Why is it that we start out strong on a change we want to make or a goal that we have…and then we fall short? Podcaster and manager of the Lifeway Podcast Network Angie Elkins sits down with the AllMomDoes Podcast host Julie Lyles Carr for an honest conversation about the physical and spiritual truths she learned when she set out to do the 75 Hard Challenge.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr:
So I’m walking through the Nashville airport and I hear someone say, “Excuse me, excuse me.” This gorgeous redhead comes up to me and says, “I think we know each other.” And my brain’s doing that thing where I’m like, “You’re one of my people, but wait a minute, I’m in Tennessee and you’re one of my people in Florida.” And it turned out that yes, my friend Angie Elkins was in the Nashville Airport and saw me. We got to see each other. Angie, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Angie Elkins:
You are welcome. What a providential meeting that was. That was so fun.
Julie Lyles Carr:
It was amazing. It was so fun.
Angie Elkins:
It was so fun to run into you. And I was like, I know that is Julie. I’m just going to go over and say hey. And she may not even remember me, but I’m glad you did. That was really fun.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Of course, I would remember you, Angie, and I have somebody in common from here in Austin that there was a guy that I worked with when I was in ministry full time, and Angie, he ultimately went to the church where Angie is, and she got to know him and then he connected us when my first book came out and I got to be on Angie’s podcast called Chatology. Both of us were really new to the podcasting space at the time. We hit it off immediately. We tried to stay in pretty good touch through Voxer.
I’m still trying to figure out the Voxer thing, I got to be honest. You are a savant at Voxer. You have stayed in touch with all kinds of people. I am just trying to get on my Instagram feed a couple times a week. So I’m super impressed that you have been able to make that work. But it’s been so fun, Angie, to see your podcast and then the AllMomDoes podcast. They’ve just kind of grown up together. We were all sort of in podcast preschool together and we have continued on.
Angie Elkins:
Oh my word, yes. Perfect way to put it. That’s so true.
Julie Lyles Carr:
It’s so fun to get to have you on here. We were kicking around ideas like, “What could we talk about today? What do our listeners want to hear? What are some things that might be of interest?” And one of the things that we settled on that I really am excited to explore with you, I got to watch you through the magic of the Instagrams, go through a little thing that I’ve had several friends do called 75 Hard. And this program, I’m like, “Wow.”
It started out as one of these online trends and I saw more and more people getting on board and then I saw you doing it and I loved that you made social media something of your accountability space. You jumped in there and were posting what you were doing. So first of all, I want to hear about your 75 Hard experience because I am sure I have a listener out there who is probably in the thick of it or thinking about doing it or got two days in and went, “This is bananas.” So tell me what yours was and what you got started down that road and why.
Angie Elkins:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me tell you that I had a friend that did 75 Hard during COVID, and I watched her, she really documented it well on Instagram. Every day when she would go out for her outdoor workout, she would document what she was doing and talk to her followers. And I was absolutely drawn in and I thought, “Man, I wish I could do that.” And you know how it is, you see somebody else doing it and think, “She’s making that look so easy.”
But we know it’s not easy. It literally has the word hard in the title. So we know it’s not easy. But I watched her do it and I thought, I wish I could do that. But I can’t picture myself doing two 45 minute workouts a day following a diet for 75 days straight without any break or cheat meal or anything at all, drinking a gallon of water a day and read 10 pages of nonfiction, which seemed easy to me and honestly was, and then take a progress photo. That’s the fifth thing that you have to do.
I just thought, “I don’t think I can do that.” But I wanted to. There was a part of me that thought, “I really want to do that.” And recently I just had physically gotten to a place where I was really uncomfortable in my body. I think a lot of us live with a lot of body, like “I wish this was different, I wish I was thinner, I wish …” We have all of that.
But I had reached an all time high in my weight gain. I was physically uncomfortable and I have been a yo-yo dieter all my life. So I really felt like I just needed a bootcamp. That’s the approach I felt like I needed. And I was on a walk and I heard a podcaster say, “What is something hard that you really want to challenge yourself to do, but you’re afraid to do it? Or there’s something holding you back. I want you to picture yourself at the end of that challenge.”
