Ep 176 – Trying To Do Too Much At Once

Ben:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio.

Ben:, Ben:

My name is Ben and I’m Giacomo and this is episode 176.

Ben:

Right? Well, you and I just got back from some trips. You went to Dallas. I did and Danny and I went to Danbury in Connecticut, which doesn’t mean anything to anybody. But basically we went to a Google Dolls concert which is Danny’s favorite band. And she’s seen, I don’t even know she’s been going to Google Dolls concert since she was 10. And honestly, I have to, I’ve become a fan.

I mean, I, seriously, it was like Danny me, 14 year old girl who was like, really feeling, which is kind of cool because they’re an old band and we were just shutting it down. It was an older crowd kind of stiff honestly, but we were just like dancing around like kids. It was a lot of fun actually. So we got to let loose a little bit this weekend.

What was Dallas like, Dallas was hot as you would expect at this time of year, but not overly so it wasn’t like New England humidity where you step outside and you’re instantly sweating. It was kind of this dry heat. And thankfully I was there, I was kind of in and out. So I flew in at 8 p.m. on Friday night and I flew out at two or three pm on Saturday. So I was there in the evening and the morning before it really got to that kind of midday dry heat.

It was in the mid to upper nineties. So I was there kind of just looking around potentially thinking about homeownership in the near future. So it was good to kind of get an idea of what that process is like as somebody who is completely new to that realm. And I got shown around by a local to the extent that one can get shown around and being there for 12 hours, really 16 hours.

There’s a restaurant out there. Did they tell you about it? I’m trying to remember the name of it. It’s not coming to me, but the, I’m not even sure if they’re still open, but that’s the one thing I remember. And then I think we went to a Fit Con. Yes. And I believe there was some of like the big juiced up guys that were out there speaking. I was like, wait a minute, do I hear?

I can’t even remember their names, but I know they were speaking. It was a whole ridiculous to do and, and it was deathly hot when we were out there and deathly hot, we were tabling underneath a tent. Literally just chugging sticks of electrolyte hydrator and chewing on jerky, just, just pounding water, just trying to see hydrate water in salt.

And some of the vendors actually tapped out when we were out there because it was literally unusually hot. I think it was like 100 and 20 degrees. Oh my God, I was competing. So I wasn’t feeling it as bad as everyone else in the booth was because I didn’t have much bon on.

Ben:, Ben:

But even I was uncomfortable, I actually one of the reasons that drew me out there was the fact that Irving, which is the city that I was looking in.

Ben:

So there’s Dallas and Fort Worth and kind of in between. There is Irving and Arlington. So Irving was ranked one of the top 20 most vegan friendly cities last year. So that was part of the reason that I wanted to kind of check that area out. There were some other reasons as well, but I didn’t unfortunately get to explore much of the vegan options of vegan food out there, but it seems pretty affordable.

It’s cheap. You get a lot of kind of local food, like I’m sure the, the Mexican food there is just amazing. so I’ll have to go back another time to experience more of the, the local charm, but it was mostly just a business quote unquote trip.

Yeah, we’re heading out. You won’t be with us. Unfortunately, Danny, myself and some of the other members of the vegan, strong and vegan, strong plant build team. We’re going out to, by the time it airs, I think on the weekend to Atlanta is a Peachtree road race. And the idea is to reach different demographics of people because we’ve been really just infiltrating strength and physique, fitness, sports worlds with events.

But we’re going to the Peachtree Road race, which is the oldest 10-K in the country and it’s pretty large, it’s a big get together. The track club just gets everyone involved in the city, like just tons of people sign up for it. But it’s, there’s also a competitive element to the race and then we’re going to the New York City Marathon in October. I don’t know if you knew that, but that’s not. Yes. So that’s pretty exciting.

When is the, Boston marathon debut coming?

