Ep 68 | Trouble Saying No? How Learning the Power of a Positive No Can Help You Burn Fat
One of the biggest obstacles I see in my clients’ fitness journeys isn’t lack of motivation, discipline, or even knowledge. It’s the inability to say no effectively.
When you can’t say no—to other people, to old habits, or even to yourself—you’ll find it nearly impossible to stay on track with your fat loss or fitness goals. In fact, learning to set boundaries is one of the most powerful skills you can develop if you’re serious about transforming your body and your health.
This is the theme for this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast, where I share both a personal update and a practical framework you can use to protect your goals.
Why I Took a Step Back
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I took some time away from the podcast. Between reorganizing my business with the help of a coach and navigating the heavy realities of what’s been happening here in the U.S., I needed a moment to recharge.
I call it “cocoon time”—that period where you step back, rest, and refill your energy so you can show up stronger. Now, I’m back with fresh energy, new programs, and a clear vision of how to help you succeed in your fitness journey.
One of those programs is my 90-Day Fat Loss Transformation, which is open for enrollment right now. Some of my early clients are already seeing amazing results—one even hit her initial weight loss goal and is now shifting into muscle-building mode.
But beyond workouts and meal plans, there’s a deeper skill we need to master: boundaries.
Why Saying No Is So Hard
Many of us grew up in environments where saying no wasn’t an option. Maybe you were told, “Don’t talk back,” or, “Don’t say no to me.” That kind of conditioning follows us into adulthood, making it difficult to push back when people or habits pull us away from what we want.
This shows up in so many areas of life—work, relationships, and especially health.
Your partner suggests going out for ice cream even though you’re focused on your nutrition plan.
A friend pressures you into happy hour when you’ve already scheduled a workout.
You catch yourself reaching for cookies when what you actually need is water, rest, or real food.
Without strong boundaries, these little yeses to the wrong things add up—and your goals get sidelined.
The Power of a Positive No
This is where William Ury’s book The Power of a Positive No* comes in. The core idea is simple but transformative: every no is actually a yes–no–yes sandwich.
Yes #1: Start with your bigger “yes”—your goals, values, or the life you’re building.
No: Say no to whatever conflicts with that.
Yes #2: Offer an alternative or reaffirm the relationship.
Here are some practical examples:
Scenario: A friend invites you for late-night pizza.
Yes: “I’m committed to my fat loss goals.”
No: “I’m not going to eat pizza tonight.”
Yes: “But I’d love to meet up for coffee this weekend instead.”
Scenario: You crave cookies late at night.
Yes: “I want to fuel my body for progress.”
No: “Cookies won’t get me there.”
Yes: “I’ll have some Greek yogurt with fruit—it satisfies the craving and supports my goals.”
Notice how this method isn’t about harsh rejection. It’s about anchoring yourself in what truly matters and communicating it in a way that preserves your relationships—and your momentum.
How to Strengthen Your Boundaries
Get specific about your goals. Vague intentions won’t hold up under pressure. Write down exactly what you want (e.g., “I want to lose 20 pounds,” or “I want to build 10 pounds of muscle”).
Ask why—over and over. Don’t stop at surface-level reasons. Dig deep until you uncover the core human needs driving your goal (safety, self-esteem, belonging, vitality). That’s the fuel behind your “yes.”
Anticipate challenges. Think ahead about situations where you’ll be tempted to say yes when you mean no. Decide now how you’ll respond with a positive no.
Practice. Saying no gets easier the more you do it. Each time you protect your goal, you strengthen the muscle of self-respect.
Final Thoughts
Boundaries aren’t about shutting people out or living in restriction. They’re about choosing the life you want and refusing to settle for what pulls you off course.
Every time you say no to something misaligned, you’re really saying yes to your stronger, healthier, more empowered self.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your fat loss journey, check out my 90-Day Fat Loss Transformation Program here. And if you want to dive deeper into this concept, I highly recommend The Power of a Positive No by William Ury.
You deserve to say yes to your goals—and sometimes that starts with a positive no.
*This is an affiliate link.
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Jayd (00:00):
What I've noticed with a lot of my fat loss clients is their inability to say no effectively is one of the chief obstacles to them having success in achieving their fat loss goals. And I think that's true for anybody trying to pursue any kind of a big goal. Not being able to say no to things will take you off track faster than you think it will. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, a personal trainer and online health coach, and I've created this podcast to share with you some actionable tips that you can use to help push yourself forward and your fat loss and in your fitness. In today's episode, we are relaunching the podcast with all new episodes after I've taken some time away to work on my business, I have so many coaching programs that are on their way and I can't wait to share them with you.
