You're listening to the Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B and this is episode number 265, "How to Keep Going". Welcome to the Fitness Matters Podcast, where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I'm Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon to be author and your best middle-aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let's go.
Real quick before we get into today's topic, I want to invite you to join the Pahla B Wellness Over 50 Book Club in partnership with Chirp audiobooks. The book we're reading for November and December is The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride, which you can grab a steep discount with no monthly subscription fees at chirpbooks.com/pahla. That's P-A-H-L-A. While you're there, be sure to click the follow button to get exclusive access updates and register for the live book club event on Friday, December 16th. I'll see you there.
Hello, hello, my friends. I am so happy to be here with you today. And before we even get started, I want to take care of a couple of pieces of business. Really specifically, I was just thinking right before... Well, okay, that's not true. I didn't start thinking about this until after I hit the record button because before I hit the record button, I was kind of practicing my intro and thinking about how I wanted to introduce the topic. And then as I hit record, I was like, oh, don't forget to tell them that the podcast is about to change names. So here, let me take care of that piece of business right now. We've got a couple more episodes of the Fitness Matters Podcast. And then the podcast itself is going to continue. You guys, I love podcasting. I have come to appreciate that talking is my superpower. I have always known this even way back in grade school when I used to have on every single report card ever that I talk too much and that it's a problem and that it's disruptive and blah, blah, blah.
I have learned over the last 10 years of being in business for myself, which is actually about to be 11 years of being in business for myself as of January 1st, that I have a skill that not everybody has. I was talking to my accountant and I don't know if I've told you this story before, but it makes me laugh every time I think about it. This happened years ago. I was talking to my accountant about what I do and revenue streams and how I work and all these kinds of things. And I said something or other about having a podcast and he's like, "Oh, you just talk for 30 minutes?"
And he's an accountant. And I was like, "Yeah." And he just absolutely stared at me like a deer in the headlights like, "That's my worst nightmare," is what he just said to me. And I was like, "It's my favorite part of my job." So the podcast will always continue. The podcast will be here as long as I have breath in my lungs, or at least a voice and things that I want to talk to you about. So the podcast is continuing, but it is getting a rebrand. We are changing the name of the Fitness Matters Podcast to the Get Your Goal Podcast. I have realized over the past year or so that while fitness will always be a love of mine, that I really, really love talking about, not just fitness but fitness in the realm of weight loss very specifically and weight loss in the realm of getting any kind of a goal.
I have really figured out how, well, first of all, just how to get a goal, what the process is, how it works, how it works every time, whether you mean for it to work this way or not. It is really the crux of my Get Your Goal group where we talk about this stuff, we dissect it. We dig into how your thoughts create your feelings and drive your actions and get your results. And I love talking about goal getting. And I really love talking about weight loss specifically. I am going to continue to talk about weight loss. But I'm not going to necessarily talk about it through the lens of fitness the way I once did. I am definitely moving into a lot more... I mean, obviously this podcast has literally always been mindset. Way back, even when it was the Let's Run Podcast, it was all about the mindset of running and fitness and getting goals.
I mean, I really, I could have called it the Get Your Goal Podcast way back then. If only, oh my gosh, if only I'd had the foresight to be able to have named it that. But anyways, as of January 1st, which by the way is a Sunday, which feels so lovely to start the rebrand of this podcast, which is not really a start. It's going to be like episode, I don't know, 268, 269, something like that. So we've got a couple episodes left where it's the Fitness Matters Podcast, and then it will still come out on Sundays. It will still have me, Pahla B, as your host. However, it will be called the Get Your Goal Podcast.
And it will also have a new home online, which fingers crossed, is also going to be available January 1st. We're really squeaking right up to the wire here with all kinds of moving parts that I am not in charge of. But I have the most amazing web designer who is really, really working overtime and helping me in so many ways, who will have the getyourgoal.com website, either available right now or available really, really soon. All of the podcast episodes are going to be on there. You're still going to be able to download the 5-0 Method on there. And we have a page that talks all about the Get Your Goal group, which is... God, I'm so excited. I'm so excited about the website. I'm going to send you there now, and if it's still the old website, I'll have something in the show notes that says, hey, coming on whatever date it's coming. So that is the administrative stuff.
