Super Awesome You - Achieve your goals and conquer your motivation
You know how it's easy to be encouraging to your best friend? And just as easy to be mean to yourself and count yourself out? Did you know there's biology behind that?
Each episode covers how our neurobiology tries to help, but often gets in the way of us achieving our goals. We'll talk about steps to take to push past those barriers, and be the very best (super awesome) you!
The host, Sam, holds a degree in Neurobiology and has been obsessed with motivation, goals, psychology for nearly a decade now. He is a former spin instructor, a current runner & marathoner, an entrepreneur, and podcaster.
Super Awesome You - Achieve your goals and conquer your motivation
Why Delayed Gratification is so difficult, and tips to deal with it
Hi, Sam here, I'm fighting a cold this week, hope you can excuse my stuffed up voice!
Join me this week as I tackle the difficulty of long term goals, and why in the moment, we tend to make the poor choice (vs the choice we actually want to make).
You can find the song of the week on the weekly playlist here on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2wxmDClsiebNBJ2B3Jut5u?si=5edd46976ddc4630
Hello and welcome to the Super Awesome you podcast. My name is Sam. I'm the host of the show on the Super Awesome Mix podcast network. If you haven't done so already, please take a moment and consider leaving a five-star review on the player that you're currently listening to me on. It helps a lot to A motivate me to keep going, because I love getting those five-star reviews. It means a lot to you know. Get that recognition, I'll be honest. B it helps with other people who you know may stumble upon the show and can be encouraging for them to listen themselves, which ultimately the goal is that we all just become a little bit more super awesome in the world. So if it's helping you out to listen and this is not your first episode then hopefully your five star review can help others to listen and get into the show as well.
Speaker 1:You can find more of the show's content at super awesome you on Instagram and on threads. I have been very busy lately trying to figure out threads If you're not on it. It's basically like a Twitter slash X clone, but it seems to me like it is very heavy on replying to people much more than just like posting content, although, I'll be honest, I'm still very confused about how to get content that people engage with, because I was scrolling through the other day and someone just posted the word music and that's literally all that they wrote, and that thing had like a hundred likes and a bunch of you know, re-quotes, or whatever you want to call them, where you just like repost them or quote them, and I like pour my heart and soul into posts of varying lengths and get like one or two likes. So I feel like I'm missing something. But you know what the spirit of the show is, that we treat every little thing as a learning moment and you just keep growing and keep trying things out. There's a quote that I really like that I read recently and I believe it's attributed to Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, and he said something along the lines of like if you want to be successful, you have to double your rate of failure, and I just love that sentiment, and so I feel like I've not only doubled my rate of failure with threads, but I've tripled and quadrupled it lately. But hopefully, on my way there, I will find some success With that.
Speaker 1:Let's get into today's topic. I'm going to share a story with you first. It's kind of set the tone for the rest of the episode. So I am currently trying to lose some weight Ever since I ran the marathon. Unfortunately, I injured myself coming out of that race, and so I have not been able to run for the last month and a half. However, I'm still eating like I'm running 30 plus miles a week, and so I have put on some extra weight, which I'm not too happy about, you know, and it's something that I think we can all kind of commiserate with.
Speaker 1:At some point or another in our lives, we've added weight that maybe we don't want there. This is not about fat shaming. This is not about telling you not to be comfortable in your body. The whole point is to feel comfortable in your body. So if you are carrying extra weight that you just don't want, or you feel like you've made some choices that has put it there and you want to reverse it, then that's all I'm speaking to, and so I'm in that boat. I've added on some pounds that I'm not too pleased about, and I really want to reverse that trend.
Speaker 1:Now, if you've ever set a long-term goal like that and yes, losing weight is, nine times out of 10, a long-term goal it does not happen overnight. You know the struggle that comes with setting a long-term goal but then realizing that you have to make minute-by-minute decisions that add up to that long-term goal, but then realizing that you have to make minute-by-minute decisions that add up to that long-term goal. So, to give you an example of this, it is, you know, tuesday, december 17th, at the time of this recording, or you know, perhaps you're listening to it on the day that it's launched, and it's the holidays here in the United States, and Thanksgiving rolled past, you know, a couple weeks ago, and we've got Christmas coming up, and it's the holidays here in the United States and Thanksgiving rolled past, you know, a couple weeks ago, and we've got Christmas coming up, and it's the season that is very heavy on delicious sugary goods, and so I'll be sitting around being like, yes, I'm gonna lose weight. You know, I want to drop a couple of these pounds that I added the last several weeks. And then all of a sudden I'm presented with sugar cookies or a delicious brownie, or some ice cream or you know any number of baked goods that have just made their way into our home, and it is very difficult to turn that down when something is just available right in front of you and you know that you're going to like it. You know, generally baked goods are delicious.
Speaker 1:It's really difficult in that moment to remember that you're trying to lose weight and you can kind of just make a decision. You know, on the margin, so to speak, like you can just convince yourself, like it's fine, I'm gonna have one or two cookies in this moment. You know, I don't want to completely deprive myself of it. I'm not someone who thinks in extremes when it comes to dieting. I think there's just a lot of problems with that for many, many reasons, and so, you know, I tend to want to allow myself to take a cookie here and there, or eat something sugary or sweet or some chocolate after dinner, whatever the case may be. But the problem again is that I have to remind myself that I'm making these decisions over a very long period of time, and so the long-term goal is to lose the weight.
Speaker 1:But the short-term issue is that I'm making these decisions in the moment, whenever I'm presented with them, and it's very easy to forget that this is all going to add up to me either successfully losing weight or staying the same, or adding weight onto my body, and so in this little moment, it's an innocent choice to eat a cookie or two. But then maybe tomorrow comes and I'm presented with more cookies and more baked goods and I might, in that again moment, in just the information I have available to me now, you know, in that second, be like, yeah, I'm going to take more cookies because you know it's fine, it's fine. And then you add this up over 365 days and you've basically never dieted or controlled your sugar habit whatsoever and you've either stayed the same or added on more pounds Totally speaking from personal experience, because that's pretty much what always happens to me. So the point here is that we, you know, tend to make decisions in a moment, you know, whenever we take the information that's available to us right now, and it's a very logical thing to choose the baked good and the sugary snack or take a second serving when you know that you're full and all the things that kind of stand in the way of improving your diet and your health. Why is that? Well, we're basically programmed to eat, right? I mean, that sounds like such an obvious statement, but we really are. Eating is a source of fuel for us. Our bodies will literally break down over time unless you feed them. Our metabolism is basically one giant engine in our body that just is constantly burning fuel and, from an evolutionary point of view, sugar and fat was not something that we came across very often, going way back to the beginning of humans.
Speaker 1:The whole idea of a baked good is honestly fantasy, right Like it's kind of a magical thing. There was no baking, you know. There were no ovens, there certainly weren't people farming cows in the very beginning so that you get milk, and farming chickens so you could harvest eggs and having farmland. Like none of that was happening. If you wanted to eat, you were basically eating what you found in nature, and so when you, as a very primitive human being thousands of years ago, came across something that was sugary or fatty, your body was like oh, my goodness, I hit the jackpot. This is amazing. I need to load up on as much of it as possible because I have no idea when I'm going to be, you know, presented with this again and the people who you know.
Speaker 1:Again, from an evolutionary point of view, survival of the fittest is is this idea presented by Darwin. The whole theory here is that the people that made those decisions, like their brains and their guts told them to load up on fats and sugars whenever they were available, probably succeeded more in nature than those that decided not to eat them or didn't have access to them. And so those people may have, just you know, they couldn't mate, they died of starvation, whatever dark thing happened. Because, again, humanity humanity has been through a lot of trials, like going back thousands and thousands of years. Like we have it pretty, pretty cush these days, so that's all well and good. Like our brains are basically programmed to see sugar, fats, high proteins and be like, yes, I want to eat all these things because I don't want to starve. It all comes back to not wanting to starve. I feel like I bring that up in episodes a whole lot. But again, we have this biological drive at the base of what we do. Like that is the very root of our brains is basically trying to just keep us alive.
Speaker 1:Everything else is just a bonus, okay, but now it's the year 2024, and fats, sugars, proteins, oils all the amazing delicious things that we can have access to are very easy to access. Access, especially if you live in the United States and you are lucky enough, you know, to have access to food and access to grocery stores or even fast food, whatever the case may be. Like you can, you can feed yourself, which is something to be very, very grateful for, but the choices that we have to feed ourselves tend to not be the greatest. You know, love Dunkin Donuts, but it's not the most nutritional way to start your day right. It's so heavy on sugar and fat. But we pick it because, again, our brains are telling us you know they're coming from a position of like oh, this is like sparse, what a treat. Like, look at this amazing round fried piece of dough that is full of sugar and fat. Like, eat as much as you possibly can until you get sick because this is great stuff. And we do that again and again and again.
