How to Stop All-or-Nothing Thinking in Fitness

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

I was doing cardio every single day. I was weightlifting every single day. And I was like, if I didn't complete every single exercise in the set and rep scheme as prescribed, I was a complete failure.

What is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott. Welcome to today's episode, episode 103, where we're going to talk about the all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to fitness. Thank you to one of my IG people for this one.

I posted on my story the other day asking you to give me some topics that I can elaborate on in this podcast, because hearing what you guys want to hear is really helpful so that I can present it here. And I always ask for those topics to be worthy of long conversations, and I think this is definitely worthy of a long conversation. When I first saw this pop up in the little Q&A box on my IG story, I was like, damn. I can really elaborate on this topic, because I feel like I lived that all-or-nothing mindset when I was bodybuilding.

If you guys haven't listened to the first episode of this whole podcast, I would highly recommend it, because I share my entire journey in that episode. A little bit of my journey: I've been doing this for eight years now, and my journey started out in the bodybuilding world. Back in 2015, I committed to doing my first bodybuilding competition later on in the year, in November. Holy cow, I think it's been almost eight years to this day. But I committed to doing that.

And down that road, over the next three years, I truly did live this all-or-nothing mindset. So I want to share that story a little bit more and connect the dots as I talk about this mentality throughout this podcast today. There are good aspects to it. There are pros to it. There are cons to it. I'm going to talk about how it manifests in the fitness arena, how it shows up. And maybe it's showing up for you. And I want to provide some solutions, of course, from what I've learned through my own journey,

but also just solutions in general, so that you can see where this is happening for you and try and fix it so that you're not in this all-or-nothing mentality. Because it can be a very challenging mentality to be stuck in, and you feel like you have to be this one way. I felt the same way for three years. But there is the other side of that mentality where you can live in balance.

You can have a sustainable approach. You can really incorporate the lifestyle that you want and still be healthy and still get the results that you want without having that mentality. So with all that being said, let's dive into today's podcast.

First, I want to talk about the definition of an all-or-nothing mindset. It's known as black-or-white thinking. It's this distortion that makes individuals perceive situations in extremes, right? Something is either entirely perfect or it's a complete failure. There's no middle ground. There are no shades of gray. And there are key characteristics that define this mindset a little bit deeper.

One of them is binary thinking. Situations are viewed as either-or scenarios without recognizing a spectrum of possibilities, right? For instance, you either follow your diet extremely strictly, or you slip and you see yourself as having completely fallen off the wagon.

Then there's perfectionism. There's often a drive for being perfect, which can lead to setting unattainably high standards for yourself. And if those standards aren't met, it can lead to feelings that you're a failure, or feelings of self-doubt, or feelings of, oh, well, I'm never going to be able to stick to this diet or this plan because I messed up this one day out of the whole year. That's an extreme, right?

Or there's inflexibility. There's little to no room for flexibility or adjusting expectations based on a circumstance. You have an injury: well, how am I supposed to work through this injury, rather than just accepting that you have an injury? Or, my husband ended up in the hospital, but I need to go work out. That's extreme thinking. You feel like there's no flexibility in adjusting the expectations that you have for yourself and the plan you're following based on a circumstance, or on life that happens. You feel like you have to be 100% perfect in the plan that you're following even if life happens. And that can result in the inability to adapt to change or the unexpected situations that are going to happen in your life.

So that's having an all-or-nothing mentality, if you fall into those three buckets. Binary thinking: there are either-or situations, you either follow this diet or you're a complete failure. Perfectionism: you have entirely high standards for yourself, and if they're not met, you have feelings of failure or self-doubt. Or inflexibility: if life happens, which it does, you get injured, you get sick, your husband or a family member gets sick or has to have surgery, then you can't adapt to that change or those unexpected situations. So that's an all-or-nothing mindset.

Now let me pull back into my world of bodybuilding. For the first seven months of my journey, I literally lived this all-or-nothing mentality that I had to follow X diet in order to get X result when I stepped on stage. And I thought that I had to follow it exactly to a T, which I did throughout those seven months. I think I maybe messed up one or two times. One was because I went to a wedding, and I felt like a pure failure at that point, because I was three or four weeks out from the show, from this end point. And I was so entirely drained. I was exhausted. I was starving. And I was at this wedding and I said, fuck it.

This is an all-or-nothing mentality. I had every sense of completely failing and falling off the wagon. I had self-doubt like, well, great, now this happened, so when I step on stage, I'm not going to win. And it was a wedding. Life happened, right? I had this feeling that I could not adapt to this wedding, this situation that I hadn't been in for the last six months. So I fell off. I wasn't able to adjust my expectations. And after winning the show, that wedding did nothing. It was a small bump in the road. So I followed that diet to a T, right?