(01:06)
You can join the wait list for my next level strength or body sculpt coaching programs, or you can sign up for my fat loss transformation program, which is open for registration now. Just go to my website, jaydigains.com, that's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N-S.com to get more info and sign up. Now, if you are watching this on YouTube, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest videos that I drop. If you are listening to this episode, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so that you never miss an episode. You can also follow me on my socials, click on the link that is in the show notes or below the description to follow me on Instagram, TikTok and my other socials. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:59)
I'm sorry, I have not been around lately. There have been a lot of things going on. One of them is that I've been pretty overwhelmed. I started working with a business coach at this point, maybe two months ago, and while working with this business coach, I have decided to do kind of a complete overhaul of my business to make room for growth because the way that I had it structured before was not scalable and at this point I need to make more room and organize some things. So I was just getting overwhelmed and I needed to take a step back. Also, for those of you who aren't in the United States and not aware of what's going on, we have some really scary stuff happening. And so I've also needed a little bit more time to recharge my mental health considering everything going on and the state that I live in.
(03:01)
So it's been a lot and I've needed to just have that cocoon time. Sometimes you need to do a long rest and recharge your spell slots, and that's what I have been needing to do. But in recent weeks, I have been just slowly ramping up my presence and my activity on my socials, starting with TikTok and Instagram. And now today is sort of my reentry back into YouTube. So I will be back on posting regularly to the podcast, if not twice a week, at least once a week, and you'll be seeing a lot more of me. But some of the things that I have been working on with my business coach is creating new programs for people to be able to opt in for that are going to be just so much more streamlined and easy to follow, easy to keep up with on user end and on my end as well as the coach.
(03:58)
So I have gone ahead and opened up my 90 day fat loss transformation program for early access to a select few number of people who are in the program now and using it and are so far making amazing progress. It's really cool to see considering how much work it was to put this program together and still is, it's still a lot of work. It's still ongoing, but it's very nice to see the progress that people are making. One of my students started the program with a goal of just losing five pounds, and she's already lost that. And so now we're like, okay, well what's next? Let's just keep building muscle, just keep getting hotter and hotter I guess. So that's been really cool. But yeah, that is open for enrollment now. So if you want to get in to my 90 day fat loss transformation, I will post a link below this video where you can check out more information on that program and you can sign up if you like.
(05:00)
Very excited to see the progress coming out of that. And so yeah, that's been what's going on with me, and I figured that today with this reentry into the podcast, it would be a good time to talk about setting boundaries because if you are in a fitness journey or if you're trying to do anything really that is different, changing your lifestyle or trying to pursue a big goal in business or personally, you probably know that there's going to be times in your journey where you have to say no to things. And what I've noticed with a lot of my fat loss clients is their inability to say no effectively is one of the chief obstacles to them having success in achieving their fat loss goals. And I think that's true for anybody trying to pursue any kind of a big goal. Not being able to say no to things will take you off track faster than you think it will.
(06:07)
And sometimes we have to say no to other people who maybe don't understand what we're trying to do or maybe aren't as supportive as we need them to be, and maybe they want us to do things that aren't part of the plan or maybe we'll sabotage our progress and we need to say no. Sometimes we need to say no to ourselves and to old habits that don't actually help us get to where we're trying to go. And for people who struggle in saying no and in setting boundaries, I just want to take a second to say it's likely not your fault that you struggle to say no and set boundaries because it really is on our families of origin to teach us how to say no. And if you were raised in a family that didn't allow you as a child to say no because your parents or your caretakers were really authoritarian was like, don't you say no to me.
(07:04)
I'm the adult. I'm in charge. That kind of thing where you weren't allowed to push back or set boundaries or express your needs, and you probably struggle to say no as an adult, and that will bleed into almost every aspect of your life into your relationships, into your work life balance and your health and fitness. But when you learn how to say no and set boundaries, it will change your life because the things that you want to do, you'll be better able to stay on track and actually achieve your goals because you'll be avoiding the things that pull you off track. So what I have found for myself personally and for my clients has been one of the greatest resources for learning how to say no. Is William Yuri's book the Power of a positive? No. I think that this is a very foundational piece of your mental health and your social health, your relationship health and your physical health, being able to say no to things effectively and in a way that doesn't feel like rejection.
(08:14)
Because one of the reasons why we struggle to say no to other people is we are afraid of rejection. We're afraid of abandonment, or we're afraid of punishment depending on how you were conditioned based on how your family of origin or maybe influential groups or influential people in your life have responded when you've tried to say no and push back, you might have been conditioned to refrain from it because you're afraid. And this book gives a lot of pointers on how to overcome those obstacles, whether it's fear of being rejected or being abandoned or if it's you don't want to lose the relationship, you don't want to lose the deal, and I just think it's so important. So in today's episode, I want to go over how you can use the concepts in this book to set effective boundaries in your life and in your relationships to protect your fitness journey and to protect your fat loss journey.
