406: Most People Quit Right Before It Works

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 406.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and this is a fun episode because this episode came to me literally in the middle of the night last night. So let me set the stage for you. It's probably 2 AM. I don't know. I'm the type of person that if I get up in the middle of the night, I don't ever look at the clock because that just messes with my head. So I refuse to look at the clock. So I don't know what time it was, but I got up to go pee in the middle of the night last night. And I remember as I was pulling down my pants that I had the thought that my arm didn't hurt at all. So that is in contrast, my mind rewinded a year ago when I was dealing with some really bad tennis elbow. And the movement that hurt the most was when I would pull down my pants. So in the middle of the night when I would get up to go to the bathroom, I would pull down my pants. And every time I would feel that pain in my arm from the tennis elbow. And I was thinking back, this is all happening at 2 AM in the morning, by the way. I was thinking back to a year ago when I was dealing with that pain and it was very long. I'll kind of talk through the timeline, but I was dealing with this tennis elbow for a long time. And I remember when I was dealing with it one night in the middle of the night when I got up to go to the bathroom and my arm hurt again, that I had the thought, it's always going to be this way. Like that was the depressing thought that I had of like, my arm is always, it's always going to hurt. Like it's just never going to go away.

And so last night when I pulled down my pants and there was zero pain, I just flashed back to that moment of thinking nothing was ever going to change and being really grateful that here I am a year later and it has changed. And I don't have to live with that pain long-term. And so this episode started forming in my brain last night. And I thought about like writing it down, but I wanted to get right back to sleep. And so I did it. And I was like, you have to remember, you have to remember, you have to remember. And thankfully I did. When I woke up this morning, I did remember the concept. And so that's what I'm sitting down to record is this concept of let's talk about change and let's talk about what it takes. And let's talk about how to be patient as the change is taking place. 

Failed Self-Treatment and Breakthrough with Professional Help 03:12

So let me go back and just kind of fill in some of the gaps of this story. I have, I've had golfer's elbow on one elbow. This was probably, I don't know, three or four, maybe five years ago. And then I had tennis elbow on the other elbow. And if you've ever had any sort of like ligament or tendon issue, it is such a pain in the butt because your tendons and your ligaments are avascular, meaning there's no blood flow that flows directly to them, right? There's a lot of blood flow that goes into your muscles, but your tendons and ligaments are avascular, which means healing is very, very slow because the body brings healing factors in through the bloodstream. So if you get a tear in your muscle, or you have some sort of cut on you, the way that your body brings in those healing factors is through blood flow. So if you have no blood flow to something, it just makes healing so freaking slow. And so tendon and ligament issues can be such a pain in the butt to heal because of that factor. So I'd had golfer's elbow previously. I started getting this tennis elbow and I was just like, oh gosh, we got to do this again. And it was so, it's so frustrating. It's like the worst. 

So I started doing all the things that I had done previously to like fix my golfer's elbow. If you don't know, golfer's elbow is on the inside. So it's the medial malleolus. It's on the inside of your elbow, whereas tennis elbows on the outside, the lateral malleolus. And so I had it on the left lateral malleolus is where I would like feel the tugging and the pulling. And I did all my things that you're supposed to do. And I rested it and I iced it and I massaged it. And I like, you know, everything that I knew to do, I was doing and nothing, nothing was fixing this. And so finally I went to my GP and got a referral over to a PT and started working with a PT. And she was fantastic. She, I don't think she does CrossFit herself, but she was like a D1 soccer athlete back in college. So she definitely understood like athletics and, you know, what I was wanting to do to get back to doing CrossFit and lifting heavyweights and all of those things. So she was really fantastic in helping me to be able to build a plan, to be able to get there. And, you know, what we really started to find is that I had some tension in my shoulders. Like I rolled my shoulders forward, my pec, my pec was really tight and it was actually like pulling my shoulders forward, which was putting more tension on some of the muscles in my upper arm, which was also putting tension. And I was using my forearm too much. And that was just pulling on that, on that tendon.