And now I want to talk to you about how to keep going. I was really tempted to call this episode How to Keep Going When the Going Gets Tough or something like that. And I realize that that's not necessarily how I want to approach this topic. I will tell you that the reason it's on my mind right now is because of tough going. Long, long, long time listeners might recognize this time of year as being a little bit difficult. It is the anniversary of my sister's death. December 15th is five years. Five years. She's been gone almost as long as I've had a podcast. I started the podcast in October of 2017, and she passed away in December of 2017.
And for me, I have noticed, I mean for five years now, I have noticed how, as we approach the anniversary every year, that there comes a time, and the first year, it was quite literally the entire year. The second year, it was a couple of months before the anniversary. And it's getting to the point where it's not taking up all of my mental brain space the way that it once did. Thank goodness, and I'm glad for that. But I still noticed this week just some very slight things that I'm doing, things that I'm thinking, where I noticed that I'm not taking care of myself where I'm letting... Okay, I don't know if I want to use that word.
I used it anyways. Here we go. I'm going to finish the sentence, but I don't know if that's really how I want to put it out there to you. But where I'm letting myself not take care of myself. I'm letting the sadness and the memories and the anniversary itself, even just my brain is offering me like, oh, no, no, this is a hard time of year, so therefore I don't have to, for example, go to bed on time or I don't have to, because this is always my go-to, drink all my water, which I tell you what. I am making such a concerted effort on that front. Don't you worry. I'm drinking my water, but I notice my brain offering me, oh, you don't really have to. No, it's okay.
I mean, obviously this time of year, and this is where I do want to frame it, not just like how to keep going when the going gets tough, but how to keep going when the going is all celebrations all the time. This time of year there are more people around and my neighbors dropping off cookies at the front door and even me doing some baking, and all those kinds of things that we do around this time of year. And I do not mean to just lump that in as though everybody does that this time of year.
There are different times of year. For example, in my family, we have a lot of summertime birthdays, and so therefore basically from May through July, it's how much birthday cake is going to be left over in the freezer kind of season. So no matter if the going is tough or the going is celebratory, there will be times that you might notice yourself saying something to yourself about your weight loss journey or your goal journey. Whether or not it's weight loss, I mean, literally, no matter what you're working on, there will be times when your brain wants to offer you that you don't have to work on it right now. Oh, it's okay, we'll just put that to the side. I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'm just going to let myself have fun. Or this is actually what my brain offers me a lot.
Because in addition to this being, I'm going to just continue to call it a tough time of year, technically speaking, it's not a tough time of year. It's a time of year when my brain offers me lots of thoughts that feel tough. But it's also, for those of you who are in the fitness and weight loss industry, it's a very quiet time of year where I am actually behind the scenes totally ramping up everything. I mean, as previously mentioned, I'm working on a website right now. I'm actually redesigning the 5-0 Method. I'm revamping the Get Your Goal group in a way that I'm so excited about.
I have a lot of preparatory things going on right now. So I'm actually busier right now than I usually am at any other time of year. And it's such an ironic thing that literally nobody wants to talk about fitness and weight loss right now. But me getting ready for January when a lot of people want to talk about fitness and weight loss means that December happens to be a really, really busy month for me.
So in any event, no matter if this is a tough time or a celebratory time, if you notice your brain offering you... Did I finish my sentence by the way? I think that the sentence that my brain offers me is I don't have time right now. I don't have time right now to go to bed on time. I don't have time right now to drink my water. I don't have time right now to take time out to make sure that I get my exercise in. I don't have time right now to make sure that I'm recovering properly. My brain loves to offer me all kinds of thoughts about time, which at some point might even be a podcast in itself.
In any event, if you notice yourself, and I'm going to say, if I had to guess, I would say that this is most often described as letting myself off the hook or going off the rails or getting off track or life getting in the way or something where we are kind of subtly and even not so subtly... I mean, how many times have I already mentioned that I think of this as a tough time of year where we subtly and not so subtly let circumstances tell us or dictate for us whether or not we want to continue working on our goals.
