have the motivation. You you have set the tone. Restarting is usually something where you feel like it's out of your control because you didn't. You weren't the person who got off. You got off track, but you don't feel like you were the person who forced yourself off track. Something else came to force you off track. Maybe you had a a big job assignment. You had to go out of out of out of out of the country or out of out of town, maybe there was something going on with family, or maybe it's just kids. You know, we all have families, we all have different lives, and so when those things occur, it kind of tosses us off track. And so you can't predict when that's going to happen, and you can't control those things. But what you can control is when you come back, what is your what is your method for success? And starting to do that before you get there, doing that preparation in advance is what will allow you to have success because you're planning ahead of time. Because it's so much harder when you're already there. When you're already there, digging yourself out of that hole can be very hard. But if you have a plan before then. You understand. Okay, this is what I can do. And if I can't do this, let me go to this. And if I can't do this, let me go to this. So that's when I say different lanes. Having those different lanes is where you want to have. So maybe you can start right here at this particular lane, which is the intensity lane. And if that's not working for you, tone things down. Maybe go to gentle. So

Turo Virta: 15:30

yeah, yeah. What is like when when these interruptions happen, and what does someone usually tell themselves after missing a couple workouts?

Unknown: 15:45

After they miss a couple of workouts. There's always several conversations that goes on. One is, I'm gonna start again the next day, and that can kind of it turns into this cycle of procrastination because we always tell ourselves, well, eventually I'm gonna get there, but that time can really add up, and and. One of those things that we have to be mindful of. Another thing that people tell themselves is that you know it's my fault and there's something going on, and that's not necessarily the case. I and and none of us are immune to it. I personally, in my own life, I used to work out every single day, and I was consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, and I worked out a very. I always did hiit exercises, high intensity interval training, and so one of the things about it that I was prideful of when I lived in Miami is that I was getting up every morning, I was doing it, and I never considered because I was younger, I was in my mid 30s. I thought I never considered anything would come into my life and just kind of jar me from that schedule because I had been doing it for years and years and years, and then I went through a divorce. And people think that even if you're a man, you know, people think that you know you can be you're bulletproof. When when we all think that we're when we're younger that we have this resistancy, but even with me, the one thing I struggle with is I struggle with every single day. I was it was very difficult for me to get out get off the sofa. I spent about a week or two on the sofa, and I really struggled. I at first I try I had an app wheel. I tried to do a few app wheel exercises. I tried to do some stepping exercises, and I felt like I was failing myself. And it was psychologically was putting me into this cycle of I'm just not. I'm not here. I'm not ready. And and I felt like okay, I look horrible. You know, you start to have all these different thoughts in your head, and the one thing that kind of helped me was I started even on when it was very difficult on my worst days. I would set a benchmark. Okay, I'm going to walk for 15 minutes, and so I did that for a week, and then eventually the next week I moved up to 30 minutes, and then I was like, okay, well maybe we can move up to an hour, and so I started with just walking, and the reason why is for walking for me was the easiest way to jump myself back in with little resistance, because we always think that when we come back, when we restart, that because we have taken this break, that we have to jump right in there and we have to do everything at the same level that we were when we left, and that's not always the case. Jumping back in, you want to do things that you know will allow you to continue to come back, and if it's not too difficult, then you're gonna say, "Well, yeah, I can do this. Why not? Because I've already done it. You know, if you look at this mountain ahead of you and you think, "Oh my God, I just, you're gonna walk away. Most of the time, you're gonna walk away because it's just too much, and you've got too much going on. And so you start with things that look like they're achievable, and you give yourself those wins.

