Health is more than looking good with Zach Pello

Zach: People have to start where they're at and be okay with taking small steps. It does truly add up over time. the only way to get to where you want to be is the process.

Tiffany: I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder, and this is Scared Confident. When I first was beginning to export this journey of scare confidence.

This realization that every single week, our house turns on there's five areas that have to be solved for the house, the kids, food, laundry, and the last one is yourself. You've got to make sure that intentionally before you go into the week that you're making sure you're planning time for yourself. And one of those ways that I'm doing that right now is I go to the gym and I lift two days a week with Zach Palo.

And his team has been really helpful as I've really put myself back to. Like Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, had a baby. As I put myself back together, the work that Zach has done and his team have helped me on that journey has been so helpful. And I'm still very much in the first few innings of this, but he's a personal trainer has been coaching women in particular for a really long time.

And a me continue to learn from him as I'm continuing my health and aging journey. I want to do that well and share that conversation with my listeners. Zach. Thanks for

Zach: joining me. Well, I really appreciate you having me on.

Tiffany: Let's start with just giving some background on use act like how'd you get into fitness.

What's that story? I don't even know all of it actually.

Zach: Yeah. You know, I, I can look back. I would say there was a moment when I was about 11, 10, 11 years old. I started to skateboard. Going back that far. And I, I got really addicted to progress and that high I would get when I would improve and that, uh, directly went into sports and seeing that progress.

And then it went to exercise. My senior year, we started exercising, lifting weights. And so at that point in time, I wanted to be an architect of all things. I wanted to be an artist, but I realized that I liked working with people and I liked helping people. So I looking through the. Ball state the book have different degrees that they had.

I saw exercise science and it just stood out. It was like, that is what I'm doing. So I started school exercise science and my old science teacher started a personal training. And so my freshman year, I actually got to start training people in 2003, which was awesome because now I'm at, you know, 19 years of experience.

And I, I feel like I just got really lucky falling into it like that. And over the years, you know, it was one of those things where doing personal training, you get to work with different people. You know, you get to work with men, women, people over 70. Teenagers everyone. But over time you do start to develop kind of, you start to see what type of person you draw at, what type of person fulfills you as a person.

And that's kind of where I got to where I am now today. You know, it's primarily working with women in the weight room and helping them adjust their nutrition in a scientific approach yet something that's practical that they can stick to.

Tiffany: So a couple of things that. Attractive to me about working with you was one that you understood women in the postpartum journey.

Like your body is so different. And like, my head sees myself as my like strong unpregnant self, but that was not the starting point in my body. And the second is that this is like, this is your career. This is not a side hustle for you. Like, this is what you do. This is what you think about, this is what you study.

This is what you do. So what, what made you. I think a commit to it for this long. Cause I don't know, a lot of people have been trainers for 20 plus years raising a family, all of those kinds of things. And then as you settled on primarily working with women, what was peculiar or attractive to you about kind of that segment of the market?

Zach: Yeah. You know, I've been always a person who I would say I get a little bit addicted. To certain things. And I feel like it luckily landed in a very productive area of life, you know, growing a business and helping people. And I really put a lot of my life into that. And there were times early on, of course, where I questioned it, maybe when business was not as busy.

And it was early on the first 10 years where it was a struggle, I thought about being maybe a fireman or joining the military again, doing some sort of service of some sort. But luckily I, I really, I just stuck to. I had actually tested the fire, the fire department and I didn't make it. So I was like, all right, let's shift focus here.

I'm not as serious about that as I am this. So I kept pushing and sure enough, it has really worked out. And it's something that I can talk about everyday with people even outside of work. I mean, sure. You get a little burned out of it, but it's something I truly love, uh, in terms of working with women over the years, I noticed.

Differences between men and women. And for men, I'd say more often than not. I felt like they were less coachable and this isn't always the case. Of course, it just felt that way with women. I feel like they respect the process. They believe it's challenging because it is challenging, but they want to learn.