We looked into it. We went out there to check it out and we were trying to decide if it was worth it to go and we weren’t quite sold on the idea of the Expo wasn’t quite what we had hoped it would be as far as people were just kind of walking around, checking out some running clothing and sneaker companies and it just, it didn’t really

have the the kind of atmosphere that we were hoping for. So, unfortunately not this year, maybe not for the foreseeable future, but we did, we did go there to look for that.

Interesting and what drew you towards Atlanta and New York for going to these events, what was kind of the impetus because you said you’ve never really done, explored this avenue or it’s been a

while since you explored this avenue.

I think just trying to reach different types of people. We’ve gone to car races like NASCAR, for example, we’ve gone to different obviously bodybuilding events and what have you and we did Boulder Boulder, which was another 10-K in Colorado. So it’s just trying to reach different groups of people that we feel like our story that we tell as strength and physique based athletes that it will hopefully help others get interested in veganism and plant based diet.

That makes sense. Yeah. And obviously you can see. Right. We have our hands in so many different things, which is kind of the perfect time to start talking about what this episode is all about. And it’s like, are you trying to do too much at once? And what happens when you do? And how do you even figure that out? It’s pretty easy for me to talk about trying to do too much and what that looks like based on how this conversation is starting.

But I’m curious and also from a coach’s perspective, what does it look like when you are taking on a client? And you’re like, ok, they wanna do too much at once. Let’s just kind of change the context around a little bit over here.

I feel like the first time that I really noticed it is when we start talking about goal setting. If you notice that somebody has not only a lot of goals, but a lot of goals in different areas as well, maybe they have certain strength goals, they have physique goals, maybe they have mobility goals, endurance based goals, they have all these different things that they want to focus on.

And I think it manifests as a lot of excitement, which is good and a lot of motivation and ideas around what can be accomplished and what they want to do with you, which is exciting. It’s exciting to get somebody who is feeling really passionate about coming to you and wanting to get all this stuff done. They have a whole laundry list of different accomplishments that they feel like, hey, this is something that I can do.

And I think what I try to start out with is narrowing that down to. Ok. What right now, what is priority number one? What is the most important thing to you? And that, that isn’t always clear sometimes that can take a little digging to get down to in a little further line of questioning. So I think it starts out by this is something we talk about all the time finding your why behind why you’re wanting to make a change.

And there might be a couple that doesn’t have to necessarily be a singular one. And starting with what is, what feels most pressing to you right now or if nothing feels, I suppose the most pressing which of these goals feels like one that is most for you to tackle first. Because ultimately you can try to do multiple things at once, but it’s kind of like you’re just gonna do everything a little bit worse as opposed to like focusing on one attacking that saying, OK, we feel like we’ve

developed a good amount of competency or mastery at this. Now it’s feeling more aligned to move on to this thing and sometimes they happen to go hand in hand. If you look at like powerlifting and bodybuilding, those two goals can be pretty sy synergistic, the higher level you want to take it to, I think the more narrow and more tunnel vision, you have to be on the process that it’s going to take to get there.

Like if you have very specific strength goals or very specific bodybuilding goals might diverge a little

bit, but you might have a nutrition goal that happens to work in alignment with whatever your physique goal is. Like maybe a nutrition goal you have is that you want to start incorporating more fruits and vegetables, very basic one. And then you also want to lose 20 £25. Hey, we’re, we’re going hand in hand right there.

We don’t need to separate those, those two things we can do both of those at once and knock them right out. but I think oftentimes it’s like somebody has multiple goals or they have maybe one goal, but there’s a lot of different areas for improvement and they’re trying to do everything at once instead of just focusing on like what is going to move the needle the most right now.

I feel like one of the challenging parts that I wanna pick apart right now is the mindset around achieving the goal. All the things that need to happen to get to the goal and realizing that there are wins along the way and feeling OK with accepting those. And I feel like I’m being a little vague. So let me get a little more specific here. So think about the person who has that goal that eventually you’ll need tunnel vision with who use body.