And so it wasn't until, like I tried to solve this problem so long by myself, but it wasn't until I went to somebody who was actually able to get to the diagnostic, like a root problem of what was actually wrong. And we were able to work at it from a root problem perspective that things finally started to turn around. And even then it took weeks and weeks of physical therapy and these exercises that I had to do at home and the stretching that I had to do at home to be able to open up my shoulder and relax my lat and relax my my tricep to be able to actually get that muscle tension to release and to get the tension on the ligament to release as well. And not as fast as I wanted, but once we finally diagnosed what was the actual root issue, things started to improve slowly, but we were in a direction that I could see was getting me to where I wanted to go. And eventually was able to be pain-free and lift pain pain-free. And that thought that I had at 2 a.m. in the morning of it's always going to be this way was a depressive moment and wasn't actually really true.

Core Lesson: Misinterpreting Slow Progress 07:02

So what was my takeaway from that? Or what do I want to share from that story with you? The first thing is that change is going to be slower than you want. I don't think I have ever heard somebody who says they're trying to make a change and that it went faster than they wanted. That they're like, oh my gosh, slow down. Like this change is happening too fast. And I'm talking about like building a business, starting a family, you know, in your weight loss journey, right? Like these things that we set as goals. I've never heard somebody be like, oh my gosh, this goal is, this achievement, this result is happening way, way, way too fast. Almost always change is slower than you want. But the thing that I realized last night when I got up to go to the bathroom is that yes, that was slow. And it was, it was a long process to be able to heal that. But here I am a year later and like time is going to pass anyway. And so I could either sit and wallow in the, like, this is never going to change, or I could keep working at having it change and that time was going to pass anyway. And so the problem or the mistake that a lot of people make is that they misread slowness as nothing's happening. And that confusion of like nothing is happening rather than just reading it as like this is a slow process is what causes so, so many people to quit. Now I want to explore this idea because I was actually talking to a client the other day about this and I thought it was such a good point to bring up. We were having a conversation about tracking and she basically said in so many words that if it wasn't for fat loss or weight loss, she wouldn't be tracking her food, right? Like that was the purpose of this thing that she was changing that she was doing. 

Effort vs. Results and the Role of Patience 08:51

So if she wasn't going to lose fat, why is she going to track, right? That was kind of the link that she had made. And I think a lot of us do the same thing. It's like tracking is effort. There's effort, there's time, there's energy that's required to it. And I'm willing to give that effort and energy that's required if it produces a result. But if it doesn't produce a result, that effort and energy feels like it's wasted. It's like, why am I spending time on this thing when it's not actually producing the result that I want? And so what I started to talk to her about is the idea of patience. And how patient really is, like real patience, as when they talk about the virtue of patience, is when you are patient when something meaningful is happening. And that doesn't mean it's the pace you want it to happen, but we can be patient when something is happening. What people get mixed up with and where they don't know whether this is real patience or fake patience is because on the other end, it is really silly to do something hard or challenging or that requires effort if that effort really isn't working. When it's really not driving any of the results that you want, we can already see logically it doesn't make sense that you would keep putting a whole lot of time and effort into something that does not work. Now, we understand that intellectually. The problem comes is that we're really bad, most of us are really bad at differentiating which it is. Because we're really bad at seeing the progress that is actually taking place in front of us. 

Cognitive Bias and Difficulty Recognizing Progress 10:33

Our brains have a negativity bias. That means our brains spot things that are wrong way easier and way quicker than we spot things that are right. And it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. We grew up needing to be able to be safe. And so our brain is always scanning our environment to make sure that it's safe. We want to notice if the bushes are wrestling and there's a lion hiding in there and wanting to eat us. And so our brain is always scanning, looking for danger. And so that's the alert system that we use, which means we're really good at looking at and identifying what is not working. And very terrible overall at identifying what is working. And so what happens a lot of times is I see that things are actually working. Progress is actually being made and patience is a virtue in this situation. And yet the person doesn't even see it. So they misread slowness as it's not happening. A slower progress as I'm not making any progress. And so then they end up quitting because they think, well, this is silly. Why am I putting effort into something that's not producing a result? And they think this is fake patience rather than, hey, this is just the time that it takes. This is how slow change happens. This is how slow fat loss is. You just have an unrealistic expectation of how quickly the change is going to occur.