And here's what I want to offer you about this. This is actually something that I worked out for myself a really long time ago with regard to going on vacation. And it's very interesting for me to kind of move through that lens while I'm figuring out how I want to think about dealing with, again, my tough time of year. Years and years and years ago, I started recognizing that a vacation mentality didn't feel very good to me. I would tell myself, "Oh, I'm going on vacation. We'll have whatever we want and it'll just be what it is. And I don't need to really pay attention to my workout schedule or my water or anything because I just want to have fun." And I realized over the course of, honestly, not very many vacations. There were a good many years where we really didn't take very many vacations. So it was actually really easy to continue with my routine. But then when we would take a vacation, I would really hear those thoughts of, "I'm just going to let myself have fun."
And then when we were on vacation and I was eating different foods in different amounts and doing exercise. I mean, we always do some kind of exercise while we're on vacation, be it walking or whatever. But just being different with my routine and I noticed that it didn't actually feel fun, that my body would feel kind of sluggish and not as energetic as I'm used to, that at the time... I mean, again, I worked this out quite some time ago, so it was before I was fully perimenopausal and menopausal. So I still had enough energy, but I noticed that my energy was just really different. I just noticed that it wasn't very fun to allegedly have fun.
And then I started experimenting with it. Okay, what would it be like if I still allow myself, because I always allow myself, and that word right there, really, we got a whole podcast about that at some point about allowing ourselves to do things. In fact, oh, you know what? Even last week's You Have Permission to Change, you could just take off the change part of that and talk to yourself about how you can allow yourself, you have permission to do literally anything. In any event, I have permission and always have had permission to eat whatever I want. I'm always just mindful of the portions, making sure that it fits in with my goals and what I want and how much of it is going to feel good in my body.
And this is the work that I did. I started really noticing on vacation that I love having different kinds of foods. It's one of our favorite things to do is seek out different kinds of, I'm going to say local cuisine, but it's not like we travel the world. I mean, I've actually never been outside the US. But we travel and we find different kinds of foods that are interesting for wherever we are. So I have experimented with being able to eat different kinds of foods and really paying attention to the portion sizes. I've also really experimented with, even though I'm on vacation, going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time every morning, that it just really sets my body on this path of feeling, even when I'm technically speaking out of my routine, it feels like I'm enough in my routine that I really keep my energy up, that I really feel my best on vacation without being sluggish or tired or exhausted when I come home.
I love coming home and slipping very seamlessly right back into my at home routine. And so the work that I'm doing right now, I do have some practical advice for you. But really I want to share with you that this is ongoing work for me, too. And I think that that's really important to normalize for you, that you might totally figure out a mindset in one part of your life. And then in another part of your life that seems on its surface to be incredibly similar, there's still just another little subtle layer to work through that you can work through. I mean, you know what the process is. You find your thoughts and you decide if they're helpful. Literally, the process is the same every time. There's nothing about this that is surprising to me. It's simply, it's time to do this work in this particular area of my life.
And I'm noticing that the thoughts that my brain is offering me aren't helping me feel my best because right now I simultaneously want to feel sad that my sister's gone. I don't have a problem with that. That is a goal, weirdly. It is a goal to allow myself to feel the feelings and to not brush it off, or not even, I don't know, I guess let her memory go in a way that feels good and right, that I don't have to be steeped in grief. But I also, I still want to honor the anniversary. I still want to think about her. And I'm really okay with that being sad. And simultaneously, I would very much like to take care of myself so that my routine can be sad and take care of myself and my other physical goals, which is to say, I mean, honestly, I mean, I'm maintaining my weight right now.
And my physical goals are really about listening to my body and exercising in a way that feels good. I do have some fitness goals for 2023. We're going to share those not next week, because next week we're going to do the book club replay, unless you come live, which case, well, you're welcome to do both. You're welcome to attend live and listen to the replay. If you are listening to this podcast the day it comes out, we are having the book club on this coming Friday, December 16th. And it's at 7:00 AM Pacific time and there will be a link in the show notes for you to register because it is a registration event.
In any event, my current physical goals for myself are to really honor my body and be where I am and take care of myself. Which interestingly, if you are in the process of losing weight, you might be like, oh, when I'm maintaining I have to do everything different, and it's really not true at all. I still manage my mind as we talk about literally all the time. I also eat in a way that fuels what I want to do, which is to say I give myself the right amount of energy, the right number of calories. I don't currently count calories. This is a whole 'nother conversation, but I don't feel the need to count calories. I am working on and have worked on eating, I'm going to call it intuitively, but eating in a way that feels really good for my body and maintains my weight. I drink my water even when my brain offers me that I don't have time or I really don't want to. And I go to bed at the same time every night. I get up at the same time every morning.
