Philip Pape: 0:01

let's say you're doing all the right things, you're tracking your macros, going to the gym consistently and checking off all the nutrition and training boxes, but you're still not getting the results. Well, your problem might not be what you think it is. Today, my guest, adam Badger, reveals why something invisible might be sabotaging even the most disciplined approach to health and fitness. You'll discover why your body can override even the best nutrition, how emotional patterns silently block progress and real strategies to break through plateaus, when white-knuckling it with willpower is not cutting it. Stop blaming yourself for lack of discipline when the real culprit might be hiding in plain sight. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 1:05

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're going to look at why even the most disciplined nutrition and training plans can sometimes fail, despite your best efforts, despite doing all the things, checking all the boxes. And my guest today to talk about this is Adam Badger. He is a fitness coach. He's a buddy of mine, he's had me on his show as well. He's got over a decade of experience helping everyday people transform physically and mentally, and I think the mental side is super important here. Since founding Badger Strength in 2018, adam has guided hundreds of clients maybe thousands to exceptional results by simplifying nutrition and training, while emphasizing the critical role of mindset. His approach to sustainable fitness, which we love here as well, focuses on addressing both the physical and emotional aspects of health. So today you're going to learn why there might be some hidden barriers to your progress that have nothing to do with your knowledge, with your discipline, how emotional patterns can override even the perfect plan, and some tips to get over the hump and start getting results. Adam, my man, welcome to the show.

Adam Badger: 1:58

Well, thank you, man. That was a great introduction, very, very, very flattering and also super professional. I'm jealous.

Philip Pape: 2:05

I just always try to cultivate that radio voice you know.

Adam Badger: 2:09

No, no, it was perfect. It was perfect. I also. I know no one's watching on video, but I don't. Normally. I'm wearing a tank top right now and I'm not normally like douchey like this. It's just really hot in my office. No, I thought you were just trying to show off the gun, so it's good I did just work out, so I was feeling a little more confident than normal.

Philip Pape: 2:23

A little pumped. I hear you, man. I hear you man, you know it takes some courage to do that. So you know, and we love training, we love nutrition, we love talking about this stuff all the time, and you and I were, I guess, not joking because we don't want to take this. We want to take this stuff seriously, but how? And you've talked about clients as well, and people who reach out that say I really am doing everything you talk about, adam, like I'm eating the protein, I am tracking, I am training, I'm like getting enough sleep, something is still off and I've got the knowledge. You know, it's not like I'm the noob that doesn't even know I need to track my food. What's the real reason, then, that people fail to transform despite doing everything right, or thinking they're doing everything right, that people fail to?

Adam Badger: 3:04

transform despite doing everything right or thinking they're doing everything right. So I used to say that it was one of the two I's and I've kind of updated that to be it, to say that it's one of the three I's. So generally, what I found in my experience that it's usually comes down to impatience, improvement or intervention, right? So if you're checking all the boxes and you're doing everything and you feel like you know you're not seeing progress, are you being just impatient? Do you have unrealistic expectations of how quickly you're going to see results? That seems to be a very common one, right? So for some people, let's assume that they're no one's 100%. So let's assume they're 90% consistent. Their stress is not much more than normal, right? Like they have a pretty normal life, little stressors here and there and they're being super consistent. Then it's usually just impatience, like you just need to have a more realistic timeline around how quickly your body can actually change.

Adam Badger: 4:07

Then there's improvement. This is the person who says they're doing everything 90%, but really maybe it's only 60 or 70%, right? That's when you're tracking Monday through Thursday and you feel like, well, that should be enough, and then Friday night through Sunday night is just dumpster fire and you don't really know how many calories you're intaking. Or maybe you are going to the gym four days a week but you haven't progressed weights, you haven't gotten better at technique, you haven't actually gotten any stronger, you're just kind of breaking a sweat. Okay, that person needs improvement. They need to improve their consistency, they need to learn more about how to train properly. But then there's also the step of intervention about how to train properly. But then there's also the step of intervention. So let's assume someone has been relatively patient, they've been consistent for six months. They're just not noticing much change at all. So they're not being super impatient. Let's assume that, across the board, they are checking all their boxes. They're in that 80 to 90% consistent range. They are progressing in the gym, they're just not seeing it. That's when we can take the step of being like okay, we have to intervene here. This is like the intervention step and not intervention, like we have to have a gum to Jesus, talk with you, but just, we gotta, we gotta do some investigation and go okay, what's what's going on here?

Adam Badger: 5:19

Now that can kind of shift into what our main topic was, was probably going to be, which is well, what is likely going on with that person and those are the people where there's likely a lot of chronic stress and they are unaware of how that's affecting their body. So they're they're not fully. They're not fully connecting their mental health or their emotional health and their physical health. And I always stress that I don't mean this in like a hippie woo-woo way, because I'm not like that at all. I'm just talking about how chronic stress affects you physically and mentally and it makes results much harder to achieve and it really extends the timeline. So that means you have to be very, very consistent for much, much longer to see a little bit of progress, or you can actually get in there and address your levels of chronic stress, what's stressing you out, how your body's responding to stress, and it doesn't always mean you got to do like blood work and stuff like that. So anyway that I said a lot.

Philip Pape: 6:27

No, no, you didn't. Actually, that was perfect. Like we could literally bottle up that as a clip because the three eyes. I love frameworks and I think that was one of the best ways I've ever heard this. I'll call it a sequential process of self-reflection of are you doing this? And actually it is contact. It's good context for this episode, because I think what we're talking about here is you feel stuck and you think you're doing the right things. Well, check off. These are other boxes to check that you might not be checking.

Philip Pape: 6:54

And impatience is amazing because I did a podcast about it recently, because I do get a lot of clients who start with me and not usually not one-on-one clients so much. Well, you know them too. Every client who, like you know, we're trying to set up their diet, we're trying to set up their training. They're open, they're committed to it, they're doing the things. And then after three weeks, why am I not losing weight? I'm so frustrated Like what's going on. And there's a lot of opportunity there for reframing, support, accountability around patients, which is a skill. It's a skill because I'm an impatient guy, trust me. I used to speed all the time because I'm impatient.

Adam Badger: 7:30

Me too. I'm extremely Listen. I always like to tell my clients I'm extremely impatient. I'm not a patient person. I want results as fast as possible too. I get it. You're never going to meet someone who's like, no, I prefer to have slower results. Of course, if, if all things considered, you could get results faster without any negative side effects, who's not gonna choose that? Like everyone's gonna choose that, probably again with the, with the caveat that there's not gonna be negative side effects to that. So if you're like, hey, listen, you listen, you could do this a sustainable diet, a sustainable workout program but you'll get results in three months versus six months, which you're going to choose, most people are going to choose three months. Why wouldn't you?

Adam Badger: 8:12

But the patience part is so important because and I think this is where we can get into the mindset and talking about human behavior I get it. I get, when you take the leap and you invest in yourself and you hire a coach, or you invest in yourself by going to a gym or invest the time and energy into a program, you have this impulsive or instinctual desire to see a return on that. And when you're not seeing a return on that, yeah, you're going to start getting inquisitive and going, oh, what's going on? I don't know why I'm. What's the point? So for those people, let's just say it is an impatience thing.

Adam Badger: 8:48

You got to start looking at. Well, why am I actually even doing this in the first place? Like, why do I want to lose 20 pounds? Why do I want to get leaner, why do I want to get stronger? Because if you can get to the root of that which can tie into, like the stress management, that which can tie into, like the stress management, the chronic stress and all that stuff, but if you get to the root of that, you can then start looking at your results beyond just the scale and body comp, like are you sleeping better? Are you feeling better? Are you getting stronger? All that stuff.

Philip Pape: 9:14

And do you think there are some. I'll call them simple hacks, or the way that we frame, we call it periodization, right, but for those who don't know, it's just having phases and having, which sometimes are tied. We tie them to timelines, sometimes incorrectly, I'll say. But, for example, I only do monthly plans for my coaching. Now, just recently switched to that, mainly because I found that some of the impatience comes from the pressure of the clock, the pressure of like I paid for six months and I have four months out of that for fat loss and I'm one month in and I'm not quite where I thought we should be based on that pretty graph you showed me which maybe that's my mistake of like here's the ideal trajectory and and it's like, oh geez, you know they feel like their money and time are locked Right. So are there just again, before we move into the other eyes and then eventually stress like not having a timeframe or not having a target weight. What is your approach to that?

Adam Badger: 10:06

Just as a very simple thing people can do right now we're trying to say lose fat, I would say it's a good question. Uh, cause? I'm trying to think of a simple answer? Because, because, because I would say the the easiest thing you could do upfront is to start tracking progress by the completion of the tasks and not by the scale and body measurements.

Philip Pape: 10:29

That's good, right, that's good.

Adam Badger: 10:30

So I would be like yeah, start and start just going. Hey, I want to hit you know, let's say you're doing four workouts a week. Okay, I want to do at least 15, 16 workouts this month. Check those boxes. I want to do at least five walks a week. Check those boxes. I want to hit my calories and protein at least six out of seven days. Check those boxes and start getting like enjoyment out of that. And if you're not enjoying that, understand that maybe.

Adam Badger: 10:58

Then there's something you need to address in terms of your personal process, the routine you're building. So if I'm looking at if I'm looking at building a routine or building a lifestyle, it's not that, like every little thing we do to lose 20 pounds, you have to do for the rest of your life Because, as you know, losing weight by nature is a temporary process. It's not something you should do. But the habits you build along the way should be relatively sustainable. They just the dial gets turned down a bit once you're in maintenance. So, are you eating foods that you enjoy? Are you noticing you have more energy? Are you getting better sleep? Are you making improvements as a human being? Is your quality of life getting better, like? These are all things that I understand when you're trying to lose weight.

Adam Badger: 11:41

It's very emotional. You want to. I always describe it. It's like climbing, or I think I might've used this analogy with you. It's like climbing a rickety ladder and you're you're almost at the top. You want to just get onto the roof right, cause you just want to feel that stability of going. Oh God, I reached my goal weight, or I reached my goal pant size. Now I feel safe, but at the end of the day, like you're still the same, you're like you still have to figure out how to live in that, in that, in that place. So people are trying to latch on to some like emotional security, and I feel like that's what a lot of coaches don't talk about. They're just talking about patience and we'll track your progress, enjoy the process. But you have to understand that this person. They're trying to latch on to a sense of security because they think when they have that security and they feel comfortable in their body, that it's going to fill some void, and usually it's not.

Philip Pape: 12:32

Yeah, so there's a lot of great stuff, a lot of gold there, man, because I was thinking of a movie I think it's on Hulu called Fall. Have you seen this? No?