But this is an example too in me. So you and I know what it’s like to be on the other side to the point where you’re already competing. Now, imagine all the things you had to do to get there. Now, imagine taking a client who doesn’t know the first thing about it but, or maybe they do, but they haven’t gone through the motions yet. They haven’t gained the experience.

So they don’t quite understand what their process is gonna need to be like just yet. But they do have this end goal in sight right now. As a coach, you want to get them to the finish, you want them to be able to see the finish line because that’s, that’s the, that’s more, that’s like they’re buying, they’re like, I’m gonna get to this goal. I believe I can get to this goal.

So like you’re gonna have to deal with disappointment of them, not of probably feeling like they may not get to their goal. That’s a problem. You’re also gonna have to deal with a client who is not gonna understand how they’re succeeding even though they’re not succeeding on paper just yet. And also you got to get them to succeed on paper to a degree.

So to me, that’s what I think about as a coach, if I’m putting myself directly in the shoes of the client. And s because as a coach, you get a, a clear understanding of what they’re dealing with that they can’t see because it’s basically your responsibility to understand what they’re struggling with. Do, do you get what I’m saying? As far as like without giving like actual specific details, whether it’s getting a certain amount of protein or getting 10,000 steps a day or whatever

it is you know, because it is more than that but, but to, to do them all all at once and to also understand when they need to hold back and not do those things, but that they’ll be able to do them after the fact when they have to prep like it’s a much harder sell to, like, prove to someone, hey, you, you can do this and you are gonna do this.

Yeah, I think it’s kind of getting out the balance that you need to have between outcome versus process goals. And if you get somebody who’s overly focused on an outcome goal, so what’s an outcome goal? An outcome goal is I want to step on the bodybuilding stage. You might have a specific date in mind. I want to lose X number of pounds. I want to put on X number of X amount of muscle.

A process goal is the steps that you’re actually taking in order to achieve that goal. And I think you need to have somewhat of a balance because if it’s only process, then people don’t get those hits of you know, the, the gratification and they might feel like I’m not making any progress, nothing’s happening here. Whereas they might actually be making a ton of progress.

They just haven’t given themselves the space or you haven’t fostered the awareness for them that they have been making these changes. So sometimes you’ll get somebody who let’s just say that they want to put on muscle and lose body fat. They want to do a body rec comp and the scale way to stay in the same. And they haven’t really been looking at the photos.

They’ve been somebody who’s been focused on the scale for a long time. They might be so focused on the outcome, goal of changing their body composition that they get really, you know, bogged down in the numbers. And then you have to remind them to look at the difference between the photos from 12 weeks ago to now and like, holy cow, you can see a ton of changes there.

It might not even be as you know, as clear as that. It might be something like, hey, you’ve been nailing your protein intake for these past like 6 to 8 weeks and you’ve been getting stronger in the gym. So even if we don’t see the changes necessarily right now, we know that they’re happening underneath the surface and we just need to wait another six or eight weeks until we go into this fat loss phase and you’re gonna see all those changes manifest.

So I think part of it is getting them to buy into what you are selling as a coach and saying like, hey, you’re gonna have to trust me, this is the long term vision in terms of getting where you wanna go. So I think it is important to kind of lay that out for them so they know that where they’re headed and they can kind of have that, you know, goal in the future somewhere.

It’s not this just amorphous thing that, you know, doesn’t really like, there’s no timeline tied to it. There’s no nothing you have to have some degree of direction, but also enough flexibility to say like, hey, this is what I think is gonna happen as a coach, but we’re gonna have to adapt and, and change on the fly because no system is so static that you don’t require any changes to be made along the way and breaking it up into kind of phases, I think helps because it’s like, OK, we’re

focused on phase one right now, let’s get done whatever that looks like, whether that’s getting your habits in check, going through a building phase, going through a fat loss phase, going through a maintenance phase. OK? We did this phase now it’s on to the next one.