Turo Virta: 19:12

As you you said, or you tell a lot that disruption is information, not failure. What do you mean by that? It

Unknown: 19:23

is information because it is telling you what the barriers are, it is telling you where you should focus. When when interruptions happen, you have to look at what got me off, where where am I struggling the most, where do I need to focus? We we leave with this all or nothing design, and so you have to assume that you still have the skills that you have built in place over time, but maybe you need to apply them in a different way. I like to I call it the MVW, the minimum viable workout. You have to find your minimum viable workout. What works for you? It could be eight to 20 minutes. You know, eight to 20 minutes may not seem like a lot to you. It may not seem like you're doing a lot, but is are you able to keep it going? Is it consistent? Have you built that consistency? Does it really count? And so you have to tell yourself that yes, it does count. But when you get interrupted, sit down and look at it because it will interruptions are going to happen again, and this allows you to build a plan. It's easier to build a plan when you know yourself and you know your life circumstances. I can give you a plan, but I can't predict what you're going through. I don't know what's going on in your everyday life. You have that data. We use this data in all parts of our life. We just don't realize it. Companies use it to market to us. Other companies use it to sell us things. Use your own data to figure out, okay, what motivates me when I'm at my lowest. What just makes me feel good. It doesn't have to be what motivates. Based means for fitness. What makes me feel good? What gives me energy? Because if we stop looking at things as okay, I just have to look at it like with just my fitness. My no, what gives you energy? What makes you feel good? Because if you feel good and you have energy, guess what? Restarting that workout doesn't seem as hard as it was. It doesn't seem as difficult. We try to disconnect these things, but most times they are connected. Our mental being, our emotional being, our physical, our how we are doing physical. Sometimes we feel physically good. We're we're not injured. We haven't been on vacation, but maybe we're just not feeling it. Maybe we are not dealing with grief or anything at this moment, we're just tired. We're just we're just mentally fatigued. We've been working out, and we're just there. Well, find other ways to motivate yourself to to enhance that that emotional connection, and then yeah, I think that's one way that people are able to use that data. Another way is find out what your worst your worst habits are, because a lot of times I know I do it. Many people do it. We doom scroll, and sometimes doom scrolling, having that exposure to things that are maybe contributing to you not returning, maybe that sometimes taking a step back from it, dialing it down, that can also be helpful. For example, I took a break from social media for a while. It wasn't a long break; it was about a month, but I needed that because it gave me more time to do things that I had never considered, like meditation. I was meditating every single day. I was going out, getting sun every single day. Those things seemed trivial before I went through, you know, the the different things I was going

through at the time: 22:54

divorce, grief from a losing a loved one, and so. But those things helped me to just feel better to where okay, I can restart, and then restarting becomes easier with each day.

Turo Virta: 23:09

What is your opinion? So, should every workout plan or every plan have a kind of bad week version?

Unknown: 23:19

Yes, I believe strongly. I believe every workout workout plan should have a bad week version. I think you should make the first week deliberately repeatable, and I think that you should use lighter loads. You should have fewer sets. You should do controlled movements, easy cardio. The goal is to finish one week capable of week two, rather than trying to force yourself back into this particular model, and so, like with, and I, I've heard you talk on some of your previous episodes. You have these different guides. You need to have a guide where you know you have maybe it might be something short, like two short full body sprint sections, or something with a structure that is repeatable to where you're like, okay, I can come back and show up for week two. Maybe I can't, and that even if you can't advance, if you just stay, if you're just able to return on week two, that's good. So having a bad week version is always good because it's going to occur. It's going to. There's always going to be a bad week. It may not. It may. It may be one of those things where it doesn't happen very often. But having that plan in place helps people because people always ask me and they say, "Well, I'm going on vacation and I want to have fun, and you deserve to have fun if you worked hard, things like that. You want to go out there and be with your family and things like that. But I know on vacation it's very hard to focus on fitness. Coming back, generally you need a break from the vacation in order to get back to fitness. And so yeah, having that back week version I think is good. And then also having it when it comes to your diet plans as well, because we generally when we go off and do things, we also we're not eating as well as we should. We're we want to live a little, and so we we we do things that we normally wouldn't do, and so we feel like okay, we got to jump back in it. But that can make things difficult. So having a bad week version makes your life easier.

Turo Virta: 25:21

And do you have some example in your mind, like let's say for someone who usually I would say workout three times a week, and each workout is let's say 45 to 60 minutes. What could be a bad week version?