And I messed up maybe another time earlier on because I was measuring my rice wrong. And I was like, goddamn, I'm a failure. I truly lived in this all-or-nothing. If I don't follow this plan to a T, if I don't work out six days a week... and leading up to the show, I was doing seven days a week. I was doing cardio every single day. I was weightlifting every single day. You guys, this is how extreme my all-or-nothing mindset got. Down to the fact that if I didn't complete every single exercise in the set and rep scheme as prescribed, I was a complete failure.

I wasn't being perfect. If there was a day that I wasn't able to do that because of time, I had no flexibility in adapting to that change and letting myself know that would be okay. That is how I lived for the first seven months. And then it continued on, because after my first show I gained back 25 pounds in one month, and I was entirely uncomfortable. And I was like, the only way that I know how to get this body is by doing exactly what I did for the last seven months.

So then I dove into competing again, and I competed in 2016. And that all-or-nothing mentality just continued and continued and continued.

So I want to dive into a few of the pros and cons, because some of you guys can probably relate to me on that. And then I'm going to dive into how this may manifest for you guys in fitness in a broad sense. So let me dive into the pros and cons really quick.

The pros. I look back at my journey and I do love many aspects of the standards I held myself to, the commitments I held myself to, the intense focus I held myself to, the discipline that I built for myself. I love those aspects because I built them going through that journey, and I know that I probably wouldn't have built them elsewhere. Or maybe I could have, but this was just something that I was put to the test with and challenged myself with. Throughout my journey, I knew that I had a goal, so I kept that commitment to the goal. It culminated in an all-or-nothing mindset, but I still kept my commitment to that goal.

I held myself to very high standards. I had intense focus throughout that entire journey, tunnel vision toward this one day that I had committed myself to. I can easily pull those things and apply them to my life now, in how I work and in some of my training, which is way more flexible to this day. But I still have these standards and expectations and commitments for myself. When I commit to something and I say I'm going to do something, I do have this intense focus.

However, there's so much more leeway for myself in the balanced approach that I have now, which I'm going to share when I get to the solutions. But I really am proud of myself for those pros of the all-or-nothing mindset that I created for myself, because they have a trickle effect into every aspect of my life.

The cons, which I already touched on, are the lack of flexibility, the immensely increased stress, and the potential for burnout. Guys, I remember at one point in my journey, I was maybe six or eight weeks out from my show. I was on the lying hamstring curl doing my workout, and my mom was upstairs running on the treadmill. I saw her come down the stairs and walk towards me, and I just started freaking bawling my eyes out. I'm like, this is so freaking hard, Mom. It was the comfort of seeing somebody that I knew, knowing that she's my safe space and I could be vulnerable with her in the moment. And I just lost it. I just started bawling.

I was just so stuck in that. I wouldn't allow myself to have flexibility. I wouldn't allow myself to rest when I needed rest, which I'm going to talk about in a second. I wouldn't allow myself to deviate from the plan. Like I said, every set, every rep, everything was done to a T according to the plan. And yeah, that happened. I had burnout. I looked at her and I just started bawling.

And there's always a high risk of quitting when you have those minor setbacks. That didn't happen to me, but a lot of people may experience that with this type of mentality: if you have a setback, you quit. I'm going to talk about that with the all-in trend diets, the quick fixes. If you deviate from that plan, you end up quitting, and it's just a day or two that you deviated from the plan.

So those are the pros and the cons of this all-or-nothing mentality. I do appreciate the pros, but there are cons that come with it. There's so much increased stress in having to do the plan 110%.

And I'm going to talk about this with social life, but my social life in that first seven months was me trying to figure it out. My friends are here, but they live this lifestyle. And I want to live this lifestyle, and they don't align with that. So I need to distance myself from that, because if I do that, then I'm out of my goals and I'm not staying true to myself. And then they're drinking, and I can't drink because I can't have alcohol during this time. You guys, reflecting upon this, I really hope this resonates, because I'm going to get to the solutions and how I experience total sustainability in my whole lifestyle now.

I hope you know that there's the other side. There is the other side of this all-or-nothing mentality, and you can truly live a balanced approach and allow yourself to mess up, learn from the mess-up, and then just continue on. Because if you're consistent the majority of the time, which allows for errors, then you will still get to the goals that you want. Okay? You just need to be consistent the majority of the time.

You don't need to be perfect. Perfect and consistency are two different things. You just need to stay consistent. And if you're doing that the majority of the time, and all of the actions that you take are actions towards your future self, you will get the results that you want.

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Now, that's a little bit of my story mixed in with what I experienced. I want to talk a little bit about how this may manifest for you inside of your fitness routine.

The first one is following a rigid exercise plan. If you feel compelled to follow a strict workout schedule without allowing yourself rest or recovery days, then if you miss a day, you feel like the whole workout routine is ruined, which can lead you to giving up entirely.