I exercise, not always moderately. I exercise in a way that I am prioritizing recovery, which I believe we talked about on the episode where we talked about exercising for weight loss, and I talked about the different ways that you might exercise. And one of them really is exercising differently every day, but prioritizing recovery. And I'm going to point you in the direction of that podcast episode. And if that's not what I talked about, I apologize. My memory is faulty.
In any event, the work that I'm doing right now for my simultaneous goals of honoring my sister's memory and honoring my grief and taking care of myself means that I'm really listening for the thoughts that aren't sad for the sake of honoring Vicky, but are sad for the sake of just kind of feeling bad. And I know that sounds really funny and that it feels funny, too. Some of the thoughts that I'm uncovering are really interesting to me because it's along the lines of you already don't feel good, so why drink your water? You already don't feel good, so why, for example, stop eating when you could have another three desserts? You already feel sad, so why not also feel bad physically in some way by staying up late or whatever?
And it's really interesting to hear my brain offer me this because I honestly, up until this year, had not heard those thoughts. I've been, I'm going to say giving into them and that's not what I mean. When you have automatic thoughts, they create automatic feelings that drive automatic actions. Until you go looking and listening for them, you just find yourself doing stuff that you're like, "Oh, man, I did not get to bed on time." Well, that's too bad. I'm going to make myself go to bed on time, which I mean, sometimes that works, but mostly it doesn't. When you find the thoughts and recognize that they're not helpful, that actually is the way to be able to put yourself to bed on time or to drink your water the way you want to, or to be able to eat the amount of energy that you want to, is recognizing that you're having some kind of thought that is creating a feeling that's driving an action that you'd rather not be doing. Or sometimes it's an inaction. I mean, in the case of not drinking my water, I would consider that an inaction.
But what I want to offer you really specifically about how to keep going when the going gets either amazing or tough or somewhere in between or whatever. However this conversation landed for you, what I want to offer you is that a couple of things. Number one, the work is always the same. You find your thoughts, you decide if they're helpful and you feel whatever feelings need to be felt in there. That's always going to be the work that we talk about. And I want to offer you to be gentle with yourself, especially if it's a tough time of year. And even honestly, even if it's a celebratory time of year, there are choices that we make from automatic thoughts and automatic feelings that maybe you just don't want to examine right now.
I mean, as previously mentioned, I'm five years into this grief. And this is the first time that I even wanted to listen to these kinds of thoughts. This is the first time I have even thought about digging into this. It just wasn't on my priority list to see what I could be doing in a way that feels good until this year. So if this isn't your year, if this isn't the time, you just take your time. You can get to whatever mindset work you want to get to whenever you get to it. I promise you there's always more. And I love that because I think to myself, oh, at some point I'm going to be done with this, right? No, we have 60,000 thoughts a day. There really are always going to be thoughts to dig into. There's always going to be thoughts to find and figure out if they're helpful or unhelpful.
I really feel like this work is, in a good way, never ending, that I think of it as a treat. I get to continually become more aware of myself and my brain and my capabilities and my potential forever, as long as I want to. And sometimes that means that I am not exploring something right now.
And I think that's probably the biggest thing that I really wanted to offer you is that you don't have to explore how to keep going right now if going right now means just getting through something. And then maybe exploring it later, maybe exploring it next year, maybe the year after that, maybe whenever you get to it is whenever you get to it. And that is actually how you keep going, is by recognizing that there will always be mindset work to do. You don't have to do it right now. You can do it whenever you want to. And in the meantime, keep moving forward in a way that feels your best right now without the judgment of, well, I could probably be doing better. Nope, this is what we're doing right now, and it is the best because it is what you're doing.
You guys, I really hope that this was helpful for you. I will see you, I mean, literally see you if you come to the book club. I will have podcasts for you over the next couple of weeks, which means that we will be together soon. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you again soon.
If you are getting a lot out of the Fitness Matters podcast and you're ready to take it to the next level, you are going to love the Get Your Goal coaching and accountability group. We take all the theory and knowledge here on the podcast and actually apply it in real life on your real weight loss and fitness goals. It's hands-on, it's fun, and it works. Find out more at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal. And let's get your goal.