Speaker 1:That's an evolutionary trap. And then the reason it's a trap is because we end up actually hurting our health rather than helping our health. Because, let's be honest, putting a donut right next to like a stem of broccoli, I mean there's no contest, right? At least for me, there's just no contest. Donut 10 out of 10 times until I feel sick. And then, maybe, maybe, like the 11th time, I'll go for the broccoli. But our brains look at that stuff and we're like, oh my gosh, like it's so rooted in our evolutionary biology to pick a donut over a stem of broccoli because it just lights up our brain Like the sugar. Just honestly, it hits so many different things like neurochemical centers in our brain telling us this is wonderful, you need to do more of this. Give me more. And the broccoli not so much. So the broccoli comes into that whole thing of like delayed gratification.
Speaker 1:If I were to start to pick broccoli and tofu and like healthy choices and beans and brown rice instead of white rice and like make these dietary changes that are recommended by nutritionists, the short-term decision is one of pain. I am not a fan of brown rice. I'm just going to go on the record. I don't like it. If I had to choice between brown rice and white rice, I'm going to pick white rice almost every time.
Speaker 1:But over time, if I were to pick brown rice or whole grain bread instead of white bread and stems of broccoli over donuts, my health is going to improve. It will be very slow, it will be invisible. At first I don't eat one stem broccoli and suddenly I'm healthy. But over that extended period of time I will start to notice changes and I'll start to notice that maybe my waist line slims a little bit, my pants start to fit a little bit better, I look better in shirts, I feel better, which is really, ultimately what this is all about just making sure you feel comfortable in your body, and that delayed gratification hits real hard after like a year of eating healthy and, you know, eschewing the donut and instead having a more balanced meal, or maybe at least limiting the donut to like once a week, or once a month, or whatever the case may be, so you don't totally lose your mind.
Speaker 1:So the issue, though, comes back to what I mentioned in the very beginning of this episode, or early on in the episode, which is, logically, we're making those decisions, though, in the moment, and it's really difficult for us to remember that there is a long-term goal here. You know like we have a destination in mind. That feels very far away, especially when you are first starting out, like those first few days of working out, of eating healthy, of saving money instead of spending it, of laying the groundwork down for business that you one day want to work full time. For those first few days, you are going to see virtually no progress. You're going to think that you are just doing nothing at all because there's none of that instant feedback. Maybe you get a little bit of a blip early on because you're proud of yourself for picking a healthy meal over a sugary, fatty one. Or maybe you're proud of yourself because you didn't buy those new Nike shoes that you really, really want. But a week in, a month in, you're going to start to feel that pain of like oh, it's been a month of this and I still don't see anything. Or it's been a week of this, I still don't feel any different, or my savings are still kind of low. What's the point? And it's very easy for your immediate brain to take over. And then you know you've blown up your goal once again. So here's the shortcut that I have learned that really helps me in these scenarios. Really helps me in these scenarios.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, this podcast is not just talking about the problems and why we get into them, but, you know, ideally giving you some kind of a toolkit to solve them. And here's the thing that works for me we have a much easier time making decisions when we have a framework to make those decisions. So, just like we have a framework for picking sugar and fat over a healthy vegetable. You can install your own framework of decision making and then that becomes kind of the overriding set of rules that your body and your brain listens to whenever you're faced with a decision. It acts like a shortcut for decision making. So the risk of constantly having to choose broccoli over a donut you know to go back to this example time and time again, the downside of that is like you get fatigued making that choice repeatedly, which is understandable, like again, your brain is really fighting you to pick the donut and so at some point you're probably going to pick the donut and then you're going to feel like you failed and you're off your goal.