You've probably experienced that. For my first seven months, I followed it to a T every single day and I didn't miss a day. And coming out of that, in the weeks after my show where I tried to play around with not doing it perfectly, I experienced, who am I? This is not who I am. I follow everything to a T. I have to get my workout in six or seven days a week, even post-show, when I'm not even competing. And sometimes when people first sign up for something, they feel like they have to go all or nothing. But hey, life's going to happen.

So I'm going to mix the solutions in with this. When I was on my journey, working out six to seven days a week, you better bet there were so many days inside that routine when I was so tired and had no energy to work out. But because I had this all-or-nothing mentality at the beginning, I didn't recognize the importance of rest days, of listening to my body and allowing myself to have a flexible routine, which is exactly what I do now. So know that when you sign up for a new workout routine, you do not have to follow it strictly.

Better yet, I would always highly recommend this: you can't go from zero to 100. If you go from zero workouts a week to working out six days a week, you are likely to fail at doing that. You're setting yourself up for failure at that point. You need to be honest with yourself when starting your fitness journey and go from zero to two days a week. After two weeks of doing that, you'll realize, okay, I'm getting into a solid routine. I'm building new habits. I'm showing up for myself two out of the seven days of the week working out.

Now I can add on a day. So it's a gradual build-up rather than a zero-to-100 moment. And when you get to a four-day workout routine, which is exactly what I do now, the three days of the week that you're supposed to take as rest days, you actually take as rest days. You don't feel like you have to show up every single day of the week. A lot of people ask, how do I get okay with rest days? You have to take them. You have to follow through on that action for yourself and get your body used to you actually doing it.

And an active rest day can be getting your steps in, going for a hike, going for a walk outside, or doing active recovery like stretching. Those can be things that you incorporate if you're somebody who can't totally adapt to a full-on rest day. That is how you get more of a balanced approach and allow more flexibility into your routine, rather than going from zero to 100 and then feeling like you have to follow everything to a T every single week of the year.

You don't need to do that. And when I say that, I mean you do have to follow the plan you sign up for, but life will happen. You will get sick. You will travel, all of the things. So maybe five to seven weeks out of the year, maybe even more than that, you don't follow the routine to a T. It's okay, because the other 45 to 47 weeks of the year, you're still consistent. You're consistent the majority of the time, and you're still winning at that point.

Do that math, whatever that is percentage-wise. You're still winning at that point. You're still going to get to the goals that you want. So accepting this for yourself is a big thing that you must do, rather than going all or nothing, zero to 100, and killing yourself in the first four weeks of a new workout routine. You're destined to give up at that point.

Another one is extreme dieting. A lot of people aren't happy with where they're at and what they're experiencing with their body and their self-confidence. They're feeling blah, they have low energy, and they're like, I must eat healthy.

So they go from zero to 100 to following a strict diet, clean eating, no room for deviation. And if you indulge in a treat in your first two weeks, you may feel like you have failed. And this is going to lead to an unhealthy cycle of restricting foods and bingeing. So if that is you, if you go all or nothing, zero to 100 in your first two weeks, yes, you may feel like you've failed, because you're not going to be able to keep up with that.

It's the same thing as the concept of working out. Okay, I am not eating healthy, so I'm going to focus on at least three out of the seven days of the week where I start to eat better and make better food choices. You do that for two to three weeks, and then you add on another day, and add on another day. That is you building habits. That is how you create change. And most importantly, while you're doing that, you still allow yourself to have the foods that you enjoy. This is why I love macronutrients: tracking macronutrients, understanding the macronutrient world.

It is not another diet. It is a skill set that will serve you for the rest of your life. And because I track macronutrients, I am able to keep the foods I love in my routine, which allows me to have a more sustainable eating routine. So, from the bodybuilding all-or-nothing mentality: three years of eating egg whites, chicken and broccoli, ground beef and rice, tilapia and cod, vegetables. Going from that, and the pain that I felt in that experience of, this sucks.

I hate this food. At points I was eating it cold. Actually, the majority of the time I was eating it cold.

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Dude, it just gives me chills thinking about that. But I'm also grateful for the experience, because I can speak to it now. At one point I was like, dude, this cannot be the way. I need to figure out a way that is more sustainable and realistic for my lifestyle, because I love food. I love treats. I love sweets. And I know there are people who live sustainably and still get the results they want. So how do they do that? And that is how I found macronutrients.

To this day, this is the most scientifically proven method to help you live a balanced lifestyle and get the results that you want: eating the foods you enjoy and still getting the body composition, all of the things. Until you prove me wrong, until something else comes out, macronutrients are the way. And look, I hear all the time that macronutrients are so hard, so time-consuming. Yo, it's better than what you're doing right now, right? What's the worst-case scenario of you tracking macros and learning macronutrients?