They want to figure it out. And so I feel like I get more fulfilled helping women through. And I'm very empathetic to their situations. You know, I'm a guy, so I can't totally sympathize, but I can put myself in their shoes and imagine what they're going through throughout their life, whether it's having kids and the struggle of fat loss is so big and the pressure from social media and all this stuff that just makes them feel bad about themselves.

And it just makes me sick to my stomach that they have to feel that way. And I get so much value and I feel so fulfilled. When I'm helping women realize, you know, that they're, they're awesome. That they're great. That they're powerful that they've, they've done this. They've had kids they've, you know, accomplished so much in their life, you know, and sometimes they go under appreciated for how much they do above and beyond.

That's behind the scenes.

Tiffany: One of the things that I've also heard is this idea of like habit building. I've been really clear about my brain naturally thinks in extremes. And so my high achiever type a personality wanted to say, Hey, I'm going to spend two hours in the gym five days a week. Make me perfect. Fast. That is the like natural narrative in my head that doesn't fit my life.

It didn't fit the strength of my body at the time that was like impractical. And so I have in my, I think as I'm a touring beginning to better understand the wisdom and like habit layering and habit building, and I told myself, success looks like going two days a week for a year. It wasn't going to let myself.

Quit or pull back for a year. That was my goal. That's what success looked like, because your brain talks you out of all kinds of things. It's like, it's kind of a long drive for me. Like 6:00 AM comes early. Like when you're up too late the night before a kid is sick, like there's all kinds of circumstantial things that you can pull back from it.

But I was like, I can do two days. For a year.

So as you've worked with women for a long time and just been in this space and even in your own life, let's talk a little bit about habit building and, and how that works for people.

Zach: Yeah, that's such a great point. And it's one of the, I would say the foundational things to success with everything in life, whether it's business or, you know, your nutrition or exercise.

The biggest thing with, with habits I would say is we're only as good as our worst at our worst. Like we're only as good as the habits we keep. So for the most part, if it's something you won't be able to sustain. You're always going to fall back to where you were. So knowing that it's important to set realistic expectations on habits, because what happens is if you feel like failure, when you're trying to create new habits, you're not going to continue.

You're going to fall. You have to set up a habit. That is something that's doable, something that's reasonable for you, but pushes you outside of your box. Just a little. But enough to wear it. You see you're taking steps forward, but you can stick to it and you could feel successful. That's how you're going to build habits.

And I think the biggest thing is, you know, I look at it, there's these foundational habits for your fitness and health and as name, a few of these, but most people when they think of habits or diets or whatever, they think of removal, these foundational habits are more by including. And inclusion is a much easier habit to build than exclusion.

So focusing on how many servings of fruits and vegetables you eat a day, right? Like for the rest of your life, you're probably going to eat fruits and vegetables. The question is how many, so again, we're not removing, we're just working on like, what is your base fruit and vegetable habit? What's your base water drinking habit.

What's your base sleep habit. Right? So if we can focus more on those and less on trying to woman stop eating this or that. Like, that's usually not as much of a sustainable habit as the other ones. Again, the habits are the key to long-term success. You know, we could do something for 12 weeks, but the real question is, you know, are you going to sustain that?

Tiffany: What's the residue left in your life from the effort? And I honestly it's like, so. Obvious when you say it out loud, but when you're in a place of like pain internally, like where you're not happy with yourself, my mind, at least like it goes buzzard. And I remember when we first started working together this time, I was like, you know, there's keto, there's paleo intermittent fasting.

And I was like, which one should I do to get results? And your answer was irritating and the right one, which was, well, what one can you stick with? Or which one do you think you'll like in my personal. At the beginning of a journey is like, it doesn't matter if I like it or not just make me do it. And you're like, but I know that that won't leave residue in your life.

Like I know that that won't be sustainable. The other thing I recall you saying, which maybe you say this a lot, I don't know is you said, I decided at some point to become obsessed with moderation. Yes. So explain that. Cause it's, it's a disruptive thing

Zach: to say. Cause I typically have a, I would say. I get hyper-focused on things.

