Marianne Kane  00:05

Hi everyone. I'm here today to chat with Josh Hillis. Josh and I have been, I guess, chatting behind the scenes for I don't know, feels like several months and we were originally going to like just be well, it's kind of going to be a chit chat but at first it was just that hey, we have a lot of overlap here and this the types of things that we're doing for people, and I thought well why don't we turn it into more of a interview type thing, so I'm going to quiz Josh from you guys.  You guys have provided really good questions, and I also have a topic discussion that we will have more of a cultural - I don't know how to describe it - but just a general feeling in the in the world of fitness, weight, body image... it sort of overlaps into everything, health and fat loss. And we want to cover that at the end. So stay tuned. We've got some really good questions, But first of all, let's introduce Josh. And Josh, I'm really not really good. I know you've written 2 or 3 books?

Josh Hillis  01:25

No no, no if you go with published books it's two, but add a couple ebooks that were pretty big also, um, yeah,

Marianne Kane  01:37

tell us a little bit about you.

Josh Hillis  01:41

So, my name is Josh. I've been a personal trainer since 2004. And I started off real early in kind of like the kettlebell world, and thought that I was going to be training like Jiu Jitsu fighters (I did jujitsu at the time), but I ended up training all clients that that were interested in weight loss. And so I got really interested in what makes that work. And that got me into nutrition and exploring a bunch of diets and realizing that like, individual diets didn't matter, and then having people calorie count and track and being like, Okay, this works really well for some people, but like, not most people, and why is that, and then that got me to habits, and wrote my first book, "Fat Loss Happens on Monday" kind of like about trying to have people keep a food journal, and then like, pull habits out of that. Um, and then that put me in touch with some people who were like, Hey, you know, like, a lot of we were talking about, like, kind of touching on psychology. So went back school for psychology, worked with a registered dietician for a while, who was really into like hunger and fullness cues learned about that. Um, and that's kind of where I'm at now. Is is whatever Really into right now is looking at the the psychology of emotional eating, basically. Right? So like, like in a meta level, it's like behavior change, and how do we do things that matter to us even when it's hard? And like specifically, like emotional eating is a really neat way to look at that. Because it's, it's very, very clear.

Marianne Kane  03:27

It's kind of I don't know, it feels like a messy area. I like how you follow kind of your interests and discover, like curiosity, like, yeah, take you places, and that's the best. I think that's the best way to do things to be honest.

Josh Hillis  03:47

Well, and also it was one of the things were like, what I was curious about was like, why am I not helping more people? You know, like, like, when I started with diets, I was like, oh, wow, I can help a sliver of people. You know, and then when I expanded out a little bit like food drilling and behavior, it's like, Okay, I'm helping more but like what you know? And so it kept going like, like, what am I missing that I can only help? And I feel like this is sort of like the overarching problem with the fitness industry is I feel like the fitness industry is like really dialed in on like helping, like the easy ones are like, let's optimize for the people that can already do it. And so my curiosity is, right. And so my curiosity has always been like, what would it take to help the people that the fitness industry doesn't typically help? Yeah. I think

Marianne Kane  04:34

that's where overlap is like people are left behind or left on the sidelines. Like, I think I don't know if you've noticed, I've like a lot of people internalize that and think it's their fault, because they can't seem to get it to work for them. And unfortunately, it's just the way the game set. Yeah, for certain people.

Josh Hillis  04:57

Yeah, they've probably had trainers that blamed them. Yeah for like, you know, like, like they weren't given really adequate tools. And then the trainer that they had blamed them for not doing well with the inadequate tools that that trainer provided them. Right. So like, I think part of the reason they've that it's so common to internalize it is because they've they've literally been taught to internalize it. They've been taught that it's their fault. Yeah, um, my stance, of course, is that it's a skills gap.