Unknown: 25:36

Yeah. So a bad week version of that would be let's break it down to eight to 20 minutes. If you can do 20 minutes, great. But set a range rather than setting just one particular thing, so you might say, "Okay, I'm not going to do 40, but I'm going to do 30. 30 is still that's good if you can do it, but it's still there. I say set a range because the range keeps you from looking at that one number. We focus and we hyper fixate on numbers, and when we see. A particular goal. Most people feel like we have to reach it, and if we don't reach it, then we feel like okay, that sucks. But when you have a range, it makes it easier on yourself. And so instead of having like okay, I'm going to work out five days a week or four days a week, and I'm going to do 40 minutes. Say let's do eight to 20 minutes, anywhere from eight to 20. A lot of times, people try to stop in the middle somewhere, but you can't you can't fixate on it. And instead of doing that for five days, try doing it for three days, and then set that as just a bear, just a bar. If you can do more than three days, if you get to that third day and you like, okay, I can do it. There's nothing wrong with going ahead and doing that because you've already you've gotten yourself there. You're building up that that momentum. But if you don't, it doesn't give you this lasting feeling of okay, I I I I I didn't do it, and so I'm just not going to do it. Because every time we feel like we have these small failures where we don't complete something, it it kind of gives us that negativity to where we we just don't feel like coming back. We don't want to return because we feel like okay, I got to get to where I was before, and that's just not the that's just not the that's just not how life works. You know, you're you're gonna be at different points in your life no matter where you are.

Turo Virta: 27:24

Yeah, no, I love it. I love that example. It's just methods what I use and what have been for me and for my members in my coaching have been the most helpful. Like I have in my my workout app is like minimum version. It's like of course you can set those your own goals, but I I like to not think about it minutes. I think it about like sits, how many sits you are doing it? And I said for myself, Cole, that I need to go strength training for me personally. Even I'm a fitness coach. I honestly I don't enjoy doing it. Like when I'm in there, I know I love the way how it makes me feel, but just that going there lifting weights, I'm like that. Oh no, and I'm trying to tell myself every possible excuse to not do it. But I have that minimum goal two times per week, 10 sets, 10 sets. So if I decide to do five exercises, two sets seats, it's done. And I take around that eight to 20 minutes, depending on exercises and what I do, but it's just those sets. And then, of course, what usually happens if I'm not short on time or anything. Once I get started, I get those 10 sets. Then I think, oh, why I could do one more or two more exercises. So then it ends up. Usually, it's just that starting part is the hardest part. And and when it's then it's visible for me. Like when you are, I'm in my app. It's it's tracking those things. And now you know, I think I'm now in 33 weeks in a row. I have kept my consistency. And this is now like I think was it last week was like that. Oh, I can't make it. And I said no, I can't break my streak. I gotta keep going. I gotta keep going. I don't want to break it now. And and then I got that. Finally, it was it was just bare minimum what I needed to do. That just that you know in my app I see that my streak is going. So those it's it sounds like a small things, but in the end they are huge. Like if you if you are tracking your streaks, what you are doing, I believe that those are like it matters so much, and because then you know you don't give, you don't allow yourself, you don't find that excuse why you are allowing yourself to stop, and and once you keep going, then you know of course, do I think after like 10 minutes is it going to do a lot for me? Probably not, but that consistency-what is behind that-is a game changer.