So then the question becomes, how do you make that distinction in the moment? When you're doing something, you're putting effort into something. We want to keep putting that effort in if we just need to be patient and we just need to wait for that effort to work. Because the seed does not sprout the day you plant it. It doesn't sprout the day after you plant it. It doesn't sprout a week after you plant it. We do recognize that there is some time period between planting the seed and when it sprouts. And there's nothing wrong happening in that time period. We just need to be patient and keep on doing it. So how do we differentiate in our journey? I'm doing XYZ to be able to get results. How long do I need to do this to be able to actually look at myself and say, this isn't working and I need to try something different versus this is working even if it's slower than I want it to be and I just need to be patient and I just need to go. How do we differentiate that in the moment? 

Root Cause vs. Symptom-Level Fixes 12:51

So I have five questions that you can ask yourself that will help you know if you are needing to just be patient or if we've been patient enough and we've run the experiment long enough to know that this isn't actually going to work. What are the questions you can ask yourself of like, I planted the seed and now I don't see a tree. Is this because I just need to keep waiting for the tree to sprout and I just need to be a little bit more patient or because the seed was a dud? These are the questions that I would use to help you to figure that out in your own journey. 

Okay. So question number one is, are you working on the root cause or the symptom? And this goes back to my story about my arm. When I was trying to heal this on my own, I was doing all the things that I knew how to do, which was rest, which was doing some massage, which was taking ibuprofen, which was doing some icing. And that was about all I knew that I could do. And that wasn't working. It wasn't producing any result. And the reason was, is because I hadn't actually gotten down to the root cause of why I was having that pain. And it had nothing to do with my arm. It actually had to do with my pec. My pec was really tight and that was causing, your body's a chain. And so something, a tightness higher up in the chain is going to impact everything lower down the chain. So my arm pain had nothing to do with my arm. It had to do with my tight pec muscles. And so once we identified, once we, I say this like I had something to do with it. I went to the PT and once the knowledgeable PT identified what the root cause was, then we could really start to work on it and we could actually start to heal it. And so I could have done all the things that I knew how to do forever. And it probably would have never solved the problem because I wasn't able to get to the root cause myself. I had to enlist the help of somebody to be able to get down to what actually is the problem. 

And this is somewhere where I see a lot of people spinning their own wheels because when it comes to your health and fitness journey, somehow we have this idea that we should be able to figure it all out on ourselves, by ourselves. Like, I don't know why we don't have a problem going to PT to like help us with our tendons, but somehow we think that we should be able to figure out the root cause of what's keeping us stuck in our health and fitness journey on our own. But this is a big thing that I see a lot of people spinning their wheels because they're not actually working on what the root problem is of why they're stuck or why they aren't getting the results that they want or why that they are inconsistent or why they can't hit their macros consistently. Like those are the root cause things. So the first question I would say is, are you working on the root cause or are you just working on the symptoms? Because if we're just working on the symptoms, we can spin our wheels for a really long time and not actually see any meaningful change.

True Consistency vs. “Consistent-ish” Behavior 15:38

Number two is, have you actually been consistent or are you consistent-ish? This is a big distinction because if you're really being honest with yourself, are you actually consistent in following through with the plan that you have created? And when I talk to a lot of people and we get really nitty gritty of like actually asking the questions and looking at the data and pulling the information day after day after day, a lot of people have convinced themselves that they are very consistent. And when we step back and look at the data, you aren't actually as consistent as you think you are. Now, I'm not saying you're lying. I'm just saying, again, our brain is really good at like filling in gaps. And so we just say, oh yeah, I'm like super consistent. And then we look at the data and we're like, oh dang, I'm not actually as consistent as I thought I was.

So this is something to be honest about. And this is why data is so important, because you may feel like you're being consistent, but the data doesn't lie. How many days have you not tracked? How many days have you overeaten? How many days have you actually hit your numbers versus not hit your numbers? How many days are you actually doing cardio? How many steps are you actually taking in a day? Tracking those data points, the data is not going to lie. And it's really going to help you to confront whether you have been actually consistent or whether you've just been consistent-ish. Because just being consistent-ish is like planting a seed and then like digging it up every three days and replanting it. Like, yeah, the seed's not going to sprout. And that is not because if you weren't consistent, it wouldn't sprout. It's just because you keep digging it up every three days and we haven't developed the consistency to be able to get there. 