Marianne Kane  05:24

Okay, yeah, I can see why I can see why that is. And I also i'm curious, like, as I see it, like, before we get into questions, okay. Yeah, I can see it like what you're talking about. I see it in terms of the exercise stuff. And it's almost like, so I was redoing my one of my homepage, and I was just talking about that. As you enter into the health and fitness world for whatever reason, the premise you enter into your with, is that you're broken and you need something to fix you or complete you... and then whatever (you'll be happy). Yeah, unfortunately, it's never enough because that's not the problem. People are equipped themselves and it's a coach or trainers job to be a guide to help them tap into those things. I think that's just from my own background, but I'm not into like, I'm not majoring in psychology or anything but I

Josh Hillis  06:31

I think that's genius. Like that. That's so like the meta problem is that like, like you said, the underlying premise is that is that you're broken is that there's something wrong with you. And, you can see how that's like pervasive in everything. You can see how like trainers are taught to sell that way. Like that's, that's the way most marketing is designed, like you're broken. We'll fix you. That's Cool,

Marianne Kane  07:00

kind of disturbing in the same time, what bugs me, you were probably in the diet world in the same way. But for me, it's whenever people are harping on about people being dysfunctional. You're dysfunctional. If you don't, you're gonna, you're gonna get whatever. And it's like, well, people just like, yeah, is therapy movement is good. Anyway, I....

Josh Hillis  07:25

No, it's true, though, right? Like, I'm, like, I'm in a couple Facebook groups of trainers. And and like, there's so much conversation over, like, how do I fix this broken client? And like, what what can I let them do? You know, and, um, and there's very few of us have like, you and I that are like, maybe let's just find movements that they can do and do those.

Marianne Kane  07:53

That's it, it's not create any negative associations with anything in particular, just try Yeah, speak about the positives of moving your back. Or Yeah, like, so like, do you know Travis Pollen?

Josh Hillis  08:09

Yeah, love him, Yeah,

Marianne Kane  08:10

He's done a whole load of fitness memes just tackling these problems that people believe, these beliefs in myths and things.

Josh Hillis  08:20

Okay, crazy parallel there, right? We're basically taught in that way that like our bodies are super fragile, right? Like don't do one thing wrong or you'll break it. And I feel like there's a there's a parallel to nutrition where people are taught like that, that nutrition is super fragile, like you do one thing wrong and you've blown everything, you know, like as if, as if anything on either side was that fragile, is it just isn't effective. It's just it just really, really, really isn't effective.

Marianne Kane  08:57

yet so much stress. It's like this all or nothing or zero-sum mentality? Like if you did like a half, I always talk about this one half if you only did half the work, but it feels like for many people, that's only half the results. Like, yeah, because what is a whole workout anyway?  There are many levels to this, Right.  We'll get into a question, because they're great questions. I'm sure they'll result in great answers. And so Lori from my "fitness after life happened" group, says that she is "fascinated by the process that regular exercisers used to keep themselves going. How do they rejig motivation? So that once the initial philosophy ends, they keep going and I guess like, maybe I'll touch on the second point. Yeah. Do you feel okay? Yes to commented right. After that and said, Oh, I also find the tie in with behavioral economics really interesting in relation to behavior change. I often I've often wondered why the nudge theory developed by Richard Thaler might apply to promoting physical activity.

Josh Hillis  10:22

Okay, so um, so I'll start at nudging and work backwards. Um, so feeling oh no nudging is this idea of like, let's set things up to make it easier to do the right thing versus the wrong thing. Right. That's like the whole level. That's underlying concept. And there's some really neat applications of it. The EU has a cool program called the magic program where they've got like multidisciplinary experts in obesity that are looking at like different ways to like, like nudge and University of Edinburgh had a really cool course based on that, that I took. But what was interesting about like taking that course, and looking at how like multifactorial that there's they're specifically looking at obesity, but just looking at how big and complex and issue it is. And I feel like it was kind of like an interesting paradox to this idea that there's this like, really simple solution. Right.

And, um, I think that, I think that there are things we can pull from that that are that are super useful.  Like, it is easier to self regulate, you know, really delicious foods, if there aren't like sitting out on the counter where they're easy to see. Right? That's, that's useful, right? That's like that's like the people that work in companies, whether they use like a magic philosophy, a lot of them will have like, they'll have like, you go into the break room, and there's fruit out on the counter, and there's no cookie like cookies and brownies in the cupboard. That's fine. That's, that's great. It's useful. And it's, it's nowhere near enough. It's like not even on the same planet as like dealing my perspective of like, what we might want to look at. Um, we just like, again, I typically help and what I like studying what I like to work with his people are dealing with like stress eating, and emotional eating. And if you are eating the cookies to manage the stress of having your boss yell at you, or because you're procrastinating on a project, it's not gonna matter if it's on the on the counter, or if it's in the cupboard, right, because that's your, that's your coping tool. And unless we have other coping tools, then those things are nice, but they're they're insufficient, right? So um,  

So that gets into the bigger thing of, she was asking about motivation. And what we want to look at with motivation. I'm a huge fan of self determination theory which which puts motivate And I'm going to simplify it in four levels. And select the lowest level would be like reward and punishment. The next lowest level would be like guilt and contingent self esteem. The next level would be like personally identified person identified goals, which is really tough, which is what you want to talk about later. And then the last one is personally identified values, like the kind of person you want to be the kind of character strengths you want to have. Like that.

And so the the basic problem that most people have, is there using either like reward and punishment, or like guilt and continue self esteem like I feel good about myself. If I workout I feel bad about myself. I don't, I need to punish myself. If I eat that thing I feel good about you know, like that kind of stuff. It just isn't very robust. It's a it's a really delicate it that's a fragile form of motivation. Yeah.

Whereas like the flip side is, the kind of person you want to be like, do your values is extraordinarily robust, right? Like, a lot of my clients are parents, they want to be a good parent, they've got a pretty, they've got a pretty good idea of like what it means for them to be a good parent. They want to be that kind of parent, on a good day and on a bad day. Whereas, like, if you're just doing reward and punishment, if you're having a bad day that that's probably not enough.

Marianne Kane  14:31

And even just the sound of it, like what kind of person do you want to be? Like? inspiring, almost like you kind of just feel like, I wonder even just when you're describing those levels, I'm like, Wow, I've probably, you know, I've done more or less, all of those and I think only when I became a parent did I start thinking about the person I want to be? And really just that's cool, aligning it with those values, like With fitness I don't do it with everything. Yeah. Fitness because it was something that I think you know, you're stuck in that cycle to all you know the reward punishment or good that's a good that's a strong one. Yeah, then the negative  So, I guess in my follow up I would have I guess relating to her first question is how do you help somebody move towards being more motivated by the person that they want to be?

Josh Hillis  15:35

Great question um so first they want to spend some time reflecting on what that is right and I usually start clients off with like a values list and you can google values list and probably a million will come out like Brene Brown's got a really good one and it's just and but it's it's just that it's easy to like circle words, you know, to get started, but eventually you Want to move that into like, more of like a narrative thing, and sometimes clients will actually start with like writing out the kind of person they want to be. But we want to get out there is we want to get at like, not what's another goal, but like, what is the character strength? Do I want to be self compassionate? Do I want to be conscientious? Do I want to be strong? Do I want to be connected?

You know, we want to try and figure out like some, a few simple things that we can actually use in the moment as a decision making tool, right? So if I've got if I've got conscientious and self compassionate, let's just say I've got those two, then if I'm, if I've got a tough decision, I can actually use that in the moment and say, like, what's the self compassionate route to go? What's the conscientious route to go, you know, and I can kind of work with that.  And then we want to look at how do we be with all of the normal feelings that humans have. And, you know, like, it's normal to feel tired, it's normal to feel sad, it's normal to feel frustrated, it's normal to feel worried. It's normal to feel, you know, like, like all these things where you might say, like, I would work out today, if I wasn't frustrated, I would work out today if I wasn't stressed out at work, if I wasn't tired. Um, but and then and then.

And then we can get like really specific to like, how do we take self compassion and apply it to working out? Like, okay, so I'm in this position, it's the end of my work day, I've got a bunch of stuff on my to do list.  Like when I get home, I'm stressed out, I feel kind of overwhelmed. I've got these feelings. I recognize that it's normal to have those feelings with all the all the stuff that I've got going on. What is the most self compassionate thing to do? And I might say like, okay, self compassion is doing what matters to me, even when it's hard and uncomfortable, right? So it's self compassionate to go To the to go and start my workout. Right. And so, so going and starting my workout self compassionate. And then let's say 10 minutes in, I feel great. And I'm like, I'm gonna rock. Cool. But let's say I get 10 minutes in, it's like, you know what I'm super beat. And like, I feel horrible, then actually self compassionate thing is probably to call it.

