The hardest part of any fitness or lifestyle plan is making the decision to commit. Once that mental commitment is made, everything else, including diet changes and regular workouts, becomes significantly easier. People often resist going to the gym but find the experience rewarding once they start, and even a less-than-perfect workout is better than none. Setting realistic and meaningful goals, measuring progress, and maintaining consistency are crucial for achieving lasting results.

Integrating exercise into one’s daily routine and making manageable changes to one’s diet are also essential. Personal examples include an unwavering 1:00 PM workout schedule and the simplicity of making healthier food choices, like homemade pizza. Initial challenges, like adjusting schedules and dietary habits, can be overcome with persistence and a strong mental commitment. Ultimately, the decision to change is the most significant hurdle, and once overcome, the path to better health becomes much more straightforward.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:20 - The Hardest Part of Any Plan

00:45 - Personal Experience and Challenges

01:08 - Benefits of Consistency

02:00 - Importance of Setting Realistic Goals

03:17 - Measurement and Tracking

04:42 - Making Time for Exercise

06:23 - Commitment to Exercise Routine

08:18 - Simplifying Diet Changes

10:01 - Overcoming Initial Challenges

11:14 - Setting Meaningful Goals

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] It's Friday with questions from questions that challenge almost like. Somebody asked me what I thought the hardest part of the plan was, was the working hours, the diet. The whole day out there is only one part. It's the choice. It's the mental piece. Once you've made the decision, everything else is easy. Once you choose to go to the gym and you're actually at the gym, you're going to get some type of workout. And it's funny because I talk to people on the go, I really didn't want to go. And I kept hearing all these reasons not to go, and I was tired and I thought, I'll just stay home and I'll get some sleep and I'll be up there tomorrow. But I decided I'll just go. And they told me I complained the whole way to the gym. I shouldn't be going. I'm tired. I won't do this. I got to the gym like I complained, the whole walking in, getting dressed. Then I start working out and it was fine. And I'm like, well how? Like the whole time you were tired, you didn't want to do it. You know, whatever might, you know, what was the quality of the workout? And then I and I am like, really? There I go. I mean, it was a pretty good workout. Like once I just started doing it, like it was like, I'm already here, I might as well get it done.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:08] And so I just kind of done it wasn't that bad. I was there's a pretty good workout. I'm like, that's what happens the vast majority of the time if you go and you get a crappy workout, right, you get a six. Like, you know, you cut some set short, you know, you just get exhausted. Continue to reinforce, you know, four different exercises for four sets. You did, you know, three, three exercises for three sets of ten. So three sets of 15 or so you took, you know, 70% of your workout. Still nothing every single time. And the fact that I went to the gym, you always look back and you're like, I went, I checked the box and I went because not every work that's going to be as good as the last one. But I went. And when you can consistently do that, you consistently make it to the gym. You will consistently get better. Yeah. When you consistently, you know, sit down and you eat the right foods. Sometimes you're going to have a little bit extra stuff and you're like, I shouldn't eat. I should have eaten the entire thing of ice cream. I should have eaten half the container of ice cream. But you know what? Whatever I eat fine, fine. But you sell it out of you so it within the parameters of your diet, you know? And that's the thing.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:17] That's why. That's why I sort of like we have to have pizza and ice cream cookies and like, all the things you enjoy, we have to have in your diet because we're going to make this a forever thing. You can't you can't be upset. I can't have this. I can't have that. You have to be like, I'm excited about the things in my diet. But again, this all comes back to the number one thing is making your decision. If I'm going to do this and it makes you make the decision small at the time, right? Because what ends up happening, what I see more often than not is people have tried things. It didn't work, but it didn't fully commit. Maybe they didn't say, okay, for the next six weeks I'm going to do this thing. They didn't figure out how to fit it in their schedule long term. And so it just didn't work. They didn't make the they didn't make the goals properly. They didn't sit down and set their goals properly. This is one of the reasons I always tell me what the goals are 70, 30, 70% for you and 30% for me because I'm really where you are. Like, I know where you start and I should, I need, I need to know where you are. Which is why we need instrumentation testing and the Western medicine testing, the blood, the SRE, the whole deal will do.