Adam Badger: 12:40

I haven't.

Philip Pape: 12:40

Okay, you talk about the rickety ladder. Well, this is a. In this movie, these two girls, women, whatever, uh decide to climb a radio tower. That's like force tall, tallest structure in the world and all the way up there some disasters occur.

Philip Pape: 12:54

Let's just leave it at that. I don't want to spoil the movie, it's really good and but it reminds me of like they're barely getting there there stability. It's kind of like rock climbing for the first time without any guidance, right? You just don't know if the carabiner and the thing that goes in the rock I don't know what it's called is going to hold. Okay, and like you said, what if you want to go back down the ladder? Well, now it's rickety, right. Some rungs are going to fall and the whole thing might fall off.

Philip Pape: 13:16

I like that analogy and also the checking the boxes, because people get hung up on the quantities or when they think of consistency, they think I'm always hitting the target, as opposed to I'm doing the thing, which may or may not hit the target all the time. But like per habit theory, james, clear atomic habits, compounding all that fun stuff. You just got to do it multiple times to put it in place and then you can start to optimize, maybe the quantities and the numbers you hit. I mean, at least that's what comes to mind for me. So that's impatience, man, and then improvement. We could just gloss over that a little.

Philip Pape: 13:47

I think I'm not gonna say it's obvious, but there definitely is a gap from like I'm doing the thing to now I'm improving the thing and then I've improved to a point where I should be getting the result and I'm still not getting the result. That takes us to okay. Something else is going on. So, adam, what could the things be on that list before we get to chronic stress? Or another way to look at it, is the excuses people make. That's not chronic stress. Do you know what I mean? Like hormones? Hormones come to mind.

Adam Badger: 14:19

Yeah, I think so. I think what people forget is that, when it comes to and I want to just like let everyone know, like I'm not a hormone expert or a thyroid expert or by any means I'm not an endocrinologist I've had clients, but I can count on less than one hand the amount of clients I've had where the reason why they weren't seeing results was a legitimate hormonal issue.

Philip Pape: 14:42

Exactly, it's a small percentage, but it's real. We're not gaslighting anybody here, yeah.

Adam Badger: 14:46

I had one client who was specifically and this is an interesting story. I won't go into the whole thing, but basically her not seeing results almost saved her life because she was doing everything, Everything was on track, she was checking all the boxes and we worked together for like eight months and she's like I just am not seeing like any changes. So then that led to getting testing and she found out she had like a, a potentially cancerous growth on her thyroid and then she got it surgically removed and now she's great.

Philip Pape: 15:19

Did you take that personally, Like how did that make you feel through the process? I think people want to know, because we're humans too as coaches and I tend to take these things a little bit personally, like I'm not able to help you what's going on?

Adam Badger: 15:30

Yeah, I always get. I will always turn the finger at myself first before I go, or the clients, like you know, lying, or whatever. I was like, oh man, like and and yeah, I'm a human too. So I was like, do I suck at this? Like, what am I doing wrong? I could have 29 clients all doing good. I have one client that's not. I'm like, oh, maybe I just suck, maybe I'm not as good as I think I am and I would rack my brain and we would do maintenance breaks, we would do form check videos, we would do a little bit more of an aggressive diet.

Adam Badger: 15:56

And there was, there was like very, very slow progress and she wasn't someone who was overweight. She was like you know, you're a, a mom, busy, and she was in a healthy weight range, but she just wanted to be more. She wanted to look like she worked out and she felt like she didn't. And once we discovered that, I was like, okay, this makes sense. And I was honestly just more, you know, happy for her that she was getting answers and she was. And then it was more about just talking to her about how she was emotionally feeling dealing with this. She had a daughter and now she might have cancer, like it was a whole thing, of course.

Adam Badger: 16:29

But then on the flip side of that, I've had other clients who were hitting plateaus, and I remember one client specifically this is someone who is more of like a hybrid client. So they were doing in-person coaching and also doing nutrition coaching and she came in one day and she was like in tears, she nutrition coaching. And she came in one day and she was like in tears. She's like I just don't understand. I am tracking and I just am not losing it. She dropped like 10 pounds and just like plateaued out. I go, just do me one favor tomorrow. I don't care what it is, anything that enters your mouth, just track it, just just. Maybe there's something that we're not seeing. Turns out, she was and I will laugh at this and I don't mean to be mean about it, but it was just. It was just. This is where knowledge comes in. She was drinking apple juice at every day and just was like, oh, it's apple juice, like it wasn't even like tracking it.

Philip Pape: 17:18

Oh, it's a fruit, it's a vegetable. Those don't have any calories.

Adam Badger: 17:21

And I was like how much are you drinking? She's like I don't know like a few glasses. So she was drinking like 600 calories of apple juice a day and wasn't tracking it. And then she stopped that and started losing weight. So I was like, okay, there was improvement.

Philip Pape: 17:32

And I had another client recently who you know, hold on hold the thought on the other client, just just so people know like this is a thing. You may not be doing it on purpose, you may be misinformed or you could be tracking chorizo as like lean pork, you know, and like it could be as simple as that You're 400 calories off or you're copying and pasting an error you made months ago, perpetually Right, so anyway continue, way, continue.

