#75: Tips for Starting & Maintaining your Fitness Habits - with Dr. Peggy Malone

Have you had trouble getting started with weight training or in staying consistent with your training?

If so, this episode is for you!

In this episode, I talk with Life Coach Peggy Malone who works with midlife women about different strategies which can help you to start and stay consistent with your fitness habits. 

We discuss many different ways to build and maintain good habits (because one size does not fit all!) They include: 

1. Connecting the habit you want to build with your values
2. Tapping into the wisdom of your future self
3. The All-or-something vs. all-or-nothing mentality
4. The "do it for 5 minutes" rule
5. Habit stacking
6. Changing your identity
7. Building systems to get you to your goals
8. The need for accountability

Enjoy the show!

Connect with Dr. Peggy: 

• Her website: https://drpeggymalone.com/
• On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drpeggymalone/
• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoctorPeggyMalone/

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:47 Dr. Peggy's Personal Journey
• 5:09 The Midlife Improvement Project
• 6:23 Empowering Women in Midlife
• 7:35 Common Challenges and Solutions
• 11:04 The Importance of Values and Future Self
• 17:54 Overcoming the All or Nothing Mentality
• 22:08 Empowering Women to Take Control
• 24:31 The Power of Habit Stacking
• 26:36 Building a New Identity
• 31:19 Creating Effective Systems
• 34:13 The Importance of Accountability
• 37:33 Embracing Midlife Decisions
• 39:51 Connect with Dr. Peggy Malone

Transcript

POD75: Tips for Starting & Maintaining your Fitness Habits - with Dr. Peggy Malone

Welcome to 40+ fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women in perimenopause and postmenopause build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And this episode is a special treat. This is the first time that I've actually brought a guest on the show.

So, oh my God, I was a little nervous, but I think it went okay. And the reason I brought on this special. guest is that I know that a lot of you are struggling with how to get started with new fitness habits and also how to stay consistent once you get started. And so I wanted to really bring on an expert in this kind of thing.

Life coach, Dr. Peggy Malone. So Dr. Peggy Malone is a chiropractor turned life coach who helps women over 40 lean into the magic of being a woman in midlife. She helps you to get curious and then gain clarity about where you want to go next. With this one precious life and then helps you incorporate and venture and play on your way to that Reinvented version of you in her play time Peggy plays basketball Practices back handsprings at old lady gymnastics and goes on epic snowboarding adventures with her bearded husband John.

She's based in London, Ontario, Canada, where she and her husband love to throw parties, watch NFL football and cuddle with their ragdoll cat, Amigo. She is the host of another podcast called the Midlife Improvement Project, where she helps you increase self awareness and build confidence as you discover what got you here.

And get clear about where you want to go next on the way to being an even better you. So listen to my interview with Dr. Peggy and I hope you get some great tips out of here. And yeah, I would love to hear from you whether you enjoyed this kind of interview podcast because I'm thinking about doing a little bit more of them.

And if you have particular topics or people that you can think of that you would like for me to have on the show, then please reach out through one of the channels in the show notes. Enjoy the show.

Peggy, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me Lynn. Yeah, great to have you and to hear your perspective on these things. I thought, um, we could get started by having you tell me, tell us a little bit about you and your story and how you made this transition from chiropractor to helping women in midlife.

Um, okay, well, I'll give you the, the big, the big picture and I'll try and like, shorten the story. Uh, essentially, uh, my world is such that I live in Canada, I have a husband named John and the two of us years ago. And it's kind of a downer story that leads into something great. We really wanted to have a baby and we did all the things.

And, um, I'm guessing that some of your listeners and some of your clients have been through the fertility journey. We went through that. We ended up various. IVF spent a ton of money, a lot of tears. Uh, we had five pregnancies and five losses. It was very challenging and I'm speaking flippantly about it now, but it's been a decade since it happened.

I've processed it a lot. I've done a lot of work around it. The reason why this is relevant to the story is that. When that sort of was wrapping up and we knew that we were in a place where we had made the decision to move forward and, uh, and be aunts and uncles instead of parents in this life. Um, I was kind of a little lost in terms of my personal growth.