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:17] You know, the calcium CT? The CTA will do all the testing. We'll figure out this is where you are today, which is easy. What's hard? And I have to rely on you. Forest. Where do you want to go? What are your goals? Which is why we sit down. We go over goals so, so hard because it's entirely for you. And it's like, here's your goal. But the most important thing is how will you measure that goal? How do we know we're getting better? Because if you don't do that part, you're you're you're never get there. Because as you start getting there, if you're 30% of the way there and you look at it, you're like, going to the gym sucks. I don't like it. It's part of my I could easily be doing something else, you know? And they, you know, I have to eat this. I'll have to make some food. It's 10% more of a pain for the diet. But if you, you know, 3 or 4 weeks in, you look, you look at your metrics and you're like, but I am getting better on all of my goals. It's easy to look at and go, oh, what I've chosen to do. The path of chosen to get on, to take from point A to point B is working. My efforts are showing me results. I'm going to choose to lean in harder when I choose to invest more time, energy, and money. That's the thing. But the thing is, you have to make the decision to do it. If no one, no one wakes up at the gym and goes hungry again here. This is not a strange place to be, I guess. So work out. That's not what happens. You have to make the decision to to change your life.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:42] You gotta make the decision to walk you, to lean into the heart. You know, any time that you make a change, it's going to be hard. So just understand that and be like, I'm going to do something hard that I'm going to be out of my comfort zone, you know, for how long? You know, six weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks until it becomes habit. Like people ask me, like, what do you do at 1:00 every day? I work out like, well, what if. No, no, I work out like, I don't go to meetings, work schedule meetings. I don't take phone calls. I don't do any of that stuff. I work out at one. That's it. That's what I do. I'm in the gym five days a week. Saturdays I work out at about 7:00 in the morning. And then Sundays all work at about seven because I have to be ready for church. But that's that's. I've put it in my schedule, and then everything else works around it. So you know, and nobody can work it up when I get that. But you find a slot in your schedule and you're like, I have decided that this time I search for this, this thing, and I'm going to do this thing. So that's that's the thing. So as you make the decision and you're like, I'm going to do this. That's when things happen. Now a lot of times the reason why this first six, eight weeks is the hardest is because you haven't made the decision. You've said, I'm willing to dedicate a little to see if this works at all. And that's that's the most difficult case, which is why sometimes you like. Well, I can work out three days a week. I'm like, okay, I'll take three, I want five, I'm not going with your seven, and I want you to do five, because that's how that's the that's the best way to spread apart all the different workouts. And if they weren't, it's very.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:23] You don't have to work at five. You know, but to get most to hit most people's goals and see them really come through you in a manner where you're you're seeing things happen quickly. You need to you need to dedicate a decent amount of time to it. And like an hour, five days a week works pretty well. So, you know, and then you like inside that deal you can make. Well, I don't want to do much cardio fun. You don't have to. There's once you go to the gym, once you're at the gym. Once you see, that's the thing. Once you're at the gym every day for an hour, what you do while you're at the gym, we can change. Easy, easy. Like, okay, it's back to it's chest. It's ready to run a little bit today. We're gonna do it, okay? But you set up that hour, right? Or that 90 minutes or that 45 or whatever it is. And you've got to the gym. That's the thing. Or I want you to clean out your entire pantry and throw away all of this food and replace it with this stuff. Once you've done that and you're like, now I have to learn how to do things a little differently. Yeah. And once you've gone through the process, it's pretty easy. Like, what I think is hilarious is when you see people who I'm like, they're like, I love pizza. They're great. You can have pizza because it's one of the things that I like to take, like, we have it all the time, you know, but you have to make it. You can either make it from flour and water and bake it up. So my 11 year old likes to do it. Or you can do it from pre-made, crust, which is typically you, Alex, do it either way. You're going to make some stuff and you're like, oh my gosh, making pizza is so hard. No that's that's not accurate. Well it's literally it's like a flat salad. Like you take the dough, you take the crust, they put a little sauce on it and then you drop things on it like you drop some cheese on it. I put Italian seasoning.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:18] I drop some cheese on it, you drop, I drop chicken and steak and mushrooms and onions on it. I put it in the oven, I hit go. It's really not that hard in the first couple of times when people do it, they're like, oh, this isn't actually that hard. They tell me, like, well, I smoke two turkeys every week, like, oh my gosh, that's that's more, that's, that's more than I can do. No it's not. It literally takes me I just the defrosting takes the longest. Once you see frost, I take all the stuff out, stick my my probes in them, stick them in the sweater. There's no seasoning or basting or, you know, marinating or that's just not the way I do it, because it doesn't have to be done that way. So stick them in there from from being in plastic wraps to being on my smoker seven minutes and then I walk away and it smokes when I come back to go off cigarets in the oven to to rest for an hour or so, cut them up super duper easy the