The Cost Of Constant Restarts

Philip Pape 0:00

How many times have you started over? A new program, a new diet, a new coach, a new app, a new set of macros, a new Monday morning where this time it'll definitely be different. If you're being honest, it's probably more times than you want to count, as it is for me. And every single time you believed in it, you showed up, you did the work. And then at some point it stopped working or you stopped trusting it and you are back to searching for the next thing. Today I want to talk about why that keeps happening, what those programs were missing, and what it would actually take for this to be the last time. This will be a short bonus episode for your Saturday. I'm dropping this because Eat More Lift Heavy, the program I've been building for the past few months, starts Monday. And I didn't want to spend 10 minutes pitching you. I wanted to spend 10 minutes on the thing nobody talks about. Why do smart, consistent, motivated people like you and me keep ending up back at square one? I want you to think about the last program that you tried. And I hear about them all the time. You guys tell me by email, I just did this program. Or the last three programs you tried. Maybe it was a macro plan from an app. Maybe it was a 12-week challenge. Maybe it was a membership with workouts and a Facebook group. Maybe it was with a one-on-one coach. And I'm guessing that it went something like this: you joined, you were super excited, you learned some things, you saw some early results. And then somewhere around week six or maybe week eight, it started to feel like you were just doing the same thing on repeat, assuming you were even still consistent at that point. Maybe the content ran out that got you excited at the beginning, or it stopped being relevant to where you were. It wasn't changing with you, or you hit a plateau and you didn't know what to adjust. You know, you were following the plan, but all of a sudden that plan wasn't working, and it didn't seem like you could really get the support or input you needed. And maybe the coach wasn't as expected. And then you either canceled or you stayed connected or subscribed or whatever the model was, but then you stopped engaging, which is basically the same thing. And I see it at all levels of coaching from free groups all the way up to one-on-one.

Why Most Plans Lose Momentum

Philip Pape 2:08

Now, here's what I want you to think about. I want you to notice. This is very psychological. Okay. The problem is almost never effort, even though effort's a part of this, there's something upstream. There's a bottleneck upstream. You might have been showing up, you might have been quote unquote doing the things. And then the problem wasn't even the information either, right? Especially for those of you who listen to this podcast. Most of the programs out there have a decent level of information. They have a decent set of steps, et cetera. A lot of them are kind of cookie cutter, I'll say, and built on the same principles, of course. But the problem was that most programs have no trajectory, endpoint, periodization, map, whatever you want to call it. They give you access to some information and maybe even a coach, but they don't really take you through an adaptable process. And I say it that way on purpose because they all have a process. They all have a method. They're like, yeah, here's our method, here's phase one, two, three. But they don't have an adaptable process where you say, okay, you've built this skill and now this thing is tripping you up. Here's the next skill, and here's the next solution to the next, you know, micro problem that you have. Also, many of them don't really have a final endpoint. What I mean by that is I've talked to clients who had really good one-on-one coaches they work with, people I respect in the industry, and they're like, Yeah, I lost 10 pounds or I lost 15 pounds or whatever, but now I've gained it all back. And I'm like, well, how did that happen? Right? How did that happen? Were you dependent on the coach, or was it more of a situation of you didn't have the skills by the end of it to do it on your own again and again if needed, right? Or you were relying too much on external motivation or having that extra accountability, which accountability is really, really important, but you should also be able to learn the fundamental skills that you take with you forward independently. So you have that agency, that self-efficacy.