I was looking for something because I'd had this idea forever that we were going to be parents and because it wasn't working out, I couldn't pass my DNA on to the next generation. I couldn't mother in the way that I thought I was going to. And so I was looking for purpose. I was looking for a legacy. I was looking for something and we were on a vacation.

We went, um, away cause we needed to go away and I was reading a book on that vacation. And the book was the happiness project by Gretchen Rubin. And I love Gretchen Rubin. I refer to her as my online pretend best friend and I've read all of her books and I actually met her in real life one time. She's great.

Um, anyway, this book, if you're not familiar with it, sort of like, She took a year and she did an experiment where she did all of these things to try and improve her happiness, and I just loved the concept of it, as books do, it hit me right at the right time, and then in that next year, after reading this book, it sort of became a spark for me, a friend of mine and I would always have really interesting conversations about personal growth, and we were like, you know what, we should like, Okay.

Um, so we started a podcast and at that time it was in June of 2018 and we started a podcast called The Improvement Project because we were both interested in personal growth and habits and routines and all of the things that scratched the itch of helping us to understand why we are the way we are.

And so the two of us, her name is, her name is Jenny. Um, Jenny and I started the podcast together and we did that podcast weekly for, um. A couple of years and then she had a young child at the time and then she had to step away from the podcast just because her life got busy and it didn't work. So I continued on with the podcast on my own and, the years went by, the pandemic happened, all of the things.

I kept being consistent with the podcast, which was a really, um. important balm for me when I was going through my own turmoil, but then also the world was going through turmoil. So the podcast was the thing that I stayed consistent with. It was a lovely personal growth tool for me to be as consistent as possible through that time.

And then as I started to come into perimenopause and the challenges associated with this time of life, which you are familiar with, which your listeners will be familiar with, I realized that As I was evolving, the podcast needed to evolve. So now the podcast is known as the Midlife Improvement Project.

So, on top of that, I started working with women in midlife who are, as all of you listening know, and Lynn, as you know, these fantastic humans who have superpowers that they're just awakening up to. And It's like the coolest demographic of humans. I'm saying this because I'm in this demographic, but also because all of the women that I work with in this demographic, they are waking up, they're realizing that they have superpowers.

They are reinventing themselves. They are deciding that they want to do something awesome with the second half of their life. And so. I was and am still a chiropractor, uh, healthcare provider, but through this whole process that I've just explained, I've now evolved in part of what I do, um, is I work with women as a coach and I help them to decide what they want to be when they grow up, what they want to do with their second half, how they want to reinvent themselves in midlife and beyond.

So that's, that's what I do. That's my story, essentially. And if you have questions, I'm happy to expand on anything I've said. 

No, that, that is really, really exciting. And, and I have to say that I could have used you a few years ago because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up.

And then I found it finally, which was amazing. But, um, are there any common themes you're noticing with women when they're thinking about what they want to do? 

Yeah. So this won't be a surprise to you. The common themes are, I've been taking care of everyone else and I've put myself last. The common themes are, I want to do this thing, but who am I?

Imposter syndrome. The common thing themes are guilt because I want to do something else, but I'm not sure if that is acceptable or allowed. And then what I try and kind of push women towards is they get to decide. They get to put themselves first. Finally, they get to do the thing they've always wanted to do, and they get to like worry about their own needs first before everybody else's for the very first time for a lot of women.

That is so important. I always think about when you're on an airplane and they say, when those masks drop, you first put it on yourself and then on others, cause then you can take care of others better. And I, I feel like that's something that all of us, you know, we maybe haven't done that enough in our earlier parts of life.

Well, and I think you might've talked about this in some of your, um, podcasts already. But I think the big reason for it is that we're swimming in the soup of how we've been conditioned and how we've been conditioned is to be taught that our worth lies in how we can serve other people. And it sort of skims over or forgets that if we can actually take care of ourselves first, everybody around us will benefit.

So, if we bring it back to kind of the health and fitness piece, one thing that I've really noticed very strongly with women in midlife, they know that, that something's happening to their bodies. They notice they're getting weaker. Uh, I mean, I even have one woman that I'm thinking of in particular, who was like, yeah, I know, you know, I'm weaker.