Adam Badger: 17:52

No, it's a, it's a real thing and I've had that happen several times. I had a client recently who's you know kind of uh, same deals, like a little not as emotional about it, but it's like I just feel like I'm in this plateau and I said okay, and I said let's, let do me a favor, like you're, start sending me some form, more form, check videos. You were being consistent with that in the beginning, when you kind of laid off that and then when I just realized, oh yeah, you know like you're, she's working on her home, she's working out at home, she's got dumbbells, I'm like you're, you're lifting your heaviest dumbbells Like they're nothing.

Philip Pape: 18:17

Now so you need heavy.

Adam Badger: 18:19

You need heavier weights, so like she. But now she's like an A plus client, so she goes okay and she's ordering more weights.

Philip Pape: 18:26

So she was like barely maintaining her muscle when she was trying to build.

Adam Badger: 18:30

Right, yeah, so she had like dropped like 15 pounds and then it was like it like steadied out and I'm like, okay, so basically what's happening is now your, your calories are pretty consistent, but your calorie output is just plateaued. Yeah, so instead of us dropping your calories, let's ramp up your, your workouts a bit. And it's like oh yeah, the weights that you're using are just too light for you. Now you gotta, you gotta, bump it up. So there is definitely a cause for improvement.

Adam Badger: 18:56

As far as the next thing we're going to talk about, intervention, there is just a very small amount of people who it's like oh, you have this underlying thyroid issue.

Adam Badger: 19:05

Generally, even if you did have an underlying thyroid issue or hashimoto's, or hormonal or perimenopause, any of that stuff, I always like to really stress to people it doesn't really change the protocols that much.

Adam Badger: 19:20

Like, let's say, you go, I have this thyroid issue or I like save for something where it requires surgery, like my thyroid is slow or I have hashimoto's or I have autoimmune, yeah, all that stuff is being affected because you're in a chronic state of fight or flight and your body's like shutting down and it's not going to prioritize muscle building and fat loss. And I always like to stress people because you know, we know, starvation mode is not a thing. We live in 2025, modern day America and you're paying for. You're paying for one-on-one coaching, which means, like you know, you're probably doing well financially. You have access to high calorie, palatable foods. So there's probably some holes, like when you're stressed out and your calorie output goes down. Not only does that does that affect the you know, obviously your calorie balance, but there's probably times throughout the month, throughout the week, throughout the quarter, where you are giving in and those are just having a bigger impact because you're not able to push it in the gym.

Philip Pape: 20:18

Do you find, before we go too down this rabbit hole, do you find that individuals in that demographic which most people listening to podcasts are probably in that realm who, let's say, they have a stressful job, they have some chronic life stress, like we all do, and then they start doing the things right, they start developing the systems and habits that you work with them on, that we talk about here as well, and a few months in, do you see some marked improvement despite all the stress, and that the stress is just kind of a plateau point? Or do you find that right off the bat it's a problem?

Adam Badger: 20:50

That's a good point. So I hope this answers your question, because this is where my mind went when you asked me that, and this is where my mind went when you asked me that, and this is something that I talk about with clients a lot, and it can really help really change your life. Your perception of stress is what causes the negative side effects, not the stress itself, so the example I use with people is if you're, I'm a pretty, there's certain things in life that I stress about that if I told people, they'd be like you're, you're crazy, and there's other things in life that don't bother me, that seem to really like rile other people up. The example that I always use, though, is like if you're driving in the in the fast lane on the highway and someone cuts you off fast lane on the highway and someone cuts you off let's say, me and Steven are both in that same situation I get cut off and I roll my eyes. Steven gets cut off and he starts cursing at the other driver, and he's got a vein in his neck and he's red in the face. He's clenching the steering wheel. We experienced the same stressor, but his perception of that, which we can go into. Why that's like like the root of that, why that bothered him, which is another step. But his reaction to that stress, his perception of that stress, the fact that he felt maybe emasculated or scared in the moment, is causing all the negative side effects. Now you take that one little tiny incident but multiply that a thousands of times a year. If you're perceiving your chronic stress as this life or death situation, physiologically you're going to handle stress way worse and it's going to have a more impactful effect on your body. So if you can, if all of your stressors in life stay the same but you learn to work on how you're perceiving them, you can have the same stressors and not as many negative side effects.

Adam Badger: 22:45

And I've seen that one client that I use as an example all the time. She started with me about a year ago she worked with me for six months total. Over the course of six months she lost 25 pounds. She went from working out zero times a week to four times a week, slowly, because it started with two. She went from saying she wasn't a gym person and had no time for the gym to being a four times a week gym person. She didn't track food, said she had absolutely no time to eat, was eating three to four meals a day, started getting her steps in, went from 2,000 steps to 8,000 steps over time. But nothing about her life changed in terms of her stressors. She had the same job. In fact, her job got more stressful because she took on more responsibility. She had the same two kids with the same amount of afterschool activities, the same husband, the same social life, same amount of travel. Nothing changed, but her perception of her life changed and her habits changed.

Adam Badger: 23:36

And I'm not trying to go off on too many tangents, but I basically break it down for my clients that do you have your proactive habits and your reactive solutions. Your proactive habits are the things you do regularly, consistently, whether you're stressed or not, and your reactive stuff is when stress does tend to hit you and you start and you do get triggered. These are the kind of things you can implement in the moment to pull yourself out of that and perceive your stress differently. So that's kind of how I break it down for clients is really building these core proactive habits that build like an armor so that you're able to handle stress better, and then reactive tactics so that when you do spike your stress or your stress gets spiked by life. You can then handle it in the moment and not let it spiral.

