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Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast, I’m Paula Parker. I’m a life and weight loss coach helping lifelong dieters reach their goal weight and then keep it for as long as they want to.

When you’re on a mission to release extra weight and maybe you’re also trying to accept and love your body during the process, you’re gonna encounter obstacles. That’s inevitable right? That’s true for weight loss and it’s true for any life goal we have. And the difference between someone who reaches their goal weight and someone who doesn’t is how they dealt with the obstacles that got in their way. And I’d like to offer that it’s the reason why you haven’t reached your goal weight yet, but you will. Okay. Let that sink in. You, listening to this right now have every resource you need to reach your goal weight. All that’s in your way is your mind, so listen up because I’m going to give you an exercise on how you can use your mind to overcome ANY obstacle that arises. And not only that, it’s a FUN exercise. Yes - you’re going to ENJOY doing this. We’re going to take something not fun: obstacles and work our juju to make it FUN and get what we want. That is what coaching is all about - working that juju!

I’m not going to give you the answer to every obstacle in weight loss - there are so many I’m not sure that would even be possible anyways. But I’m going to teach you how YOU can work with your mind to do it for yourself. Because once you master this skill with your weight loss, you can apply it to other goals as well. 

Okay, let’s get started shall we?

Why do obstacles sabotage our progress? What is an obstacle? Google says an obstacle is a thing that blocks one's way or prevents or hinders progress. Why do obstacles prevent us from losing weight permanently?

We let them. 

And why do we do this? 

Think of the last obstacle you encountered that derailed your progress? Was it that you got super hungry and went off your plan? Was it that you had a stressful day or were bored at work and needed a little something to get you through? And then you felt guilty and had more of these “little quits” until the “big quit.”  Was this the first time you encountered that particular obstacle? I’ll bet not.

That’s the thing. We know they’re coming and they’re typically the same ones we’ve encountered before, so it’s not even like it’s a surprise. But somehow our brain tricks us into thinking it will be different this time around because we are MORE committed.

Maybe it’s because there’s a wedding coming up and we want to look good in our dress. Maybe we’re really in pain about how we look in the mirror or now that a lot of us will be returning to the office, we want to look and feel good when we see our colleagues and be able to fit into our dress pants.

Our level of commitment feels really high. So we decide to eat healthy every day and exercise a certain number of times a week. Then what happens? Obstacles!  We say I don’t want to do this anymore - I’m out and turn back, only to start again a little while later and commit again. Do this on repeat and you erode your belief in yourself - you have no trust in yourself or your ability to lose weight and keep it off. 

If you’ve been a life long dieter, you know this reality all too well. So let’s talk about the different types of obstacles so that you can identify them for yourself and then we’ll talk about what we can do about them.

I’ve identified 4 Types of obstacles when it comes to weight loss:

• Cultural/Social - it’s normal to eat fattening foods and to overeat and overdrink especially with friends and family, or we’re vegan or vegetarian which we think makes it harder for us because we have less food choices

• Economic - we think we can’t afford to invest in ourselves with healthy food, or a weight-loss program - even when it's often the thing we want most in life 

• Biological - we have allergies, intense physical cravings, and overhunger  because our hormones are out of balance 

• Psychological - We lack emotional coping skills, we have lots of thought errors and an overdesire for food 

There are a million specific obstacles, but I’ve made a list of some that I’ve experienced personally and listen to see if any of these are coming up for you too:

We get hungry.

We get tired.

We get bored.

We don’t have the time to meal prep.

We don’t feel like planning our food ahead of time. 

We don’t have time or feel like going to the store so we just get takeout even though it’s not on my food plan. 

We have cravings.

We have urges to overeat or binge

We start wondering if we’re eating the right foods or need to change our plan and get stuck in mind drama around what to eat

We go out for dinner and want to enjoy ourselves without restriction

Someone close to us made something special that’s off our plan

Any or all of these sound familiar? I’m sure they do.

And what are the two things that ALL of these obstacles have in common? No matter what type - whether it’s economic, social, biological or psychological, they ALL cause unwanted feelings and they all have an undercurrent of disbelief. 

I’ll explain. Name any obstacle and there are unwanted feelings attached to it. Why? Because there is an underlying thought error. Most of the time these thought errors are unconscious, or we believe they are true and that is why it feels so hard to change. It feels like there’s no getting around THIS obstacle - it just doesn’t seem feasible. The only reason it seems that way is because our brain is doing it’s job - to seek pleasure, avoid pain and exert the least amount of energy possible. It’s easier for our brain to say, “Yeah, overcoming this obstacle is going to be too painful and require too much effort, let’s NOT overcome it and eat the food instead.”

