Ep 104 The Messy Middle: Why Progress isn't Pretty (and why that's the point)

Have you ever started over on the same goal so many times you've lost count? Same commitment, same strong start — and then life happens, motivation disappears, and the goal quietly gets shelved until Monday.

That space between starting and arriving? That's not failure. That's the work. In this episode, Kat breaks down what she calls the messy middle — why it's so uncomfortable, why our culture of instant results is making it worse, and four honest, practical ways to actually get through it.

No gadgets. No optimization hacks. Just the things that hold you when motivation doesn't show up.

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Resources mentioned

• Atomic Habits by James Clear — jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
• KatFit Strength Online Coaching — kat.fit
• KatFit on Instagram — @KatFitStrength

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Transcript

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Let me ask you this. How many times have you stopped and started over again on the same goal, same weight loss target, same commitment to workout three times a week, same promise to eat better, sleep, more, stress less, and every single time you start strong, maybe weak, maybe two. Then life happens. Kids get sick, work explodes. You miss a workout, then another, and somewhere in between the second and third you quietly she the goal and tell yourself you'll try again. Monday I. I get this completely. I have lived this. I coach clients who are trying to change this every day, and what nobody tells you is that space between starting and arriving at your goal, that is not failure. That is the work. That is what I call the messy middle. And today we are going to talk about why it's so uncomfortable, why our culture is making it worse, and most importantly, what you can actually do to get through it. Welcome to Miles From Review, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I am Kat, your host, and if you are new here, welcome and if you're a long time listener, I'm so happy that you have been supporting this show. Please, if you have not done so already. Follow the show and if you have a spare moment or two, rate the show. This helps other individuals like yourself find the show. It does not gimme any sort of monetary perks, but it allows for me to speak to more individuals like yourself so that I can reach more voices and help more voices clearing up. Just all the noise in the fitness and wellness space and providing some clarity and tangible tips to help support you wherever you are in your journey. Today, we are living in just an era of instant everything. You can order something and within an hour it be on your doorstep. We are promised massive transformations and little to no time. As the ad state on social media, we are peppered with before and afters with no tangible information of what it takes in, how long our timeline is skewed on goals and the time it takes and what it takes. And this. Is doing us a disservice. Social media has essentially broken our ability to watch a process in full because everything we see is either before and after and nobody posts about that messy middle like nobody shares about the Tuesday night where they ate cereal for dinner and skip the gym because they were just too depleted. Nobody posts about that plateau where nothing is changing. They're still showing up. And nothing changes. Nobody posts about the workout. That was a disaster that they couldn't lift what they normally lifted. They had to walk away from that workout. Nobody posts about the times that they were super tired. So our brains have absorbed this lie that if we're doing it right, results should come fast. And if they aren't coming fast, we are the problem. We must be doing it wrong. We're broken. Nothing works for us. And then on top of that, you are not living a simple life. So with this. If we're doing it right, results should come fast. We're peppered with information of just do X, then Y will happen or be consistent. However, your life is complex. I've said it many times and I'm going to say it again. The only fact is there are 24 hours in a day and nobody has the same 24 hours because your life is different. You're running households, managing careers, raising kids, and trying to carve out some time and energy for your own health. You make hundreds of decisions a day before you even think about your own goals. So when you hear some influencers say, just be consistent, or if you had motivation, it will happen, or. It's super simple. I want you to hear. Simple does not mean easy. Because a lot of this stuff is hard. And hard doesn't mean impossible. And that space between where you are and where you want to be is the messy middle. Most of us are in the messy middle, it's hard to see when that goal has arrived and we're so conditioned that it's established goal meet goal, but the messy middle is where the work happens. If you've read the book, atomic Habits is a very popular one. I do enjoy it for a lot of reasons. However it is good information to glean from and apply when we are goal setting. Goal setting is complex. It's not black and white. There's a lot of messy middle there. So when clients come in for me and they make a goal, oftentimes that goal is altered many different times. Does that mean you can't? Obtain that goal. It just means we have to adapt the plan, change the plan. The goal may change, and that's perfectly fine. So the quote that I absolutely remind myself from the book, atomic Habits by James Clear, is you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And what this actually means for us in real life is motivation is a terrible long-term strategy. Motivation shows up when you're inspired. Systems