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Welcome back to the True Transformation Podcast. It is your host Josiah Novak, owner and founder of thetruetransformation.com, where we help you take fitness and use it to improve every part of your life. Today, we’re talking about 20 years of underrated fat loss lessons in about 45 minutes. If you're watching on the channel, welcome back. If you're on the podcast, I appreciate you listening.
[Episode Start]
Today, I want to walk through my list of all the things—at least as much as I can fit into 45 minutes—that I've learned since I started working out about 20-25 years ago. I became a personal trainer 20 years ago, and there's been so many lessons I've learned, so many mistakes I've made. I mean, you name the mistake, I've probably made it, and I want to help you avoid those mistakes, learn what to do differently, and give you some things that are just really underrated when it comes to transforming your body.
The first thing that I want to talk about is something called identity design, and it's a really simple concept. It's not necessarily always easy to implement, but once you understand this, you'll start to paint a better picture, or at least a clearer picture, of how to literally wipe the slate clean and start to build something sustainable, something that stands the test of time. Because the truth is, everybody could get abs for a day and call themselves elite, call themselves fit, and struggle to get there, fight to get there, do unhealthy things to get there, and call themselves ripped, call themselves fit. But the real test of whether or not your fitness program is built the right way is does it stand the test of time?
And I think one of the biggest reasons why most plans end up failing, end up burning out, and most people struggle to maintain fitness is because their identity is still attached to the person who's not fit. The version of themselves who would prefer to do the things that give them short-term pleasure and long-term pain versus short-term uncomfortable situations with long-term pleasure and ROI. This identity design concept really became apparent when I started working with people online, and I was no longer in the gym just trying to burn through people every 45 minutes. You know, it was kind of a rat race. It was one person stacked on top of the other because there's only so much time in a day. And I really didn't get a great chance to connect with people on a personal level until I moved my business online and I started doing more internal work with people, more mindset coaching, more spiritual coaching, right? Talking about things outside of just fitness that fitness has a big impact on.
You know, I realized that physical health is just one piece of the equation. You know, I started fitness, and I started working out in response to an abusive childhood. You know, I was raised in an alcoholic home, an emotionally abusive home, a physically abusive home, and a home where I went through a lot of turmoil, and there was a lot of trauma, both for me and my five other siblings. I was the oldest of six, and fitness was a refuge for me. It was a sanctuary. It was like a place to get out of the craziness. But what I realized is, even as I got older, I was still loving fitness, but my identity was still trapped around the kid who was a victim, right? It was still trapped around the person who was never ripped, was never muscular, was never confident, had a lot of insecurity, and fitness wasn't going to take care of all that. At least the physical side of fitness wasn't going to take care of all that. I needed to get my identity dialed in. I needed to get the spiritual, the emotional, and the mental identity part of my life dialed in.
That changed the game for me when I started working on it myself and working on it with people in my coaching business, and realizing, Hey, you don't have to be the person that is in your current chapter, right? You don't have to be the person who's overweight. You know, you don't have to be the person who struggles with eating. People talk about themselves, and they don't even hear what they're saying. They'll be like, Yeah, I'll never have abs, or like, I'm not the guy who can control his alcohol, or I'm not the guy who can do that. Like, that's for people with more discipline. And you're just speaking those things into existence when you could literally change who you are. You don't have to be stuck. And that just comes down to two things. Number one, making a decision, right? You decide, Hey, I'm gonna be someone different. I'm gonna literally evolve my identity into something else, and then writing new stories. So you have to write new stories mentally around what you are capable of, like, what can you do? And the answer is, you're capable of so much more.
And once you start to shift your identity, all of a sudden the behaviors become easy. You know, I tell people all the time, you get your identity dialed in, you get your spiritual health, your mental health in a better place, or in a better place. The fitness side, man, it gets so easy. Fitness is actually really simple at the end of the day. It's one of the easiest concepts to understand, really, once you break it down, it's not rocket science, but we make it complicated. Be. Our identities are wrapped up in complex, insecure, lacking discipline, all these traumas that we've never actually closed the loop on. All these things contribute to the complexity that we feel around fitness. So it's a big topic. I'm starting with a huge one here, but we have to get our identity dialed into the person who we want to be.
Which leads me to point number two, because then the next question, if you're thinking and you're taking notes at home, is like, Well, okay, that makes sense, I guess. But how do I do that, right? Like, how do I start getting into a new identity, like, do I change my name? Like, social security number? Like, how does this work? And the answer is, No, you just have to start by getting into character. Now, I'm a huge movie buff, right? I love going to the movies. I love watching every decent movie that comes out, even bad movies I'll watch. And, you know, I just love the movies, and I really admire great actors who really just get into the role on a deep level that they're playing on the screen. Daniel Day Lewis is one of my favorite actors, and he's famous for only doing a few movies, like he just doesn't do a lot of volume. But when he does a movie, oh my gosh, he goes all in on the role, and leading up to filming the movie, he becomes the person that he's going to play, like he literally becomes the person. And what this does is, when he's on screen, it allows him to be the person at a deeper level, like his acting becomes so real that you feel like you're watching someone who is literally the person who's the character, right? It's not an actor playing the character, it is the character.
So I call this getting into character, because at the end of the day, we can start to play the version of ourselves that we want to be before we actually get the result. So think about it like this, if you're someone who's like, Hey, man, I got to take better care of my body. I want to lose body fat. I want to rid myself of the bad habits. I want to start doing the right habits. I want to sleep better. I want to eat better. I want to be nicer to my kids, nicer to my spouse. I just want to be a better, happier person. Well, you can start to play that person and get into character before you actually see the results show up. And the best thing to do is start asking yourself, what would that future version of me or that future identity do in these situations. You know, it could be something as silly as when you're out to eat, like, what would that version of me order at a restaurant? Like? Let me start just pretending to be that person by doing the things that that person would do right now before the result shows up, before you're ripped, before you're muscular, before you're mentally dialed in, before you're spiritually connected like and you're feeling great again, you start doing those things.
And here's the magic. The magic happens, because when you get into character, all of a sudden, the habits and routines rapidly improve, and it doesn't feel as hard because you're playing someone else for now, until you permanently shift and become that person. And once again, this is a lesson I've learned over the last 20 years. You know, if I want something, especially with my physical fitness, well, I need to start making decisions based off of the future version of me. Like, what am I? What am I headed towards? Because the guy right now and the shoes I'm in today overweight or, you know, out of shape, or whatever. Maybe, like some of you watching, the decisions I make aren't great. You know, that's why I'm here, obviously. So let me start by getting into character. Let me prepare for the role that I am ultimately going to play in a permanent way very soon. But before those results get there, let me start getting into character now.
Now, lesson number three, as we head deeper into this discussion today about underrated lessons from the last 20 years. You know, I think it's also important to have little rules that we can have in our day to help us avoid making terrible decisions that lead to more terrible decisions. The easiest one that I've ever implemented, that I've ever created, that I've ever utilized both in my life and our clients' lives, is what's called the 10-minute rule. And the 10-minute rule is simply this: When you know you need to do something but you don't feel like doing it, you'd rather do other things that aren't the right things, do the right thing for 10 minutes. And that could be a number of things. That could be working out, that could be creating a healthy meal, that could be going to bed at the right time, that could be drinking enough water, going for a walk—the list goes on and on—all the things that obviously contribute to fat loss and body transformation and mental health.
You don't feel like doing it. And the reason why you don't feel like doing it is because in your mind, it feels like climbing Mount Everest. We take a small task and we exaggerate the difficulty in our own story, right? We think, Man, cooking chicken, cooking up a steak, going to do a workout, Man, that feels like I have to climb Mount Everest, right now. And we put that story in our head, so we go, now. I don't want to do it because it's too inconvenient. I'd rather go, you know, relax. I'd rather go do something productive, quote, unquote, I'd rather go have a drink. You know, the whole list goes on. So we create that idea that it's this massive task. So what the 10-minute rule does is it shrinks the task down to a very bite-sized chunk, little bite-sized chunk that we then go accomplish, and we go, wow, that was easy. And all of a sudden it tricks our emotional brain into going, Oh, it's not that hard. So my 45-minute workout, or my 30-minute workout that I did 10 minutes of, was really easy. 10 minutes went by in a blink. I could do another 30 minutes. I could do another 20 minutes, no problem. And you accomplish something now that accomplishment gives you a massive amount of momentum, self-belief and happiness and fulfillment. All those emotions come together and they build what motivation and discipline, because you want more of that, right? You like that feeling of accomplishment. You like believing in yourself, but you have to have little rules in place that lead you to reaching that emotional state. So then you want more of it.
So these are things that nobody wants to talk about, right? So I said underrated fat loss advice, because, dude, to be honest, if you want to learn how to just count macros and do bicep curls and shoulder presses and do cardio like, there's books. I've written books, I've written articles. I mean, you know, there's, there's a million resources out there, but part of what we do with the True Transformation is we give you all the things that you actually need, right? We want to create a sanctuary for you, a safe place, a clean slate, and build real sustainability, real permanent transformation. And these are the things you have to have in your toolbox. You know, it's not enough to just be like, Hey, I'm gonna eat more protein. Like, yeah, okay, cool. Do that for sure. But that's not really what you're after. You're after the stuff that will lead to eating more protein or will lead to having abs, but it's all the stuff that will impact all parts of your life, right? These rules can be applied to everything. A tough conversation. Have it for 10 minutes. By the time 10 minutes is up, you're gonna be like, what was I so worried about? Let's just get through this whole thing. You know, put the dishes away for 10 minutes. I always joke around. I hate putting the dishes away. Putting the dishes away, but I do it for 10 minutes. And guess what? It takes eight minutes to put the dishes away. So the 10-minute rule knocks out the whole task.