Let’s pull a couple as examples to show you the unwanted feelings and the underlying thought error. 

We get hungry.

The emotions here might be self-pity, self-righteousness, confusion, overwhelm.

The underlying thought is that “this shouldn’t be happening” right? Essentially there’s resistance to the experience of hunger. 

How about “I don’t have time to go to the store.” 

Same list of emotions here! Self-pity, self-righteousness, confusion, overwhelm.
The underlying thought is “this is a valid reason for not sticking to my plan.” If I don’t have time to get the food on my plan, how can I possibly stick to it?

Okay one more, because this one is a hard one for a lot of people, especially during summer when there’s a more carefree, celebratory flavour in the air.

“I’m out for dinner or out with friends and want to enjoy myself”
What’s the emotion here? Feeling entitled, maybe some deprivation. 

The thought is again, “this is a valid reason for not sticking to my plan” “this one time won’t make a difference, I can get back on track tomorrow” “I don't want to miss out.”

Listen, all of these come from MY brain, from my past experience so don’t feel bad if this is you too. It’s totally normal and that’s why so many of us don’t lose weight and keep it off. 

Let’s talk about the second thing all obstacles have in common - the very reason we define them as obstacles - as something getting in our way is that we let them because we don’t truly BELIEVE at our core, that we it’s possible to reach our goal weight. I really want that to sink in so I’ll say it again. The reason you let any obstacle get in your way without overcoming it - the reason you quit is that you don’t have an UNWAVERING belief that’s your goal weight is coming for you. That it’s simply inevitable. 

Again, I’m telling you this from personal experience because I lived 20 years of my weight going up and down and all the while I doubted - I doubted that it would ever happen. I was always trying something new and trying to eat less. I was always wondering if I was working out enough or doing the right workout - should I be doing yoga, more cardio, lifting weights or HIIT workouts? Maybe if I was vegetarian I would lose weight, which I was for 10 years and I didn’t not help my weight loss efforts at all. Maybe if I did this cleanse or that cleanse. Listen, I have tried it all so don’t waste your time. If you want to do a cleanse for health reasons, I’m all for it but DO NOT do it simply for weight loss. I’m sure most of you have heard of the Master Cleanse - Beyonce did it in the last few years and it got really popular but I heard about like, 20 years ago from my sister who was working with this girl at starbucks who said she did it and lost 10lbs in 10 days and I was like, sign me up! If you’re not familiar, you don’t eat but only drink a drink made of water, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and lemon juice. I did it. I lost 10lbs but guess what, I gained it right back in less than 2 weeks. But I did not learn the lesson, because I didn’t have my own program back then - I really didn’t know any better so the next time I did it, I thought, well maybe I just need to go for longer, lose MORE weight and then if I gain a bit back, I’ll still be better off. So listen, I went 30  DAYS. That’s 30 days of no food and only this lemon drink. Talk about proof that weight loss isn’t about will power. You’re probably like me and have loads of willpower, but that’s NOT what keeps you from gaining weight. It’s your over hunger from your hormones being out of whack and your overdesire for food caused by an intolerance for unwanted emotions. 

But here’s the good news. As many of you know, I’m on a weight loss journey right now because I have extra weight from my pregnancy. But THIS time, it is so good you guys - it’s so so different from those years of dieting and food hell. Because now I have my own program for one, and I also have an UNWAVERING belief in my success. For me, I’m a 10/10 on the belief scale. There is literally no obstacle that could get in my way. I know my goal weight is inevitable. It’s simply a matter of time.

I don’t expect you to be in that headspace right now. You are likely in self-doubt but that is the first step to believing. You’ll start believing in yourself when you see yourself overcoming obstacles, no matter how small and you acknowledge them to yourself. You celebrate your tiny wins. When you start seeing progress, you’ll gain momentum. So it’s very important you do this work of overcoming obstacles.

But before we get to the exercise, I want to focus on a couple of obstacles that are really detrimental to reaching your goal weight. 

First is the psychological obstacle of failure. What do I mean by this? So often we don’t make a goal or commitment to something we want because we’re afraid we’ll fail and won’t get it. 

So what do we do? We DON’T go for it and we fail ahead of time. 

This shows up in my clients whose initial weight goal is much higher than it could be. Now, don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to choose that number for themselves, but when I ask clients what their goal weight is, their DREAM number it’s ALWAYS at least 10-15lbs heavier than it could be. 

Why?