Philip Pape: 24:20

This hits so hard, man. I'm smiling for those that are not watching the video, because what Adam's saying is it's profound, it really is, and I don't mean that in a light way either, because we talk about stress in a nebulous form. Sometimes we tie it to our hormones, like cortisol. We also talk about all these little hacks to mitigate stress, and breath work and yoga and all that, but the idea that stress is going to happen, what do you do? It's not just about like meditating, right, it's. Do you even perceive the stress in a way that's going to internalize it for you in the first place? The reason I resonate this with Adam is because, again, I could see.

Philip Pape: 24:59

The road rage used to be a thing for me until I had kids and then realized how dangerous it was in a car to allow yourself to react to that initial emotion that comes in. So you start to find that deeper. Why which ties to what you said earlier why are you doing this the fitness thing? Well, why am I acting this way? And why am I even driving a car with my kids while I'm trying to get them from one place to the other? Cause I protect them and I'm keeping them safe.

Philip Pape: 25:26

And so you get to the point at least I did, where you know I wasn't speeding, I kind of brush off. I don't get into fights. If people want to instigate, I just let them go, let them merge and the stress you're just like the burden is just totally off. And you know, adam, like working with clients, if a client messages you, maybe they want to cancel, maybe they're frustrated because they're not getting the result, like that stresses me out because I feel like I'm letting them down. But if I have to do a billion things and have a lot of people depending on me, like I roll with it, man, like to me that's super low pressure. I can handle emotion, people's emotional stress coming at me. So we all have different things, like you're saying, that stress us more than others. So, having said that, I think that's it sounds like the thing we should be focusing on today, because people can take control of that.

Philip Pape: 26:10

Like I feel like today, with stuff you're going to share, they can have a few steps to empower them to change their perceived stress, and I wonder what those are.

Adam Badger: 26:18

So, so the way I walk people through it is, uh, I like to break it down into uh, four steps and uh, step one is identifying your chronic stressors. So this is obviously very individual, but you have to. I mean, you can make a mental note of it, but like it would helpful to write it down and and just kind of take stock of what are the things in your life currently that are consistently causing you stress, right, not like little incidences over time, but like what are the things that are causing the chronic stress in your life? So that's step one is you got to create that list that could probably take you 10 minutes, right, like, like, actually like nail that down. You can even take it a step further and nail it down to like the top five, whatever it is, but you got to really like be aware of it, cause if you're aware of the things that are stressing you out, guess what? Like now you know when they're popping up you can be more prepared for it, right?

Philip Pape: 27:13

Just like with your three big three or four that most people have.

Adam Badger: 27:16

I mean, I would say, obviously it's very individual, but generally speaking, when we're talking about and this is a I mean, this is probably a step prior to that, but it's just understanding that stress kind of basically can be put into three buckets, right, it's like your psychological stress, your physical stress, metabolic stress, right? So psychological stress, that's probably the most common one, right, that covers, like you know, sadness, depression, anxiety, overworked, overload, over consuming information, like all that falls in that bucket. Then there's like physical stress. That's like the type of workouts you're doing or the type of workouts that you're not doing, like, right, if you're sedentary, that's physically stressful, the type of, you know, if you've had injuries, nagging pains, things like that, that's your physical stress. And then your metabolic stress is like the underlying stuff that we were kind of talking about. So if you have thyroid issues, digestive issues, that's also stress on the body. So all of these things are. These are three different stress buckets.

Adam Badger: 28:11

I would say, for most people, what you have to understand is your psychological stress, like saving for, like, let's say, you're you're completely overtraining or you're completely sedentary, or you have like some really bad injury. Obviously that's a physical stress, but for most people, psychological stress is the big one and that's what's trickling into the other areas, right? So I like to have people really mostly focused on psychological stress, because that's usually the thing that they need to tackle, whereas because if you're overtraining, I could tell you to train less. That's a pretty easy fix, but psychological stress is a little deeper, cool man.

Philip Pape: 28:45

So that's identify your stressors. They're psychological, physical, metabolic, and there's a whole potential list there that may be appropriate to you.

Adam Badger: 28:52

And for most people it's a psychological one, and that tends to be things like kids career self-doubt, things like that, and that leads into step two. So step one is identify your chronic stressors. Step two is the big one. That requires the deeper work and this is the work that most people I don't want to say they're unwilling to do, but you really have to commit, you know, you really have to like commit to I'm going to do this deeper work and that's identifying your root cause. Why are these things in your life actually causing stress? Again, perception right. So it's like I like to always be nuanced. You could not get too down the rabbit hole on step two and still probably fix your chronic stress. But going down the rabbit hole on step two and actually committing to doing that work and not putting a timeline on it and doing it over time, are you allowed to curse on this podcast?

Philip Pape: 29:50

Go for it.