And so there's, there's so the the the final thing of this is that we're taking these values and the values are flexible in the context of the situation that you're in. Right? So it was self compassion to go and start but like, depending on, like how much physical energy you have that day, and like, I mean, some days I'm so beat where I'm like, I might get hurt if I keep working out. Right?

Marianne Kane  18:49

Is it was it's hard to in a moment to have that conversation sometimes with yourself, isn't it too Yeah, fair enough. I guess practice practice over time, like you get better at it. But I know it's myself is what usually happens is, it'll get I'll be going to bed and I'll be like, dammit. I was gonna do whatever I can Yeah, I'm like, then I'm already going to bed so I'm super, super tired. So I'm like, try just tomorrow, but I don't really make a proper plan. And I don't be so I'm like not proactive. Yeah. So how do you help people be more proactive?

Josh Hillis  19:39

So every week we build an obstacle planning every single week, like most of what a coaching conversation is, I shouldn't say most of it. An important part of, of coaching conversation to me, is obstacle planning. So, um, where that comes from two places, either we look at last week and we say like, hey, Like you're you wanted to do this, but like something else came up. And so let's create an if then plan. So if that happens, then what are you going to do differently? The other way we can look at it is look at your schedule next week, what's coming up next week? And like, how do you plan for how do you create an F then plan for the things that are like likely to come up. And the thing that's really neat about the research on that is that you don't even have to follow the plan that you came up with. The act of recognizing obstacles, makes you more effective and flexible in the moment. So a lot of times my clients will come up with a plan and like half the time they'll follow the plan they came up with half the time they'll do something else. But it was still something like more values driven and what they would normally do even if it wasn't you know, cuz like sometimes, again, like in context, they realize like, hey, that the plan that came up with Doesn't make as much sense as this.

Marianne Kane  21:02

Gave me an idea. I definitely think I should incorporate some of that into Equipped with Strength, because I do have a plan B concept. A sort of built in backup and almost planning for if this happens next week, then this is what Yeah. And so just to make that more concrete, this is something that will really help move you along that, you know, over those obstacles or prepare for them. And so just you're building in that ability, just to Yeah, and even if like you said, like, you didn't do it, like your exact plan, I suppose like it gives you that creative practice to sort of think outside the usual track.

Josh Hillis  21:55

Yeah. And that's one of the things we're like, it's super individual. Really, it is one of those things where like, Oh, I got to that moment and, I wasn't able to follow that plan. Okay, maybe we need a better plan. Maybe the plan wasn't realistic, maybe, you know, or I actually have a lot of clients that will they'll come up with like two or three plans. They'll be like, I'll do one of these three things. But, um, but I love that you have Plan B built in anyway, because you're already teaching people flexibility. Right? They're already getting that and, for real flexibility is robustness. And it's what has things endure. 

You know, cuz life happens.

Marianne Kane  22:42

Yeah, it definitely happens. And you have to be able to zoom out and see the big picture. And in this moment in time, if even if I don't do my plan, it doesn't matter in the big picture. If I am fine next week. week after that.  It's something I'm glad that I had struggled the last couple years of trying to be consistent again when life happens. Yeah, it's really useful skill to have.

Josh Hillis  23:15

Yeah.

Marianne Kane  23:17

So I want to move on to another question. Well, there's what Yeah, we'll go for the first question from Elizabeth first. So Elizabeth, who's a member of Equipped with Strength asked, "I'm not trying to lose, happy to maintain but I've been helped by the approach of Gillian Riley. I wonder if she knows her work.

Josh Hillis  23:42

I don't, I don't.

Marianne Kane  23:45

"well, she. She treats overeating as addictive desire, uses knowledge of neurophysiology in her approach to overcome t