So I'm very obsessed and I'll want to do things perfectly and do really well with them. But you can also be really obsessed about doing everything within reason. So you can look at successes in that way, too. Some good examples. Like again, I, I look at the process and I asked myself, can I stick to this?

And can I get just a one, 1% improvement? Because those 1% improvements again, moderation, right? Make a big difference. 30 extra minutes of sleep a night is almost, it's like 20, some extra days of nights of sleep throughout the year. A hundred calories, less of food per day is roughly say 10 pounds a year.

So, you know, you've got these small changes. That if the stack a lot of those on top of each other over time, you get massive change. And that's what I mean by moderation, right? Like focus on the moderation and the small changes. Cause they do add up. I mean, it's okay if we, we go and push really hard for 12 weeks, that's fine too.

But I encourage people to be like, okay, no, that this is not sustainable. Recognize it. And then ask yourself, what can you take from that? That would be, you know, quote unquote moderation in your life. It's something you can implement longterm.

Tiffany: As I've gotten older, understanding this idea of getting my life to a place where it's sustainable is really the true secret to life.

And it's not just with food and like sort of binge and purge. Moments in life. You can do that with quality time where you're bingeing and purging that with your family. It can be bingeing and purging even like spiritually, like w where you're, but you're not at a place where is sustainable. And then, like you say, like the increments are building towards a life and an outcome that.

Why do you think, is it your obsessive personality and my need for achievement that drives that? Or do you think that societal, do you see that across your clients, this struggle with an adherence to being moderate?

Zach: I think that's actually pretty common. I do think that it's built in our society. You can't be mediocre or something like we always have to strive for more.

We always have to push further. But the question is why, why, like, why do we need more of this? Why do we need to lose weight? Why do we need to do this or that? You know? And I think you have to ask yourself, is it pressure that you're getting external? You know, you're doing things or is it truly something that you want?

But I think that it's pretty common across the board. I usually have to help my clients take a step back pretty often because they do get ahead of themselves and I do it too. I think the big key is if we can smooth out some of the peaks and valleys. We're going to be doing really well. Instead of having these extreme highs, extreme lows, we're always going to have them including myself, but can we make those a little bit less so

Tiffany: on confident we talk about the role fear plays in our life and our experiences.

How do you see fear? Play out and either the gym or even in people's kind of wellness.

Zach: Yeah. I think there's a lot of fear, especially at the gym for women and again, being empathetic towards it because I, I do see it sometimes and I can get it, you know, there's some gymtimidation as some will call it, but.

When I talk to women, they're afraid of being judged, of course, which is one of the first things that would have come to my mind. I can understand that. And then also, sometimes women are worried that men will bother them in the gym, which is a definite concern, which I've actually seen, could be an issue occasionally.

And so I do hear about those situations because I do work with a lot of women where they feel uncomfortable. And so it's so important. For them to find a gym or an area with the community. That's very supportive and respectful at the same time, but, you know, and then of course getting hurt is another one.

Sometimes people are worried about, you know, hurting their back or their knee or their shoulder, and then also gaining too much muscle or getting too bulky and surprisingly. From men a lot lately, too. Oh, interesting. That's usually not been the case over the years until the last, I would say five years.

I've gotten a lot more of that for men and actually a little bit less from women, but I still think that that is still a sticking point for a lot of women. They really are worried about getting bulky from lifting weights.

Tiffany: So I, I told myself this one time, I was like, oh my word, Tiffany. Cause sometimes I'll think that too.

I just. A hundred pounds and bench pressing. And I was like, oh brother, why do I even need to do that? And I was like, you know what, I'm probably not going to roll out of bed one morning and suddenly just have. There's massive body. You'll be fine. But I think people picture that as like pop by mind. Like you're gonna drink this spinach in your body,

Zach: like poop.

