How to ACTUALLY WIN the New Year | DFIO Ep.248

Dieting From The Inside Out
Dec 26, 2022
9 min read

Updated: Oct 5, 2023

About This Episode:

Welcome back! I am PUMPED for this episode.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a solo episode and as we head into Christmas I thought this was the perfect time to sit down and talk about how to win in the New Year.

I’m tired of seeing people live the same life year after year or start off strong in January just to fall off before the end of the month.

I think it’s really important to have this end-of-the-year talk, so let’s get into it!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro

01:52 Sponsors

04:38 Intro to winning the New Year

05:43 Reflections

17:15 Intention Setting

29:01 Things to Know & Wrap Your Head Around Before the New Year Starts

32:14 Wrap-up and how to apply for coaching

Transcript (click to expand)

Intro to Winning the New Year:

I have this episode broken down into the following sections:

Reflections
Intention Setting
Things to Know & Wrap Your Head Around Before the New Year Starts

I broke the episode down this way because we can’t make better decisions for the next year unless we understand what happened this past year.

In addition to that, in the world of goal setting, we need to sit down and understand how to appropriately set goals and intentions.

Lastly, we have to get your expectations in a good place.

Reflections:

Reflection is part of the thinking process—we’re asking and answering our own questions. In the world of reflecting, question number one you have to ask yourself is: What went well?

You have to understand that the quality of the solutions you get will be based on the quality of the questions you ask yourself. So, especially going into the New Year, ask yourself: what went well this past year?

Identifying what went well in 2022 will allow you to do more of those things.

Perhaps you were more consistent—or maybe you hit rock bottom, but are now actually resolved to change your life. Write down what went well so you have momentum with that. We need momentum going into the new year.

Question number two is the antagonist to that: Where did you fall short? What didn’t go well?

These questions are really super simple. I’m the King of Simplicity. We have to get the answers we need and the questions don’t have to be crazy complicated to accomplish that.

Did you do well with your consistency in nutrition, but sucked when it came to training? Did you do well when things were okay, but when life threw you a curveball and things got stressful did you lose it? Did you start your inner work but then sabotage during the year? Where did you fall short?

You have to ask yourself these questions from a very emotionally neutral place—we’re looking for high levels of equanimity with this. You do not want to go into these reflections with your emotions all over the place.

Depending on what didn’t go well we might need to put more focus on those parts.

Don’t go into 2023 with the idea of raising your ceiling. Your best days are already good enough. We want to make your worst days a little bit better.

I want you to think of it as raising your floor. We don’t want your life to be like an adult roller coaster with huge, high highs and super horrible lows—we want this to be moderate like a kiddie roller coaster.

Question number three: Knowing what you know now, what you have gathered from questions one and two? What would you do differently?

If we reset to 8-12 months ago, what would you do differently?

For me and my weight loss goals, I would have focused more. Where I fell short was, at certain times during the year, I got distracted. I got overwhelmed and I didn’t focus as much.

There are a few areas where I did not have enough self-care and my mental bandwidth didn’t last. I got burned out. I should have put more things in place to prevent that mental exhaustion.

So, those are a couple of things for me based on what I did and didn’t do well. Now I want you to do the same thing for yourself.

Question number four—this is a very black-and-white answer: Did you do what you said you’d do?

This is two-sided. From the outcomes that you set—like losing weight, going on this trip, getting your nutrition in check, whatever goal you set—did you do it? Yes or no?

Then, why or why not?

We have to bring massive amounts of awareness to our ability to do the things we said we would do.

If I fell short on my goals, I need to get clear on why it didn't happen and where it went south. That's a spot I need to work on.

Again, we are doing this emotionlessly—no remorse or regret.

We are doing this very logically:

“Did I accomplish the goal I set out?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I set the goal too high.”

or “I had this family issue come up.”

Is it something like that or did you just give up?

Perhaps you set your goal and made your plan based on your best days, not your worst days—or maybe you tried to do it all yourself for the tenth year in a row.

We have to look at, “did I accomplish the goals I wanted to?” but we also have to look at the action standpoint: “did I do the things I said I wanted?”

Ignorance is bliss and if you don’t look at these things honestly, you can’t course-correct.

The final question you need to ask yourself while reflecting is: What do I need to let go of?

I have been talking to some clients in our group about this.

I would argue that a lot of people need to let go of the speed of things and the actual outcome itself. We need to let go of, “I need to lose weight right now.” We need to let go of the weight loss and put the actions into place to lose the weight—and let the weight loss happen when it’s supposed to.

Do we need to let go of perfectionism? Do we need to let go of old mentalities and identities that have held us back?

These past 12 days, I did Jared’s 12 Days of Christmas—and in addition to 12 days of giveaways, I did 12 days of training about identities and how to become the version of yourself that gets and accomplishes the things that you want.

A big part of identity is learning to let go because you can’t get new results using old software.

To recap:

What went well?
Where did you fall short?
What would you do differently in knowing what you know now?
Did you do what you said you would do? Why or why not?
What do you need to let go of?

If you go into the new year being the same you—holding on to the same old bullshit—you will not accomplish anything. You will relive the same shitty year over and over again.