Unknown: 29:56

So you're so true, and like you said, it doesn't seem like it's large. It seems like it's very small. But the way I tell people, look at it like little gears in a machine. Every gear is important, and they connect. These gears connect for the entire system. And so, what you're doing when you're making think when you're having this bare minimum, whether it's don't worry about the minutes, don't worry about the sets. You know, have this amount of sets or have this amount of minutes. You're building a system, and that's what you have to consider. And you have a system for certain things. If you have a car and you drive and you live in an area where it gets snow, when you're driving, you have tires for this season, and you have tires for the snowy season. Well, when you're working out, you have a system in place. You have a system for when everything's going great and it's normal, and then you have a system for when things aren't going great and it's not going normal. And I try to, I say you should minimize everything when it comes to there. Minimize, make it simple. The simpler, the easier it is. The less excuses you have, and the easier it is for you to. Say okay, I'm gonna do it because you could easily say I'm just gonna break this freak. I'm just, I'm just like it's just one day, but when the moment you give up one day, you know that it can it can have a cascading effect. So yeah,

Turo Virta: 31:21

but what if what what about then if what should someone do in case that you know you have missed several workouts, and what should someone do after missing several workouts?

Unknown: 31:36

When you miss several workouts, the first thing you need to do is look at why. What was the cause of it? And the reason why I say look at the cause of it, it might seem like it's insignificant, but it's very significant because it helps you to stop what's going on. It helps you to plug up the leaks, so to so to speak. And so figure out what to cause it. Is it because it's just you don't feel like getting up, feel like going to the gym, do home workouts? Is it because the workouts are too hard, make them simpler? Is it because the workouts are too long? Make them shorter, is because your schedule is just not allowing you to. Okay, find out ways that you can incorporate into your schedule that does not make things too difficult. Are you able to work out while you're at work? Are you able to work out soon as you get home? Are there things that you can do that can make the the the entrance to getting back to your to your fitness routine easier, and so I tell people to focus on that. Look at that, but also think about why you want to work out. What is what is it that you want to achieve? And because a lot of times when we have bad weeks, we kind of forget why we started working out in the first place, and that's another way. When I say the disruption is information, it remind you can go back to where you started. Why was it you were so excited? Because you were very excited at the beginning of the years, like I'm going to work out, I'm going to work out, and you know there's a lot of noise that goes on throughout the throughout life and throughout the years. So when you are able to go back to that place of where you got started, you're back motivated again. You're it becomes a little bit easier to consider like okay, I you know why and you know why and you keep start to show up for yourself. You start to show up for why you want to why you want to work out? Why? Why you're doing this? What the purpose of it

Turo Virta: 33:32

is? Yeah. No, I I I'm I so much security because I I think that like if you go deeper on that why because it's it's gonna be always like because what I hear at least so often that you know I just didn't feel motivated or I don't know. Like I think that it's the moment when everyone should realize that they're why they are actually why they need to do it. It's probably not enough if you if you don't like us. Then you kind of dig it kind of deeper, deeper, and identify like us. Usually, what I see that the people who are most consistent, they have that reason why they are doing it. It's usually it's more painful than the workout itself. So pain basically have to be greater. And usually, like if it's like just that you know, if the motivation is that you know I just want to look nice in my bikini, it's a it's a very good and valid motivation. I'm not saying that, but it's also usually the one which is the first one that ah whatever I can reach that goal also next year. It's not that urgent that you have to do it now, but then if it's like a what is for myself, my motivation is like my dad passed away at the age of 70, and he lost his basically ability to enjoy the life at age of 60. And I'm now 44. I have his picture on my desk, and every time when I don't feel like like, cause he never, he never, I think he never worked out in his life. He never ate a salad or any anything else. And I'm thinking that you know, if I think now that I have maybe 15 years left, that is that pain. Like I said, I don't want that somebody is changing diapers for me, like I do for my newborn son now, for me when I'm in my 60s, I was like, this is that that pain is for me greater than actually getting started with my workout. So that is that's what I think that it's just that I don't have any any myself any any cause that I need to look certain way or something. It's just because of my health, my well-being, and wanting to be here, being able to do things with my son and and being a role model for him. So I think that has so much to do. What what like how deep. You are going, and if you like those things for me, taking little bit time to think about there are some ways how you can if you don't know, like because it's it's it's not easy to find what is your why why you do it like you know I don't know I should do it like but if it it have to be really meaningful.

