Make Weight Loss SUSTAINABLE ft. Carter Good | Dieting from the Inside Out Ep.238

Dieting From The Inside Out
Oct 18, 2022
7 min read

Updated: Oct 5, 2023

In this episode, we have a very special guest episode—and a very good friend of mine—Carter Good.

Carter has been coaching for about the same amount of time as me, but before he started coaching, Carter had his own weight loss journey, losing over 140lbs on his own.

One of the most interesting things about Carter is that he lives his life in a way that is not super conducive to fat loss. He travels, goes to music festivals, and has managed to keep his weight off for over five years.

I wanted to have Carter on the show because I know he will have a lot of great information on not only how to have your own transformation, but how to live your best life and maintain that transformation sustainably.

Often, after we lose weight, we find ourselves trapped because we're afraid we won't keep it off. We stop going out and having fun, but it doesn't need to be that way—and Carter is a prime example of this.

I know you'll enjoy and get a lot out of the variety of topics we cover in today's episode.

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:03) – Our sponsors

(03:58) – About today's episode

(06:13) – Catching up with Carter

(09:20) – About Carter Good

(11:47) – Expectations and mindset

(16:09) – Balancing lifestyle and weight loss

(28:07) – Boundaries, habit change, and intercommunication

(35:08) – Honesty with yourself and changing your goals

(49:08) – Where to find Carter

(50:27) – Closing thoughts and how to sign up for coaching

Transcription (click to open)

Episode Synopsis

About Carter:

Carter runs an online fitness coaching company. He got started on Instagram, creating free content. He and Jared have very similar messages and approaches to fitness.

Carter first got into fitness when he was 17. He weighed over 300lbs and lost more than 140lbs. Unfortunately, when he first lost weight, he was on an unsustainable, restrictive system. Realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to maintain his weight loss, Carter dove into his own research and discovered flexible dieting, and wanted to share that with others, leading him to start coaching around 2017.

Today, Carter has had a lot of changes, especially in business—choosing a direction for his business and how to scale.

Expectations and Mindset:

When it comes to coaching, Carter has his clients consider their ideal outcomes—who they want to be, how they incorporate exercise, how their relationships with food is, etc. Having his clients paint this dream outcome better allows them to work toward their goals in a way that sets the client up for success, and gives Carter the opportunity to prepare them for the length of their weight loss journey.

Carter finds that there are certain mindset shifts that need to happen—no matter the amount of weight that someone has to lose—and that part of what people struggle with is the idea that weight loss is a byproduct of taking better care of themselves—eating better, looking better, and feeling better.

He also finds that clients who have a lower amount of weight to lose, like 20lbs, can have a harder time letting go of the idea that the weight is the problem as opposed to those who have a significant amount to lose, like 120lbs, since the person who has more weight to lose health and/or enjoyment of life is often negatively impacted by their weight.

Jared similarly notes that his clients who have further to go are often coming from a place of just wanting to feel better.

Balancing Lifestyle and Weight Loss/Maintenance:

Going back to expectation setting, Carter knows that with his lifestyle, being able to go out to eat, drink alcohol, travel, and generally enjoy his life, he won’t be able to be as optimal from a physique standpoint.

For a time, Carter believed he needed to be in the best shape, but he came to realize that he could be 15lbs heavier, be in a healthy body weight range, and do the things he wants to. He didn’t need to be as lean as possible to be happy and successful.

Carter is also a big fan of rules. He knows that if he is going out to eat, he can set himself up for success beforehand by doing things like working out ahead of time or taking a fasting-type approach.

Carter also understands that one of the reasons he got to 300lbs was simply accessibility—keeping food in the house.

A simple solution for him is to not keep certain foods around that he knows he does not have good skills of moderation with. If he does want a particular food, he will buy a small package, have it, and then it's done.

The goal is to create an environment where you can be successful, especially knowing that he has those times where he just goes out and doesn’t worry about his food.

None of these foods are bad. Knowing yourself, knowing what you can be moderate with, and fostering the right environment for yourself is key to success.

Snack foods are hyper-palatable, and another approach he finds useful is to mentally label certain food items as belonging to someone else. For example, he and his girlfriend both love potato chips. His girlfriend can eat a few chips and be satisfied, whereas Carter is likely to eat the whole bag. So, when there are chips in the house, they are “his girlfriend’s potato chips” and he does not eat them because they don’t “belong” to him.

Having honest conversations with your spouse or significant other, and establishing those rules—or if you have kids, simply labeling those snack foods as belonging to your kids—is a viable tactic.

As Carter points out, the goal is to understand what you’re good at and double down on it, as well as understand what you’re not as good at, and find ways to limit the impact of those things.

Boundaries:

Carter believes that giving yourself some grace surrounding these habit changes is integral to your journey.

Habit change is hard and, while in some situations a lack of motivation may be a factor, oftentimes you just need to have an honest conversation with yourself about whether or not you are in the right place to make the necessary sacrifices to accomplish your goals.

If you are in a place where you can make these changes, creating accountability and discipline with another person can be immensely helpful to keep you on track. Coaching is just one example of how you can do this. You can also have these conversations about your goals and struggles with those close to you, like a spouse or significant other, and ask them to help you.

Having someone who can constructively call you out can be very helpful. Jared finds that often having these conversations with a spouse or significant other, telling them that you need them to not bring certain foods in the house, or to not say “X” about your weight, 9 times out of 10 goes well because they want to help you.

Fitness Coach Carter Good and his quote about aligning actions and goals with personal identity. — "People get attached to their own identities of who they think they are, but they don't realize that the actions they take or even their goals aren't necessarily who they actually are." - Carter Good

Changing Goals:

When Carter evolved from wanting to be the shredded, fitness coach, to being Carter, with a balanced lifestyle, he had to take time to self-reflect on how he felt about his goals changing, and if he was okay with that.

People grow and evolve, their wants and needs change, and that’s okay.

Carter was able to learn to be okay with moving in a new direction. Carter finds that people often get stuck in their identities and become scared of change. Carter was that way also, but when he released the insecurities he had around being a fitness coach and needing to look a certain way, he was able to recognize that his goals had changed and take pressure off himself.

Jared and Carter see this with clients all the time—they need to come out of a diet or need to be honest with how much they are eating, their worth is tied to a goal. Carter often has exercises with clients and asks them to imagine how they would feel reaching X goal, and determine if that feeling is something that can be accomplished through things like personal development instead of this goal that they have become attached to.

Carter often starts clients out a little more aggressively losing weight and then has them switch into maintenance once he has established some trust with them to help them break out of the need to always be progressing toward a stressful goal and work them toward a headspace in which they can be okay not losing weight.

Jared points out that once you reach a goal, it’s inevitable that you'll want to be somewhere else.

Carter has found that something that is really difficult for people is when they get to the point where they no longer have fitness goals. It becomes about maintaining and it’s something that he works with clients while they are losing weight. It’s important to learn to be okay with maintaining, making slower progress, or taking breaks. Goals are often not satisfying when you reach them if it’s all you’ve been working toward.

Jared finds that sometimes people just deny progress while they are making it.

A person will have lost inches—but not weight—and be dissatisfied, or will have lost 30lbs, but simply think, “well I still have X amount to lose,” and when they finally get to their goal weight, they realize that they were happier before their weight loss because they have denied themselves those victories throughout the entire process.

Carter has observed that for most people, their motivation for weight loss comes with a lot of negative motivation—they feel bad about themselves, they have health concerns—and that negative motivation is part of why they deny their goals.

One of the only solutions is getting a person to realize that it’s not about a goal, it's about creating a sustainable lifestyle and finding enjoyment in the process.