Defining the Experiment Timeline 17:20

Question number three, have you answered the question of how long you're going to run this experiment? This I think is a really interesting question to ask yourself. It sounds something like this. Okay, let me give you an example actually. Okay, so I have this app called Bevel that I've shared before on the podcast. And it connects with my Apple Watch and it tracks all of my sleep and my heart rate during my workouts and things like that. And then it has a really awesome… All by the way, all that reporting is free. What is part of the paid subscription and what I've paid my own big girl dollars to subscribe to is the AI that integrates with it. And the AI can kind of analyze your information and pull it all together and synthesize it into actionable next steps. That has been really interesting. One of the things that Bevel keeps prompting me is saying, hey, you're eating really close to your sleep time. And this is my nightly Ninja Creamy, which I love. And it's saying, hey, because you have to continue to digest your food, it abuts into getting you into a deep sleep mode. So it's kind of stealing some of your deep sleeps because instead of getting into that deep sleep restorative mode, your body is trying to digest all this food that you're eating so close to bedtime. So what you really should do if you want to improve your deep sleep is to move that last meal up two to three hours before you go to bed. 

And so I was a little dubious. I was like, I don't know that this is actually going to do anything. It seems kind of silly. But you know what? I'm up for an experiment. I'm up for a let's try it out. So I did it for two nights where I stopped eating three hours before bedtime. And the results were not super clear. And I was like, see, it's not a big deal. I can keep eating my ice cream. This doesn't matter for me. And then I stopped and I was like, dude, you just gave yourself two days of data, like two days of an experiment to try out this thing. The body is complex. This is not going to be a linear you do X and you get Y immediately type of thing. There's just too many other variables that are confounding that you need more than two days of data to see if this actually is a trend, if there is a benefit to you to doing it. And so I stepped back and noticed that I was doing that and saying like two days of data isn't enough. And so then I asked myself a really great question, which is, okay, how many days of data would help me to see if this is actually something helpful for me? And I don't know that there's a right answer. It doesn't really matter, but I knew that the answer was more than two. And so I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll commit to this for a month. That seems like a reasonable amount of time that if I do this consistently for a month and I compared this month to last month and look at my deep sleep, that that's enough data that I can kind of see the trends a little bit more clearly. 

And so that's what I've been doing. I don't know. I'm still in the middle of the experiment. I'll let you know how it goes. But it was such a great realization for me that I think that we do this a lot where we're like, I'm going to make this change, but we never stopped back and say, how long do I need to do it consistently to actually get good information of whether this works or not? We just start. And then when we get frustrated, we make that decision in that moment of frustration rather than on the onset of just going into it knowing I need 30 days at least of consistently making this change for me to be able to really read the data and know if it's working. In statistics, anytime you read a research study, they always are reporting what's called the N, which is the number of participants. So there'll be like N was 325 or N was 10,430. That just tells you the number of people that they were studying or the number of subjects they were studying in that research study. And it's generally understood that the more number, the higher number you have, the more that data is accurate and applicable and can be applied to a wide swath of the population. So if we have an N of 12 subjects and we find some correlation with those 12 subjects, okay, that tells us a little thing, but that is very different than if we find that correlation or that statistical difference with 10,000 people. And it's the same thing. It's like my N of two days does not give me as much information as my N of 30 days does.

So that would be the third question I would ask is like, how long would it really take to know if this is working or not? How long of consistency would this really take? And it's longer than two weeks. It's longer than three weeks. And it's probably longer than four weeks for most people, for like almost anything that you're changing, okay? Like four weeks might be the low end. So if you're not willing to commit to starting something and going four weeks consistently with it without seeing a change and still continuing on, that's going to be a problem because change is slower than you think. And it's going to take longer than you think. And what's going to happen is you're going to quit just before it starts working. And that's what I see a lot of people doing is they quit two weeks in, they quit three weeks in, they even quit four weeks in. When if you have just gone another like one to two weeks, that compounding change starts to show, right? That's when the tree starts to sprout or the seed starts to sprout and you actually can see something. It doesn't mean nothing is happening in that time period.