Because they don’t think it’s possible for them. They think, well I could probably lose 15 or maybe 20lbs, but 30 - 40? That’s too hard for me. They don’t want to go for it because they are afraid they can’t do it and will fail. 

And again, the reason we don’t want to fail at anything is unwanted feelings. 

Next let’s talk about the obstacle of blame. This is a sneaky one. 

Clients often don’t see it in their thinking because they think it’s simply the REASON they are miserable. How we know it’s blame is if you’re giving power to someone or something else for your experience. 

I’ll share some common examples. Now, here’s a disclaimer before I share these, if this is you, it’s not a problem - it’s simply information as to what’s going on in your brain. Don’t start blaming yourself for your blaming, okay? When we see what’s going on in our brains, we can decide to change it if we want to.

First example:

“I can’t lose weight because my husband does the cooking and doesn’t want to make food that’s on my plan.” Blaming the husband.

“I can’t lose weight because it would be rude to turn down food that someone else made for me.” Blaming another person.

“I can’t lose weight because I have a slow metabolism” Blaming your body

“It’s harder for me to lose weight than other people because I don’t have enough willpower.” Blaming yourself.

“I can’t lose weight because I have bad genetics, everyone in my family is overweight.” Blaming your parents.

Now you may have listened to these and thought, yeah but for that really IS true. I actually don’t care if it is or not. You need to know that when you do this, when you blame others or something else for your inability to lose weight, you are giving all your power away. 

So you can continue to believe it’s true OR you can take 100% responsibility for your life and be someone who takes charge, someone who finds solutions to every obstacle. 

It is TOTALLY up to you and I know you can do it. 

Okay, so here’s what you’ve been waiting for. This is your self-coaching exercise for the week. It’s my Method to Overcome Any Weight Loss Obstacle.

1. Decide on a protocol to commit to for 2 weeks. Your protocol is what you will and won’t eat, how many times a day you’ll be eating and how many exceptions you will include and when those will be. 

2. Make a list of at least 20 obstacles that you can think of that will get in the way of you following your protocol to the letter. If you can think of more, list more. You want to come up with as many obstacles as you possibly can - big and small. 

3. Visualize/imagine your future self who has ALREADY achieved the goal. 

   1. What does she weigh?

   2. How does she eat?

   3. What does she wear?

   4. How else would you describe her?

   5. What does her life look like?

4. Now that you are in the right mindset, the mindset of your future self, go through your list of obstacles one by one and use your creative, problem-solving brain to come up with solutions AHEAD of time. Notice how your future self thinks about this. Why isn’t it an obstacle for her?

Being onto yourself about the obstacles you’re facing isn’t always straight forward and often there’s a lot of programming on going on under the surface. It is extremely efficient to work with someone who will see what you can’t, and help you get your brain into the habit of seeing all the solutions. Not only that, seeing the obstacles as simply part of the deal, and not getting discouraged by them. 

Another thing we do is set a weight loss goal and then spend the whole time in rebellion against our plan. We only see obstacles and think it’s a fact that it’s just too hard. Then we go off our plan, proving to ourselves that we were right after all, it was just too hard.

So I’d like to invite any of you who think their obstacles are getting in their way to reach out to me for a session. I’ll show you the power and efficiency of having a second brain on your problem, we’ll solve for one and the next and the next and then you move forward that much faster. Here’s the thing - at the root of every perceived obstacle that seems impossible in the moment is self-doubt.  I know this because if you were a 10/10 in your belief that you would truly reach your goal, you would naturally be finding solutions on your one. Self-doubt is totally normal because you’ve never reached your goal weight and KEPT it off and it undermines all your efforts. When you work with a coach like me or any other life coach, we hold that certainty for you and help you grow it inside yourself. That’s the power of coaching. That’s why I’ve found there’s so much I can do on my own through self-coaching, but if I want to accelerate my progress - it’s a no-brainer to hire a coach. 

So listen. I know it’s summer and there’s a more carefree feeling in the air that doesn’t always feel conducive to weight loss, but if you start now, you will be feeling so good when the fall comes and you’re trying on those dress pants and jeans. If you are serious about getting rid of the COVID weight or ending the vicious dieting rollercoaster you’ve been on for years, set up a call with me to decide if coaching is a right fit for you. It’s a free consultation in which you can ask me about coaching and what you can expect and learn why it’s different than anything you’ve ever tried before. And if by the end of our call, you don’t think it’s your best option for reaching your goal weight, that’s no problem at all and you can take what you’ve learned and run with it. 

Download the PDF: Overcome Any Weight Loss Obstacle