Adam Badger: 29:51

It can fucking change your life, not only physically, but we're talking about your relationships, your finances, finances how you're showing up in the world. Step number two is like like I could get emotional talking about how deep I've gotten into step number two and it literally it can change your fucking life, but you have to be willing to do the work. It's identifying root causes like why are these things stressing you out? And it comes down to what underlying subconscious beliefs are you holding on to that are showing up in your life that is affecting everything. So, for example, if work is a chronic stressor for you and you dig a little bit into that, why is work stressful? Oh well, I'm overworked, I'm taking on too much, I feel like I have too much on my plate, okay, well, why is that? Why do you see that behavior showing up in your life? And if you go down that rabbit hole enough it could it could come all the way back down to like well, when I was a kid, my parents got divorced and I didn't see my dad as much and that made me feel unworthy and I felt like if I was successful in life, like this isn't my personal story, but like and that, why now in life I'm constantly trying to overachieve, overdo things. I'm, you know I'm a perfectionist. I'm all or nothing. I've never felt good enough. That's the stuff you need to work on, because, if you're aware of that, I like to compare it to an analogy that I use with my clients.

Adam Badger: 31:16

It's like Haley Jo Osment in the Sixth Sense. He can see dead people. When he first sees dead people, the whole first 75%, 80% of the movie is him freaking the fuck out about seeing dead people and trying to fix it. And then, when he accepts that they're there and he's always going to see them, he now is calm about it and handles it better. That's what your underlying subconscious beliefs are. Once you see them, you're like you're going to be like oh, I don't want to see that. It's going to freak you out. You're like I don't want to, I don't want to think about that, like that's scary. But now you're aware of show up as a different parent, a different spouse, a different employee, employer, like you're going to show up differently in all areas. So to start doing the work on that is you have to start. I would start by looking at you. Know what is the trend in your life? Like some common ones that I see are overachievers. Right, that's like a very common one.

Adam Badger: 32:11

perfectionist perfectionist another one is like that people don't really think of is like I call it life of the party someone who's always, who's never opening up, right, they're always cracking jokes, self-deprecating everything's lighthearted. They never. You can't have a deep conversation with them. That person might be thinking well, no one cares about my feelings, they're bottling up all their negative emotions. They don't ever feel safe to express them. What do you think that leads to? Chronic stress? Right, chronic psychological stress? Yes, the yes man or yes woman right Over committing saying yes to everything never setting boundaries.

Adam Badger: 32:48

These are some very common ones. You can even even another. One is like an underachiever, someone who's so afraid of failure that they never take a chance on themselves, they never actually push themselves, they never actually go for that promotion or ask that person out because they're so afraid of getting shot down. When you start to recognize these patterns in your life, it's going to open up a lot of doors for you that are actually going to be very, very impactful in how you're showing up in the world.

Philip Pape: 33:12

Then steps three and four oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. You don't get to go on here. I can talk about that all day. I just, I, just I want to sit on things because, like, we're not just providing information, I think if you're listening to this, this could unlock everything for you. And I will admit, like Adam is an expert in this stuff. I can just tell he talks about it in his show, talking fit, all the time time and I think he's underselling himself on how important this is. Because when you said identifying root cause, I bet a lot of people went to all, right, I want to identify the root cause of what the stressor is. No, you're saying why does that stressor cause you stress Again, going back to perceived stress, that is an important, profound distinction. It really is. It's super important, adam, important profound distinction.

Tony: 33:59

It really is. It's super important, adam. My name is Tony. I'm a strength lifter in my forties. Thank you to Phil and his wits and weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. That's what I like about Phil. He's got a great sense of humor. He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to. One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view, is that he practices what he preaches. He also works out with barbells. He trains heavy not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice and I would strongly recommend you talk with him and he'll help you out.

Adam Badger: 34:43

Well, here's one that I missed.

Adam Badger: 34:44

I'm excited about it because it's so helpful. This is a big one that I missed. It's a common category people fall into too is a victim, and when I say victim, I always want to explain this to people, because people, when they first hear that one, they're like well, that one's not me, like it might be you, because a victim is not someone who just walks around feeling sorry for themselves. That's not what I'm talking about. Right Again. That's like kind of like I hate social media. Like that's the messaging that people go oh, you got to stop being a victim or stop feeling sorry for yourself, right, no excuses.

Philip Pape: 35:12

Yeah, it's like this oversimplification.

Adam Badger: 35:14

Victim mindset is not about feeling sorry for yourself. A victim mindset means you don't trust your own ability to save yourself, so you're always looking for someone else or something else to come fix your problem. And it actually took me to do some deeper work to realize that that was one that I had, and wasn't willing to admit that I had, because I always used to think well, because I'm someone who honestly is, I'm resilient, I am very, I have a good work ethic, like I'm a hard worker. So I was always like I'm an overachiever. I'm an overachiever, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

Adam Badger: 35:52

For a couple of years not like three days to realize like, oh, I keep falling into this victim mindset. Well, where does that come from? Oh well, I had a relatively traumatic childhood and as a kid I couldn't depend on the people I was supposed to depend on. So I always used to have these thoughts when I was a kid that something or someone was going to come in and like save the day. And I used to have this thought like, oh, if we just won the lottery or if this one thing just happened. And when I started to do is, I started to try to.

Adam Badger: 36:24

Once I realized that nothing was happening. I then put that pressure on myself. I've got to be the one to save my family and that was the hard wiring. Again, subconscious is not something that you're thinking of every day. It's under the surface. It's not something you're necessarily even aware of. That hardwiring and that pressure was running my life, for I'm 34 right now, so I don't know. 33 and a half years of just this pressure and it was draining my nutrients. I was chronically stressed, highly anxious. I didn't even realize I had anxiety until I was in my 30s because I just thought that's just how I am so realizing that can be very powerful because once you realize it, you have control over it. When you have control over it, you can control it right, you can manage it.