Unknown: 36:24

I agree. I and and I think some people think that they have to know the why right away. Sometimes you don't1. reason why I started Vanity Strong and I named it Vanity Scrong was because a lot of people kind of start for superficial reason. The saying that I came up with was "start for the mirror, stay for Sprint, and the reason why is because it's okay if that's why you got into it, but generally for me, I didn't want to look a certain way. I I always was very skinny growing up, and so I wanted to be this big muscle guy and things like that. And I was working out, but I when I grew up, you mentioned your father. My father died at the age of 32, and he died before I was born, so I was born in December. He died in April, and so it was. He never knew that he was going to have a son, and he's one of those things I've just kind of lived in my head. Is I don't know, like because he died so young, I don't. I've always looked at other people and their parents and like okay, you know how how does their health look compared to their parents? What are their parents' habits? What are their habits? And most of us were all I notice in our generation at least the the younger generation that we have now with people between the ages of 30 and 60, we are generally more focused on fitness than our our our our predecessors are our parents and our grandparents, and it's because we've we grew up with them and we look at the lifestyles that they had, and we want to we we want to be healthier, we want to live longer, you know, we we want to be. I myself, I'm I still have not had kids yet, and but I I plan to, and so I'm thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to be a 40-something-year-old dad, and I'm concerned because I want to be here for my my kids as much as possible when they're there. I want to be able to to to to follow them, to to play with them, to to be able to play sports with them, and so one reason why I focus on it, my my health so much now and fitness is such a big part of my life is because I do have concerns. I am scared, and I I do want that kind of that I want to have in my brain this consistency so that I'm constantly constantly being able to to show up for myself, so that I can show up for my kids, and so that I can show up for my wife, and so that you know when I get to a a age a more a more mature age, I am able to be independent because I think one of the things that makes us feel so human and so and so confident is that we are able to be independent. We're able to take care of ourselves, and one of the ways we're able to do that is by being preventative. And the preventative work that I'm talking about is being able to show up and be consistent with your workouts. You might look at a person who does 30-minute workouts, says, "Okay, well, they're not really doing that much. They're just doing 30 minutes every day. Well, 30 minutes a day for three or four days every single week for 52 weeks a year is that's a system in place. Yeah, it's a lot. That that is a person who is showing up every single day, and it's not always easy. Even if the workout seems easy, it's not all. It's not easy just to show up, just showing up in itself can be difficult, and so having that ability to to do that and being able to look back on that, and that's another thing that I tell people: if you start and you only start with small things, but you're consistent, and you start to look back at everything you've done, you look at the work you've done. Like if you have a calendar, and you've done those check-offs. If you have a meal plan, you've got the checks on it, and you go back and you look at that. That is a resume for you. That is your entire that that that's your entire workout history, and that informs you. Listen, I can do this, and I already have shown that I can show up. So it allows you to continue showing up for yourself, and you know your motivations can change. It can you can show. There's nothing wrong with showing up to to one to look the same way that you used to look in a certain bikini, but know that you aren't the same exact person, and know what the new normal looks like for you, and just understand that your motivations are going to change, but the formula itself, the workout, the results itself still should be the same. Which is, I just want to keep showing up every single day, and I want to keep this consistency, and I want to under I want to look at the things that are successes rather than avoiding them, because we avoid a lot of the success. Is like I said. How do your clothes fit? How is your energy? How quickly are you able to return after disruption? Sometimes people get disrupted, but then they return after a week. That's not small. Being able to return after a week is good because disruptions, as we know, they can last weeks or months. Some disruptions can last years before people return back to their routine. So, yeah,

Turo Virta: 41:30

yeah. With those disruptions, I wanted to ask because a lot of big part of my audience is women over 40, and what should those women over 40 focus on maintaining during particularly stressful periods? Which are the most important things. The