Exactly. It's like, it doesn't happen that way. I understand the fear because you know, you see some of this stuff out there, you see some of the bodybuilders that are way on the extreme end of things. And you don't really know what they're doing to get there, but you see that. And it scares people off from lifting weights.

People assume that they got there just because of weight lifting weights or lifting weights, but it might've been either things. It's also how they're eating. It's also that they're, you know, they're spending 24 7 focus on trying to build muscle. That's all they're trying to do. And you look around the gym and most of the people have been lifting for a lot of years there.

They're not huge or massive in, especially the women. Very rarely. Very rarely. There's a very small percentage chance that someone might have that good genetics, like a less than 1% chance. And we have to look at like fat and muscle. If you look at the size of five pounds of fat, next to five pounds of muscle, five pounds of fat takes up a lot more space than five pounds of muscle.

And so if you even stay the same weight over the course of a year, but you added in weightlifting. And you've built five pounds of muscle lost five pounds of fat. You're the same weight. You'd actually be smaller, not bigger. So I always have to remind people that like, if you replace the fat with muscle, you're going to be smaller.

I don't know how he ties up to, and it's going to be in the places you want it, you know, you don't build a bunch of muscle around your waist when you lose weight is sometimes you'll lose. And your butt, it's amazing. Lose shaping your arms. So the muscles, what keeps a shape there for you?

Tiffany: So let's talk about nutrition, cause you mentioned that a little bit.

I feel like the adage I would pull on as it relates to nutrition is that you can't out, out, work out a bad diet. I've heard that. And the other is that 80%. Is in the kitchen and 20% of us in the gym. So are those true? Is that how you see it play out? How do, how do we need to think

Zach: about, yeah, it's a little bit nuanced and it's always like, it depends, right?

Uh, everybody's a little bit different. They're going to respond differently to exercise, but if we're talking fat loss, so there's some theories out there where like, if we burn 800 calories and exercise that day, our resting metabolism will decrease or. Uh, extra movement outside or network out will actually go down or a total calorie burn for the day.

We'll actually be lowered, not necessarily lower than normal, but it's going to try to compensate for the extra 800 calories burned. And this is pretty darn common and the studies are showing it so that 800 calories at the end of the day, my only end up netting 300 calories. So, right. So then on top of it, the extra food you might eat because you're hungry because there is a response to like intense exercise and hunger many times.

So a lot of times people will eat a little bit more and they'll move a little bit less throughout the day. So it's a net even. Bernie body fat actually, which is crazy to think, you know? And so when, when people are putting all this effort into exercise and they're just killing themselves in the gym, expecting this result, when in reality, they just spend hour to try to burn 800 calories, which netted 300, by the end of the day, 300 calories you can eat in a matter of two minutes.

Yes, that's the problem, right? True. I mean, it's crazy. You know, I had these, uh, these like fig bars, they're like a hundred calories each. I had four of them in five minutes and I'm like, wow. As 400 cars that is consumed in five minutes, that is not good for, you know, what I'm going for or whatever. So that's really where the problem is.

It's easier to eat 400 calories less than it is to exercise, to burn 400 calories. Right. And I think that's why. We need to put more, a little bit more of the focus on the nutrition side of things, and then find an exercise amount, not for calorie burn, but for health building strength, building muscle, improving your car, you health, adding to your life, adding to your health longevity.

Tiffany: For me, the idea of exercising for health and longevity honestly came into view. Having a baby at 40, I started to realize if I want to see her, when she's 40, I have to live to be 80 like that. If I want to see her at 60, I have to live to be a hundred. Like if she has a baby, when I had a baby, I could become a grandma to her when, when I'm 80 years old.

And I started to see time in a different way and exercise as part of my vitality about sweating, being good for my skin about muscle growth, being part of. My body being able to stand itself, you know, for a long time, all those kinds of things. And I remember about six months in, we took her on a stroller ride.