I need to start lifting weights and everything. So, yeah. And she just can't get herself to like take that first step. And, and then there are those, um, some of my clients actually who are like, how do I stay consistent? How do I build this into a real habit that I will follow up on? Because honestly, lifting weights is not something where you're going to see results right away.

So you have to You just have to do it for a while. So just in those two different scenarios in a way, like how do you get someone to get started or help them to get started? And how do you help them to keep going? Do you have some tips? Yeah. 

Well, this is like. The, the biggest challenge for all of us and myself included, I'm still in this category for getting myself going regularly with my weights.

I'll do it for a while and then I'll ease off and then I'll do it for a while. So in terms of how I would help somebody with this, and in terms of like what I'm putting into place in terms of my own strategies, there's a few things that I can mention. Um, a place that I like to start, uh, when we're talking about doing something is just like people often they've come to you and they'll say, Lynn, this is what's happening.

What do I do? Right? Or they'll come to me and they'll say, Peggy, this is what's happening. This is what my challenges are. Just tell me what to do. Give me the step by step process. Give me the recipe and I'll do it. So, the action is what everybody is focused on. But, Upstream from taking any action is how you're thinking about things and how you feel about things.

And those are the things that if we focus more on, what are we thinking about? How do we feel about it? It changes what actions we take or don't take. And then that's what gets us a result. So this is a very basic cognitive behavioral model that a lot of coaches will employ. So it starts with a circumstance.

The circumstance is I'm in midlife and I'm losing muscle mass. I need to do something. These are, this is what my brain tells me. But instead of focusing on what I need to do, I need to back up and be like, who, what do I believe? What are my values? What am I thinking on the regular? So generally speaking the way I start with clients is we get, we start first with reexamining what is important.

to you at the stage of life and why and how does lifting weights, for example, fit into that. So we get clear on what, when I say what's important, I mean, what are your values? So that might be a long term health. Somebody might have the value of freedom or independence. And if you can connect freedom and independence to lifting weights, they're way more likely to do the thing.

Because if I know that if I lift weights, Three days a week that later on in my life. I will have more freedom or even now even in a few weeks I'll have more freedom. I'll have more independence as I get older Then I'm connecting the lifting weights to my values if my value is connection Well, now I can connect with other humans that are doing this.

Now I've connected a value to the thing that I want to do. So anytime when you can get clear on what's important to you in this life, then that can be a jumping off point that allows you downstream from your values. To do the thing and then get the result. So this is something that's going to be individual to every human, because every human has slightly different things that are important to them.

Some humans are like, you know, the thing that's important to me is leadership. Or the thing that's important to me is family. Or the thing that's important to me is beauty or aesthetics or like the way things look right. These are important values that once might not be important to me, but you might be like, I really want it to look a certain way.

I want it to, I want to feel a certain way. So, um, It's not an easy thing to just be like, here's the tip, go do it. It's actually going into the trenches and figuring out what are my values, what's important to me and why. And then connecting the thing that you want to do, whether it's lifting weights or flossing your teeth regularly, or, you know, doing whatever it is that you want to build in as a habit.

We can tie it back to what's important to you. 

Okay. 

So that's, that's sort of step one. 

Okay. So that's like a, really a values exercise . 

I've heard you talk on your own podcast about thinking about your future self. I really love that concept.

Like resonated with me. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. 

I love this too. I will say to my clients on the regular, and I often remind my own self too. When you think about your future self and your future self can be you 20 minutes from now, or it can be you 30 years from now, that version of you has the thing that you want now.

So when you think to yourself, Oh, future Peggy is super strong because she was consistent doing her exercises every day or every week, 

I can tap into the wisdom of that future version of me. And I can be like, Hey, you have this thing that I want. What do I need to do now so that I can get to you successfully?

And you can always trust a future version of yourself because it's you. So I often will tap into this when I'm thinking about, I don't want to do my workout. For example, this is something my brain likes to show me as a thought. And I will be like, okay, future me, 30 minutes from now when I'm done this workout.