show up on a Wednesday when you're exhausted, and the last thing you want to do is anything. So today I'm gonna give you four practical, honest ways to assist with that messy middle. Not by being more disciplined, not by buying a new program or a gadget but by building a few things that hold you when motivation doesn't show up or allows you to show up for yourself more simply, not easy. This is hard. Simply just means clearing the noise. And having these systems that can help you show up on your most chaotic weeks, as well as your most incredible weeks where you're feeling motivated and all the energy is there and things just align. Number one, stop managing your motivation. Manage your decisions instead. Willpower is such a finite resource where we see a lot of this hype, this quick dopamine hit is from so social media of if you had willpower, it's normally a quick motivational. Wording a reel with a person working out, or a day in a life of someone showing their kids and how they can always show up with this like willpower infused quote. But the problem with that is it sets you up for failure because willpower gets used up very quickly. Every decision you make in a day. What you feed your kids, what you say in an email, how you handle things at school. Drop off that big meeting or presentation that comes up. Every one of those chips away at your own capacity for more decisions later in the day. And by the time 7:00 PM rolls around and you're supposed to choose to work out or eat something nourishing, you're running on fumes. You feel the decision fatigue, you're exhausted. All you wanna do is plop down on the couch. Open up your phone and just scroll, because that feels easy. Then you're being peppered with these willpower infused reels, and then the guilt builds. Oh, if I could only get my act together, if I could only have more motivation if it were just that simple, what's wrong with me? But the secret is not to make better in the moment decisions, the secret is to make fewer of them. So plan your workouts for the week again. I want to be crystal clear here. I do understand none of this is easy and it can be hard to build this in, but I'm trying to simplify how to do this. And when I say plan your workouts for the week on Sunday does not mean it's going to look beautiful, and we're going to get into that a little bit more. But if you don't put them in your calendar like they are, a meeting that you cannot cancel, Decide what you're gonna make for dinner, maybe three nights a week or one night. Think about, okay, if I can just alleviate and have something on a system so I'm not constantly making these decisions every single time, that is gonna help set out your clothes the night before for working out. If you work out first thing in the morning, I get it. I have been there where I have not set out my clothes and I'm tiptoeing around my room on the Dulles like flashlight setting on my phone to try and find my clothes. It feels defeating and you feel disheveled before you even get into your workout and then feeling rushed because it's just not flowing. Set your clothes out the night before. None of it is glamorous, but these pre decisions, the times where you have space, and I do understand that weekends can be packed. This is where you need to look at. I would argue a four week schedule. And no, I'm in the thick of it with my kids with sports, we've got tournaments, we've got sports stuff that takes up all day on the weekends. And when I know there's a busy weekend or a slew of busy weekends, I will try and steal a pocket of time on a Friday night to make the decisions for the next week being like, okay, we're not gonna clock out of this week until we think about next week. You have to find that pocket of time. That works. For you. So I'm mentioning Sunday here, but Sunday may be the worst day for you to think about your upcoming week. It could be Wednesday, but you have to find the system and the timing that works for you, and that is key with managing your decisions ahead, is looking at what is going to work for you. Takeaway number two, change your relationship with the messy middle itself. So we're gonna go into a little bit more of what James Clear writes about, and I think this is one of the most unrated ideas of behavioral change. And he calls it the plateau of latent potential. And it's this concept that when you plant the seed, nothing is gonna happen for weeks. I don't know if you're a gardener. I am a. Garden hobbyist. And it's always so exciting when you start your sprouts, you plant the seed and you're like, okay, when's the action gonna happen? But it takes some time. Now with seeds it's gonna take a few days. But when you plant the seed of a gold, nothing is gonna happen for a few weeks. And the seed is doing enormous work underground. It's building the roots, it's building the structure, and you cannot see any of that. And one day. Something breaks through the soil, but the growth didn't start on that day. It was accumulating the whole entire time. So that is your messy middle. You're doing the work, the results are being built. There's just nothing visible yet. And I'm gonna jump back to take away number one, where I started talking about planning and the systems that is part of the messy middle planning and getting yourself. Set up with a system takes time. It's that plateau of latent potential. Everybody is capable of their goals, but what we do not allow ourselves is having that time, that latent, that plateau of latent potential to get ourselves. Set up for success. We're building that roots, we're building that structure. We're building that foundation that is not talked about in that transformational post. I am not immune to this because I've been doing this for years. I had a lot of time in that, on that plateau of latent potential where it's. A little bit of a transformation talk here or timeline is before I had kids, it was really, I'm gonna say easy. I only had to worry about myself and my husband's schedule a little bit. There was nobody depending on me to show up, to pick them up, to make the dinner, to get them through the bedtime routine, to pick them up from a childcare situation. There was none of that. So I had more time. I didn't have to be so structured or put in a system or process. And so when I had my first child, my goodness, my whole system blew up. I had to sit there and go back. To that messy middle to figure out how to prioritize myself. So just because we get a system in place does not mean it's set in stone. So this messy middle, this building, the roots, the building, the structure is going to have transformations of its own. And that's okay. It does not mean you're failing. So what it looks like in a fitness situation, you wanna work out. You wanna work out three days a week. Okay. You've established that. You verbalized that. But the process in obtaining that isn't, you're not a robot. It's not, I am going to work out three days a week, therefore I work out three days a week and it automatically happens. No. We have this beautiful organic thing called our life with many different responsibilities. Takeaway number one is let's take some of that deciding factor out. Let's start to schedule. So I always encourage my clients, like when we start to put ourselves on the calendar, you may not show up that first week. You may put yourself on the calendar and be like, Ooh, I really wanna work out tonight, but maybe a work project popped up. Maybe your partner had to travel. So that throws your stuff off. Okay, that's still something you need to celebrate. That's still a win that you put yourself on the calendar. So that is the messy middle. It is not a failure. It does not mean something is wrong with you that you couldn't work out. It means you are starting to build that system. You are starting to build those roots and that structure that is gonna set you up for long time success. So that is part of the work. You set your clothes out the night before and someone has a nightmare and you need that extra time to sleep because someone had a nightmare in the middle of the night, or maybe you didn't sleep so well, but you're like, I really need to get that 45 minutes of sleep or that hour of sleep because it is gonna set me up for success. Celebrate setting out those clothes because that is part of that messy middle. That is part of establishing that system to set yourself up for success and. The problem becomes we abandon that process before these breakthroughs happen because it looks like nothing is happening. We expect a linear climb and we get a flat line and suddenly jumps, and most people quit during that flat line. That concept, the plateau of latent potential, that is where the change is happening, but. It's not fun. It's not Instagram flashy. It does not drive likes. It doesn't, there's no virality to it. So we're not seeing that. And in our minds, we've been so trained that if it doesn't come quickly or automatically something is wrong with me, I have failed in the process. Nothing works. So I have to move on to find the next thing. What I challenge you to do is reframe what progress means. Progress is not only the scale moving progress is showing up when you didn't feel like it. Progress is making decisions ahead of time, even if no action occurs. Progress is the workout you modified instead of skipping. Progress is choosing a walk over the couch on a hard day. These are compounding even when you cannot see them. I wanna take a quick pause because I wanna tell you about something I built specifically for the women who have been in the messy middle for a while and already for some actual support. KatFit Strength is my online program and it is built for women. Over 35 who want to get strong without overhauling their entire life. No complicated protocols, no hour long workouts, you just can't fit in. Just clear. Progressive strength program delivered through the KatFitt app with coaching that meets you where you actually are. There are two tiers Essentials, gives you the program and the structure. And Premier, which gets you direct access to me, both are designed to work in the real world, meaning one with kids in jobs and the days that just don't go as planned. If you've been listening to this episode and thinking, I need this in my actual training life, not just in my headphones, this is the place. Head to the show notes, click a fit call with me and we will chat to discuss your goals. No obligation to sign on. It is a place reserved for you and I just to chat to see if this program will work for you. All right, let's get back to it and talk about takeaway number three, because this one might be the most practical one. Have a minimum viable day and never negotiate below it. This is one that I use with my clients and in my own training life as a mom, as a woman with a career, a family is just so unpredictable. If your plan only works when everything goes perfectly, it's not a plan. It's a wish. It's a pie in the sky. It is a perfection seeking all or nothing trap. What I want you to design is a minimal, viable version of your routine, not your ideal day. Just the floor, the like bare minimum, and it is never ever to be negotiated. How this works is it's a non-negotiable baseline that you can hit even on your hardest day. Maybe it's 10 minutes of movement, maybe it's getting outside for a walk. Maybe it's drinking your water and getting seven hours of sleep. Whatever it is, decide in advance and protect it like it matters because it truly does. And here's how it works. It keeps the identity alive. So when you go from a full workout to nothing, you