Welcome to the very first episode of the Mindful Shape podcast with me, Paula Parker. In this first episode you’ll learn about what self-coaching for weight loss is all about.

I’ll help you understand why you haven’t been able to reach your goal weight and stay there and how self-coaching can help you stop overeating and stick to your food and exercise plan.

Okay so let’s get started. First. Why coaching? Weight loss is a personal development journey. It requires you to literally become a new person because you’ll grow into a better version of yourself. And by better, I seriously don’t mean skinnier. Not at all. I mean the version of you who is kind and compassionate with herself. And trusts herself. 

Coaching works because it’s about self discovery and self-mastery. We’re basically using the topic of weight loss because that's the result we want most - but really, weight loss is our playground to explore our minds and grow. The tools we learn here about how to manage our thoughts will help us to achieve anything we want in life. 

First, why are you overweight?

The reason anyone is overweight is both simple and complex. It’s simple because being overweight is caused from overeating period. When we eat enough and only the amount of food our body requires to function, we won’t lose weight and we won’t gain. But the reasons we lose a few pounds only to gain it back or more and remain above our natural body weight is complex.

Okay, we know overeating causes being overweight. So what causes overeating? An over desire to eat. Most people try don’t solve for THIS problem. They try to solve for the weight and not the reasons for the overeating - an imbalanced desire. That’s why if someone hands you an eating plan and exercise program, it never works over the long term. It’s not solving the root issue. The over desire/overeating problem. 

Let’s look at what causes over desire so that we can solve for it. Over desire involves Hormones, Emotions and Habits. 

Hormones: If you’re like most people you believe in the widely accepted notion of calories in, calories out. To lose weight you need to eat less and workout more right? And you haven’t lost weight because you lack the discipline to keep this up. Wrong. 

Being overweight is caused by a weight set point that is too high because of a hormonal imbalance in the body. Hormones are chemical messengers that regulate appetite, fat storage and blood sugar levels. What controls weight set point? Insulin. Your body is trying to maintain homeostasis so this is why when you reduce calories, you get really hungry.

If you want more detailed information on this I recommend checking out Dr. Jason Fung’s book Obesity code. There is a ton of really good information.  

Research shows us that weight gain is not caused by calories, it’s caused by insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone which means when insulin is in your blood your body is storing your food for energy. You are either storing energy or burning energy at all times. Eating triggers insulin to be released. You store this food for future energy  - this is a good thing. It’s why we don’t die in our sleep from starvation. However if you overeat - you eat more than your body needs to function, that food will stay stored aka fat on your body.

So what does this mean for you? It means we don’t care so much about calories. It means we need to get in tune with our inner wisdom around how much food we actually require. When you aren’t eating for entertainment, emotional reasons or out of habit, you (sadly) don’t need THAT much food. Keep in mind that eating more calories than you need increased insulin which increases fat storage.

Our goal is to become “fat adapted” rather than a “sugar burner” This means that your body uses the extra fat on your body for fuel. To do this we need to get out hormones balanced by regulating our insulin levels, ghrelin (makes you hungry) and leptin (tells you you’re full).

Now there’s a lot we can do to help regulate these hormones and it’s really not as complicated as you’d think. I’m talking about 

• Getting 8 + hours of sleep

• Eating 3 meals a day 

• Reducing or cutting out sugar and refined carbs

• Eating enough fat to feel satiated

• Being active

• More fiber

Next emotions: 

Emotional reasons

If you are overeating or finding it nearly impossible not to comply to your sugar cravings, Food and typically sugar is most likely acting as a substitute for fundamental human needs. 

These include an emotional need, spiritual need, and nutritional need. For many of us nutritional info doesn’t help. We’ll eat a healthy diet all day and then a whole box of cookies at night or eat healthy all week and then on overdo it on the weekends. In this case, need to look at the spiritual and emotional needs.

Needs that we most often meet with food are:

1. Connection

2. Intimacy

3. Love

4. Security

5. Relaxation

6. Freedom

7. Self-expression

8. Adventure/Excitement

9. Entertainment

Often sugar cravings are substituting the need for love and intimacy. My husband and I now live on Vancouver island, but previously we would travel over here on the ferry to visit his family.  

One night as we were sitting there an older couple, probably in their late 60’s walked by. The wife said in this really gentle voice to her husband, “Do you want to get some candy?” The husband who was walking ahead of her didn’t say anything. She paused and then persisted meekly, “Candies?...Candies?” The husband half-turned toward her and grumbled, “It’s quarter to ten!” and carried on ahead of her. Many of us are starving for love and affection. We don’t get nearly the amount of love and affection we need. We quite literally need more “sweetness” in our lives. 

Finally, habits. 

So you know the stats - it’s not very many people who lose weight and keep it off. So what does it really take?

From what I can tell, there are three necessary and sufficient conditions for long lasting weight loss. 

They are: Belief, Desire and Commitment. 

1. Belief

The first key to this is to believe your goal is truly possible for you.

So you may be thinking this is pretty basic, but really think about it. You may have a self-concept of someone who “struggles with their weight.” Who is the girl with the pretty face and is always just a bit bigger than her friends or the overweight sister in your family. Examine your current beliefs because consciously or not, they are dictating every action you take and are resulting in your current weight. Fortunately, these are just thoughts we’ve kept thinking over and over and we can change them. I’m telling you - you get to decide what your self concept is. Are you an athlete? Are you naturally thin? I know it sounds a bit nuts - like you can’t just think, “oh now I’m naturally thin” and be that way. But stay with me here. You can start leaning into that way by repeatedly having the thoughts that this is possible for you. Even if it’s just that the work you’re doing on your brain now is leading you there. 

So how do we start believing the seemingly unbelievable? First find evidence all around you for your brain to see. We know that that’s how humans work. When we see someone else do it, we believe it’s now possible. At least for them. And you’ve seen people lose weight and most likely you’ve even lost weight before so you know it’s possible to physically lose weight. Can you believe that people just like you, can and do reach their goal weight and don’t have drama around food.

The second key is that you believe it despite your current circumstances. 

You can look in the mirror, see the extra weight and know it’s temporary. You believe you will see that goal number on the scale even though you don’t see it now. You know it’s coming. The more you can make the present not matter, the stronger your belief in the next version of you will be. The more you can practice the thought that you’ll reach your goal, the more inspired you’ll start to feel and the more inspired action you’ll take. You will start living from that place. You will be in the world as a slim person who’s not attached to food EVEN if your body hasn’t caught up yet. Over time and with enough inspired action, it will and it all starts with belief.

2. Desire

Your desire is your unique guidance system from your authentic self. We don’t actually all want the same things. When people say they want to be happy it means different things. What brings joy to some of us doesn’t bring joy to all of us. I’m sure you can easily come up with examples in food, music, how you spend your leisure time.

To reach your goal weight and stay there long term, you’ve got to want it so bad. You’ve got to be in a mental head space where you literally can not stand another day of being in your current state. It’s important to desire your result, absolutely. We all want to think positive. AND it’s equally important to acknowledge your pain and suffering. Don’t discount it. Be real with yourself. Otherwise, I’m telling you, your brain will stay in a low grade comfort zone and in a year’s time you will have not lost a single pound. 

3. Commitment

What I’m talking about here is being committed to the process. And it is a process. We are organic beings and weightloss doesn’t often (if ever) go in a straight line. Nature just doesn’t work that way. Being committed is that you know there will be highs and lows and you get back up every single time. 

The biggest mistake women make is going off their plan and then falling into black and white thinking. “Well, I overate so I the whole day is out - I might as well enjoy it and eat all the foods.” Or I missed my workout, I might as well have desert.” And often these are not even conscious thoughts - we’ve had this form of black and white thinking that by this point it seems to just happen and we never seem to make any progress. 

And it’s hard to stay consistent right? You get home from work and you’re tired and hungry and your prefrontal cortex has checked out when it comes to decision making for weight loss. Your primitive brain is now calling the shots. It will serve up what’s easy, familiar, and comforting. This is why commitment is so hard. We WILL get tired, hungry, and stressed. So we need to plan for this in advance so that our prefrontal cortex is making the decisions here. This is why we food prep and we plan what we will do in these situations in advance. AND if we do make a mistake, we don’t go into black and white thinking. We have compassion for ourselves and we get back on track.

Now, I’m not saying that this removes the discomfort. It doesn’t. We won’t always FEEL like having salad and chicken or going to the gym. But what we practice, we get good at it. Our brains become familiar with this and it only gets easier. The mind drama will dissipate. It eventually becomes natural, how you live. You make a plan, you follow the plan. You experience discomfort. You experience mind drama. You drink a glass of water. You move on. 

So ask yourself - which needs some time and attention. Where do you need to strengthen? Is it Believing it’s on it’s way, is it connecting to Desire (the Why) more regularly or is being committed to the process? 

My hope is that you’ll listen to this podcast and implement what you learn here. If you’re like me and most other people, you have a habit of taking in a ton of information but rarely putting it into real practice. That’s entertainment and it won’t change your body. What will change your body is truly practicing what you learn. And I do mean practice. Being a coaching student means you are practicing new ways of thinking and acting. Practice means you are learning and making mistakes and relearning and trying again and again. So if you’ve tried to lose weight a number of times in the past, you are well versed in this. All of that is to your benefit because it means you have honed the skill of determination. That can only serve you.

I would like to offer that 80% of the time you should be focused on what’s happening in your brain about how you’re relating to yourself and only 20% should be on what you’re eating and on working out. 

So I’ll leave you with this:

To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence. This whole process is about who you need to become to have what you want. To have the experience of life you were meant to have. Your destiny. The unfolding of this is your true path. 

Thanks you guys, talk to you again soon.