What would she think? And I know that this is what she thinks every time. You'll love it when it's done. You feel better. You have endorphins running through your body. Feels good. You feel great because you moved. And so that's how, that's what she's telling me. And then I can say to her, okay, what should I do now?

And she'll send the message back from 30 minutes into the future. Go and get it done. Get after it. You'll feel better when it's done. I can use this same wisdom for my 75 year old self who is taking the groceries in from the car. When she comes home from the grocery store, she is going to also say to me, get the workout done.

You need these biceps to be strong. You need these legs to be strong so that you can. So if you're not feeling motivated, which we can talk about motivation as well, but your future self is a really great resource. So definitely tap into it. 

And I'm thinking about that image of your future self, uh, you know, in your seventies or eighties.

Cause I think a lot of women, they are looking in a way at their future selves when they look at their moms. Right. I mean, I know I'm looking at my future self. I mean, my, I look scarily like my mom. I can catch myself in the mirror and I'm like, Oh my God, you know, but I'm just noticing how like weak she's getting.

And that her quality of life is starting to decline. You know, I'm thinking about, can she come boating with me? For example, this summer, does she have enough balance to do it? She's not even 80 yet. And, and so I'm like seeing this future self. And whenever I see her, I have this, you know, like, Oh my God, I got to keep doing this weight training.

You know, I've got to keep my balance up and all these things. So I don't end up. That that doesn't end up being my future self. I want my future self to be different than, than that. Yes, absolutely. I 

think that's another way to look at it for sure. And, and then also speaking to your mom, and I think you're already there, like, you know, there might be people listening to this who are already in their seventies or their eighties.

It's never too late to start lifting heavy things, right? So their future selves will be able to go boating potentially if they get going on the lifting the weights now. Yeah. So. Um, I hear what you're saying though. I, I look at my mom and when I, I catch like a glimpse of myself and I'm like, Oh, surprising when, especially at this time of life, because I think when we were kids, we remember our moms really strongly being around their fifties.

And so now when I see my face, I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's totally my mom. 

Exactly. Exactly that. No, it's really true. And another one that, I noticed a lot with clients is. This kind of all or nothing mentality maybe you could speak a little bit to that as well. I mean, I, I feel like there are almost two camps.

They're the ones who go into it full on where I just think to myself, Oh my goodness, you're going to be able to do this for like, Four weeks max, and then you're going to just burn out and then there are the ones who, you know, I'm giving them 15 minutes a day kind of things.

I think that this all or nothing mentality is really wrapped up in, the same soup of putting everybody else first. And also related to that is like being a good girl, being a perfect girl. If I'm perfect, then I'll be accepted.

I'll be loved. There's a lot of that overlaying what's going on here. So as a result of that, If I can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it. So I want you to give me all of the things and I will do it perfectly or I will do nothing. And there's what happens with that is either, what you're saying is they'll try and do all the things all at once and then burn out.

Or they'll be like, I will do all the things all at once, but not right now because I'm not ready right now. I need it to be perfect conditions, perfect timing. I need everything to be perfect. So it'll be next Monday or next month or next year or 10 years from now. But. As we both know, like time's not slowing down and it's especially important for us at this vintage to get as much muscle on our bodies as possible to do the things starting now.

So when I see this pattern show up and it happens a lot. with very motivated type A, uh, women, they want to do it perfectly or nothing. So instead of all or nothing, we focus on all or something. So this is just like you said, let's do 15 minutes to start. And what the rule I give people when they're starting any new habit is, I call it the do it for five minutes rule.

So if people don't want to exercise, I'm like, okay, can you do something for five minutes? And they're like, yeah, easy. I can do that for five minutes. And then I'm like, all right, even if you don't want to do it, commit to putting on your running shoes and then saying, you'll do it for five minutes. The thing that's magic about motivation is that motivation is often the result of taking action.

Not the cause of it. So we don't get motivated because we're like sitting around and all of a sudden it just strikes us like a lightning bolt. We get motivated when we actually start moving. So this is why one of the things I often will say to people is we need to get moving to get motivated. Once we're moving, all of a sudden we're like, Oh, okay.

