In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Drew’s struggle with perfectionism and hiding his weaknesses — and how it eventually broke him.
• His journey of going from totally fit — to gaining 75 pounds (on purpose!) — to getting fit again — and what he learned on the way.
• How he finally learned to love himself.
• Why he believes vulnerability is a strength.
• Why “trying” to make your marketing more authentic doesn’t work.

About Drew Manning

Drew Manning is the NY Times Best Selling Author of the book, Fit2Fat2Fit and is best known for his Fit2Fat2Fit.com experiment that went viral online. He’s been featured on shows like Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, The View and many more. His experiment has become a hit TV show, called Fit to Fat to Fit, airing on A&E & Lifetime. His new book Complete Keto is available now!

If you’re inspired by this episode, I’d love to hear your biggest Aha! moments. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your social media and tag me, @christieturley!

LINKS:

Drew’s Fit2Fat2Fit Podcast

Drew’s Books: 

• Fit2Fat2Fit: The Unexpected Lessons from Gaining and Losing 75 lbs on Purpose
• Complete Keto: A Guide to Transforming Your Body and Your Mind for Life

Drew’s Website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter

Transcript:

Christie:
Welcome to the Mind Muse Podcast. I’m your host, Christie Turley. And today I’m speaking with Drew Manning, as we discuss unlearning who you think you are and becoming authentically yourself. In the episode, you’ll hear Drew’s struggle with perfectionism and hiding his weaknesses and how it eventually broke him.

Christie:
We’ll hear his journey of going from totally fit to gaining 75 pounds on purpose to getting fit again, and what he learned on the way. We’ll also see and hear how he finally learned to love himself and why he believes vulnerability is a strength. We’ll also hear and discuss why trying to make your marketing more authentic doesn’t actually work. Drew Manning is the New York Times Best-Selling Author of the book, Fit to Fat to Fit, and is best known for his Fit to Fat to Fit dot com experiment that went viral online.

Christie:
He’s been featured on shows like Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, The View, and many more. His experiment also became a hit TV show airing on A and E, and Lifetime, and his new book Complete Keto is now available. I think you’ll really be inspired by this episode. So let’s go ahead and dive in. All right. Welcome to the show Drew!

Drew:
Thank you, Christie, for having me.

Christie:
I’m excited. We’re gonna talk a lot about being authentic and what that means. Feels like a word that gets tossed around a lot, and especially in Marketing, I’m sure.

Drew:
Yep.

Christie:
Like you’re a very successful online marketer. There’s a lot of people talking about, “Oh, you got to be authentic in your marketing.”

Drew:
Yeah.

Christie:
But let’s talk about what that really means about your journey to find your true self.

Drew:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I remember I was at a mastermind one time and someone said, asked people in the audience, “How many of you guys trying to be authentic with your content you put out there?” And like everyone raised their hand and he’s like, “That’s your problem,” he said, “there is no trying to be authentic.” He just, you know, you know what, don’t try. If you’re trying to be authentic, you’re doing it wrong, you know? You’re just, it’s about being authentic, and what that means for me personally, it’s more so instead of learning how to be authentic, it’s more so about unlearning who you were taught to be, right? Your whole life ever since we were a four or five-year-old kid, we’ve been domesticated, almost like an animal of like, “This is good. This is bad. This is what you do. This is what you don’t do. This is what you do to fit in. This is weird and not acceptable,”

Drew:
and you kind of just go a long life, like, being taught by parents, teachers, coaches, church leaders, whoever it is telling you the norms of society at that moment in time of what is acceptable, and you kind of just like, “Oh, this is who I’m supposed to be, and this is kind of who I am,” and I think finding who your true, authentic self, sometimes take some unlearning of those things, and then, that’s where you actually find who you really are. So for me, it’s been an unraveling journey of kind of letting go those things that I was taught to be who I was supposed to be my entire life, and that’s really where my journey of authenticity and vulnerability comes to play, but it took me a good 35 years to figure that out.

Christie:
That’s true, isn’t it? It does.

Drew:
Yeah.

Christie:
It takes a lifetime to unlearn the conditioning,

Drew:
Yep.

Christie:
and even the stuff that we pick up along the way, being in online marketing, a successful business owner. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff thrown at you. Like status, or, you know, “You making six figures, seven figures or eight figures,” you know? Like, “What kind of car do you drive? Do you have a house on the beach?”

Drew:
Yeah.

Christie:
You know, and that’s not you! That’s not truly who you are, that’s things that you have, right?

Drew:
Yeah. It’s a piece of you. It’s a part of you, and that’s the thing is we, you attach yourself to identities and labels that society puts on you. Like you’re a man, you’re a woman, you’re a football player, you’re a stockbroker, you’re, this, that, and your like, “Oh yeah, I am this,” and you attach identity, that identity to that, and so for me a little bit about my story background is my Fit to Fat to Fit story is, you know, and we’ll dive into this a little bit, but

Christie:
Take that slower for people, because it took me out a few times hearing that to really get what you’re saying. The

Drew:
Yeah. Fit to Fat to Fit.

Christie:
So back to Fit. I love it.

Drew:
It is just like it sounds. So my whole life, I grew up in a family of 11 brothers and sisters, right? I don’t know what my parents were thinking, but they had 11 kids. So I played sports since I was a very little, and so I’ve always been in shape, and so my identity growing up was I was Drew the Fit guy, right? That was the label I put on myself. That was a label people put on me. When they looked at me, like, “Oh, that guy’s Fit!” “Yup. I’m Drew the Fit guy,” and that was part of my identity, and then I did this thing called Fit to Fat to Fit, where I purposely put on 75 pounds in six months to gain a better understanding and empathy for my clients. And I was truly humbled. It was way harder than I thought it would be. But what I learned from that was, when I was gaining weight, I had a couple of freak out moments where I wanted to go up to strangers so bad and tell them that I wasn’t really overweight, that this was just an experiment, that this wasn’t really my body, that this is just a temporary thing that I was doing for this website and, you know, this journey, and I was so uncomfortable on my own skin because I kind of lost my identity, and that was the first time I really realized, it took me a long time.

Drew:
It didn’t just happen instantly that I am more than my body. There’s more to me than just this physical body that I’ve been given. There’s more to you out there. The problem is our society places so much a value on the physical look of your body and what it looks like, and if it doesn’t fit in with the societal norm, you’re kind of looked at differently. You’re treated differently. Or people say things to you sometimes that are offensive or hurtful and that hurts! And so you’re like, “Well, I want to fit in. I want to be good looking like these people are that I see online,” and so we start to compare and we start to beat ourselves up, and we think that’s our identity, but body image is different than self image, and that’s what I learned from doing that experience, that experiment Fit to Fat, to Fit experiment and some other life journeys that I’ve been on have really helped me let go of that.

Christie:
You know, what just came to me, which is really interesting, it’s almost like the second time you became fit after being fat, you shed not just the weight, but all of the emotional weight and all of the, I mean, it’s still work, you’re still work in progress, right?

Drew:
Yeah.

Christie:
But it seems like it was more than the weight that you shed. You shed some mindsets. You shed parts of your identity that you thought you were.

Drew:
Yeah. Yeah, and that’s where the journey became way more of mental and emotional journey. Like going into that journey, I thought it was gonna be physical, right? Get a big gut, a big butt, some man boobs, and then I would lose it, and you know, but I was so surprised at how much it effectively affected me mentally and emotionally, and that’s why I wrote my first book Fit to Fat to Fit, and it goes into the personal journey of what I went through on the mental, emotional level, and that’s what I took from this whole experiment was transformation. The reason people struggle with weight loss is not because they don’t know how to count calories. They don’t know how to exercise properly or take certain supplements, or, it’s not a lack of knowledge of the physical things, eat less working out.

Drew:
It’s the mental, emotional struggles that, that they’ve struggled with their whole life. And that’s why it’s hard for them to stay consistent, living a healthy lifestyle, because sometimes it has to do with trauma or self-worth or addiction or distracting ourselves, numbing the pain with certain substances. You know, some people gravitate towards food or drugs or alcohol or sex to numb the pain that we’ve experienced. And that’s kind of like a self-defense mechanism that we’ve learned from a very young age and it’s really hard to break that habit. So that’s what I learned from this whole experiment was, you know, people don’t struggle with a lack of the physical knowledge it takes to lose weight. It’s staying consistent with that lifestyle, is way more up here than it is, you know, just eating and working out.

Christie:
Yeah. It’s the psychology behind it. So you’re kind of like a psychiatrist to your clients.

Drew:
I do talk a lot about the mental, emotional struggles that they go through and I really try to tie, and I’m not a psychiatrist by any means. I’m not pretending to be that. But what I’m trying to do is help that person raise their level of self-awareness so that they realize that their problems aren’t that they are a failure, that they lack willpower, have no discipline to, you know, transform their body. What I’m trying to help them become aware of is the connection between the mental, emotional challenges or traumas that they have and how that leads and manifests itself in a physical form of, you know, trying to change your body and how it’s not as simple as just eating less and working out. It has to do with letting go of that past pain and trauma that we’ve hold on to.

Drew:
And we tend to distract ourselves with unhealthy substances, and, you know, I don’t judge whether someone’s addicted to drugs or porn or food or alcohol. Whatever it is,

Christie:
Sugar.

Drew:
We all, yeah! Sugar. We all numb ourselves with some kind of substance and it just looks differently for each person. So if I could just help people raise their level of self-awareness to realize the connection between, “Okay, this trauma, when this stress happens, I’m triggered and I gravitate towards this food.” If I could be the observer of myself in that moment, instead of just reacting, now I can thoughtfully respond, instead of react, like a lot of us do because we’re not even aware that it’s happening. We just do it because we programmed our brain to do that. So it takes a lot of unlearning to become that and realize those connections and that level of self-awareness. And that’s where true transformation starts to happen.

Christie:
Yeah, it’s interesting too because I could see how this could apply to business as well. Like trying to change your business.

Drew:
Yep.

Christie:
So what, do you have some specific examples of maybe some of these emotional traumas or as one of my other guests, Dr. Don Wood said, “emotional concussions that people can have,” and how do you work through those? How do you help them get past it? Because, I mean, I’m sure it’s, I’m sure it’s similar. Change your body, change your business, right?

Drew:
Yeah. I could list off a few things that have really worked for me because I’ve gone through my own transformation. Not so much physically for me, I’ve kind of been in control of that my whole life, you know, being aware of that. But for me it was the emotional and Spiritual traumas that I had experienced, and getting through that, there was a list of things that really helped me almost rewire my neural pathways in my brain to think differently and to look at my situation from a totally different perspective. And that’s where you can start to change is shifting your perception of your situation. Not so much shifting your situation, but shifting your perception of the situation. So those things that have worked for me were, you know, and at first I thought they were weird.

Drew:
I thought, you know, I don’t know this stuff’s gonna help. I’m used to these X, Y, and Z things. And now I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and trying these new things. For me, that was therapy, you know? I wasn’t, I grew up in an era where therapy was looked at as, looked down upon like, “Oh, that was for crazy people or people with serious problems,” being open to, you know, a life coach, a therapist, meditation. And that was not open to that. I was taught that prayer was all you needed and all you need to do is pray and that will solve everything. And meditation’s weird and, you know, it doesn’t work, but that was open to meditation, positive affirmations. That was really powerful for me, even though it seems kind of corny saying positive things about yourself to yourself when no one else is around, but I promise you, it really, really changed my perception of myself.

Drew:
A gratitude list, journaling every single day, you know, going out in nature, being out in nature and doing these things that are a little bit out of people’s comfort zone. For me, you know, it really took me doing those things outside my comfort zone to see myself and my situation from a different perspective. And that’s what helped me grow and, you know, become who I am today, the authentic version of myself.

Christie:
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. And I agree with you on, on all those points. I’ve done a lot of different things too, to really open my mind and change perspectives. And the thing you said about prayer is so interesting because it’s like prayer is like talking and asking for things or expressing gratitude, but meditation’s the listening part.

Drew:
Exactly.

Christie:
It does not have to look like Buddha ohm-ing in a lotus position. You can be meditating as you’re walking, like,

Drew:
Yep.

Christie:
I think we just have a really, I mean, we’re taught how meditation’s supposed to look, but it’s not, it’s not really the truth. Meditation can bring on that alpha wave state in your brain so that you are more receptive to ideas popping in. You know, the greatest inventors and geniuses of our time definitely had time to reflect and think. They may not have called it a meditation, but that’s exactly what they were doing.

Drew:
Yeah. It can look differently for different people and there’s different approaches and it doesn’t have to be this weird woo woo thing that you think it is. I think the thing that I, that helped me be comfortable with it was noticing that kind of an uptick, or it was becoming more mainstream of people that I knew and respected. “Oh, that person meditates. Okay. That’s, that’s interesting.” And then it became more normal. It was more normalized. And then people started doing it from a scientific perspective and business perspective. And now it’s helped them as a business leader, as a business owner. And then also from a scientific perspective, like almost became this hacking thing. And now, there’s these, all these apps and you got celebrities like LeBron James, who promotes The Calm app and all these people are doing it now.

Drew:
It’s like, “Okay, now its kind of cool.” Like now we can, you know, look into this as an option instead of just saying, “Okay, well I don’t know how to do it therefore I’m not going to do it.” So, I think just being open to it, at least and seeing what it looks like for you and what the best practices for you, because you’re only going to do it if you feel some results from it and you feel something different from it and it feels somewhat comfortable. In the beginning it’s going to be uncomfortable. But you know, over time it’s just become a lifesaver.

Christie:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. For me too. It’s like breathing to me. If I don’t take that time to reflect and connect with myself and you know, my higher power, it’s, the day does not go as well. So, let’s talk about perfectionism and appearing perfect on the outside.

Drew:
So, oh go ahead.

Christie:
And this ties right into how we even started the conversation about authentic marketing, right?

Drew:
Yes. So I’ll give you a little bit about my backstory of how I’ve learned to break that cycle because the, my perception of the culture I grew up in, from the religion I grew up with and the way my family raised me and the way I was, you know, I perceive society was, “Hey, you know, we all have weaknesses, but I don’t know how to show them. I don’t know how to talk about them.” So from a very young age, I learn this pattern to hide my weaknesses because I felt like anytime I showed my weakness or sinned or did something bad, there was a punishment, right? Either from my parents or from my church leaders.

Drew:
And so as a kid, and not having a healthy outlet, I looked at those things as punishments. And so therefore I wanted to avoid punishment. So I stopped confessing my weaknesses because I didn’t want other people to feel badly about myself. And I didn’t want to feel badly about myself either. And so I would hide those weaknesses to kind of, you know, preserve myself and, and save myself from these punishments. And so from a very young age, I learned this vicious cycle of hiding those weaknesses. And that just became a habit over time because I was so worried about what other people thought of me because in the religion I grew up in, it felt like there’s a lot of pressure to be perfect. And if I wasn’t perfect, people are going to notice, you know?

Drew:
There’s, I’ll give a specific example in the religion I grew up in, there’s a bread and water to passed around. It’s called the sacrament. And as a young teenage kid, you know, you’re only supposed to partake of the sacrament if you’re “worthy” and if you aren’t worthy, it’s a sin to take of, to partake of it. But the problem is that, it’s passed around and the leaders of the church are in front of the church and you feel like they’re looking down on you. And for me I felt like, “Okay, I can’t have my parents know I’m not taking this,” because of course I’m a sinner and I don’t want my friends to see like, “Oh, Drew’s not taking the sacrament, that must mean this, this or this.”

Drew:
So I would just lie about it and just take it and feel so guilty and ashamed. And the shame just kind of became more powerful over time because the negative self-talk just was always inside. Like you are a failure. You are a failure over and over again because I would try and be perfect. I really would, but the mistakes and the sins just kept coming. And so I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to pretend they don’t exist.” And as a man, we’re taught to kind of man up, don’t talk about our feelings. Don’t talk about our emotions, just handle it and suppress our feelings. And eventually that broke me though. Eventually that broke me and to make a long story short, if anyone wants to go to listen to episode 100 of my podcast, it’s the most downloaded podcast out of all my podcasts that will give you more insight of what I’m talking about, but hitting rock bottom for me was going through my divorce, being found out about my weaknesses.

Drew:
And I thought the world was going to come crushing down on me at that time. And so it took me hitting rock bottom to finally learn, “Okay, I have, you know, I have nothing else to lose. Like I’ve, I’m at the lowest of lows in my life. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get out of this. Like what should I do?” And so I was open to therapy and life coaching and meditation at that time. So it’s a little bit about my story about letting go of perfectionism. I think for me, it eventually broke me. I think for everyone out there, it breaks them at some point in time. If they’re just suppressing, pretending, acting like those weaknesses don’t exist and they don’t have a healthy outlet to talk about their weaknesses.

Drew:
I feel like at some point in time, it’s eventually going to break you.

Christie:
Yeah, I totally agree. And I will put that link to the episode in the show notes for people

Drew:
Thank you.

Christie:
as well, if they want to check that out after this. So how do you now bring your full self to the world? You know, not hiding parts of yourself, but bringing your whole personality.

Drew:
Yeah. This was a journey for me because I don’t want people to think, “Oh, one day I woke up and then I was like, hey,

Christie:
It’s so not true. Right?

Drew:
Yeah! This was years and years of self development, working with professionals to help me release these old habits and these old programmings that I’ve grew up with. And so it took me years to get there. And you know, like I said, the first step was working with my life coach, who is, she does a Byron Katie’s The Work. And it was amazing for me to use her methods, to see myself from a different perspective. She was the first person that really taught me to learn how to love myself, despite my past. Despite everything I’d done in my past, the mistakes, my weaknesses, my sins. The problem is I saw myself as a failure because I had failed so much. And so I therefore, I was a failure.

Drew:
That was my identity. She was the first person to really teach me, to see myself from a different perspective and learn how to love myself. And once I developed that self-love, I saw my past self from a different perspective as well. And I realized that I am not my past. I get to choose if I am my past. Like if I want to define myself by my past and stay in that victim mentality, I can, but I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life, blaming other people for my mistakes, instead of owning my story, embracing vulnerability as a strength and you know, over years of also reading Renee Brown’s work, that really helped me let go of guilt and shame. And once I was able to own my story and for me, it took me coming public with it.

Drew:
And that’s what I’m talking about in episode 100, as I come public with why I got divorced. And that for me was being able to be authentic for the first time. And it was like a breath of fresh air, like a hundred pounds lifted off your back. Like, “Hey, this is me. This is how I’ve, this is where I was. This is who I was and why I was that way. And here’s what I’ve learned to help me get out of that and become who I really am.” Right? Because before I was just pretending to be someone that was perfect on the outside, but really didn’t know how to talk about my weaknesses and my struggles and I thought vulnerability was a weakness. And now having done all that work, years and years of it, now I’m in a place where I embraced vulnerability as a strength, so much so I’ve got a tattoo on my forearm that says “Vulnerability is Strength.”

Drew:
As a reminder to myself, to always embrace it as the strength, instead of see it as a weakness, and life is so much more freeing when you can be authentically you. You know, you’re not worried about what other people think of you. It’s so freeing to show up every single day and be like, “Look, this is me. I love myself. And this is who I am.” And when you come from a place of self-love versus self-hate, you start to see people differently too. You start to be less judgmental and you look, there’s less hate filled in your heart. And you start to look at people from a place of self-love, where you love them too. They’re a reflection of yourself. So that’s what people don’t realize. That’s why there’s so much hate going on in this world is because that people hate themselves.

Drew:
And when you hate yourself, you hate, you project that on other people, you hate in others what you see in yourself. And so, that’s why hurt people, hurt people, right? That’s why that vicious cycle continues until you break that cycle and you learn to love yourself, and then you start operating at a place of self-love and all your relationships will change. So that’s kind of been my journey through the years of how I’ve gotten there. Like I said, meditation, positive affirmations, gratitude lists, journal, life coach, books like Renee Brown and listen to podcasts have really helped me shift my perception.

Christie:
Yeah, that’s awesome, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s like the self-love piece. People throw that around like it’s so easy to do and it takes a lot of work and it is a key to everything because when you can lead with love, when you really love yourself, you can’t help but love others. And there’s a reason why all the world religions talk about love as the core tenant, you know? And there’s even, you know, a wise man that once said like, you know, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, if you really break that down, you really can’t love your neighbor anymore than you can love yourself.

Drew:
Yes. That’s so true.

Christie:
And so if you want to increase your capacity to love others, you’ve got to increase the capacity to love yourself, and love all of you—the shadow, the light, the weakness, the strength.

Drew:
Exactly, and that’s kind of where real transformation starts to happen. And that’s what I try and do with my business is tie the mental, emotional, spiritual piece in, as well as the physical because people think if they just transform their body and then get skinny and get that six pack, then they’ll love themselves. And then other people will love them. And so they think that’s going to solve all their problems. And then finally they’ll be happy. But guess what? I know a lot of people with a six pack abs that still are insecure, that still hate themselves. So that is not the key. It’s not this outside source of happiness that you’re chasing after, just like money or house or fame, we think that’s, what’s going to make us happy. But in reality, happiness comes from within and you could love yourself now where you are at being imperfect as you are, that’s totally fine.

Drew:
It’s possible to love yourself now while you continue to work on a better version of yourself and I 100% believe that as possible. The problem is that we have bought into this myth that these outside sources of, you know, quote unquote, “happiness will bring us happiness,” but I promise you it’s a myth. And sometimes it takes people finding that out. They get that body, they get that money and they realize I’m still unhappy.

Christie:
It’s so, so true. And I’ve experienced that as well. And I also think, you know, now during this time of this massive upheaval, I feel like if there is like one thing for people to work on, it would be to work on themselves to work on their self-love because, you’re right, I mean, it’s almost like there’s this paradigm shift that I see coming. It’s like we’ve been chasing all these external things, right? And not looking within, we’ve been looking for our answers externally and now we’re starting to see that the friend we thought had similar views doesn’t have the same views, or we see like the media kind of slipping up a little bit and not really telling us the full truth or we, you know, all these places like even Wikipedia sometimes does not have the right answers.

Christie:
You know, you can’t even verify it on Snopes anymore. So what do you do? You’ve got to look within, you’ve got to get in touch with yourself and your higher power like that higher intelligence, you know, that has all the answers, that wisdom part of you, and there, you can know the truth. You really can.

Drew:
Yeah. I believe that one hundred percent, and that’s the thing is, it takes a while to get there, right? This, we’re talking about something that maybe you and I have worked on, it’s just like working out. You have to put time and effort and make it a priority to be able to get there. You can’t just think, you know, just read one self-help book and that’ll help or listening to one podcast, and that will help. It’s becoming that. Like letting that become part of your lifestyle and that’s how it works with physical transformation too. People think, Oh, if I just go through the motions, do the exercise, and take the supplements, eat the food that my body will magically transform,” and yes, that’s a part of it. But if you want it to be a lifestyle, it has to become a part of you. Just like religion. Like if you want religion to transform your life, you can’t just show up and go through the motions.

Drew:
You actually have to live it inside, outside all the time, and then becomes a part of you. And then that’s where your perception starts to change, and that’s where you’re like, “Wow!” You look back at yourself. You’re like, “Wow, now I’ve seen some real change in my life!” It’s because you’ve made it a priority, and you know, it’s hard. We live in a society of convenience. We want the quick fix. We want the magic pill. We want like, what’s the shortcut? Like I don’t want to deal with that work. So we have to shift our perception of that, of doing hard work and doing hard things in order to transform ourselves. If there’s something that we don’t like about ourselves, ask yourself why? Why don’t you like this about yourself? And, is it about just changing that one thing?

Drew:
And most of the time it’s not. It’s about becoming or unbecoming, you know, who you’re really supposed to be. And we think it’s “Oh, once I get to the top of the mountain or once I achieve this or that, then I will be happy. Then I’ll love myself.” But before you know it, life’s passed you by and you’ve hated yourself your whole life. And that’s sad. So many people have gone through that.

Christie:
Yeah, and a lot of times too, when you’re so focused on picking up on yourself or beating yourself up about this or that, you’re not really that present to those around you. So again, it’s like, yeah, I agree. It’s not a quick fix. It is. But you know, if you really want to grow your business or grow your impact or feel like you have a bigger purpose, like, I like how you put it. It’s unlearning all these other things that you think you were, or you think you had to do and learning who you truly are, so you can become that.

Christie:
It’s the whole “Be,” “Do,” “Have” paradigm. You’ve heard of that, right?

Drew:
Yeah, yeah.

Christie:
Do you want to explain it real quick for people who may not have?

Drew:
No, no, no, no. I don’t feel like I’m professional explaining. You can go ahead. Yeah.

Christie:
The thing is, most people think it’s “I have to be.” Like if I have these things, then I will do these things. Like if I have a million dollars in my bank account, then I must be a good business person and they have it backwards. You know, if you act from the perspective of, maybe you can even think about it as your future self, you know, if you can’t really think of yourself as, “Oh,” you know, “I am” just fill in the blank, its like an affirmation. Like, “I am a creative” or “I am innovative.” Okay. So what does an innovative person do? Or what do they have? You know? Well, an innovative person has great ideas! They have solutions from seemingly impossible problems.

Christie:
You know? They have creations all day long, you know. That’s what a person being that does and has. Right? And by default they’re gonna have clients that come to them for those solutions. So that’s just an example. But it’s like in networking meetings, when people ask you, “What do you do?” It’s usually the first question.

Drew:
Yeah.

Christie:
And I think that’s like, that’s just proof of what I’m saying that people have it backwards. They think it’s “Do,” “Be,” “Have”. So yeah, it’s, the “Being” comes first, and we’re talking about unlearning the being that we thought we’ve been. Becoming something that you actually are, that you’re, you are born to be, that you actually are at soul level.

Drew:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. And this is what I see in my industry all the time, with health and fitness is, you know, people focus so much on the results and they weigh their success or value based off of the results that they give. They get the results and they’re successful and they made it. If they don’t get the results, they’re a failure and they still beat themselves up over that. What I’ve learned, what I’ve noticed is when people just focus on the process and fall in love with the process, and they do the process because the process makes them feel good. It feels good to eat healthy. It feels good to exercise. It feels good to move your body and have a healthy body. It feels good if you do it for that and you fall in love with the process, the results take care of themselves over time. Right? But when you focus on the results only, and you hate the process and you just do the process because you have to, to get the results, then it never becomes a lifestyle change.

Drew:
It’s just become something like, “Ugh, I hate this, but I got to do it anyways,” versus learning to love the process. Shift your perception of your situation, shift your perception of the process. Learn to fall in love with the process. Switch it up, change it up, if you need to. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. Like you see on Instagram. It could look however you want to, especially with eating food and diets and exercise, like there’s so many different ways of doing it. Find one that is rewarding to you, or that you actually enjoy doing. And then before you know it, the results eventually come. So we kind of have it backwards. Though it’s hard to teach people that because they want the instant results, you know?

Christie:
Yeah, they want the magic pill. It’s even true in business. It’s like, you hire hoping they’re gonna solve all of your problems. And you know, a lot of times, that’s not the case, you know? You’ve gotta have other things in place or you’ve gotta realize it’s a journey. It’s a process, and there’s, Prince once said, “It took me years to become an overnight success.”

Drew:
Yeah. It’s so true.

Christie:
So yeah. Well, good. Well, this has been awesome. Why don’t you go ahead and tell people how they can get a hold of you, learn more about what your business is, where to find your podcast and then go ahead and finish this off on a final thought.

Drew:
Yeah, thank you for letting me do that. So my brand is Fit to Fat to Fit. I’ll say this slow. So it’s Fit number 2, the number two, and then Fat the number 2 Fit dot com Fit2Fat2Fit.com that’s my website. That’s my first book. It’s all my social media handles, it’s my podcast. So just Google that you’ll find everything you need, all my programs. My second book’s Complete Keto. But if you go to Fit2Fat2Fit.com, you’ll find all of that. And then I think going along with the theme of this whole podcast that we’ve kind of touched on and I’ve mentioned it in the podcast is, is learning to operate at a place of self-love versus self-hate. Like, life is way too short to be at war with yourself. Before you know it, life passes you by.

Drew:
And so the first step in all of this, is just the belief that you are worthy to try. You are worthy to just try your best. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about figuring it all out. It’s just about first having that desire or that inner self-worth that you are worthy to keep fighting for what you want. Right? And I want everyone listening to know that they are worthy because I can’t convince you that you are. You can’t convince them that they are. No one can convince someone that they’re worthy. They truly have to believe that from within. And that’s where real change will eventually start because then, once you believe you’re worthy, you’re like, “Okay, I’m worthy enough to try therapy.”

Drew:
“I’m worthy enough to try, maybe walking 10 minutes every day.” “I’m worthy enough to try getting up 10 minutes earlier and journaling and meditating.” And once you believe that you are worthy of having those things that you desire, that’s where you start to put it in the work to eventually change. And before you know it, you look back two years later, three years later, four years later, you’re like, “Wow, look at who I’ve become. Even though I couldn’t see the change day to day, look at who I become over the years.” And that’s what I would say to everyone out there listening. And that’s, I think, it’s a good way to end the podcast.