So I started thinking, “What if I did it? What if I actually did it and 75 days passed and I stuck to it and did it?” And so I’m going to tell you, Julie, I didn’t think about it too long. I spent maybe three or four days and then I thought, “I’m just doing it. I’m just jumping in and doing it.” And I will tell you within the first probably three or four days of it, I realized I’m totally going to be able to do this. I think I can really do this.
There was a point probably about halfway through where I really started trusting myself to do it. So at first I was scared I was not going to do it. The second workout, I was just planning and planning, trying to get it done as early as possible so I knew I wouldn’t fall off the wagon. Because the rule with 75 Hard is if you mess up, you have to go back to day one.
Julie Lyles Carr:
It’s like Candyland, like when you play Candyland with your kids and you get to the demented whatever forest of whatever, and then you’re back in it again. So yeah, that is quite the warning.
Angie Elkins:
But about halfway through, I realized I can relax a little bit on that second workout because I’m going to do it. It doesn’t matter if it is 10:00 PM, I’m doing it. I just knew I would do it at that point. And I didn’t even realize that what I was struggling with was disbelief in myself and my capability and what I could do. So girl, I learned so much about myself, about God, about him walking with me. There’s so much to unpack about this challenge, I’m telling you. And it got me back in better physical shape. I lost 35 pounds, which a lot of people don’t do it for a weight loss, but that was my goal. So it was awesome.
Julie Lyles Carr:
That’s amazing. And you and I were extrapolating on the fact that something like that, 75 days, okay. But you think about it, it’s two and a half months. It’s not like you’re in saying, I’m going to do this thing for the next nine months or ten months or two years. You’re making a smaller commitment and it is something that can be done. You and I were talking about the fact that so often there are things that they’re hard, they’re not the hardest thing you could ever experience. And yet for some reason, sometimes those things that are going to stretch us just a little bit are some of the very hardest things for us to begin to do. You said something that I think is really fascinating that I hadn’t thought about until you said it, was this idea that you had to learn to trust yourself, that you could carry it through.
I think a lot of times we let ourselves down, we start something, we stop, we start cleaning out the garage, we get distracted, we wander away, and we have built up a little bit of a culture of mistrust with ourselves about what we might be able to pull off. Why do you think that sometimes smaller, really more attainable goals are sometimes the very things that we resist jumping into?
Angie Elkins:
You know what? I’m not sure about that, why all of these times in the past have I started, I can literally remember hearing someone say, “Add something into your life and into your routine that is so small that there’s no way you can stop doing it.” And I started adding in stretching in the morning while my coffee was brewing in the Keurig. So we all know that takes about 90 seconds, right? Not long at all. So I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to add some stretching in.” Did I stick with that? No, I did not. I did not stick with that.
And part of it, I think for me and my personality, and I do think every personality is different, I think for me that was too small to see any kind of movement or result. It was just doing it for the sake of doing it. But you know when you go to bootcamp, you are going in, you are going to have to commit and give 100%, and if you do that, you will see results. And that’s really where I was. What I realized is all of these times in the past, I had not been giving 100%. I had been giving as little as I could to get by to say I was doing what I thought I could do. And I will tell you that what I realized about myself, one of the things, is that I would do whatever I could to keep from doing the hard thing in this realm of my life, in the healthy realm of my life.
I had a lot of discipline in other ways, like you and I killing the podcast game, killing it. We’re here, we’re showing up, we’re recording, we’re being consistent, doing all the things we have to do. My business was growing, my marriage was thriving, my children are great. I mean, everybody’s kids got problems, right? But I’m just saying, everything else I seemed to be juggling, but taking care of myself was the thing that I did not have discipline around in any way.
I would honor a healthy eating plan for 7 days, 14 days, even 21 days with some breaks in between cheat meals, all of that. I had never cultivated really, really strong self-discipline around this area of my life and gone all in. Gone all in. And that’s what I needed. I didn’t need a baby step because maintaining baby steps just wasn’t working for me.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right, right. That idea of baby steps, I think a lot of times you’re right, we’re hearing a lot of people now say, coaches and others say, “Look, just do the small tiny thing and hopefully that will lend itself into a pattern which will grow ultimately into a habit.” But there are things, I think you’re so right, Angie, where we have to take the leap or it’s probably not going to happen. There may be certain areas of our life that we can do that, but there are other areas that we really may have to do that full on clean out to break some of the that we have to certain issues in our lives.