She's terrible in the stroller. And we were like a mile and a half away and she wanted to be carried back and I carried her the whole way and it was not a big deal. I was like, I just carried her for a mile and a half without my back hurting or needing. And I started to realize this is about functionally being able to live my life.

In my forties in a way where I'm physically strong for what it needs, when that means carrying a 25 pound baby for a mile and a half. And so I feel like for the first time, it really is becoming about for me and for my life and for vitality.

Zach: The foundational habits stick, just like the foundational exercise should stick. Long-term the foundational stuff is what improves your longevity, right? The, the 12 week restriction stuff is, is gonna change how you look, but it won't necessarily have a large impact long-term for you unless you keep some of those habits.

Right. But I think that, that the big thing, especially for women weightlifting is bone density. And the other cool thing that people don't realize is that weightlifting. Cardio health as well. It helps reduce blood pressure, cholesterol, improve insulin sensitivity. And you know, we have to remember this stuff like, especially strength and muscle is directly tied to how longevity and all cause mortality in Inc, including step counts, even just being active, like just taking walks and things like that.

It shows that up to 10,000 steps a day, you get all cause mortality is reduced. So it goes to show that these foundational things are going to help you long-term if you can keep up with them. So what do the words

Tiffany: all cause mortality mean I'm not

Zach: familiar with just like, basically from my understanding.

Yeah. death, death, everything. So death from heart attack, death from car wreck, everything. Right? So people who are more active, they step more, they just have a lower percent chance. And so that's why it's important to get this stuff in your life and plan for it being there for the rest of your life.

Because eating one week of a ton of vegetables is gonna have very little impact the rest of your life. Eating some vegetables every day for the rest of your life will have a huge impact. So it's not about the intensity. It's more about the duration.

Tiffany: So if I were to look at like the two dashboards in my health journey, the first dashboard.

Fitness exercise to me that dashboard has like four knobs on it. If I look over at my dashboard, that is my nutrition dashboard. I see like 400 knobs. Like it's way more confusing to me about where to start, how to fight increments. And part of it is that like for me, exercise is contained. To the hours of the day when nobody else is awake.

And so I can do it and focus. And it's like in my control, nutrition happens the other, whatever, 16 hours I'm awake. So it's like in the chaos of distractions and life and everything else,

I don't really even know what my question is, but how do I, how do I. Begin the journey of they're not being 400 knobs because it's basically like, I just don't know where it is. Good question.

Zach: So over the years, I think as you get more knowledge, you learn what to prioritize and what not to prioritize.

Right? So if we're looking for fat loss is one thing. Overall health is another thing. So we have a couple of things going on there that we have to figure out what we're trying to do. Right. If we're looking for long-term health, total calorie balance is the number one important. Followed closely by food quality.

So if we look at it that way, we have to make sure we're maintaining a healthy body weight above all still like that's one of the largest, uh, factors for most disease is maintaining a good, healthy body weight. But right after that really close is going to be food quality. So if we look at food quality and ominous going to be like, oh, if I had to give you just one thing to focus on, it would be fruits and vegetable servings.

Right then followed probably next would be protein intake because protein is a great tool for helping regulate body weight, because it keeps you fuller. It's one of the, it's the most satiating macronutrient. And also it actually burns the most calories when consumed too. So I'm broken down, but you know, you have to know these priorities, right?

So in terms for fat loss, we're looking at that then I would say again, calories. Total's first. I would think about if you got that in check and your body's a relatively healthy weight, and then you're looking at protein intake and then you're looking at like fruits, vegetables, and food quality. But most people, what I would recommend is if your goal is as long-term health, you know, then it would be.

Probably starting out with fruits and vegetables and working on just that one habit in first tracking. And I do this with my clients and we probably did it before where we track, how many fruits and vegetables you get a day for a week or two. And then we, we look at like, okay, on the days that you had five or six servings, what went well that day?

And how can we repeat that? And actually having assessment every week or every two weeks for yourself, if you don't have a coach, you know, actually check in with yourself, have a check-in day where you check in on yourself for a few things and see what your progress is. And then. You can set the goals for the next week.