So by kind of breaking that larger goal down into chunks, then I think it helps the person focus on what the task is as at hand while still having that long term goal in inside and keeping them kind of working towards that.

Yeah, I agree. It’s easier said than done though. And the problem is sometimes you see self sabotage come into play because someone is worried that they’re not doing enough or someone is afraid of how much they’re doing and they don’t trust that they can keep doing what they need to be doing. A let go of some things that they don’t. I like to use.

Typical. How do I say? I like to compare you to say like, OK, well, this is your tool kit and these are your tools, these are the skills that you developed. You have all this, you have to trust in that right now. I want you to put some of these things away and people freak out, they worry, they’re like, am I gonna

be able to tap into that part of myself and do it again and sometimes actually have a problem with it.

Other times when they put some of this stuff away, it is that control and anxiousness like kind of environment or at least it can breed that in someone where they have a hard time switching to doing things differently to focus on some other goal or to like maybe coast a little bit and figure out how to just like they realize you are doing too much right now for whatever it is. Like, I think you were just saying what no system is static. Is that what you said? OK. Exactly. So if no system is

static and you have to be dynamic, whether it’s because of your environmental stressors, other priorities, whether you’re doing everything perfectly and you’re not getting the results you’re looking for, you have to be able to, to switch it up. And I feel like it can be hard when you’ve given the structure discipline and routine to someone regardless of what kind of personality they are or whatever is in their character. Like it could be hard to get them to pivot like that.

I think something that is often underestimated is the impact that stress has on everything that we do and it might look like on paper, you’re doing everything that you need to be doing and you should be doing because hey, I’m nailing all those list off variables. I’m nailing my protein. I’m nailing my macros to the gram or within 5 g. I’m making sure that my training is done at the same time every single day with my equipment that I usually have access to.

I’m tracking everything in all these spreadsheets and my data and I’ve got my, you know, my readiness score and my sleep score and it’s like you’re focusing on yes, the, the big rocks, but you’re going. So you’re getting very much bogged down in the details so much so that it’s probably creating some stress and some stress that might actually be counteracting the progress that you think you’re making or at least offsetting it.

And I think sometimes it takes a period of pulling back and seeing that you don’t regress in order to come to that realization, like maybe you’ve been tracking your macros religiously for five years and your coach suggests that, hey, you know, we’re in an off season right now. You know, you just said to me that your wife is mad at you because you can’t go out to eat because you can’t track it super accurately.

Why don’t we try like having a meal that is, you eat mindfully while you’re out, but you’re not pulling out your, you know, your tracking app and not being present during a meal. Why don’t we try some of that because you might find that the decreased life stress that you have at home is making you sleep better and you’re actually performing better in the gym and you have some more flexibility with kind of these lifestyle habits that are going to make it.

So, hey, maybe you do do a prep in a couple of years. then you can maybe go back to some of those things like you said, like there are tools that you have and the phase that you’re in dictates, how many of these you need to pull out but you don’t need all of them at one time. And another example that I can think of is somebody that comes to you and maybe they have a lot of room for improvement on the nutrition front.

They’ve been eating a standard American diet their whole life. Maybe they’re having a lot of soda, prepackage goods. Like if you, if you try to both switch up what this person, everything this person is eating at once and try to, like, make the, encourage them to learn how tracking works and putting stuff into my fitness pal. And like, you’re just stacking all these things on top of them.

It’s gonna become overwhelming to the point where they just might give up and quit. And we know that, like, adherence is the, the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to, making any change. And maybe all you need to do is start getting them to eat a regular meal three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And you’re focused on protein, fruits and vegetables. Like that might not be all they need. And then you can or like, hey, let’s just take whatever you’re eating right now, don’t

make any change. Let’s just track it. Let’s just pay attention to it. Let’s just be mindful about it without actually changing anything. Those are two different, you know, routes that you could take without having to do both of them at one time and potentially overwhelm them where if had you just chosen one, it would have ended up with a lot better outcome.