(09:16)
So essentially, when it comes to the power of a positive no, a positive no is basically yes, no yes sandwich, right? Every effective no that you have to give either to yourself or to other people has to start with a yes. And that yes is your ultimate goals or your interests what it is that you're trying to build towards. So if you don't have a really solid idea in mind of what you are trying to achieve and an image of where you're trying to go, it is going to be very hard for you to say no to people along your fitness journey. Whereas if you have an idea in mind of an end goal that's very specific and you have the image in your mind that you can think of, it is a lot easier to say no because when you have that image in mind, what you tell yourself is in order to say yes to that, in order to say yes to my dream or my goal, I have to say no to this.
(10:19)
It's a lot like this post that I read on Instagram years ago, which said, my life changed when I decided what I wanted my life to look like. And then I started saying no to everything that wasn't that and to everything that doesn't lead to that. And that's the mentality that you have to adopt here. So when it comes to empowering your ability to say no to things, to other people and to yourself, it all starts with having a very clear understanding of what you're trying to do. So if you have been trying to lose weight or if you've been trying to get in shape, but you don't really have an idea in mind of an end goal of what you're specifically trying to do, you're going to struggle and you're going to have a hard time saying no, and you're going to have a hard time staying consistent as well when your motivation starts to wane.
(11:14)
So the first thing that you want to do in order to be able to say no and set boundaries effectively is to sit down with yourself with a journal and decide what it is you are trying to do and get very, very specific. What is it that you're trying to achieve, whether it's I need to lose 30 pounds, or I want to gain 10 pounds of muscle, or whatever your fitness goal is, make it specific, measurable, actionable. But then you need to go beyond setting a smart goal and getting specific about what you want and ask yourself why you want that thing, right? This is the thing that makes that yes, more powerful. Why is it that you want to lose 30 pounds? Why is it that you want to gain 10 pounds of muscle or whatever the specific goal is? You need to ask yourself why it's important to you to do that and really think about how it is you are envisioning your life is going to change as a result of achieving that goal.
(12:13)
So you essentially want to ask yourself, why do I want this? And then when you get the answer to that, ask yourself why again. Well, why do I want that? Figure out what the answer is and then ask yourself why again? And keep asking yourself why until you can't ask why anymore. And when you reach the point where you can't ask why anymore, you likely will have reached the point where you've kind of arrived at a core human need. So we have just several core human needs, we need safety, we need acceptance, we need self-esteem, or we need to be responsible for other people, right? Figure out what the core need or core needs are that achieving your goal is going to meet for you. That is why it's important. And then once you've found that and you've sketched it out, you've written it all out in a journal, that is your why.
(13:06)
So once you have that solid, then it's going to be so much easier for you to say no to things that are not in alignment with that goal. Of course, the next step is to learn what things help you to get from point A to point B, but having a clear idea of what point B looks like and why it's important for you to get there is step one, and then you got to figure out how to get there. You can work with a coach, you could work with me, do one of my programs, 90 day fat loss transformation. It's open for enrollment. Now, link will be below or in the podcast notes if you're listening, but figure out your how to get to that point. Now while you are working towards that point, following the plan that your coach has laid out or following the plan that you have laid out, you're going to be faced with situations where people are going to ask you to do things or demand of you to do things that are counterproductive to your goals or that are going to sabotage your goal.
(14:06)
It's not uncommon for this to happen. For many people, the biggest saboteur of their progress is the person that they sleep next to every night. It's really not uncommon for people to find that once they start their fat loss journey or once they start their wellness and fitness journey, their spouse or their significant other will often make snide remarks or say things like basically says, you're making different choices and I don't like it. I don't like the way that that makes me feel, and that's their insecurity. It's not your responsibility to manage your partners or significant others' feelings and emotional state, especially when it comes to them feeling insecure because of something that someone is doing for their health. That's something that they're responsible for figuring out those feelings and working on those feelings. I hate to sound harsh, but everyone is responsible for their own gains and people who see you trying to improve your health and try to say things to knock you down or crabs in a bucket, try to pull you back down to their level.
(15:14)
Those are places where you need to learn how to set boundaries and keeping the power of a positive no in mind, you'll be much more able to do that without necessarily sacrificing the relationship and without being necessarily harsh or being unnecessarily harsh with the other people. But then sometimes you're going to have to say no to yourself and to old habits and framing your nos in a positive way where it starts with what is my yes? That's the first question is what is my yes, what is my why? Remembering that will empower your no. So first is the yes or your why. Thinking about that, the thing that I want to say yes to my goal and then saying no, and there's many, many different ways to say no. Sometimes you can just say no and leave it at that straightforward, no ambiguity, right? But sometimes maybe it takes a little bit of nuance and you have to be like, no, but I'll offer this alternative solution, which would be the third part or the second.