I feel good. It's kind of like when you're sitting down after dinner and you're like, uh, I should probably do the dishes and all I want to do is like go to sleep. But then you get up and you get moving and you do it. And then you're like, sweet. Okay. And now I can do like. 20 other things. Because I feel good because I got moving and I got started.

The getting started is the hard part. So, um, so that's related to the all or nothing or all or something. But then as well, just like what you said, instead of being like, I need to do all the things all at once, we need to pick the tiniest version of it and get started on that. So sometimes this can be, I don't want you to do any exercise this week.

The only thing that I want you to do is while you're brushing your teeth, I want you to do five squats. If you do that every single day of this week, that's a win and this is all or something you can do that as you're getting started. But you can also do this on days when life is lifey and things are happening.

If you do something, then it's going to be better than nothing. So a good example of this is I have a client and they, when they know that they don't have time to do their regular workout in between meetings, they'll stand up and do 10 burpees. And they do that five times in the day and now they've done 50 burpees and it's all or something.

Yeah. No, that's really true. I have one client in particular that I'm thinking of I guess she wanted so much to be doing it right that I mean, we had many conversations where she's asking for my permission to not do it all.

So you're saying it's okay that I don't. You know, try to lose all the weight now while I'm weight training, you know, starting with the training. 

Oh, this one, this one pinches my heart. Yes. 

Yeah. 

Um, it, by the way, it just reminds me, I think that a lot of women who have been scripted from the time they were little to be good girls, they want to follow the rules.

They want to do it correctly. They want to get permission. And so, especially at this time of life, when we're all waking up and realizing that we get to decide the thing that I really spend a lot of time talking to my clients about is no one's coming to rescue you. Like you get to decide and it's you, you're, you're.

You're the hero of this story. 

Yeah. 

So anytime somebody is like, if you have a sneaky thought that is, I'm doing it wrong, you can just switch that thought to, I'll just do a little bit and I'll trust that my inner knowing knows what to do and I don't need permission to do this. I can just get started.

Yeah, no, that's, uh, it's really interesting to hear your perspective because it's like so much bigger than just the training part of it, but it so relates to the same issues that people have with the training. So, 

Oh, 100%. Well, and it's such a great metaphor or analogy for like the bigger picture because.

It's this thing that we know is going to benefit us and it's hard to start and it's hard to do, but if we can, we'll see benefit. So take that and put it on like starting a new career or, um, you know, taking a trip or starting a new hobby of any kind or starting a business. All of these things have, All of this in common.

It's like, we need to get moving to get motivated. We need to tap into the wisdom of our future selves. We need to get clear on what our values are. We need to start with something instead of waiting until conditions are perfect. All or something versus all or nothing. And it will help us to, to move in the right direction.

Yeah. And you've heard this before. Most people that are entrenched in personal growth of any kind have heard this, the saying that. The time's going to pass anyway, if we do a little bit of something, then it's going to get us somewhere. If we do nothing, then we're going to go five, 10 years and still be in the same place that we're in now.

We might as well try something. 

Yeah. And actually with our health, we'll be in a worse place if we don't do anything. So in a way, it's even more, Motivating to, do something. 

 You were also talking about habit stacking. I think you a little bit mentioned an idea of it with the tooth brushing and the squats.

That would be probably an example of habit stacking, right? Sure. Do you have some others for people who are just trying to start doing this. I'm thinking of, if you already have the habit of going to the gym to an aerobics class, could you habit stack on that, for example, to do some weight training 

yeah, absolutely. So just for those who are not familiar, the idea of habit stacking is just Taking something that you do every day, all the time, and it's locked in, and you don't have to think about it, it's just part of your identity. So, and a good example for me is I brush my teeth every day. I don't have to think about it, I don't have to, like, convince myself to do it, I don't have to gain motivation to get it done.

Same thing as I drink coffee every day, it's a habit that I have. I don't have to be motivated to drink coffee, in fact, I'm excited to drink coffee. Um, So anytime you have something in your life that you do every single day and you don't have to think about it, it's already locked in. That's what we want to stack on top of, or we want to hook to.

So some people call it like habit hooking or habit, habit stacking. So pick one of those, for example, and then if the habit you want to build or bring into your life is, um, like doing more exercise, Then we need to get creative and find a way to stack that habit on top of it. So the example you had is that if somebody already has it locked in that they go to the gym to do an aerobics class and it's just part of who they are.

It's their identity. They don't have to think about it. It's not, not something they have to really focus too much on. If it's already locked in, this is a beautiful place to be like, Ooh, that's something I'm already doing. How can I add something to it? So at the gym, perfect place. After you've done your aerobics or before your aerobics, if that makes it easier because we're trying to do it easy, not perfect.

It's let's go and do 10 minutes of adding a bit of weight training and then start to build it in so that it becomes part of the identity of who I am. I do aerobics and weights at the gym now. 

 I love that identity thing because this is actually something I did talk about on one of the podcasts was that, um, there was a study about people dieting and when they studied the people who, you know, had lost weight and been able to keep it off, it was because they had actually changed how they thought about themselves.

For example, when I changed my habits of eating now, I am a person who eats 140 grams of protein every day. You know, like I've changed my identity. I am a person who goes to the gym to weight train. I'm a person who has muscle. I'm a person who walks on a walk pad every day.

You know, like that's become part of my identity over time and, and it's helped me to maintain those things. 

Well, and this is like, that's a prime example of what we started talking about at the beginning of this conversation. You probably say to your clients on the regular, I want you to eat at least a hundred grams of protein a day.

We're going to work up to a hundred. And that person now knows what to do, right? It's the thing to do and they can try it and they might have some success at it for a few weeks. But if their identity is still. Like stuck in a place where they are a human who does not eat a hundred grams of protein every day, then they will slide back.

So it starts with how we feel and what we believe about ourselves, which is ultimately will grow into our identity. The more we think and feel, I am a person who eats 140 grams of protein every day. I am a person who lifts weights, who walks, who does these things, then the doing. It's just the downstream easy part of it, the way you think and believe about it is the hard part.

So this is why building a little bit at a time on your thoughts and your beliefs and your identity is the thing that will allow us to do the things to get the result we want. 

Yeah. 

Which, and it's also cool that you have the experience and, um, evidence. That it's possible to be a human that used to have an identity that did not involve 140 grams of protein.

You know, you can share that with your clients because now I'm that human. 

It's amazing. The power of the mind, actually, they always say, be really careful of how you talk to yourself. Uh, it is really, really powerful. Thinking of yourself as I'm an athlete, I'm a weight trainer, you will convince yourself if you say it to yourself often enough , 

a hundred percent.

And you know what I love about this? And I give my clients these kinds of exercises on the regular. You can, if I, if I offered to a person who was brand new to exercise, I want you to think the thought, I am an athlete. Their brain will not believe it a hundred percent. They'll be like, I don't know what you're talking about lady.

And I'm like, okay, that's fine. You don't have to believe it yet, but we're still going to practice this thought. If you practice the thought, I am an athlete. It may or may not be objectively true, but is it useful? Does it help you to move into the direction of becoming somebody who believes that they're an athlete?

We can practice it. So, um, slightly off track, but a bit of an example of this is oftentimes when you're Women in particular really struggle with worrying about what other people are thinking about them. So I'll give an example or an exercise to a client and I'll say, okay, this week your homework is when you go into the grocery store and you put all of the stuff on the conveyor belt, there's going to be the person there who's your checkout person.

I want you to think thoughts. This person thinks I'm amazing. They want to help me. They want to like say something amazing to me. That's going to have a, the song going to have a great day. So anytime when I interact with strangers, I practice the thought, everyone thinks I'm amazing. Everybody wants to help me out and do all the things that I need.

Everything works out for me. And the fascinating part about this is that when you introduce this idea to somebody and then they go and do it, they show up with a different energy. And then, so of course the person thinks they're amazing and then it changes their whole experience of their life. So if I practice the thought regularly, I'm an athlete.