Yeah, there’s also the fear right that you priori you had a hard time prioritizing this in the first place. That’s why you hired a coach for accountability, right? And for motivation. Now, your coach is legit telling you like, well, you have all these other buckets that you haven’t filled and they’re pretty empty and they have seemingly nothing to do with your fitness goal.

But if you don’t take care of the rest of your life, you’re not gonna have, you’re gonna sit there and blame yourself for failing at your goal while you just beat your head against the wall and try to do it. But they’re also, but that same person is lacking the understanding that it actually makes sense to nurture other areas of your life that you’ve had to arguably not prioritize because you’re learning things that are going to further you along, like tracking food, like training

in a certain way with a certain degree of frequency or intensity or like whatever or any number of things really that are just like obviously directly related to check off the box for things that you need to do to reach said goal. That’s a hard sell for people because they came from a place where they were, in fact, not prioritizing things that were directly necessary for their fitness goals.

So I feel like it’s kind of a struggle trying to, to pull that pull, to pull that lever and to suggest to someone like, hey, I know that it made sense logically to do this. But I’m gonna ask you to do the opposite for yourself right now and then to also have that person trust that, that everything else isn’t going to go to crap while they’re doing that.

I think it’s pretty easy to get, push back from, from people with that because they might not see the connection and how things are related, but everything is related really when it comes down to it. it’s kind of cliche to say that fitness is a lifestyle but it’s at the very least a big part of your lifestyle and when one thing goes in one area, it usually affects other things and it has kind of a cascading effect.

So I think it’s getting people to trust in you as a professional. Hey, this is why you hired me. Just give it a chance. Let’s see, we can always go back to the way that you were trying things before. But ultimately, usually the reason they’re coming to you is because it hasn’t worked out before. So, I find that sometimes it can take more or less convincing with people, but usually it’s just like, hey, just give, just give it a shot.

Let’s just, let’s just see how this goes. you touched on training there. Is that an area that you see where people are, are trying to do too much, when it comes to coming, like, so an area that I really see this in is somebody’s feeling very motivated and they come to and you, you know, one of the questions that we typically ask people is, how much time do you have to train during the week?

And usually they will pick the max, like coach, I can be in the gym seven days a week, two hours, you tell me what I need to do and I’m gonna do it and this is somebody who maybe hasn’t even lifted weights before or they’re very new to it. And you’re like, all right, you’re gonna be in the gym three times a week doing full body for like an hour, maybe, you know, 75 minutes.

And they’re like, what, like I thought, I thought you were supposed to be getting me in shape like three times a week. How is that gonna work? You’re like, we can go to four once you’ve shown me that three is something that you can actually manage and handle. and it’s actually good because then you’re giving people, kind of like that they’re itching for more when you start them out and that’s a great place to be is when you can get somebody to the point where, hey, this feels not that

hard. This isn’t as hard as I thought. I think people like to make things hard because you get that dopamine head of like, hey, I did something hard and it feels good, but it’s like, how long can you sustain that for? And would you actually be better off if you bit off a little bit, less than you could chew and then you want a little bit more, we’ll give you a little bit more and we’re kind of drip feeding, that difficulty over time as opposed to throwing, throwing it all at you at once.

Yeah, for sure. And I do tend to see training as being the thing that someone uses to excuse themselves from developing other healthy habits that have nothing to do with training. They just lean in on the training book. Well, and I don’t even think it’s a conscious choice half the time sometimes it is and you know, it, right. Other times they’re like, well, this, this is what I know I can do, right.

I’m gonna do this. I could be planning my meals better, but I’m gonna just spend more minutes of my week training. I could be buying better food and any number of things. But I’m going to do this. I could be preparing more and gathering my thoughts or like writing things down that I wanna work on and discuss with my coach, but I’m going to focus more on my training. So I, I feel like training can be an outlet because it’s one of those things that’s really easy.