(16:22)
Yes. So a positive no is like a yes no. Yes. When you say no, especially to people who are pushy or if you want to soften the no a little bit is you offer some kind of alternative. No, I'm not going to be having ice cream, but I will have some yogurt. Well, you eat ice cream and we can watch a movie, right? You're offering an alternative, which is sort of like a yes to my goals. I'm going to have some Greek yogurt because I don't want to have as many calories and I want to make sure that I'm getting my protein, so I'm going to have some yogurt instead or some Greek yogurt instead. But you can eat ice cream. That's fine. You do, you boo, right? So you're still saying yes to them, spending time with them doing something, eating something with them, but you're saying no to the extra calories and the refined sugars that maybe you haven't budgeted for in your daily calorie goal, right?
(17:23)
Sometimes your no needs to be a not right now or a later, which means I can't do that right now, but ask me later, right? I can't go for ice cream right now because I'm actively working towards something, or I haven't budgeted for the ice cream today in my calories, but how about on Saturday, right? I'll plan for it on Saturday. I have a treat meal scheduled on Saturday or no to going out for drinks for happy hour right now. But let's celebrate once I'm done with my 90 day challenge. So it's not right now, which doesn't feel as much like a rejection. Sometimes you might have to say, ask me later, or I will decide later. Sometimes I will decide later. I'm not going to decide right now. Pushing the decision down the road can also be really helpful, especially in the moment when you are faced with something really tempting and you're like, I don't want to say no to myself or to the other person.
(18:31)
Let me just put a little time barrier down here and say, it's really tempting right now, but I'm going to go do this other thing first or give me a couple days to think about it. Give me a couple hours to think about it and then I'll decide, right? Buying yourself some time to really think about whether you want to or whether the thing is in alignment with your goals or not. That's a really great way to say no. So in these situations, basically you're saying yes to yourself, no to the thing that you need to say no to, but then you're offering an alternative or you're saying yes to the relationship. You're saying yes to their interests, which may not necessarily be like they want you to eat ice cream. It's more that they want to do something with you, right? Figuring out what the underlying needs are of the other person can help you to say no more effectively as well and still safeguard your interests.
(19:27)
And the same thing can be true when it comes to saying no to yourself. If you have this consistent pattern or these cravings or these urges. If you kind of take a step back and you try to identify what's the underlying need behind, I sense that my body is saying, I really want cookies right now, or I really want something sweet, but I haven't budgeted for it. I'm really jonesing for it. Taking a step back and really thinking about what is the actual underlying needs? I don't actually need cookies. I don't need ice cream. What's the underlying need here? Am I actually hungry? Should I go ahead and eat what I've planned for my meal prep? Am I hungry? Sometimes the underlying need is I'm actually thirsty. I'm not hungry at all. I'm thirsty. We so often times mistake or thirst signals for hunger cues and the types of hunger cues that we get, or cravings that we get from being thirsty are sweets, sweets and salty like snacks, like chips and crackers and stuff.
(20:31)
So try to figure out what the underlying need is that you can say yes to without sacrificing your progress or your goals. So this is the framework that I teach my clients in teaching them how to set boundaries in their life with other people and with themselves so that they could reach their goals. And I go into more details and I give more tips in my 90 day fat loss transformation journey and in the six month journey as well. And you can learn more about that by clicking the link below or in the show notes if you are listening. But I highly recommend going and reading William U's the Power of a Positive Note, which I will also link in the show notes to learn more about setting boundaries because it's a skill that we all need and it's a skill that will help you and you'll never be done learning, right?
(21:16)
I've read this book maybe five times now, and every time I read it or listen to it, other things pop out at me and I'm learning better and better ways to communicate and advocate for myself. So that's my recommendations for today, the first podcast episode back in gear. Thank you guys for being so patient and waiting for me to come back to the podcast. I'm excited to be back. I will have more good things to come. In the meantime, if you are watching this on YouTube, please make sure to the video and subscribe to the channel so that you never miss new episodes and new videos. And if you are listening to this, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the channel, and I will see you guys next time.
(22:08)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you found it helpful. And don't forget to like this video if you're watching on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so that you never miss a new episode. And if you are listening to this episode, make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episode delivered right to your device. I can't wait to share more tips with you in the coming weeks. Make sure to stay tuned for the next episode, and in the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, eat your protein, and listen to your body. I will see you soon.
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