Philip Pape: 37:12

Yeah, yeah, and it sounds like it would express itself in many ways that people label things from imposter syndrome to, like you said, being a victim to self-doubt and all of these maybe to a lack of confidence, because I could see how that would cause that as well. So does some of that continue to linger for you? I'm just curious, and also I don't know if we want to take a quick tangent into a life-changing experience you had recently and how that has evolved your personal perspective on any of this, including yourself.

Adam Badger: 37:39

Yeah. So the one thing I always coach my clients on is if you expect that these things are going to go away, then you're always going to be discouraged. So they never go away. You get better at managing it. It's like your relationship with food. If you're someone who used to, you know be afraid of carbs, you're kind of always going to be afraid of carbs to a certain degree, but you get better and better at managing it. But if you expect, if you're waiting for the day where you're just gonna wake up and you're all these things are going to go away, then you're always gonna be discouraged, because every time you feel down or you feel insecure, you feel lack of confidence, you're like, oh man, this isn't working.

Adam Badger: 38:13

Back to the impatience and the improvement Right? So for me to answer your question yes, it shows up every single day, every single day. There are multiple times a day where there's something that just triggers those thoughts and I have to actively and intentionally reroute. So make to make sure that I'm not, I'm not showing up as that version of myself for my wife and my kids, and that sounds way oversimplified and it's not as easy as I made it sound. But that's the work they have to do, and you're not going to be batting 1000 on it either. There's going to be days where you feel like you're trying so hard to reroute your brain and reroute the way you're thinking and you're just going to be caught up in that thought pattern and you just get better and better at managing it.

Philip Pape: 39:00

And just to not let it go, something happened to you recently right, yeah, yeah.

Adam Badger: 39:04

So I got in a really bad car accident. It's March, it's mid-March right now we're recording this. So it was February 1st. I went to the gym on a Saturday morning this you know, I was just. I went to the gym on a saturday morning. Uh, was driving home. I came to like a blinking red. I slowed up to a stop it was it's six o'clock on 6 30 in the morning on a saturday no one's on the road. So I slowed up to a stop at the blinking red and then pursued forward like you do.

Adam Badger: 39:31

That's, that's how a blinky red words it it's stop sign, the, the, the uh intersecting uh lane is like a 55 mile an hour uh, highway, uh, and the person who's coming down didn't slow up for their blinking yellow um, I know this because the distance between the two lights. If they had split up even a little bit, it would have been a fender bender, um, and I can't really remember, but I'm like 98% sure they didn't have their headlights on because the, the road is so like you could literally see like a mile down the road, like I would have seen headlights coming. So it wrecked me, man, like like the, like I still like have like my neck. I, my neck is like super tight, my shoulder, my collarbones messed up. But anyway, long story short, I a half a second later it would have been way, way worse. Uh, and I have two kids, like I had to like take my. Luckily they weren't in the car, but I remember taking my daughter's car seat out of my car and being like wow, she could have been in the car with me. Like scary, scary. Now the sexy Instagram story would be oh, this was like a life changing moment.

Adam Badger: 40:39

And then I immediately switched my mindset and like now, like I have this new zest for life. Life's not that simple, right? So like it started with immediate like anger and slight depression, I would say Cause I was like that happened. But then nothing about your life changes really.

Adam Badger: 41:02

And I was back to work on Monday with all this pain and slight concussion, but I had that underlying self-belief of like well, I can't take time off of work because if I take time off work, I'm not providing for my family. So I just kind of went back into those old thought patterns and then I kind of came out of them and kind of found like that's when I started like you know really going like what am I doing? Like what are the things in life that I'm doing that I don't enjoy that I'm spending so much time doing? And then I started to go off on that and like start to focus more on things I enjoy. And then that then I'm a human too, so then got impatient with that, so that that wasn't really like converting in quotes right to like new clients and opportunities. We got frustrated again, got mad again, got it.

Adam Badger: 41:46

So it's like impatience, impatience exactly so then, but now I've come I kind of come to a place where, like, I feel like I'm much more clear and I'm starting to really take back a lot of ownership over my career and my life that I was giving up to things and people that I thought could quote unquote, like save me, which which sounds extreme, because I've been in the same career for 11 years, I've made a really good living, I provide for my family. Realistically, on paper, my life is better than I thought it was going to turn out, but there was something inside of me that kept saying it wasn't good enough. It's because of these expectations and pressure that I was putting on myself and then I kept giving up authority to like, oh, this business coach, this person, this resource could help me get to the next level.

Philip Pape: 42:35

Like program hopping for business.

Adam Badger: 42:42

Yeah, program hopping for business. And then it was like I'm chasing something that I don't even necessarily enjoy doing and the truth is I love what I do. I was just packaging it in a way that wasn't aligned with me because I thought that's what I had to do, again, giving up ownership. And now I'm at a place where I'm like I could continue to do something that wasn't working and that I wasn't enjoyable, and it could end up with me getting hit by a car. So why not try doing stuff that I do enjoy in a way that I enjoy doing it and feel aligned with? Because I could still get hit by a car, but now I have a pickup truck so I'm less likely to get railed like that.

Philip Pape: 43:17

Hey, that's part of the solution. So I wanted people to understand this right, because, again, being human and dealing with things that are stressors, those are stressors too, and you just talked about some tools and active, proactive behaviors for that. I know we're running short on time and there's more steps beyond the identifying root cause, like how to deal with it. Well, actually, you just mentioned them.