Well, I can go, I can lift, it feels good. It seems like something that’s easy to manage. So I’ll just, I’ll spend more time doing that. But I will literally have this argument with my clients. I’m like, well, you could be training six days a week right now because you love it or you could be training four days a week for 60 minutes as opposed to six days a week for like 90 minutes. And we could work on some other things.

Ben:, Ben:

But sometimes that’s a hard sell, I think, especially if you have gotten to the point where you really enjoy the training.

Ben:

I think it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re doing something hard. But reality, that’s the easy thing is focusing on what you’re already good at and doing more of it as opposed to, like you said, maybe focusing on some of those areas where just look at the return on investment, really, the return on the investment from going from, like you said, using that example, four times a week, 60 minutes to six times a week, 90 minutes maximum, we’re talking 10% 20%.

Maybe you don’t even know that it’s necessarily gonna be better though, could be worse. Let’s say you have a really high stress job, like your recovery is not as good as it could be. You might actually just be putting yourself in worse of a hole and you’d be doing better, with a little bit less.

So more is not always better in multiple ways. And yeah, I really like what you said about what are some of these areas that you’re neglecting because you are choosing to pour into a cup that is already full. I see that as well.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like as a coach, you almost sort of help someone not destroy their life to go after something, you also have the power to push them in that direction. So it’s a pretty big responsibility and you can definitely see it when you look at how other clients are, the types that will do literally anything. And if you push them in that direction, hard enough and they don’t break, they could wind up harming themselves in other ways because they don’t, they’re not

connecting the dots and they’re not real. Oh, crap. Like my whole life is not working well right now. So, and then the saddest part about all of it is that they can’t even manage the, the fitness as well. So it’s like one of those things where you really have to keep a pretty healthy perspective of what someone should be

doing and just because they have the time to do and they want to do it, you kind of like, gauge if it’s the right time. you know, and they could be contributed to something else.

I feel like it, I feel like it kind of relates to a youtube video that Danny made recently about undereating on your macros. Like, just because you can do more or make something harder, doesn’t necessarily make it better or make it the right time to do that. Like the amount of effort required to achieve a goal or achieve an outcome is the amount of effort that you should put forth. And ideally no more than that, but kind of as I was getting it earlier, we like the feeling of making things

hard sometimes. And, if, especially if you kind of get addicted to that feeling, it’s easy to fall into that trap. But then again, it begs the question, how long can that really be sustained for? And what if you actually were able to have more in the tank in the future when you really needed it because you held yourself back at the times when you didn’t need to push yourself unnecessarily far.

What’s a quick way to assess this? What would you recommend to someone? How are they going to not be stuck in their own routine and be and stop from it and be like? All right, this is what I’m doing. Am I doing too much? What would you recommend?

I think as hard of a cell as it can be if you identify that there’s a certain area that you feel like you’re maybe being like overly neurotic about or you are investing more time than perhaps is necessary. You kind of just have to experiment and try pulling back and see if you see what happens, see what your progress progress is like. That can be really hard if you’re somebody who your identity is attached to being this hard worker or is attached to I do whatever it takes to get to my goal.

It’s a good mentality to have for sure it can be facilitative, but it can also be destructive in certain contexts. So I think what I, where I would start with this is let’s say that we’ll use the training example. Going from that six times a week, 90 minutes down to four times a week, 60 minutes. Try it. See what happens. See like compare, you know, maybe you’ve been doing it a certain way for the past six months.

Give it a good three months. See if your rate of progress is as good, if not better. And then if it is, that’s freeing up time that can either be spent in other areas, related to fitness or not. Let’s maybe give a nutrition example as well. let’s say that you have been making sure that you need to hit every single macro within 5 g of whatever your targets are. Maybe you just go to calories and protein for a little bit. Let’s see. What are your results?