send yourself a signal that says, I'm someone who quits when things get hard. But when you do your minimum, even if it's 10 minutes or a short walk, you send yourself a completely different message. You say, I am someone who shows up for herself even on hard days, and that identity is what builds the muscle of consistency over time. Look at your day, and again, it has to work for you. And this is going back to where it celebrates. Like maybe it's setting out your clothes every single night and you celebrate that. Maybe it's, I need to take two minutes of breath work before I walk into work, start with one that. You can be aware and acknowledge that this is where I'm showing up even on the days that I don't feel like it. I always encourage my clients to do is if they don't have the energy or the capacity or access to or their life changes, is do a mobility routine. You can do it in your pajamas. That is always gonna serve you well it's more accessible, especially when your day changes. Take away. Number four, make your environment do the work for you. And this one, this is one of those things that sounds almost too simple to matter. But I promise you it matters. Your environment is either working for you or working against you right now, so there's no neutral here. If your workout shoes are buried in the back of your closet, if you're fighting a battle before you even start. If your healthy snacks are on the back shelf and the chips are at eye level, your brain is gonna choose the chips. Nine outta 10. It's not because you're weak, but your brain is wired to take the path of least resistance. And it's, again, it's nothing against you. It's not a character flaw, it's just that's biology. So if you start to look at how we can set our environment up for success, it is going to make it easier. It's gonna remove those barriers, it's going to take away those battles so that it makes it simpler for you to get into a workout routine. It takes away that decision. How this might work is, let's build off of this. So some of my clients have a little bit more time in the evening and they have to work out first thing in the morning.'cause that's where it will fit best in their schedule. So it might look like I'm laying out the clothes the night before in my room. So that's step one. And I know I need to get a a breakfast after, but it's always rushed. So they pre-make or they set their breakfast up there. Utensils, their their plates, et cetera, whatever they need, it's all packed so that it makes it easier for them to nourish and show up for themselves while the chaos of everybody getting up and going to their respective workplaces and school places are happening. So it's taking some of that decision. Out before you're in the moment, because when you're in the moment having to make those decisions, it's going to feel like impossible. And showing up for yourself is going to be the first thing that gets taken out because. Most often women are the default parent. You are the person who is the finder. The question answerer, the emotional regulator, all the things I know. I get it.. I can't tell you how many times I am derailed just trying to get myself to where I need to go. And what helps me get set up for success is I have these things set out so that even in the chaotic mornings of Mom, where is this? And you're thinking, I told you to pack this the night before, because kids, they never listen. I know that I can keep myself moving while quickly finding something for my children. So design for the path of least resistance. Put shoes by the door. Put a water bottle on the counter. keep the cut vegetables at the front of the fridge. Set your gym bag out the night before. Just no hacks, no gits, like it's. Free. It's simple. Like sometimes when we trick ourselves that it can't be that easy, but it is, and again, I can't stress enough. Easy doesn't mean that it's not hard. There is an element to hard, there is an element to us being in that plateau of latent potential where we are getting these things set up. But the more action you take and being like, okay, I packed my gym bag the night before. But you forgot it at the house, so now you have to go home. Okay? Celebrate that win. And maybe when you get home, do a mobility routine or a body weight routine and the time that you were supposed to be at the gym. Just don't be like, I can't, I don't have my gym bag. I can't go. You set aside that time. So recoup some of that time even though you're at home. If your partner is to be watching the kids while you went to the gym, but you forgot your gym bag. Phone ahead and be like, Hey, I know I'll be in the house, but please like I need this time for myself. And then I'll jump in and help with everything Okay, so don't bail on yourself. Even if the gym bag is forgotten keeping the cut vegetables at the front of the fridge and you're like, you know what? Crunchy vegetables just does not sound good to me. I want something. What? Whatever you're craving because you're craving that will be like, you know what? I can have. This, whatever I'm craving, but I'm also going to incorporate the vegetables. It doesn't have to be the all or nothing. We're not looking at black or white. The messy middle is a lot of gray and, the plateau of latent potential takes a lot of, scaffolding to build ourselves up to see that change With that we wanna audit ourselves. This is not a get out the red pen, show all the places where you've gone wrong and rake yourself over the coals for that. I keep forgetting my gym bag. Be, it's in the mud room or whatnot and I keep getting derailed. Maybe the night before you put your gym bag in the car, maybe you cut the vegetables, you're in front of the fridge, but you're just like, I don't eat them. What vegetables are you keeping there that are cut? Do you