Unknown: 41:49

most important things that they have to remember is don't don't try to repay lost time. And so, what I mean by that, when we lose time, when you take time away, we tend to come back and we're trying to make up for the time that we lost. It's not realistic, and you don't have to prove who you don't have to prove that you're the same person that you were before the break, because it even if you can if you're able to complete those exercises, sometimes a lot of times it can create excessive soreness and fatigue and things like that. And so, but that pain is useful information because it lets you know your current capacity, you know it's one of those things that it it lets you govern what tomorrow's load is going to be, and it's one of those things you women often have this pressure, and it's one of those things because they're they're dealing with so many challenges and a lot of times they get overlooked when it comes to fitness. When women get to a certain age, they typically get overlooked when it comes to fitness. And as it's like this area between 30s and really any anything after 35, it just feels like people are getting lost in the crackbacks. And so there's so many things to consider. You have family. You have your your your medical. You have your just life circumstance. You have your careers. You have all these different variables going on, and so you don't have to overdo to come back. You just have to be able to know. Okay, what is what is my bar? Find the smallest useful session that you can complete on hard, and then start asking yourself like, is my motivation still the same? If it's not, then just sit down and ask yourself a couple of questions. You know, how do you stay consistent? What do you do when your plans get ruined? Literally, just ask yourself these questions because these are a lot of questions that people don't ask themselves. It's just that when life happens, all of a sudden they're shocked by it, and now what do I do? And so they're looking for a magic bullet, and there's no magic bullet. I've never been able to give anyone. People always come back and say, "Can I lose 50 pounds in a month? And I, you cannot lose 50 pounds in a month. Yeah, you

Turo Virta: 44:12

can if you just cut off like both legs or maybe arms. But

Unknown: 44:19

exactly, you know, if you if you if you want to do a little hacking, you can hacking off. You can you can you can lose it, but I tell people you know focus on other things that that that focus on other things and focus on how you feel because a lot of times how you feel can inform you more so than what you're that magic number that you're looking for or that that something that you saw in an ad. You're gonna keep. We're we're we're a very different type of society where we're connected. We're seeing things. You're gonna see things sometimes that get you discouraged. Just realize that. Listen, I have my own system in place. I'm working it. I'm not comparing it to anybody else because you don't know what that other person is going on. People, women in their 20s and in their teens and people, other people who are working out, they have disruptions too. We all have disruptions. Doesn't matter what your age is. Doesn't matter what your physical capacity is. We all do. But being able to make one for yourself is what matters.

Turo Virta: 45:21

So imagine then someone like I just want to get it like really practical. Like if you imagine, let's imagine that someone who is listening has been off track for three weeks. They haven't trained. Nutrition has been inconsistent. They feel disappointed and they are thinking, "I will restart properly on Monday. What should they do today instead?