I know for some people that can be, maybe it’s the kind of content you’re watching and you really have to go just cold hard. I’ve had people in my life I love very much who are fighting addiction and to try to taper off some things simply was not going to really help them create the kind of space they needed to really chase after what their next needed to be and to leave some stuff behind.
Now, the flip side of that, and this is what I think is interesting within the experience that you’ve had, what do we do when we come off something like the 75 day? And one of the reasons I’m asking is, I know my listeners heard me say this on previous episodes, we’ve probably, those of us who’ve been in church culture a while, have seen the thing that we call the cardboard testimonies. And you get somebody up there and they’re like, “Oh, we were in this situation,” and they flip the cardboard over and it’s this amazing testimony about how things have changed.
I have to tell you, Angie, I have hit the point, I cringed every time we were going to do it because history just kept showing me over and over that some of the people we were going to cart out there who were going to say their marriage was fixed or their addiction was over or their shopping habits had been curbed, within a couple three weeks, it was all going to be in the dumpster again, because trying to maintain some of the transformation in our lives, even when it’s God kissed, even when it’s God directed, can be really tough. So on the other side of bootcamp, how have you remained in the battle? How have you remained in the fight without it being quite so intense, but carrying the lessons that you learned with you?
Angie Elkins:
Okay, I love this question because as I was in the middle of 75 Hard, I was formulating in my head, what am I going to do when this is over? This is not sustainable. I cannot, nor do I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life. And I was also keeping track of the things about 75 Hard that I was loving, like just finding the things about it that my body and my soul had been craving that I wanted to keep. But then the other things that I dreaded, even though I had committed to, you know how it is, there are parts of it that you just dread. And so I started filtering through those things as I was doing the 75 challenge. And one of them was the Sunday workouts. Working out on a Sunday, I’m telling you there is a reason God said rest on the seventh day.
So I immediately determined I will either not work out at all on Sunday or I definitely will not be doing two. There’s no way. My body got really, really tired. And someone told me who had done 75 Hard before that it took her body about three weeks to acclimate to the two workouts a day. I’m telling you, it took me probably until the last, I don’t know. No, I may have had three weeks at the end when I felt like I was acclimated. Because it was hard. So I immediately knew the things I do not, nor can I maintain. One is two workouts a day. That is not something I’m ever going to do for the rest of my life. But one of the things that I grew to love, and I will tell you Julie, the reason I jumped into this bootcamp in particular is because I really wanted life change.
I wanted a major health renovation in my life and I knew that this would create that. And that’s what everyone told me. “It will change your life, it will change your life.” And I was like, “Great. That’s what I’m looking for.” And so it has changed my life in these ways. I love going for a walk in the morning in my neighborhood. I absolutely love it. I live in Florida, as you mentioned. It’s beautiful here. The sun in the mornings, the birds, walking by the lakes, it’s dreamy. I love it and my body craves it now. So that’s one thing I continue to do.
I still have some weight loss goals, and so I’ve got a new system for what I’m going to do when I’ve just jumped back into a second round challenge. It’s not the full 75 Hard, but I am going to do one workout every day except Sunday and a second workout every other day, which will be strength training, as I continue to try to lose weight. I’m still eating low-carb, which works for me. I add a lot of veggies in, so everyone know, and a lot of fruit. So low-carb, when I say low-carb, I mean no processed foods, just healthy carbs on the days that I eat carbs. So everybody calm down. I am eating carbs. And the water, I’m not drinking a gallon of water a day, but I am trying to finish two 40-ounce Stanleys, so that’s 80 ounces a day.
So I’ve modified it just a little bit so that I can continue to lose some weight. But once I get to my goal, which honestly this was all motivated by, what is the thorn in my flesh? I’m just going to tell you, I had a friend preach on this and I realized it was the fact that I have never been able to maintain a healthy weight, not because of any health issue I have, not because of my body not working the way it should, but simply because of my lack of discipline in that area.
And so my life goal, I set a life goal, I’m going to reach a healthy weight and I’m going to stay there. That’s a life goal of mine. So once I reach that goal, I will develop a new plan that helps me maintain that weight. So great question. I do want to come back to something you just said. I know I’m talking so much, but-
Julie Lyles Carr:
No, go. That’s why you’re here, girl. We want to hear it.