This is why we have to look at patterns.

As coaches, we are always looking at people’s patterns. Your patterns are going to try to live through and keep coming at you, so you have to be aware to make real changes.

Intention setting:

I use the word intention, but it could be goals—I don’t have a problem with that terminology.

Often during this time of the year, you will see people go crazy goal setting or you’ll see people actually talk shit about setting goals, saying things like, “statistically most New Year’s resolutions don't work,” or saying they don’t believe in setting goals every year.

I don’t hang out with those kinds of people, because they’re usually stagnant and are often unhappy.

Right around now, you have to be really careful who you listen to in the world of achievement.

I’ll be honest, there are a lot of people who have never gotten the things you want, but will tell you how to get them.

I know a lot of broke people who are telling me how to make money. You are going to hear a lot of fat and overweight people telling you how to get fit. A lot of unhappy people will try to tell you how to find happiness.

It’s a very treacherous road and you have to be careful because there are a lot of people—very often friends and family, who are well-intentioned—that you are going to need to keep out of your head.

Sometimes you have to take the things that your loved ones tell you with a grain of salt because it’s really not good advice.

Ask yourself, if someone is trying to give you advice on weight loss or money, would you want to trade lives with them in this area? If the answer is no, then you probably shouldn’t take advice from them.

Anyway, back to intention setting.

Number one, what do you intend to do in the new year?

This can be what you want to happen and what action-based goals you have.

If you do not know what you want, nothing else matters.

If you do not know what you want, not only can no one else satisfy you, but you can’t satisfy yourself. Get crystal clear on what you want.

You can set your goals at any time—it can be your birthday, the new year, or whenever the right time for you is. Don’t be afraid to change your goals from previous years. Get clear about what you want.

A lot of times we get attached to our old goals, which is why we need to really think about this.

Number two: Why is this year going to be different?

This is a really difficult question, especially if you have been struggling year after year.

We ask our coaching clients this question, “how will this time be different?”

If you can’t tell me why this year is going to be different, then it won’t be.

There is a saying that goes, “I can not hear your words because your actions are too loud.”

Number three: Where do you always fall short and where are you going to course-correct?

This feeds off of our reflection. Where do you foresee yourself falling short and how will you course-correct?

So, if this happens, what are you going to do? Answering this ensures you are prepared when that thing happens. This is how we get ahead of ourselves.

Another saying I love is, “stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.”

Lastly, number four: we have to reverse engineer it.

I am all about setting big, crazy goals that stretch yourself, but it ultimately comes down to our actions. We cannot control our outcomes, but we can control our actions.

Set the goal you want to set, but before you start executing, reverse engineer it so you know exactly what you have to do.

For example, if your goal is to save $10,000 this year—well, how often do you get paid? How much do you need to set aside each paycheck?

$10,000/12 months = ~$833.33 per month.

If you don’t have $833 of extra income each month, what do we need to downsize?

Do we need to quit going out?

Cancel subscriptions we don’t need?

Reverse engineer the goal to something you can do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis and audit those.

That is how we crush goals.

If your goal is weight loss, what do you have to do to accomplish that?

You need to fix your relationship with food and get into a consistent deficit.

How do we fix your relationship with food?

For some, we stop demonizing certain foods. We bring your calories up to get your metabolism on track, etc.

Your relationship with food is fixed. Now what?

We start losing weight.

You want to lose a pound a week? We’ll start at half a pound a week.

What do you need to do to achieve that? How many calories, how many workouts, etc.?

If you reverse engineer your goals, you evolve your goal into actions—you can check boxes.

You cannot control outcomes, but you can control actions—and action, ironically, leads to outcomes.

You may find that you are happy losing 30 lbs as opposed to 50 lbs.

To recap intention setting:

What do you intend on doing going into the New Year?
Why is this year going to be different?
Where do you always fall short and where are you going to course correct?
Reverse engineer it
1. We can only control actions not outcomes

Things to Know & Wrap Your Head Around Before the New Year Starts:

Our last section today is things to know and wrap your head around.

Number one: you won’t want to show up.

Right now you’re fired up, but you need to make sure you make the decision now to keep showing up for yourself—even when you don’t want to.

Put a plan in place so that when you don’t want to show up for yourself, you can keep yourself on track.

Number two—which we touched on earlier: if you can’t explain how this year will be different, it won’t be.

Number three: understand that you're going to unconsciously gravitate toward what’s most familiar.

Most people gravitate toward:

Laziness
Giving up
Quitting
Mediocrity

Expect those.

You have to be ready when those things hit you. Our minds and our physiology will gravitate toward what is familiar.

To recap:

You won’t want to show up
If you can’t explain how this year will be different it won’t be
You're unconsciously going to gravitate to what’s most familiar
1. Laziness
2. Giving up
3. Quitting
4. Mediocrity
5. You need to expect those to happen

Now, you have a game plan.

If you are sitting here and still don’t know how to tackle these things yourself—that’s where coaching comes in.

The point of this isn’t to make this a big coaching push, but if you don’t know how to go about doing these things, that is why we have our coaching program.

So, if you want: