I agree with all that. And so many of those things speak to my personal struggle with weight and ADHD. And the one that I will add is there's also so much information out there and so much mixed information out there. So for those of us that tend to want to find the quote unquote right way of doing things, that all or nothing thinking where if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to clean up my eating and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. You can get stuck in the research phase, right? Because you can find so much conflicting information about what does a healthy diet constitute? What does that look like? Is it keto? Is it this? Is it that? What is a quote unquote good exercise routine? What should you be doing? What's optimal? And so we get caught in this perfectionism of I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it the right way. And that unto itself becomes overwhelming before you even start. Like it becomes a barrier unto itself of I don't even know what the right way to go about this is, despite putting time and effort into answering those questions. So what do I do? Even

if we're just talking about what you're doing at the gym, like there's so many different ways to do bicep curls or like work you know, this particular muscle. What's the best way? How do you know? Why do one over the other? Like I found that really overwhelming for sure.

Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about this client and what their struggles are.

So I have a client who is somewhat younger. They're like a university student and they very much want to develop a fitness routine that's really important to them. And, you know, obviously being a student, they're already so busy. But I think it's sort of the classic thing where, you know, they say they want it. They think of it. They're like, yeah, I want to do that. Right. And then the actual follow through is there's so many things, right? Sometimes just kind of everything we talked about being busy, you know, feeling often feeling fatigued or tired, right? Honestly, if you don't already love going to the gym, and sometimes even if you do, if you're sitting at home in your cozies and you're feeling comfy or you're tired or you've had a long, stressful day and you physically feel a bit like blah, it's really hard to be like to overcome that feeling and be like, okay, yeah, I'm going to go to the gym. And it's so funny. I don't know if you have had this, Asher, but I find this even with clients and with myself for stuff that we do like to do. Like we know we like to do something that's like fun, make art or go for a bike ride. And when we think about doing that, we'll still be like, right. So now we add in something like go to the gym, which is like work. So this client in particular is kind of struggling with all of those things, right? Not having the time, not finding the time, being quite busy, being tired, and just not being motivated. Even though, you know, they know, and we talk about it in their head that they have a global motivation to have a fitness routine. But in the moment, it's like it's two different people, right? Yeah.

And that is something I see so often with my clients and with myself, the things, even the things we truly enjoy, we can struggle to match intention with action. That's a hallmark of ADHD. Why do I not do the things I ought to do? And more so than that, why do I not do the things that I know I really want to do? The things that matter to me at my core. And so if you're already a little exercise adverse or you've not had good experiences with exercise, there's no positive evidence or motivation there yet to tap into because so much of coaching is about finding that positive motivation and finding ways to match intention with action that aren't urgency-based or it's on fire-based, that can make it a really uphill struggle. I know that was certainly very true for me. I had so much imposter syndrome around exercise for so many years because I've been doing ADHD coaching for a long time. And I've had many clients over the years who had a good exercise routine coming into coaching and would talk about how that supported their ADHD, which by the way, is something that we should mention here as we're talking about this is exercise does have tremendous positive impacts on executive function and energy. Two things that we really struggle with is ADHD And I've had several clients over the years who had that in place when we started working together. And I know the science. I know that this is helpful. And here I am, an ADHD coach, helping other people with their executive function challenges. And yet I'm unable to engage in this quote unquote, really simple way of bolstering executive function in a consistent way and never have been able to until the last couple of years. It's tough. And

that's it. It has so many. It's quite important for people with ADHD, which is why for me, I'm always really motivated to help clients with it. And a lot of the times clients will come more for the, oh, I need to lose it just it feels like a thing you should be doing and you maybe don't even know why you're motivated. But at the end of the day, it is one of the, I think, keystone pieces that helps us manage our ADHD. If we can find that way around it. And you mentioned like mindset and, you know, sort of finding that positive motivation. so with my client, who's kind of working on this right now, I think that is the thing, you know, for this person is, it's not just like a, oh, I don't have any, you know, clean gym clothes, although maybe sometimes it is. It's okay. The time does exist. We've got down to brass tacks. The fact is, okay, you've, you do have the time sometimes, not all the time because you're busy, but there are moments, but in those moments, it's that lack of motivation right it's like everything else is so important you know tons of assignments do I've been really busy this week what is that thought what is that mindset that you got to have that's going to push you to go when you're not in the mood how do you have to frame it to yourself and we've kind of what's interesting is I think for this client they've tried out a few different ways of talking to themselves about it. And this is what I call or actually maybe I stole it from Cam. I don't know, but it's like an. Yeah, I stole it from Cam. It's an internal resource, right? Like, you know, an external resources, you know, hey, let's make sure that your shoes are by the front door. But this is more of that internal resource where it's like, what is the thing that you say to yourself that gets you over the hump? And I think they're starting it to get it. I think they're kind of finding and it takes some playing around because I gave them some of like my frameworks, like here's what has worked for me. And they were like, it's funny. I love this when this happens with a client. They're like, yeah, no, that totally doesn't work for me at all. And it's cool, but I'm glad I could at least give you like, you know, a jumping off point. I think they'll get there. They're working on it.