Dependency And The Coaching Business Model

Philip Pape 3:57

And by the way, in the coaching industry, this isn't really an accident a lot of the time. All right. Open-ended coaching, where they want to increase what's called the long-term revenue or long-term value of a client, is definitely part of the pricing models. And there are honest, authentic ways to do that. Like, hey, you're so happy with what you're getting out of this that you want to go to the next level and continue on because you like the relationship, versus, you know, I feel dependent on you and I got to keep going, otherwise, I'm gonna lose everything, right? Those are two different ways to think about it. I'm happy to pay businesses who continue to offer great services, you know, even for the rest of my life, depending on what that business is, right? Like I pay for my Netflix subscription, I'm not gonna stop that because I keep wanting it. But in the fitness side, you're trying to get a result, usually, at least a short-ish term result when you start like fat loss. And then once you achieve it, you want to be able to sustain that and then go after another result potentially. And it's those other results where ongoing relationships can be helpful, but it shouldn't be to prevent you from gaining it all back, right? You should be able to stop working with that program or coach once you've hit that point and have learned what you need to continue. And that's the part that kind of upsets me a little because I I see that people are frustrated and feel taken advantage of. And so there's there's a conflation here of the pricing models with the actual, you know, process and the results. And there's not really a monetary incentive for a lot of coaches to, let's say, graduate you or to fire you. You know, I always joke with my one-on-one clients, like, I want you to fire me in about six months once we've gotten the result and taught you the skills, because I know you're gonna have independence after that if you want it. But if you want to go to the next level, I'm always here to help you out, right? Kind of like, you know, well, no, I'm I'm not gonna go in the medical side here. Let's keep it to nutrition coaching. So the model for a lot of coaches in the space works best when you are dependent on them. And then when you leave, you don't have the skills to continue on your own, and then you restart somewhere else. So to me, that's like the essence of what's going on. Now, I'm not saying these programs are scams, right? Many of them have really good people behind them, but the structure is designed for retention and not for results. You know, I think of some of my own coaches in the business space, not just fitness, but business, who I might have worked with for three months, and I'm like, hey, you really helped me out and and I don't need you anymore. I'm sorry, you know, I feel bad, but I don't need you anymore because you really helped me learn how to do this for myself. And you know what happens is six months later, a year later, I reach out and say, hey, there's something else I want to learn from you, or hey, you know that thing we worked on? I want to go to the next level. Can you help me out? And that is how true relationships are built over time, rather than you restarting because you regained all the weight or you lost all the skills that you never really had. Does that make sense? So, what would it actually look like to quote unquote

The Skills That Make Results Stick

Philip Pape 6:41

finish the right way and then sustain your results? Not finish a challenge where you were like really highly externally driven to get to the prize over eight weeks, and then you just go back to what you were doing before. Trust me, I've done challenges. I used to do challenges based on points for what you ate or your hydration status or how many workouts you did, all that. And it was very short-term, very high energy, but then you're done and you don't gain anything in terms of long-term skills. But you have to have the skills, you have to understand your data, you have to be able to make decisions about your nutrition and training without needing someone else to tell you what to do, and also without necessarily a degree in nutrition science. Okay. So, and I know that sounds like impossible for some of you, but it's not. It's not. I think that's what most programs are missing. So if you think about it this way, if you took a 26-week college course, so that'd be like a year of college, right? Or a couple semesters, you wouldn't just get access to the textbook and the materials and say, go ahead, go learn, right? Just go learn. Now, granted, there are online programs like that that are super cheap, but in college you wouldn't do that. The course would have a sequence of events that builds on itself, right? When you start week one in a college course or a high school or any course, the first week is kind of easy, right? You're just saying hello and figuring out what's gonna happen. It's all brand new to you. And then build week two builds on week one, the build week three builds on week two. The material gets more complex as your understanding deepens, but you're also able to handle that material as your understanding deepens. And then there's checkpoints. Those might be, you know, quizzes along the way, a final project, et cetera. And then you walk away with a credential. Now, I'm not gonna, I'm not saying that our fitness, our program is a course. It is not that. But as an analogy, it's a good one because fitness programs almost never work that way, even though your body actually does that way. Physiological change, also mental change or any improvement, follows this compounding sequence of buildable skills. You first have to learn some basic information. Then you need to track and build awareness. Then from that awareness, you can make the right changes, not the wrong changes. And then you have to make those changes before you can interpret feedback, and then you interpret the feedback before you can troubleshoot the feedback, and then it loops back around to taking the next action and on and on, right? But if you skip any of those steps, the whole thing collapses. It collapses because you're missing a really important piece that feeds the next piece. This is why, you know, just track your macros and follow this program doesn't work for like 95% of people, right? Some people kind of figure it out as they go and they hold on to it. Most people don't. They need a coach or a process or a sequence, and it has to feed off on itself. So when I say the last time you start over, I don't mean this program is so good you'll never want to leave. I mean this is the program that teaches you enough that you don't have to come back, at least to learn what you learned for that goal, whether that's fat loss, body recomp, whatever. And that is a different promise, right? And that's a promise that a lot in this industry don't want to make. But it's also the promise that is why I built Eat More Lift Heavy, Eat More Lift Heavy the way I did. I did it this way, understanding all of these mechanisms in the industry and what works psychologically and wanting to help as many people as as possible in the way that I would want to be helped. It's a 26-week