Unknown: 45:48

If the thing about restarting on Monday, first off, try to start before Monday if possible. But if you can't, that's fine. But set a plan because if you know that Monday is coming, you know that you've set this up. You know that you've set this up. Show up for yourself. Because it's easier, we tend as human beings. We're okay with disappointing ourselves, even though we shouldn't be. But because it's ourselves, we're like, okay, well, I'll just do it the next day. If you have to show up for an important meeting, you can't move it. Most of the time, you're hesitant to move it because you don't want to disappoint someone else. You don't want to waste other people's time. You should do the same thing for yourself, and what that means to me is sit down, make a plan. If you're older, I tell people do some aerobic activity. That's not a. It doesn't. It's not. It doesn't take a whole lot. You know, I would. I think it's great to do muscle scrutiny. You know, I don't feel like it. It takes a lot to do it, you know. Focus on balance work. If the barriers that you have written down seem okay, like if if you're at this headset and you know that I don't feel like doing it today, write down what you think you could do on Monday. Write it down, and then if you don't do that, have a line right next to that, okay. If I can't do this, I'm gonna do this. So if you have, I'm gonna do 30 minutes of cardio. Put a line there and say, okay. If I can't do 30, I can at least do 15. You know, and then and then keep setting those goals, those benchmarks. If I can't do this amount, then I'm gonna do this amount. That if I can't do 10 reps, okay. Let me do. Let me do three reps. You know. Let me do. Can I do two reps? Even on days when you don't feel like getting out of bed, I tell people if you don't get out, if you don't feel like getting out of bed, if it's that bad, can you lift your legs up? Can you move your body in bed? Okay. How often can you do that? Do that consistently. It's still you're working. You're doing something. You're working out that movement. Create those those practices and have those exercises in place. But typically, just for me in general, I tell people always try to do walking because walking is something that if is very common, is very therapeutic. It's something that most of us can do within our daytime. Very, you know, if you're working and you're having to sit for long periods of time, try standing up. Try standing up while you're at work. Standing up, doing exercises that you can do at work. Things that limit having to show up. So if you're able to do something at work, even if you're just at work and you have a dumbbell and it's a small dumbbell, you're just able to just able to do that. I used to do that all the time just because I used to have to sit at a job for long periods of time and I would feel like I'm stagnant. So my exercise would be okay. Let me stand up, and then you just keep standing up every every so many hours. You and I would write it down. I was like, okay, today I did this many sit-ups. I did this many. I stood up this many times. I did this many exercises, this many reps. And so having that in place allows you to be able to. It has allows you to have a plan for when things start to fall apart. It allows you to understand that coming back doesn't mean having one plan. It means having two or three plans because you know you might feel you might feel that on Monday I'm going to be energized. I'm going to have this, and then Monday gets there, but you know it's it's not it's not what you expected because Mondays you know, sometimes are not not the most fun, and so you know you have those you have those mechanisms in place. Like I said, it's a system, and when you have a system, that means having multiple options, and when you have options, that gives you less excuses. It gives you more opportunities for success, and it allows you to to be prepared. And so, yeah.

Turo Virta: 49:55

So time is flying last, Tristan. What would you say to someone who believes they have failed too many times?

Unknown: 50:05

I would tell them there is no such thing. There is no such thing as failing too many times. The fact that you're restarting shows that you have not failed. Only when you decide that I'm going to abandon something do you have to stop and really just take a look at things. But even then, the fact that you're thinking about it, you're already succeeding. You can fail. We fail all the time. That's how we learn. That's how we grow. Failure is not so much this big scary monster. Failure is information. Is how the greatest people in in the world, the smartest people in the world, are people who failed a lot of times, and they learn from those failures. You failing teaches you every single time what did I fail at this time? Where did where did I where did things go wrong? And when you learn that, you learn to protect against that. Something else could. Become the source of your your your your failure in the future, and and that's fine. When that happens, you're able to go back and look at that and say, okay, what worked on the last time, and find a different solution. And so, I tell people there's no such thing as too many failures. You can fail. Failing is a good thing to have because it gives you information, and because it means that you actually try. It means that you try, and the fact that you're acknowledging that you have failed means that you're ready to start back again. And it's never too late to start. There's nothing wrong with restarting. There's no such thing as restarting too many times. If you restart, that means you're showing up every day. That means that you're you're you're motivated. That you're you're ready, and that you're going, and you're attacking, and you're doing what it is you need to do. And so, don't look at it as okay. I've failed too many times. It's like no, I'm restarting, and I'm I'm getting, I'm I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm growing. That's not failure. That's life. That's what it is. It's evolution.

Turo Virta: 52:11

Thank you so much. Where can people learn more about you and Vanity Strong?

Unknown: 52:19

Yeah, you can go to vanitystrong.com. We have a lot of free information, free guides, free articles, and and people are able to print them out and things like that, and we focus on people who feel like they're left behind. Whether it is people who are over the age of 40, people who are who have limited mobility, or people who just they just have bad weeks and they haven't been able to figure out a way to kind of jump back in. And so, vanitystrong.com is where we are on Pinterest, one LinkedIn, and different places as well, but we're we we have a restart guide for people who struggle with restarting, and it shows you different lanes. And so, anyone who's interested, they can visit the website, and there they'll have plenty of information there.

Turo Virta: 53:00

Thank you so much, Billy, and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a five star review in Apple and Spotify, as those are helping so many people to find out the show. And thank you so much for being here. And talk to you in the next episode.