actually like eating them?'cause there's thousands of different vegetables. Sometimes it's you need to just do it. But look at what are the things that are driving you to make choices that. You are like, I really didn't wanna make that choice, but in that time I did. Maybe it's you're not scheduling a little time for yourself to actually sit down and eat for lunch, and you go all day and you're surviving on caffeine all day. And then by the time dinner rolls around, you're in the pantry trying to cook dinner and just munching on all these different snacks that you never wanted to munch on. So maybe. Block out some time. I do understand that workdays are so manic and most of us don't control our schedules. But then let's look at, are there better snacks that are gonna set you up for success? Because they're gonna have a better nutrient density to allow you to thrive. So when I say audit, what is making the wrong choices? Easier does not mean you are failing. It means. Sometimes we have to adjust the plan'cause it's just not working for you. We can have a plan, and this is what I do with my clients. We have to adjust. So other factors, you wanna get better. Sleep, is your phone on your nightstand? Keeping you awake? Is the drive through on your way home, making weeknight dinners harder. Nothing about this is about being perfect. It's about redesigning your environment so that the defaults serve you. We are creatures of habits. Our brain wants the path of least resistance, and our brain craves safety and comfort. So if we can set our environment up to have success, and we slowly tweak it so that we. Are getting the things that we want that are driving ourselves towards that goal, it is gonna help us. But that is all done in the messy middle. It is all done by tweaking things. And it is unique to yourself. Not one person has the same 24 hours. I cannot stress that enough, that there are only 24 hours in a day, and that is the only fact. So that Instagram fitness influencer that is touting. Oh, you can just do it if you feel motivated. I have x many kids and I can still show up. That's fantastic for her. I love that for her. But you are different, and it doesn't mean you can't. You have to sort out the routine that works for you. The routine that I have for myself is not the routine that I apply to all my clients because they are not me. They don't have my life. There may be some commonalities, but they are themselves, and that is where I coach them on their unique life. I hear, and we work. In tandem, tweaking the messy middle so that they are able to see that progress as well as coaching through that, Hey, X, Y, Z happened. Let's celebrate that. That's part of being in that messy middle. And I wanna leave you with this. Every woman you admire has built something real in her health, whether it's strength, endurance, consistency about a relationship with food, she has a messy middle story. She has weeks where nothing clicks the season where life just took over, but, and workouts just went sideways. Meals that were drive-through meals and no vegetables in sight and goals that need to be adjusted. The messy middle is not a detour. That is the path. There's no version of meaningful lasting change that skips it. The discomfort, the slowness, the uncertainty. These are not signs that something is wrong. That is the sign that you're in it and being in it is the whole thing. You don't need to jump to a new program every time something feels off or doesn't come easy. You don't need to optimize every meal or buy the expensive gadget or find the perfect window of time. You need a system that works on your hardest days, an environment that makes the right choices easier, and the willingness to stay in the messy middle long enough to let the compound effect do what it does. Make fewer in the moment decisions. Pre decide your workouts, your meals, your non-negotiables for the week. Understand the plateau of latent potential. The work is accumulating even when you can't see it. Design a minimum viable routine, A floor you can hit on your hardest days, not your best ones, and shape your environment. Make the right choice, the easy choice and an audit. What is making the wrong choices easier? Here's what I want you to do. Before you sign off on this podcast or get out of your car or finish a walk, pick one of these four things, just one, and decide right now, not on Monday, not on next week, or if it is Monday, you can decide On Monday, whenever you're listening is decide. Within the next couple hours, what you are going to do differently in the next seven days? Are you gonna pre-decide your workouts for the week? Are you going to set out your shoes tonight? Are you going to decide what your minimum viable routine looks like? Pick one and own it. And that one thing is how the messy middle becomes your foundation. And if you want support in it, that is what KatFit is built for. You can find me@www.cat.fit or on Instagram at KatFit Strength. Whether you're just starting out or you have been at this for years and your stock in your own messy middle, there is a place for you. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today, if this episode resonated with you. We take 30 seconds and leave a rating or a review. It is genuinely one of the best ways that it can help Miles from a review reach more women who need to hear this stuff. And I do read every single one. If you have a question, a when you want to share, or a topic you want me to dive into, reach out, message the podcast. Your voice really helps shape the show. I am always listening. Until next time, stay in the messy middle. It is doing something and you are doing something. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit or share this episode. Road with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.