A 26 Week Roadmap In Phases

Philip Pape 10:08

program. Sometimes I call it an experience, but that sounds a little too foo-foo. Uh okay. And the 26 weeks are not arbitrary, they are three phases that follow the sequence I described. Now, before I describe the phases, just know, again, a lot of one-on-one coaches will say, Oh, we go through these three phases, but it's kind of wishy-washy. And once they get you into the program, it's not really structured that way. How do I know? Because I've been a one-on-one coach, and in my early days, I didn't really know what to do week after week after week after week within those phases. You just kind of put all the things on paper, did all the behaviors and habits, and hope that it came out right the other side. You made adjustments. That's not good enough for me, and I hope it's not good enough for you. So the way we do it is three phases with week by week specific activities that build on each other. Okay, the first seven weeks is called stop guessing. You build your baseline, you set up your tracking, you get a training program. All within the first week, you get those things, and then you get a launch plan that gives you a lot of good information to build from over the next few weeks. And then by the time you're building that momentum, the program takes over as we make those adjustments and go from there. So stop guessing is where you build your baseline. Phase two, weeks eight through 18, is where you execute. We call this the eat more lift heavy phase, where you learn to interpret your data and your expenditure trend and to progress your training and evaluate it, to master your protein so you don't have to think about it anymore, to navigate through those plateaus and sticking points, not just us saying, oh, this is why, but you understanding how to inter determine why. And of course, you have coaches there the whole time watching this data and adjusting with you. Uh, Coach Carol and I are in the program very actively. And then phase three, weeks 19 through 26, we call this trust yourself, where you practice troubleshooting, okay, without a coach, but we give you exercises to help you understand how to describe your own system, how to deal with different scenarios. What if this happens? What if this happens? And you actually have to prove, not to us, but to yourself, that you can answer those questions. And then you really don't need us anymore. And that is the win. That is really the win.

How to Eat More and Lift Heavy

Philip Pape 12:22

All right, so Eat More Lift Heavy launches this Monday, March 30th. Now, if you've already heard this episode uh after Monday, it's launched. But if you're hearing it on the weekend, you've got until Sunday, midnight, to get in on founder pricing. This is a uh a loyalty discount we're giving to everyone who listens to the podcast or follows the email list, is on our email list because you are, you know, a supporter of us and we want to give you a break on this and make it very enticing. So founder pricing, $77 a month. We bill it quarterly and that locks you in permanently. And after tomorrow, midnight on the 29th, on the 30th, it goes to 97 a month forever. So 77 a month if you lock it in. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Now, if you want a personal nutrition coach inside the program, that is dialed called dialed in, and that's 166 a month. Again, far less than typical one-on-one coaching. And she's gonna build you a very cool, very customized nutrition blueprint at the beginning in week one, based on a separate intake just about your food and your nutrition. She's gonna review your data weekly. She's gonna give you personal feedback, video feedback every month, form checks, all of that is included. There are only three spots. I just checked three spots left for that tier. We're keeping it small. And then when they're gone, the next available spots will open up when they're available at 197 a month. So these are 166 a month if you lock it in now. Go to eatmorliftheavy.com. The link is in the show notes. We do have a 30-day guarantee. The details are in the terms. I encourage you to read that. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. All right, so here's a

Three Questions To Test Ownership

Philip Pape 14:00

little bonus. It's a quick way to know if you actually own your fitness knowledge. Like you can own and have agency around your fitness, or if you're still borrowing that knowledge from someone else and dependent on someone else. Here's how you know. Ask yourself these three questions. One, if your weight stalls for two weeks, do you know the first three things to check before changing anything? Can you bang, bang, bam, know exactly what to check? Two, if you're going on a week-long vacation, can you plan your nutrition and training without Googling a new program? Three, if someone asks you why you eat the amount of protein you eat, could you explain the reasoning, not just the number? So if you said yes to all three, you're probably in a great place. You've learned all this stuff, you're owning your own fitness. If you hesitated a bit on any of them or you're not sure, don't worry about it. That's okay. That's the vast majority of people listening. That is just a skill you haven't built yet. And those skills are what gets built through a process like the one we're talking about. And you will learn that in Eat More Lift Heavy if you go to eatmore liftheavy.com. Okay, so link in this in the show notes. Last whole time I'll say it, eatmore liftheavy.com. Until

Finish Line Mindset

Philip Pape 15:02

next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, you don't need another restart. You need a finish line. I'm Philip Pape. Eat More Lift Heavy starts Monday. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.