Are they just as good if you’re in a fat loss phase, are you continuing to lose at the, at the same rate? What’s your adherence like? Is your adherence better? Is your adherence worse? Because maybe the, yeah, the, the fats and the carbohydrates vary a little bit more day to day. But if that allows you to be more adherent over time, that’s maybe actually a plus. can you think of any more examples where? But this would be, clear or evident.

Well, honestly, then I think literally auditing your lifestyle is an, is an of often overlooked one. What are you doing? And what’s your quality of life and what have you factored in? What have you sacrificed to, to create a routine that, that fitness is just a part of? Right? And then think about how that’s impacting your stress levels, impacting how you feel, impacting your ability to make progress, all of it because sometimes it could be, I mean, sometimes it’s as simple as, as

your mindset, like what you think and other times you are in fact selling yourself a little bit short, you’re not like your quality of life is diminished because you’re going after some sort of really big goal. And if you could take a minute to take a breather, you could have a whole perspective shift, sometimes even continuing to do what you’re doing because you’ve framed it differently in your mind.

What you’re do, you know, you’re not just like stuck in a hamster wheel, try and do the same thing every single day, every single day because your goal is extreme. Other times you actually do take a little bit of a breather. You take an extra, you take a, you have a staycation day or you try to pull back on something that you’re doing that. Maybe you’re a little more neurotic about like tracking, for example, and you have like AAA free meal as we like to call it where you’re not tracking.

Maybe another thing that you do is you decide to actively choose to not train is often you train one less day a week for, for a couple of months, whatever it is, there’s so many different things because when you are an object in motion, even when like, you know, that you could probably calm down a little bit or not do things over and over again to get to set goal and still get to the goal. You can’t stop until you take inventory of what you’re doing and think about it for a hot minute.

I’m smiling because during prep, I felt like that so much of the time, it was just like exactly like you said, an object in motion stays in motion. Hey, this is what I’ve been doing. It’s been working. I’m not changing a damn thing. But then you get to a certain point where it’s like, was this really necessary? Did I really need to take it this far?

Could I have gone to the same place without maybe decreasing the number of social events that I go to during the month from eight down to two or something like that? As an example. And I think sometimes it takes until after the fact when maybe not necessarily there’s been fallout. I mean, there could be, maybe you find that you’re having some conflict with friends or family or something like that and it, for that’s kind of the impetus that forces you to realize that you need to make a

change and then you make that change and you realize, oh, ok. My fitness hasn’t really taken a step back and if anything, I enjoy it more because I’m not stressed about the fact that I’m losing friends or

I’m, you know, har harming relationships with, those who care about me and who I care about. but then sometimes it could just be like after the fact when you, again, using prep as an example, maybe you’ve gotten back to a more quote unquote normal state, like physiologically,

psychologically and you look back on that and maybe now you’re back to what you had been doing before and you’re like, OK, that was a little bit messed up. I could have done this better. And so next time you, you’ve gone through it, so you realize that there was a way to do it a little bit more balanced and you mature and you make those connections and you try it out and it’s kind of this reiterative process, I think that you said of doing this life audit and there’s lots of different areas

that you can look into and see like, you know, this area seems to have taken a little bit of a hit while I was focused over here. Maybe let’s try to balance these out. Let’s give a little bit more to that area and you might find that it’s not even taking away from, fitness as, as much as you thought it was.

And you might also find that you can continue on doing exactly what you’re doing. But now you’re a little more aware of how it’s affecting you and impacting you when you’re making the choice as opposed to the choice being made for you, because you’re that type of person that will do everything to get the end result you’re looking for on paper, right?

And I think that’s, it’s just really important to just understand what you’re doing and how it’s affecting you, not necessarily judging yourself and being like, I should stop doing this. It helps you plan ahead, it helps you think about what you might want to do in the future and it also helps you kind of just let go and be like, all right. Well, this is, this is what it’s like right now and that is just gonna be the way it’s gonna be, right.