Angie Elkins:
Okay. One of the things that you just said, Julie, about making space, how do you make space for this? I’m going to tell you that that is probably at the very top of the list for one of the things I’ve learned through this, is that I was crowding my life with things that were not good for me. Things that I might have called friends at some point. Having a glass of wine at night after dinner, or two, and listeners, go wherever you need to go with that. If you were drinking more than wine, you know what I’m saying? You don’t have to be an alcoholic to be drinking more alcohol than you should be, right?
So you might be eating late at night, as you mentioned, consuming content you shouldn’t be consuming. There are things that are crowding your life and you do not have space. I did not have room in my heart for what God wanted to do in this area. And so what I did was I just stopped practicing those things. I removed from my heart and my life the things that were crowding out the space for God. And there’s a really popular song we’re singing at church right now called Make Room. I will make room for you to do whatever you want to. And I had not been making room in my life for God to change and work and move and fill that space in my life. And it was a revelation for me and just completely life changing. So now I’m making room for a morning walk. So it’s been awesome.
Julie Lyles Carr:
It is amazing how things crowd in on us when it comes to little things like that, that we don’t realize over time are accruing and are budging out. A lot of the space that we could use for some of the things that we know are bothering us, we know we want to make change in, but we just keep filling it with other things. Angie, it makes me think about, for those of us who were raised as church kids and we went to church camp, church camp was just the height. How is it going to get any higher in the spiritual experience than the way you felt during church camp? And we have other approximations of that in our adult lives when we go to a really powerful women’s conference and it’s amazing. And then whomp, whomp, whomp, Monday morning comes around. And that’s where I think you have really keyed in on something that is so important because we sort of want to do some of these things that are going to change some things.
We may have some goals, we may have some things we want to lay down, but if we aren’t prepping ahead of time to create that room, then we’re simply going to walk right back into the practices, the habits, the routines that have gotten us where we haven’t wanted to be. How do you think God works with us in terms of showing us areas? You said that you heard the sermon that was really, really impactful to you, that made you start thinking through, what are other ways that you knew that God was inviting you to do something? And hey, listener, we’re not saying that everybody should go do 75 Hard. That’s not what this is about.
Angie Elkins:
No, definitely not.
Julie Lyles Carr:
75 Hard is the metaphor. Everybody’s got something that I feel like we know God’s tugging at us a little bit saying, “Hey, I came that you would have life and have it to the full, and this is holding you back a little bit.” So what are the little God nudges that we can look for? Because I got to tell you, Angie, I’ve worked really hard to try to let go of the things that I think are some of my people pleasing tendencies or the expectations other people have and on and on and on. And frankly, sometimes letting go of some of that has meant that I’ve been running around like it’s a free for all when actually, I needed to not necessarily replace the good habit, I needed to replace my why. And instead I just ditched the whole thing.
So how can we listen for God and be careful to filter out those people pleasing voices, those self condemnation voices, all of that, and yet still allow him to say to us, “I love you and you can come up higher. I’m going to love you just as you are, but you can come up higher.” What are things that he used to nudge you?
Angie Elkins:
Yeah, I think just really looking at where that friction is in your life, where you know, I am constantly bumping up either up against anxiety in this area or dissatisfaction in this area, or really even just feeling bad about yourself in that area. And take it before the Lord. I always say, if you want to know if you can hear God’s voice, just ask him to point out your sin. You’ll hear him. You will hear him.
Julie Lyles Carr:
You’re going for the jugular now. Wow.
Angie Elkins:
But it’s really true. It’s really true. Because I think that that is a great way is to say, “God, why, when I think about this topic, or I encounter this person or whatever this habit is, I have this feeling of dissatisfaction, emptiness, wishing it was different, wishing I were different?” That’s what it was for me. I wished that I could gain some kind of self-control around my health. And God just said, “You can. You absolutely can.”
I think there are things that hold us in bondage, and God wants to set us free, and all we have to do is be willing to say, “I am willing to do whatever it takes to be free. And if that means going to bootcamp or completely detoxing on Netflix or whatever it is, I am willing to go all in.” And I’ll tell you, I realized on day one of 75 Hard, I can remember where I was rounding the corner on my walk when I started thinking, “I wonder if I could cheat this just a little, and if I don’t do the full 45 minutes this morning, could I add five minutes this afternoon?”