Adam Badger: 43:36

So steps three and four are proactive habits and reactive tactics. Oh, cool, and you mentioned those. Yeah, Okay, yeah, yeah. So so just to give quick context for people, cause it's um, proactive habits are literally the stuff that Philip and me talk about all the time it's are you eating nutrient? Are you eating nourishing, balanced meals and getting adequate fuel every day? Notice, I didn't say on a diet, I didn't say cutting carbs or being in a deficit, Like step like you got to make sure you're eating enough.

Adam Badger: 44:06

Because when your body is under fueled guess what, that is Stress. And when your body is under fueled, that's when, like, appetite signaling shuts down and it's cool if I'm a little bit late for my next call because I really feel like this and when your body is under fueled, that's when, like, appetite signaling shuts down. And and if it's cool if I'm a little bit late for my next call because I really feel like this could be useful you have to understand that, like when your body is in fight or flight, it does not know the difference between road rage, work, stress and someone trying to kill you. If someone was trying to kill you, your appetite signaling would shut down All of your. You would get that tunnel vision. Your limbs would kind of go and kind of get like the blood would flow from your limbs to your gut and like you would get heightened senses. That's why when people fast they're like I feel so alert yeah, Cause you're fucking in fight or flight Like. So your, your body is like we're starved. We got to find food. We can zone in on something. So if you're nourished and you stop three to four times a day to sit down and eat a balanced meal, what do you think that signals to your body? It signals to your body that you're safe, because if someone was trying to kill you you wouldn't be able to stop and eat a balanced meal. So, eating balanced meals, getting regular exercise two to four times a week I recommend the best way to do that is resistance training, as I'm sure you've talked about a million times. But the best form of exercise you can do I would say secondary to that would be walking.

Adam Badger: 45:23

And then next is like some sort of mindset practice that you feel aligned with. It doesn't have to be anything specific. It could be like if you enjoy meditation, if you enjoy breath work I'm not religious, but if you are religious, prayer, going to church, like that's a form of mindset work, doing something regularly that is giving you. Whether it's three minutes or 60 minutes doesn't matter, where you're just focusing on your mental health. And if you don't I heard this quote from Tony Robbins if you don't have like 10 minutes a day to prioritize your life, then you don't have a life. So if you can't find three minutes in your schedule to do some breath work or meditate or whatever, then you don't really have a life because you're just a slave to your schedule.

Adam Badger: 46:08

But those are kind of like the proactive stuff. And then reactive is pretty much just like a three question sequence, is like no-transcript email or having a conversation that you've been avoiding right. But it gets you into a mindful place where you can move to the next logical step, as opposed to ruminating in the stress which prolongs the stress. And that's where people go into poor stress coping mechanisms, where they drink alcohol, they overindulge, which then just prolongs the stress, right. So if you can identify the stress, acknowledge why it's causing you stress in the first place and then reroute and do something productive to pull you away from it not avoid it, but pull towards a solution then it makes it.

Philip Pape: 47:14

That's your reactive tactic. So good man, so many mic drop moments in there seriously.

Philip Pape: 47:17

And I want to chat with you later on because I know you're going to have to go to a call soon about all of this. I want people listening anyone listening who follows my show here, who trusts me in any way reach out to Adam. I'm going to include his contact information and I know we also have what can we send them to. That's like the best, next best, thing to learn about, to go down this beautiful rabbit hole of learning about this.

Adam Badger: 47:40

So if you want a little bit more details on like, you know, if you're just hearing me for the first time, you might not care, but episode 183 of my podcast is about, like my mindset shift after the car accident that I had, about like my mindset shift after the car accident that I had um, but I also I also will say um, I know that I know that this isn't probably the most efficient uh way to like, like, encourage people to get in contact with me, but there's no, there's no like strings attached here, because, as we're having this conversation, I realized like, oh, this, this is a good idea to send people.

Adam Badger: 48:12

This is I did a workshop basically breaking down those four steps and getting deeper into each of them. It's a little bit of a watch. It's probably like it's over an hour, but if you want that, I'll send it to you for free, so you can contact me through my Instagram page or you can email me. It's a badger at badger strengthcom, but no strings attached. I'll just send you the recording of that because it literally just walks you through me talking about the underlying health issues that I had that were related to stress, and then talking about the four steps, the stress buckets. It really is just like a lecture on everything we talked about, but actually just kind of laid out and a little bit more consumable.

Philip Pape: 49:00

Yeah, dude, I want to send people your way because, again, Adam's a great guy, he knows what he's talking about. This is probably the clearest framing of this that I've I've ever heard personally, and I've watched and listened to a lot of content. Man and you and I know each other and I still haven't heard it expressed so eloquently and articulately and helpfully. So, everyone, I'm going to include the exact link to get you that workshop, because I think that'll be the most powerful thing, but then we'll include some secondary links to direct access as well. Adam man, thank you for taking your time coming on the show. This was a blast. I'm really glad we had you on to talk about chronic stress, because ultimately it's going to help people unlock what might be holding them back.

Adam Badger: 49:34

Thank you, man. I really appreciate the opportunity and once we started talking like getting into the flow of it, it was really cool. So I appreciate the opportunity a lot.

Philip Pape: 49:43

Yeah, man, so we're going to be in touch and hope you have an awesome weekend.

Adam Badger: 49:47

Thank you, man, you too.