I hate to be that kind of person where you have this conversation with somebody and you fear that you’re going to shy them away from doing what they’re doing. Right. It’s just not what we’re doing at all. Like we obvious, I mean, look, we, we’ve all accomplished some pretty ridiculous things and so have our clients, right? It’s to think of things though as far as like that whole idea of just hustling hard and doing it no matter what.

And just like being, you don’t need to have that kind of mindset just to get something done. As long as you do the thing, you’re gonna get the result that you want not to say that there’s anything wrong with that mindset. However, everything has its limits. Hm.

You might need it at a certain point, but you don’t need it 24 7. You, you know, it’s, I really like that analogy you used at the start where there’s all these tools that we have and we can pull them out when we need them. But we don’t want to be using the same tool 24 7 or it’s gonna get worn down or we’re gonna get worn down from using it.

So, so in the spirit of doing too much all at once, that is why we went to the Goo Dolls concert this weekend or at least that’s what we took out of it. Danny was driving us home for the second leg and she was like, we really needed this. And I looked at her, I was like, yeah, and she asked me last night and she was like, how did you sleep? And I was like, good because all those nights that I go to sleep and I’m still, it’s still lights out and I wake up, I wake up and I know I’m not quite recharged

even though I slept and I slept for enough. I know that my mind was busy and it could not necessarily restore itself or even if it could, I’m spending my day stressed out. So, making that conscious choice

to do something was the best option. And fortunately, we were able to make that option, but try telling that to somebody, it’s got big goals, big dreams and a lot of responsibilities.

It’s not that easy to make that decision. But sometimes all the more reason where you have to like find little pockets of time where you can only stay sane where you could recharge your batteries in ways that you might not be realizing that you could, that you could essentially right? You can’t, you can’t spreadsheet everything out. You can’t spreadsheet recharging yourself.

Ben:, Ben:

You can’t and sometimes that decision is made for you and that’s OK too, but you can definitely look at these kinds of experiences and learn from them and it takes disrupting that flow that you’re in to actually realize that.

Ben:

Which is, yeah, the, the paradox of what we’re all saying it. So you gotta get out of it to really see, you know, take that top down view to really see, OK, what am I missing out on? And how can that actually help me? It’s not me taking the easy way out. It’s me finding a different path. That’s gonna still get me to the, the same place, maybe even a better place.

Do we wanna add anything to this conversation or finish up anywhere here before we cut out.

I don’t think so. I like that quote that you said right? Then you can’t spreadsheet. Was it? You can’t, you can’t spreadsheet your relaxation time or something like that?

Speaker 3

You, yeah, I’ve tried, I’ve failed at it. It doesn’t work, but I have tried.

Ben:

I don’t, I’m not surprised. That doesn’t surprise me. I think I’m good though. I think I’ve, I’ve said my piece and I feel like we found a natural kind of conclusion for this episode.

And on that note, you’re gonna continue your prep and, and your season and I’m gonna continue what I’m doing over here getting ready for the next thing. But anyways, this, yeah, this has been a good one. So, on that note, thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of vegan Proteins, Muscles by Brussels radio. Stay in touch with us at Vegan Proteins at Muscles by Brussels on all the socials and shoot us an email whenever you’d like by hitting the contact button at Vegan

proteins.com. And we’ll get back to you right away once again, my name is Giacomo. I’m Ben and we’ll talk to you soon. Cool, sweet. Yeah, I know. Thanks for coming through to create some content, of

course.

Ben:, Ben:

And then you got me worried now with, with you leaving seems like I’ll be sticking around a little bit longer.

Ben:

So, yeah. Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see.
But I had no idea that, that Arlington Denver, where you had, where you, you go on the train?

Ben:, Ben:

What are you thinking after this?

Ben:

I think I’ll probably head right to the cape. I think I’m gonna take a rest there today. I’ve been, I’ve been taking more or I’ve been finding that I need the more, rest is, which has been, honestly.

Yeah, I bet.
You know.
Ok. Can you just lounge around? This is.