I'm going to show up with energy of an athlete and I will have a workout that makes me more likely to become an athlete in my own mind. And then also objectively as well. So there's something so magic about how we can practice whatever it is that we want to manifest to come into existence. The thoughts are a really big portion of it.

And what you do comes after your thoughts. 

Oh, I love that. I think I'm going to start saying that to myself at the checkout every time. I really love that because I think that is so, so, so true and so important what you just said. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So are there any other tips or tricks that you want to share before we wrap up?

Well, yeah, I've got a couple 

of things that I'll just mention because I think that one thing, especially as people are getting started, they get excited and they're wrapped up in the excitement of, I have this goal. So the goal could be, I want to lose a certain amount of weight. I want to lift a certain amount of weight.

I want to look a certain way. I want to be consistent for a certain period of time. So that's the goal. And the goal is great and the goal is going to like be filled with excitement at the beginning, but over time, a goal usually isn't enough to get us to the thing we want. So we have to build systems into, into place.

So James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits and which I think is like basically the Bible of habits. And he's one, another one of my online pretend best friends. And he says, We don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So the best way that I can incorporate this into my life and into the lives of my clients is to just get clear on what's the system.

So sometimes my clients will think that I am being pedantic when I start asking them specific questions about their system, but I'll spend an entire 45 minute call and I'll be like, okay, what time are you waking up? Where do you have your clothes set? What clothes are you wearing? What do you do next?

And then I'll, okay, I get wake up, I like, I go pee. Okay, do you go pee first or do you like drink water or do you like put on different clothes first? We get the system laid out with such specificity that when that person has a system in place around exercise, then when they wake up, they just know this is the system that I do.

Instead of the goal, which is I want to work out today. Okay. 

Yeah. 

And systems are more likely to hold us like a safety net, especially when life gets lifey, versus goals, which are going to be like, Oh, I'm not working out today because, you know, this thing happened and now I got to do this. And now I'm like, whatever, if the systems are in place and I just gave you a small example, but the system could be, um, Uh, there could be a bazillion things that are involved in systems for every goal, but just anything that you're putting in place to hold the space for that thing that you need to do daily in order to create your goal.

So a system, the habit stacking that we talked about is part of a system because we're hooking to a habit we already do. Um. 

I'm thinking the other thing that can be part of, pardon? Can calendaring be? Because for me Oh yes, 

absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. So a big system, a big part of every system is calendaring, making, an appointment for yourself, following through just like you would for your child's piano lesson or their dentist appointment.

Your appointment is important. And for a lot of people, what we need to do here is bring in another system, which is accountability. So when you have Lynn as your coach, you've built in a layer of accountability. For me, I know very well that if I wake up at five, after five in the morning to go and do a workout, there is no way in a bazillion years that I would go if I was the only level of accountability.

So for six months last year, my sister and I, Met with a trainer two days a week at 6 AM and I would hear the alarm. I'd get up, I'd put my feet on the floor. My husband would say, good job, buddy. This was part of the system. He had to say, good job, buddy. I got up, I got myself sorted and I went because I had these layers of accountability built in.

So that was part of my system. And accountability is very magic for a lot of humans. My online pretend best friend, Gretchen Rubin, that I already talked about. She has a book called, uh, the four tendencies. And, um, she talks about the fact that there are humans who are upholders who are just good at doing all of the things and taking care of things.

And they don't need a lot of external accountability. They're really good at holding themselves accountable. Internally there's questioners and they need questions asked before they can do the thing. Then there's the biggest group of people. And I'm in this group and a lot of people are, and that's obligers.

I will do the thing if I have someone else that is there holding me accountable. I'm less, um, adept, less good at holding myself accountable. And then there's rebels who sort of will do it for a while and then not. They're like an interesting group. Character, if you're interested in this at all, you can do a quiz, and figure out which one you are, but the majority of us, especially if they're in your world and they're looking for help are probably obligers because rebels and questioners will be somewhere else and upholders are already just doing their workout without help.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that you say it like that, I think I have, I have some degree of upholders who are like. Just give me the program, explain to me how I need to be training, and then they don't, they say, I don't have any problem doing it myself. And I think they've got to be the upholders, right? 

Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. So yeah, the bottom line of this whole line of me, um, waxing poetic about it is that If you can build in layers of accountability. So hire Lynn as your fitness coach is number one, you also build in the layers of accountability with other friends. Maybe they want to do the workouts with you or family members.

Um, meeting somebody somewhere that's usually people will show up for those kinds of things. Calendaring is another level of accountability that sometimes works for people because they're accountable to their calendar. Um, that, that one's not as great for me 

when 

it comes to workouts. 

Well, um, nowadays my, I have a clients and customers Facebook group and we do an accountability, every week.

So it's, I'm starting with this, I'm still learning, you know, how, how it will best run. But the idea is that, you know, you think about like, so when are you going to train this coming week? What's your plan? Right. So you are ready. Have building in the system, right? And then at the end of the week, you kind of review, review that, okay, so how did it go?

Like, did I get achieve the things that I wanted to achieve? And, and did any questions come up along the way and this kind of thing. So yeah. 

Awesome. Yeah. Love it. And then the last thing I'll say about all of this, and this is for women at this time of life. For all of the big goals that they have, whether it's for their health and fitness or whether it's for career or relationship or, um, hobbies or anything that you want to do.

My number one thing that I like to tell people is you get to decide. So because all of us are of this age group, probably remember when we were in our teens watching the movie, pretty woman. You probably watched it back then. So what I like to tell people is that pretty woman, even though it's like, um, subject matter is like maybe a little dodgy.

It's a sneaky feminist movie because Vivian, the main character was an entrepreneur. Now her product was maybe not something all of us want to sell, but she was sneaky entrepreneur. And one of the things she says in the movie, and I love it is. I say who I say when I say how much so I often will use that as a like a Post to come back to and I encourage women of this age to realize that that is what they have access to They get to decide who they hang out with they get to decide when they do it And they get to decide how much they want to um, they also get to decide What they want to do with the rest of their life now that they have access to more time for themselves.

And I think it's the most magic time of life for women. Um, obviously there's some bumpy rides through perimenopause. If we can get, you know, to a place where that's well taken care of and you're in a good place in terms of how you're feeling with your hormonal health and your physical health, anything is possible.

So you get to decide. 

Oh, I love that. And I love that to end with. I mean, I a hundred percent agree. I think this has been, and I see so many women around me that once they get through the perimenopause thing and they take control of their lives and they start doing the things they want to do. I mean, they are enjoying it.

I mean, I don't want to say more than other parts of their lives because of course having family or career success or whatever is rewarding as well. But I feel like their life is looking more like them, right? Yeah. Finally. So. Yeah. 

Yeah. They're in the glow of, of, of midlife and beyond.

Let's call it that. Yes. 

Wonderful. So, tell us like, where can people find you or connect with you? Uh, and what about your coaching? Cause now you've been so inspiring that I'm sure some people want to hear about that as well. 

Okay. Amazing. Thank you. Um, the best place to find out all about me is at my website, drpeggymalone.com. You can sort of find all avenues from there. On the socials, I'm most active on Instagram. You can also find me on Facebook. If you search Dr. Peggy Malone or even Peggy Malone, you'll find me. And if you want to listen to the podcast, it's called the Midlife Improvement Project, and it's available anywhere you can listen to or find podcasts.

In terms of coaching, um, if this is something that's piqued your curiosity at all, what I do to work with people is we start with a bit of a discovery call. And it's, um, It's absolutely free. You like, sign up for a call. I'll chat with you for an hour. We'll get clear on what your goals are and how I could help you to get to them in the next six months.

So, if you go to my website, drpeggymalone. com, there's links to find out how to, get on one of those calls, if that's something that is intriguing and you'd like to give it a call. I would love to, um, to chat with some of your listeners if they're into it. 

Yeah. And all the links will be in the show notes, so check them out there.

Great. So thank you once again for joining, Peggy. Thanks so much for having 

me. I love talking about, um, about all of this subject matter, especially to women of our vintage. We, uh, we deserve it. And, uh, once again, we get to decide what we want to do next. Yes. Thank you.