entire actual time I'm working on. Cutting obviously takes the longest. You're looking at 15 minutes of actual time spent. So there's a lot of things that are easy. People just don't make the decision to do it. Which is why we asked, like, how hard is the diet? Once you choose to do it, it's not hard. And once you're like, it's going to be difficult because I'm doing something new. And I understand that and I'm going to do something difficult for to better myself. Once you kind of get through the it's new thing, it's super easy. It's just you've made the decision to do it. The problem. We get into a lot in this way. The first part is always the hardest, because I'm asking you to change your diet and change the way you eat, not necessarily change your diet, because a lot of times people who are like, I like cookies and cupcakes and ice cream and tacos and ribs and great. And have all that stuff, you know, I just want you to make it differently.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:01] So the diet is really not that big of a deal. You have to learn kind of like, oh, I have to make like this, not like that, which is sometimes problematic, but it is what it is. The gym things really are. But the problem that we get into is that you're doing this all at once. You're changing your diet. You're changing your schedule so that you can get to the gym. You're going to be sore. We're going to talk about sleep. There's a lot of things we're going to do. But again, the hardest part of this entire thing is you have to make the decision. Now again, the goals are to help you reinforce why we made that decision, because one of the things we go through is not just what it is you want, but then after you go through each door, I feel like I want to, you know, I want my energy come up. I want energy come up. We talk about how we're going to track that. Like, when are you tired? When you the most time. When you start to get tired. Who they are. And you know why? Why is this an important goal for you? So I just want to have more energy. Nope. Why? What do you do with this energy? I'm going to get healthier. Okay. Why is going health are important? Because I want to show my kids what healthy looks like. Fantastic. That's great because I'm going to be. I want to walk my daughter down the aisle. Fantastic. Because I'm going to hold you to that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:14] That's real. Anyway, I run in the gym thing, and I like to just. You've decided you don't care about walking your daughter Danielle any more. And then we're just gonna have. Fine. And they'll go and they'll get through it and they'll come back. They'll be like. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad I'm back. I'm glad. I'm glad I stuck to it. Because now I'm in a position where this is easier. And then your kids come up and they say it's up to you. It blows you away. So, you know, that's the thing. It's it's the mental piece is always the hardest. And that's why that's why we work on it as well. That's why I want to show you what we're going to do. We're going to talk through real, actual goals that we're going to work on gratitude. We're going to work on mental state. We're going to work on the way our brain works. We're not gonna release the emotions. We're work on the NLP stuff. We're going to talk to therapists. We're going to do whatever we need to do, take the mind where it needs to be, because everything follows the mind. As soon as you make your decision, everything else is easy. So that's why all these super annoying, you know, fitness guys are you know, I didn't really wake up at around five miles, so I woke up and ran five miles and you're like, that's what they want you to understand that. We don't we don't necessarily want to do these things every day anyway, but we've decided that this is what we need to do. And so we're going to do what we need to do.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:28] We decided that the hard thing is usually the better thing. So that's what it is. So when people ask me again, like, well, what's going to be the hardest piece of this? Like making the decision and following through. Once you've made the decision, everything else is easy, but you've got to make the decision. You've got to believe in yourself and you believe in the plan. You gotta do it. And once you start believing it, it gets super easy. So but that's kind of the heart of the whole thing. Like I said, you know, once you get to the gym, how you're going to work out, how we're going to work out super easy, whether you're gonna do cardio, whether you're not not nearly as relevant as if you're going to the gym to begin with. So making the decision is easily the hardest part. And that's why we spend so much time at the beginning understanding why we're making the decision, what our goals actually are, why this is important to us, so that when we when we start having those hard days, those rough days where we don't want to do it, we don't wanna go to the gym. You can push your cliff, your reasons, and you go. They're just as valid as yesterday. They're just as valid as last week. They're gonna be just as valid in two months. So. And this is a commitment to me for from me. So I guess freed up and that makes it easier because that's the hardest part is just making the decision and following through. So you guys have any other questions in the set of questions at chairman? Welcome. We're dropping in the comments. We'll go through them. Okay. Is there how can I say.

As always if you have any questions, please send them to Questions@ChalmersWellness.com

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at questions@chalmerswellness.com. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness.