Every Habit Is a Vote: Atomic Habits for Fitness After 40

Nikkiey: What's up, WarriorBabe? Hey, everybody. Nikkiey here, and welcome to our Sunday WarriorBabe Evolution Rally Call. I am super excited to be here with you guys and to be talking about this topic tonight. It's near and dear to my heart right now. It's something that I've been sharing in my VIP program. It's something I've talked about in and out on my Blueprint calls, and I'm reading the book right now, Atomic Habits, and I highly recommend that you guys get this book and start reading it for yourself.

It's a lot of the same verbiage that I share, have shared for years, and that's why when I started reading, I was like, oh my God, it resonates on a whole bigger level. So it would help if you guys also read it too, because it will resonate with you. Things you've probably heard me say previously will just hit home when you're reading this book. So I'm excited to bring this topic to you guys tonight. Like I said, it's something I've been talking about, and I think it's really important how he frames it up, and how I'm going to share it with you guys right now.

We're going to start in just a few minutes. Go leave a comment in the Facebook group right now, in the Evolution group, to let them know that this call is getting started. Let them know we're here live. These rally calls have been getting a low attendance rate because we've been in and out on a weekly basis, and then not many people are tuning in. So it would be really helpful if you guys went into the Facebook group and just commented. All you have to say is rally call is live.

Because there's so much value that gets dropped on here. I may not talk about tactics with workouts and macros, because you literally have those. You just have to put them into action, and it's usually the mindset you're in on a daily basis that's stopping you from taking those actions and using those macros and those workouts. So that's why I do a lot of the mindset stuff, because it can make a huge difference in the goals that you're striving for and that you're looking to accomplish.

If you have your mindset in check, your body will follow. Tactics will follow. All right? So go tell the Facebook group. We're going to get started in just a few seconds on this topic. If you guys are new to WarriorBabe, welcome. I'm super excited that you're here. We do these calls every single Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Make sure you guys mark your calendars and set your alarms. You're showing up here. You're plugging in. It helps so much that you continue to keep plugging in, especially if WarriorBabe is new to you and you haven't been a part of it. It's fire that you immerse yourself in it so you can get used to my language, get used to the way I'm talking, get used to my tough love. It will help you in your goals and what you're trying to accomplish, right?

Cool. So let's fire off with tonight's topic. It's something that I have talked about before. I've done rally calls on it probably two years ago or a year and a half ago. It's one of my favorite things to talk about, but the way this guy talks about it in the book is fire. So I'm going to correlate my verbiage and also his verbiage into tonight's rally call.

So the topic is: who are you becoming? Who are you becoming? It's something I've talked about before. It's something that you guys should always be asking yourselves. It's not who you are right now. You're working to become a better version of that person, right? And it's not who you were yesterday. It's not who you were on Thanksgiving. It's not who you were last week. It's who are you becoming? And every single action that you take on a daily basis is a vote for the type of person that you wish to become.

No single instance will transform your beliefs, okay? Because I tell you to eat carbs and you go eat carbs doesn't mean that you've just transformed your beliefs around carbs. Because I tell you to stop doing cardio and you stop doing cardio for a week doesn't mean that you've transformed your beliefs around cardio. No single instance will transform your beliefs. But as you keep eating those carbs on a weekly basis, as you keep killing your cardio habits, as those votes build up, right? As the votes build up towards carbs, as the votes build up towards food, as votes tally up towards less cardio, there's evidence of who you are becoming, a new you, a newer identity of who you are becoming.

And this is the one reason why meaningful change doesn't require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of who you are becoming. Any change is meaningful. That is actually big. That's the paradox of making small improvements. I talk about this all the time. It's not the goal that you're striving for.

It's the systems. I talked about this on previous rally calls. It's the consistency. It's tracking your macros. It's drinking enough water. It's getting enough sleep. It's doing your daily workouts. It's hitting your cardio for the week. Those are the small improvements that can make a big difference. And if your change is meaningful to you, that's actually huge. If you're eating more carbs, that's actually huge. If you're doing less cardio, that's actually huge. You're breaking belief systems. But no single instance will change your belief.

But as you keep adding up these votes towards that belief of who you are becoming, how that person would act, and I'll get to that in a second, then you're building up this new you. You're building up things that support that new you. These small improvements, these habits, are the path to changing your identity. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do. Let me say this again. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.

Each time you guys start a workout, you are fit. Each time you guys track your macros, you are fit. Each time you guys play in MyFitnessPal, the systems that get you the results, you are fit. Each habit not only gets you results, but it also teaches you something far more important, and that's to trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things.

As you start doing the tracking, right, some of you guys are so resistant at the beginning to tracking macros because it's something that you've never done. So it's easy for you to not do it, and then you're always going to get the same result. But each time you put the time and effort into tracking and you hit those plus or minus five in macros, you trust yourself a little bit more. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things. You start to look at yourself in a different way, like, hey, I can do this, instead of I can't do this when you haven't even tried it.

And when those votes add up and the evidence starts to change, the story that you tell yourself begins to change as well. The I can't changes to I can. And listen up, it can also work the opposite way too. Every time you choose to perform a bad habit... let me bring this one in because it's a holiday week. Whoever got out the next day and went and killed themselves doing cardio, or felt like they had to spend two hours inside the gym, that's a fucking bad habit. Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it's a vote for that type of identity. It's a vote towards the old you, right? Whoever is eating less and killing themselves with cardio over the past couple of days, that's a vote for your old identity. You don't want that, right? That's why you're here inside of WarriorBabe.

Every time you choose to perform a bad habit that doesn't support the person that you want to become, that's a vote for that old identity. Now, listen, you don't have to be perfect. I don't expect you to be perfect. Your goal is to win the majority of the time. But the joke's on you if you keep casting the same votes you've always cast. You're just going to get the same results you've always had. If you're choosing to perform bad habits, you're going to get the same results you've always had. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.

I hope that's hammering home. So there are two things that you should do and two things you should take away from this call right now. Oh, somebody just joined. You just missed the good stuff. You're going to want to re-listen to this. Two things to take away from this call and what you need to do moving forward. Number one, decide the type of person that you want to be. Number two, prove it to yourself with those small wins that I just talked about. So first of all, decide who you want to be. Ask yourself, who are you becoming? I'll talk about that in a second.

And then prove it to yourself, because the more that you embed the habits that support the goal you're striving for, the more you trust yourself. You start to believe you can actually accomplish these things. So prove it to yourself by making and doing these small wins. I talk about tracking as a small win. Playing in MyFitnessPal, yes, it's going to be time-consuming in the beginning. Yes, it's going to freaking take time. But your goals take time.

How serious are you about it? That's a small win. It may take 30 minutes at first, but I can guarantee you, being in my position, you can get it down to three minutes. You just have to get better at it. But that's a small win that will get you towards your goal. Doing less cardio is a small win that will get you towards your goal. Prove it to yourself by following through and actually doing these things. You will trust yourself a little bit more.

So, a question for you: who do you want to be? Who do you wish to become? What are the results you want to have with your body? Now ask yourself, who is the type of person that can get the outcome that I want? Who is the type of person that could lose 40 pounds?

I'll tell you this. Inside my VIP program, a babe who is tremendously amazing has lost more than 75 pounds in the last seven months, as of her last check-in. She's around 78 pounds. And I can tell you she's been consistent. And she's got four kids, two sets of twins under the age of four. Two sets of twins under the age of four. She's got a badass career. She's got a husband. She's got a family. And she's lost 75 pounds. She doesn't realize she's doing this, but she's asked herself, who is that person who's at 200 pounds? How is that person going to act? And what does she have to do to go from 314 pounds to 200 pounds?

She's got to be consistent. She has to have good time management. She has to have priorities. She has to plan her workouts ahead of time. She has to plan her food ahead of time. She works out. She eats healthy. Those are the systems that you have to get in place for the results that you want to accomplish. That's how she's gotten 75 pounds down.

It's important to let the principles, standards and behaviors of who you want to become drive the loop rather than your results. Think about who you want to become, and then envision that person. What is that person actually doing?

When I first started my journey, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew that my end goal, who I was becoming, was someone who had to get their nutrition in check for sure and had to start working out a hell of a lot differently than running every single freaking day. That I knew for sure after finally finding the truth. I knew that all of that had to change, and that was who I wanted to become, so I had to start putting those things into action. Those are my standards. Those are my behaviors of who I want to become.

Those drove the loop. They drove my actions rather than my results. The standards and the behaviors of who I wanted to become drove the loop rather than the results. That should be the same exact vote for you. The focus should always be on becoming the type of person, not getting a particular outcome. The second you start focusing on your goals, you pull your happiness away from you. You need to focus on the systems that are going to get you to the result that you want to accomplish.

So ask yourself, who's that person that's going to lose the weight or that's going to build the muscle? And what are you not doing now that you know you should be doing? Stop shitting all over yourself, take the action and create these habits. Then you do that and you're going to trust yourself more.

All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that rally call, because that was probably one of my favorite ones thus far. Go let the Facebook group know that we just dropped a fire rally call and that they're going to want to listen to the recording when it's up live. Now, take what I just said, you guys, and assess it all. Ask yourself these serious questions and figure out what you need to change. And then do it. All right. Cool. Have a great rest of your evening. Crush it this week. Game face back on. And I'll see you guys on Wednesday for our Q&A. Bye, everyone.