What's the worst-case scenario? Just think about that for a second. There aren't many that come to mind other than the time it takes to learn the skill set, which is how anything new that you learn is going to go.

So that's the diet extremes. And then, not to mention, the all-in trends. Jumping into something trendy that's out there, that says you're going to get X result, without considering its sustainability or potential health impacts.

And once you experience a setback, you end up abandoning it abruptly. And then you think, oh, I'm a failure. You have self-doubt: I'm never going to be able to keep anything up. So that's the diet world.

Now let's talk about social life and self-isolation, because I think it's really important. With my journey, I was talking about this friend group. This is how they lived their lifestyle. Some of them were into fitness and some of them weren't,

but it was very low, minimal fitness. And I'm on this extreme of bodybuilding: I have to eat this way, I have to train this way, I can't have alcohol, I need to go to bed because I need sleep for recovery. And these guys are over here. And then I have people worried about me because I'm eating this way, I'm not showing up the way that I used to, all of these things. Look, the value of making gradual changes to your environment so that it supports the goals that you want is very important.

However, black or white, like, sorry, I can't hang out with you, you guys suck because you live this lifestyle, is not recommended. That's all or nothing. These approaches are all very similar in how you would approach them to make it more sustainable for yourself. So, the same way as with diet and working out: okay, guys, I have this goal. Just be honest and upfront about what you're working towards, how you want to shift things for yourself, and how you want to lead a different lifestyle.

It's like, hey guys, I'm doing this. I can't participate in this. You're going to have people chitter-chatter and say all the things. Just keep in mind, most importantly with this bucket, that everybody has their own opinions. Everybody is living through their own limiting stories, their own beliefs. They see you doing things and they're like, but I'm not doing it, so I need to say these things to her that will make her stop, because that'll make me more comfortable.

So know that the things they're saying in a negative, non-supportive way are because they're not doing those things. You need to create a bubble around you and say, okay, I recognize that she's saying that because she's not doing those things, but it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with her. So I'm going to keep my distance from that person and still show up for myself in the way that I want to and for the goals that I'm going after.

As time unfolds, you will recognize who supports you and who doesn't. That will take time to unfold, first of all. Sometimes those people just kind of fall away. And the ones that do support you, you know who your real friends are, and you know who to surround yourself with. So a supportive environment can either support your journey or derail your journey. It all comes down to your perspective on the situation, how you handle the situation,

and your awareness of your surroundings and the people you're surrounding yourself with. And naturally, you guys, as you embark on your journey toward your goals and what you're striving for, you're going to attract more people who are in alignment with those goals, and you can create new friendships with them. It's pretty dope.

All right. I don't think I have much more on the all-or-nothing mindset. I talked about diet, I talked about social situations, I talked about exercise. The way you get to more of a balanced lifestyle, which I lead and live now, is honestly by recognizing it. It was only a year, a year and a half ago that I recognized, dude, I live this way, but I want this way. So you just have to take actionable habits. Embed new habits that support the new way of living that you want. Looking back, I knew that this was an all-or-nothing mindset.

It served its purpose. It was great. I left undefeated in the world of bodybuilding. But I felt a lot of pain in that, and I didn't like the cons of what that lifestyle gave me. And I knew there was a better way, because I saw people living that way. So then it's about making gradual shifts that are more in alignment with the lifestyle that you want to have. Being okay with rest days is extremely important. Being okay with allowing yourself occasional treats, ice cream, donuts, candy, is too.

I have candy. I have chocolate every single night at the end of my night. Allow yourself to have those things. It's not going to derail your progress, okay? What's going to derail your progress is continuing in this all-or-nothing mindset. And then there's habit forming. You have to form new habits, habits that support you. If you're in an all-or-nothing mindset, work backwards from that. If you're at seven days a week, allow yourself one rest day.

It's the reverse of what I said earlier. Okay, I'm working out seven days a week and I want to incorporate balance, so I'm going to allow myself one active rest day. You do that for two weeks. Then you add in another one, and then another one, and you're at four days. And if you're following something strictly, occasionally allow yourself one untracked day and see how that feels. And then you recognize, oh, snap,

it didn't derail my progress. I'm still getting the results that I want. So then you allow yourself to incorporate some treats here and there throughout the week, and you're like, oh, snap. But the most important thing is control. You're in control. You have the ability to lean one way or the other. So if you allow yourself a couple of treats, don't go down the rabbit hole of making the whole week all treats, because that's an all-or-nothing mindset too. It's about finding the balance.

Finding the balance of this lifestyle and how it supports you best, you guys. All right. Man, that was one of my favorite podcasts I've recorded so far. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did, please, please, please screenshot this, tag me, and upload it to Instagram. I love seeing the feedback you guys have on this podcast. I appreciate you all. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.

Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.