If you're trying to build habits, no matter what you're trying to build, you do have to check in with yourself on this, because if you just say, I'm going to eat more vegetables and you just hope it happens, it's not going to happen. You gotta be like, okay, on Sunday, starting on tomorrow on Sunday, you're going to say, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna shoot for four servings of fruits and vegetables a day in total.

So I'm going to do that by doing X, Y, and Z. You know, I'm going to bring some veggies as a snack to work. I'm going to have an apple after lunch. Something along those lines. And then at the end of the week, say on Sunday again, you're going to come through and you say, okay, how did that go? Did I hit my target most days of the week?

If not, how can I change it? And if so, can I improve it? But it's really hard to do that with 10 different things. You need to minimize it to one or two things, right? So like I said, having a priority list, get things like, you know, again, fruits and vegetable. Your protein intake, your water intake, sleep. You know, I can name off maybe six.

I would say our high priority items. And in of those six, you would pick one or two that you want to improve. What's going to make you feel good. Like you're doing something good for your health.

Tiffany: You've talked about too, about this idea of minimums becoming a flywheel for success. That was really helpful for me when I was overwhelmed.

Feeling 25 pounds, overweight being kind of annoyed that I was doing this again for the fourth time, trying to get back into my. And it's just overwhelming. You're nursing. You've got kids, all that kind of stuff. So talk about this idea of minimums and how that kind of creates this flywheel of feeling successful,

Zach: setting minimums.

It's a really important thing where, of course, there's times we can push really hard and do extra workouts and, and really be awesome on our nutrition, all this stuff, but we never, people never set minimums of like, well, what can you do when things are really busy? What can you do when. You know, everything is a fan and you just can't stick to that program.

You always revert to your base habits. Well, what are your base habits? You know, th those are your, your minimum habits. I want you to name them. You know, how many fruits and vegetables per day are you going to eat? No matter what, like what's your priority, your minimum. And then you can have those times where you're trying to bring that.

And you're trying to see how many fruits and vegetables you can get, but you always want to know, like, I'm at least going to do this. And with exercise, like personally, like right now, I'm working out five days a week, which is a lot for me, but my minimum is probably three. So if I have a really bad week, I'll feel good about myself.

If I do at least three, I'm not going to beat myself up. So as long as you get your minimum set, you know, that's a goal where, you know, sometimes we feel guilty. If we don't hit our top goal. But it's important to give yourself a range. And even if you get the bottom of the range, that's still going to carry you through the rest of your life as going to add value to the rest of your life.

So what, you know, how many times a week are you going to exercise? Long-term how many steps are you going to get? Or how much water you drink? How much hours of sleep are you going to get? You know, and, and set that minimum for yourself. That's attainable like 95% of the time. So even if you don't have a great day of improving.

You hit your minimum and that's okay if you take a week of just doing minimums, if you're busy and you know, the kids are just going crazy and the house is a disaster and you're just pulling your hair out, just revert back to the minimum and you have to be willing to do that and not beat yourself up for that.

It's easy

Tiffany: for, it's helpful for me sometimes to take these principles and apply them to other areas of my life, where it's already happening to prove to myself it can be done. So. Okay. Take the idea of like minimums with personal hygiene. Like literally like every day, no matter what is happening, I brush my teeth.

No, that is a minimum. Every single, no matter where it is a minimum, I don't even pay attention to it anymore. It's just happening. For me every day, single day, no matter what I've take shower, doesn't matter. And I don't even see them as behaviors anymore because they're such unconscious habits. And I think that's my desire with some of these other things.

When they're in your consciousness, it feels so big. Like quote unquote, having. I have five servings of vegetables, but it's not a habit yet. It's not in an unconscious place where it just happens as part of my behavior, but as a bene Cheever in other areas a hundred percent. So that is encouraging to me when I think about it, that way, that when it is in your consciousness all the time, it becomes all this micro decision-making.