Recognizing Subtle Progress 22:44

And that's where we're going to go on to the next question. Because question number four, is anything different even a little? And this is the piece that I think a lot of people miss because they're defining success only in one framing and it's usually the scale. But the scale is not usually the first thing that starts to change when we make a change. Are your energy levels up? Are you crashing less in the afternoon? Are you sleeping better? Are you thinking less about food? Or are you having a healthier relationship with food? Are you making better decisions around food? Are you stress eating less? Are you feeling more confident with your decision-making capacity? All of these are progress that can be made. That are not going to show up in your quantifiable data. It's not going to maybe show up on the scale or on your measurements or even in your progress photos. But that does not mean that progress isn't happening. Because remember, patience is a virtue when something is happening. It's not a virtue when you just pretend like it's happening. But the problem is, is you're not again, that negativity bias, you don't actually see the progress that is taking place. And this is why it's really helpful to have a third party that is not invested in your journey. Like having a coach who can objectively look at what's going on can help you to see progress that is happening that you will skim over.

I see it over and over again. But again, the question is, is anything happening? Is anything different? Even just a little bit? Because if so, then we now have to be patient. If nothing is happening and you've been consistent for six weeks and nothing is happening, okay, maybe now, you know, it's not, maybe it's not going to work. Maybe patience isn't a virtue. Maybe nothing is happening. But I will say the number of people who consistently do something for six weeks without any, any change happening is like very, very small. Very, very small. Most people get stuck in the middle and they get stuck with inconsistency or they get stuck with not sticking with it long enough to be able to actually see it work. 

Measuring the Right Metrics at the Right Intervals 24:58

And then the last question that I have, which is kind of similar to the one I just said, but are you measuring the right things at the right intervals? If you're only looking at the scale to tell you whether you're doing the right thing or whether it's working, you do not have the right things. You're not measuring the right things. The scale is a data point. It is not the data point. And most people are using the data point incorrectly. If you're one of my MACROS 101 clients, you know that I really recommend a daily weight that is averaged over the week and compared to last week's average and next week's average. Most people look at the scale on a day-to-day basis and they go up and down with the fluctuations. If they step on the scale, it's a little bit down, they're elated. If it's up on the scale, it's a little bit up, they're depressed. Instead of smoothing out those normal highs and lows and looking at an average. 

Applying the Framework: Data, Patience, and Pivoting 25:48

So I look at what is my average weight this week versus my average last week versus my average weight the week before. That's the way that you want to use your scale weight. It is a data point. It is not the data point. Are you measuring other things? Are you doing measurements like body measurements? Are you tracking your sleep? Are you tracking your stress? Are you tracking your steps? Are you tracking how much cardio you're doing? Are you tracking your weights? These are all things that we need to be measuring and we want to be measuring on consistent intervals so that we can really get a good picture of what is actually going on with your body because that leads to what I just talked about. Is anything changing? Are you actually being consistent? The data doesn't lie. The data will hold you to the standard of consistency and the data will actively show you what is working and what isn't working. So that is how I personally would differentiate between whether I just need to be patient and focus on consistency and focus on staying in the game or whether this thing doesn't actually really work and it's time to let it go. And if it doesn't work, this is when I would say very often is quitting the actual answer. What I would say is often the answer is pivoting. And that is very different. Like just quitting doesn't usually work, but pivoting using data and feedback to pivot and maybe have a different experiment or try something new is going to keep moving you forward because you're going to learn information. You're going to utilize that as you make decisions moving forward about what's going to work for your body. So usually quitting is not the answer. Pivoting often is. 

So yes, it's probably going to take longer than you think it's going to take. And most people quit right before it works. So don't be that person. Use those questions that I gave you to be able to differentiate between do I just need to be patient and keep going or do I need to make a pivot? Not do I need to quit? Do I need to make a pivot? That's a huge, huge difference. Okay. I hoped this like 2 a.m. spark of idea that I had last night came out and was helpful to you in your health and fitness journey. If it was, I would love it so much if you share this on Instagram or you share it with a friend or text it to your sister-in-law. That helps the podcast to reach more people. And I'm really, really grateful for those of you who are sharing the podcast to all of your friends. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber. Now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

Outro

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