So if you're interested, by the way, in learning about how we set up plans, like if you actually want fat loss advice, the 3M Action Guide is your best bet. It's free. You can go to the link in the description of this video. You can download a copy for yourself. There's no charge. Just download it, start using it, right? But what we charge for is actual coaching, actual mentorship, spiritual, mental, physical health, all wrapped into one because you can't have one without the others. You have to have them all together. And so we want to get you on the right path, at least. So go do that, and then, you know, we'll start to connect more, and we can see if we're a mutual fit. And if we can take you on, we will, right?
So let's keep this going. There's a lot more. There's another rule that I think you'll really like. And I haven't talked about this one a lot, but it's called The Time Machine Rule. It's kind of an interesting thing. I actually discovered this one with being a dad, okay? Because being a dad comes with so many amazing things. I have two little boys at the time of filming this video. They're nine and eight. They're 18 months apart. Sports fanatics, just crazy kids. They're like my best little buddies. They love all the stuff I do, except 10 times more. So it's heaven for me, hell for my wife. But at the end of the day, it is not just amazing all the time, right? The truth is, there's times where I'm very impatient, there's times where I lose my cool, there's times where I flip out. There's times where, you know, the stress of being a dad leads me to want to do awful things for myself, right? Drink too much, eat crappy food, watch, you know, nasty stuff online, like, you know, like all the stuff we as men struggle with, we allow these vices to be like the easy scapegoat to relieve our stress.
Okay, so anyway, The Time Machine Rule was discovered through being a dad, because there's many moments that I find myself losing my patience and kind of being annoyed with my kids at times and going, man, like I just want to disappear. You know, I want to not be present. I want to go veg out on my phone. And I don't want to go throw the baseball around because I've had a long day. But The Time Machine Rule is this: If you could imagine for a second that you take a time machine to that very moment that you're in right now, what would be the decision you would make, right? What would be the decision you would make to make sure that the future and the results you want happen? Right? Because think about it. As a dad, you know, you take a time machine back to that moment where you're about ready to lose your cool and. And you think, man, if I lost my cool, that's going to damage my relationship with my son in that moment. It might not be massive damage, but it will create damage, even if it's a tiny amount, that's more than I want to do. So The Time Machine Rule, I have an opportunity right now to rewrite history, rewrite the story right now.
Now this can apply to your health and fitness too. Because think about it, if it's late at night, you've had a long day, you've been great, you've done your walk, your steps, you've done your workout, you hit your calories, and you're just going, Man, I'm on a mission to transform my body, my mental health, but what I really want right now is I want to crush a gallon of ice cream like that's just what I want. About a long day, dude, you took a time machine. Okay, you're here now, you have the opportunity to make the right call, because you know, deep down inside, you're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to regret the ice cream. It wasn't the time or place. There's a time and place for ice cream, for sure, but in that moment, you know it's not. It's not the right time, it's not the right place. So you have to make the decision you want to make, the decision that will impact your future results in a positive way.
So The Time Machine Rule is a reminder, more than anything, to go, Hey, I have this moment right now to rewrite the story that happens from here on out. What am I going to do? It's a powerful exercise, because, yeah, we don't really have a time machine, but if you can imagine taking one back, and that's where you are, that's why you're here right now, as you have that opportunity, it can be a powerful exercise to get you on the right path.
Speaking of the right path, at the end of the day, fitness, as I said, becomes easy when you have your mental health, your spiritual health, and you have routines around those things, right? I see someone who's struggling with their body more times than not. They're struggling with their mental health too. They're struggling with depression. They're struggling with stress and anxiety, fear, you know, overworked. They're feeling unsatisfied with life. They're worried that they're not doing enough. They're worried that things aren't going to work out. So they turn to food, they turn to lack of exercise, TV, Netflix, right? All the things that are at our disposal. So let me make fitness easy for you.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned, and it's highly underrated, is that simple is always the best option. Simple. All right, there's a lot of complicated stuff out there, there's CrossFit, there's 75 Hard. These things have a time and place, but for me, I always want to have a foundation that is set on simple principles, systems that I can rely on from now until the day I'm gone, that I can also teach to other people very, very easily. And that system for us is called the 3M system, movement muscle meals. Those are the three things that you have to dial in no matter what your goals are with fitness, even if it's building muscle, even if it's running a marathon, even if it's doing a high rocks or a Spartan Race, or if it's just seeing your abs for the first time. And you want to lose body fat, movement, muscle, meals, those are the three areas that you need to pay attention to.
Movement. You need to have strategies in place to move enough throughout your day. Muscle. You need to do workouts that at least maintain the muscle that you have, and that can be done through body weight, dumbbells, bands, TRX, a full gym, a fancy gym, barbells. All the crazy stuff depends on you, depends on your preference, but the principle of training to maintain and build a little bit of muscle and strength is a vital part of the process. And then, of course,
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