And it was like I immediately saw this tendency to cheat it, to not go all in. And I knew that if I did not go all in, I could not be set free from it. And I am telling you guys, what I have learned about myself, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us, is that when I go all in, I can do whatever he empowers me to do. I can do it. If I wanted to run a marathon, I don’t, but if I did, I could train. I could prepare myself, I could be consistent with it, and I could do it. I would’ve never been able to say that before. But it is the difference in going all in or going half in. And I had been going half in my whole life.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I think it’s incredible to think about that. We often talk about that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and yet we sometimes forget our part of the equation in that. And that radical obedience to whatever that thing is really that secret sauce that I think some of us miss. There’s also something to the idea, and I know that we want to be so cautious, and a lot of us who grew up in certain aspects of faith, we’ve battled this for a long time to get over it. I know we don’t want to get back into legalism, but this idea of these small cheats doesn’t really help us either.
It’s interesting, I for a long time was able to adhere to a particular nutrition plan that for six days you ate clean and the seventh day was a cheat day. And I loved thinking of that is like my Sabbath eating day and on and on and on. And you know what, Angie, for a long time, that little system worked for me. And then there was something that just clicked that unfortunately made that cheat day, two cheat days. And then maybe, well, what if I spaced it out this way? And well, what if … And all of a sudden I was so off track with some of the goals that I had had. I find this to be true when I’ll say, “You know what? I’m going to write this many words a day on this little project that I really think God wants me working on.” But then I’m like, “Well, maybe if I nudge 250 words to this day …” It’s these small little things that I think get in the way of some of our biggest goals.
And this is not a grit and grind statement. It’s just that self-examination of where am I trying to make a shortcut? Circle around, not actually do the whole thing. I love that you bring that up. Now in the midst of this big thing that you did, in the midst of what God was teaching you about the fact that you could do it and you could trust yourself, and he was leading you to change something that you had been really concerned about. You also started making a couple big changes in your career too. So in addition to Chatology, and I want the listener to go find that, I’ll have Rebecca put that in the show notes. You also went from being with Ivey Media with Jamie Ivey, who’s been on the show several times to now a new position at Lifeway. So catch me up on what you’re doing there.
Angie Elkins:
Girl, crazy, just crazy times. But such a God thing. I love the local church. It has always been my heartbeat. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a church secretary because that’s the only thing I thought that women could do in the church when I was growing up. And I dreamed of being a church secretary, and my dream was to serve and be vocationally employed at my local church. But because of some circumstances, like my husband is the worship pastor at my church, I’m trained in music, it doesn’t work out. Nepotism wise, it would not be a good idea.
But I’ve always served. And when this opportunity at Lifeway came up for me to lead the podcast network at Lifeway, I just thought, who but God could do this? Not only am I serving my local church, but now I’m serving as many local churches in America and all over the world, as you can imagine, by working for Lifeway. And it’s just a bigger dream than I could have ever dreamed. The people I get to work with, the churches I get to serve, it’s just amazing.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I love that.
Angie Elkins:
It’s quite a transition, but really fun.
Julie Lyles Carr:
So fantastic. Well, Angie, I hope that we get to do this again soon, that we don’t have to run into each other in a random airport, although that was amazing. And tell listeners where they can find you. I know you’re on the Instagrams a lot, so give me your Instagram handle.
Angie Elkins:
@angiebrownelkins on Instagram, please follow me there. Of course, Chatology. We’ll link to it in the show notes, I’m going to say.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Absolutely, do it. Say it. That’s right.
Angie Elkins:
I would love for you guys to find me there. So yeah, thank you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Absolutely, Angie Elkins. All right, listener, you got your initiative. Go find out more about Angie’s journey. Think about the things God may be nudging you to. Hey, I would love to see you over on Instagram. I’m @julielylescarr, all the places social. And be sure and check out AllMomDoes both at allmomdoes.com and @allmomdoes on the socials, for a community of women just like you trying to figure out the stuff, raise the kids, do the job, love the husband, and grow in your faith. I’ll see you next time on The AllMomDoes Podcast.
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