Speaker 1:But if you had a framework in mind and you had a sense of identity, for example, identity is a very powerful framework that really just kind of goes all the way around, this need to make a decision every single time, because you look at the donut versus eating some broccoli and brown rice, and you don't even make the decision. You're just like nope, I'm a person that eats brown rice and broccoli instead of donuts, or I'm a person that has oatmeal for breakfast instead of a donut. And you just state it factually. I am a person that fill in the blank. And you say that to yourself enough times, you start to make decisions not from a position of someone who's trying to diet or trying to make better choices or trying to save money. You make the decisions from someone who is what you want to be. So I am a fit you know athlete and I treat my body really well and I make really good nutritious choices, make really good nutritious choices. And so whenever you're presented early on with the donut or oatmeal for breakfast, you're going to remind yourself of that statement and you're going to think, well, what would a pro athlete eat for breakfast? They probably have oatmeal with like pecans or walnuts. And you're like cool, well, I am an athlete, I'm going to pick the oatmeal with walnuts. And you do that enough times to where your brain is no longer making that choice anymore, because it's now installed this framework, this identity, to where you are making choices from a position of who you want to be rather than who you are today.
Speaker 1:In my own life, there was a time period where I was vegan, and that is a very powerful identity that you can take on when you want to manipulate your diet, because I was vegan at the time for ethical choices and also environmental choices, and when I was presented with a brownie or some ice cream or you know something delicious like that, it really was very easy for me to say no, because the framework was there. The first questions out of my mouth to anyone presenting me with that is like oh, is there eggs or dairy in that? Is it vegan? It's probably not vegan. And they'll say yeah, no, sorry, it's not. And then that's the end of the decision. Okay, great, I can't eat that. I'm vegan. Let's put aside, how you know, any opinions you have of vegan people or veganism.
Speaker 1:The whole point of this is just the example of I had stalled this identity in my brain of, like I am a vegan person and therefore all those decisions were already made for me and I'm not having to decide to eat the brownie or not. I'm only having to decide or learn eat the brownie or not? I'm only having to decide or learn is it vegan, yes or no? The issue that came in later, in my time being vegan, is I learned that there are a lot of really good vegan baked goods and I would just run out of my way to go find them and eat them. So being vegan on its own is not necessarily a way to be healthy. You can be kind of an unhealthy vegan, and I have firsthand experience with that, but the point again is just that I identified with this title, this label, and I was making decisions not as someone who was thinking about being vegan or wasn't sure or anything like that. No, it was very factual, like I'm vegan and therefore I don't eat dairy or egg products.
Speaker 1:So if you are someone that wants to save a whole bunch of money, but you find that you frequently shop online and you buy things you don't really need or you buy frivolous items just for fun or to pass the time, one identity you can start to take on is say I am someone that saves 50% of my paycheck or 10% of my paycheck. I'm someone who saves. I'm someone that has a lot of money in my savings account just in case I ever need it. And you start to get comfortable with that statement. And so whenever you are shopping online or you find yourself you catch yourself shopping online, you're like wait, no, you know, someone who saves a lot of money isn't shopping online, like that's how they're saving their money. They decide that they don't need another pair of shoes or another pair of leggings or another t-shirt, they probably realize that the clothes that they have already will do just fine. And you close out the window and you move on with your day and you do that again enough times over the course of a year, and you do that again enough times over the course of a year and you probably will shock yourself with how much you can save if you cut out extraneous spending like that.
Speaker 1:But it does take a little bit in the beginning to find that identity, create kind of this idea of who you want to be, who you believe you should be, and allowing that to start to shortcut a lot of these decisions that you'll find in the day-to-day reality of working towards that. So set the goal, set the intention and then work your way towards that through kind of these like shortcuts. Again, this is really helpful for me. It may or may not be helpful for you, but I think it's a very powerful tool when we are really trying to create lasting change in ourselves and not have to constantly fight our biology, you know, especially when it comes to something like weight, where our biology can, you know, really have a strong drive to get us to make the unhealthy, or the donut choice versus the broccoli and brown rice choice, the donut choice versus the broccoli and brown rice choice. That is my journey that I am currently partaking, and hopefully I will find that I'm successful here in several months as I work to undo a lot of my post-marathon weight that I've gained and hopefully soon I'll be back running, which will certainly help with this as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in another week. I am not going to be here this next week because it is a holiday week, but you can look forward to a bonus episode from another show on our network called what Are you Listening To. It will feature me, matt and Jen talking about our favorite holiday songs, our favorite Christmas songs. It's a lot of fun. I hope you tune in and enjoy and, if you like it, you can also find her show Jen's show, what Are you Listening To as a separate podcast stream to follow. I will be back right before the new year with another new episode. Until then, I hope you have a super awesome couple of weeks.