That's a big intellectual load, but when you get it into. Literal habits.

Zach: Yeah. That's such a big topic. I recently had a realization. Someone had told me and you don't know how many times I hear this, but I'm all or nothing. I'm like, I think everybody kind of is to a degree. Right? Like we, I think we all want to say we're all or nothing on things, but then I brought up, I brought that exact thing up.

I said, yeah, your all or nothing on certain things. Right? Like you. You take a shower, right? You, you drink liquid every day, right? You, you don't like to stop drinking liquid. You don't stop eating. You don't stop taking showers. So in those areas, you're not all or nothing. Right? So it's a, it's a mindset.

There's something different. There's something different there. Like we have to eat food, right? We have to wear exercise. Oh, it's okay. If I push that off a day. So it's not it's it's, uh, it's a decision. Yeah. And there was a, there is a book I read, I can't remember it, but it was a, it's like an important thing, but it's not urgent, right?

Like, exercise is important, but not urgent. It's okay. If you push off a day. So people apply important things that are not urgent into the all or nothing category and things that are important, but. Like drinking liquid that they obviously they're going to do. But I think we have to reframe our mind just a little bit and understand that, you know, one day a pushing exercise off becomes two days becomes two years.

Well, I think, I think

Tiffany: we all know those people who have found a way to take exercise into their habits and we kind of villainize them sometimes socially, like you're so crazy. Like you're so extreme, like, oh, like I know. Probably in a way to make ourselves feel better about the fact that we're phoning it in ourselves, but there's an interesting.

There's an interesting component there. That's probably a different podcast,

Zach: but well, you had mentioned earlier, uh, we, before we did the podcast, uh, today is talking about minimizing some of the load of all the other things a little bit, right? Like you have to you'll have so much energy. I I'd say like you have a motivation, willpower, discipline gas tank, so to speak, and we add new things to it.

It drains it quicker and it always feels back up, but it fills up at a slow. Okay. So, uh, habits take less of that gas tank than newly formed habits. Right. And I think the key is, is to minimize, you know, the, the drain of that gas tank. So for me as an example, you know, I, where I literally have 15 of the same t-shirt.

That I wear to work every day. I've got like six pairs of the same joggers. I wear a, you know, with my eating, my eating is so regimented, not at dinner or dessert. I have super flexible there, but like breakfast and lunch, I do a lot of convenient foods. I keep life as simple as possible to reduce the load on my gas tank.

And so I think that some people, when they are, it seems like they're doing all these things. Sometimes you don't realize what they're sacrificing to or what they're cutting back on to get there.

Tiffany: Any other advice you want to be sure that people listening thing, if they're early in this journey, something,

Zach: the biggest thing is as a coach, I've learned that people have to start where they're at and be okay with taking small steps.

It does truly add up over time. And the thing is. Is the only way to get to where you want to be is the process. So we can focus on this really strong outcome goal. I want to lose 30 pounds, but the thing is, if you focus on that, a lot of times you're gonna be disappointed. So set your goal. That's great, but kind of push it aside and then just focus on improving the actual process goal.

The actions improve the actions over time. That's the outcome you should be looking for, because that will also give you the, the outcome that you want, you know, visibly, physically health wise. So again, just focus on the improvement, get obsessed with the improvement of your habits. And again, push aside what you want for the outcome, but you know, what direction you want to go.

Of course, that's really.

Tiffany: Zach, if someone was interested in engaging you or your team and you don't just have to be in Indianapolis, you support people virtually as well. How could they get in touch with you or find you?

Zach: You can either go to my Instagram page Palo fitness, or you can email me at Zack pillow, P E L L.

At gmail.com. Uh, just shoot me a message on there and I'll get back to you. And Zach Z a

Tiffany: C H Z a C H pelo fitness, P E L L. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.

So what else is on your mind? Text me 3, 1 6. 3 5 0 8 9 2 1 3 1 7 3 5 0 8 9 2 1. And be sure to follow along on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening today.

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