Ep. 32 Success Mentality in Weight Loss
The most important skill you can have for releasing extra weight is the right mindset.
8 Components to a weight loss mindset:
Self Love
Learn do, learn do, learn do - importance of reflection and assessment
Belief - in yourself, in your plan
Slow and Steady - more fun, more comfortable, easier
Raise your standards (vs. creating rules for yourself)
Get off the sidelines and into your life
Treat yourself well through failure
Make it happen - what if quitting wasn’t even an option? How would I show up?
Self Love. I would inwardly cringe when anyone would say you have to love yourself to lose weight. I was like, yeah yeah, just gimme the plan. So if you’re in that boat, here’s what I want to offer. It doesn’t have to be some super mushy feely thing, telling yourself you’re amazing and saying I love you to yourself every time you look in the mirror. I think you already love yourself deep down, you simply may not be expressing that love. So let’s talk about that. When it comes to your weight loss journey consider that the acts of self-love or expressing self love are a. No longer beating yourself up if you overeat. That’s over. That will NEVER get you closer to your goal. If feeling bad about your weight, your body, how much you ate got you there, I would have mastered it years ago, I promise you. You can probably relate. It’s simply a really bad strategy to lose weight, period. So that’s the first thing. Second, expressing self love is having your own back. By that I mean, when self-doubt and insecurity creep in, you are kind to yourself about that and still show up in your life. When things don’t work out, you don’t make it mean something is wrong with you. And lastly, self love is growing while you learn to accept where you are. I think if you can get good at this, you have the keys to the universe. You don’t have to love or even like what you weigh. But you do need to accept that that’s where you are now, and it’s actually fine. I know you don’t believe that. I know you’re saying, “ah no - it’s not fine actually.” But what if that was only a thought you have. What if, at this exact weight, you are at the perfect weight? AND you get to change it if you want to. If you haven’t been doing thought work, this may fall flat and that’s totally fine. What I’m going for here, is that you can decide to say, “Okay, this is where I am - that’s the number - whatever it is and think - I can handle that, it doesn’t mean anything bad about who I am as a person AND I’m ready for change. I’m ready to grow to the next level.”
Adopt the strategy of learn do, learn do, learn do. Here I’m talking about the importance of taking action and then learning from that action. Don’t know what to do? Do something - anything different than what you’ve been doing. And then reflect - take the time to ask yourself why is this working, why is this not working and what can I learn here. This is especially true when you’re figuring out your protocol. I recommend choosing the way you want to eat and sticking with it for 2 weeks. Then sit down and reflect, am I losing weight on this plan? Do I have enough energy, am I satiated? How do I generally feel after I eat this food or that. I was noticing for me that I wasn’t feeling well an hour or so after eating breakfast. I had a suspicion that I was eating too many walnuts in my oatmeal so I cut that down by half. And it worked. Now if it hadn’t I would have tired something else, maybe try less flaxseed meal and more chia - you get the idea. But we need to be open to experimentation. Be cautious of following rigid meal plans that don’t work for your constitution. Our bodies are unique. Your body is always communicating with you. I like to think of it like a dance between your mind and your body. Think of professional salsa dancers - they are so in sync with each other right? They are paying attention, they have the same rhythm. It’s like that with your body. When your body doesn’t feel well, you’re simply out of step and need to learn something and do something different.
Belief. Do you believe you can do it? Really? Our brains like to pull evidence from our past to tell us what’s possible - to tell us what we’re capable of. But your past has no bearing on your future. You can decide to think that. You can decide to believe that you are learning how to lose weight for the last time. Do you believe in your plan? I think that you need to believe in yourself and that you have the right plan to lose weight. And maybe that plan is a protocol that manages your insulin, or maybe it’s simply that you’ll keep trying different ways of eating until you find something that works for you and your lifestyle. Now you’ll have some days where you either don’t believe in yourself or you don’t believe in your plan. So the key here is to go back to number 2 - Do, Learn. You can take action even when you’re temporarily out of belief. It will come back. It’s not a problem.
Be the turtle not the hair okay? Slow and steady makes for permanent weight loss. The only reason you are in a rush to lose weight is because either you lack belief, so you’re brain’s telling you that you need evidence right away. But if you KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would reach your goal, you’d probably be more patient and have more fun along the way. OR you think you will feel better once you get there. You’ll have more confidence in yourself. You’ll feel better in your body, in your clothes. And I will say that there’s truth to that - you probably will feel physically more comfortable moving around in smaller body and it will be easier for your brain to find confidence generating thoughts. However, I also want to offer that all ALONG the way, you can find ways to feel more confident, to feel how you are hoping you’ll feel when you reach your goal. This will make the journey getting there much more fun.
Raise your standards. What if you turned it around and thought that fast food wasn’t worthy of you. That basically, you are too good for junk food. You get to decide what kind of women you are. It’s kind of like dating. I had this friend who was amazing, and for confidentiality reasons I won’t give out details, but let me just tell you, even if we weren’t friends - she’s a catch. Most men and women, I think would agree to that. And she was dating this guy who, let’s just say, his catchiness wasn’t so obvious. And everyone around her was wondering what she saw in him. And maybe you’ve even been in that boat. I know I have. I dated people who my friends literally questioned me about. And I can’t speak for my friend and her situation - her reasons for dating him. But I know in my case it was that this guy who was homeless at the time, not even kidding - living out of hostels and not because he was travelling - I thought he was the most I could ask for. I had simply set my standards pretty low. But later after I worked on myself and felt my worthiness, I was attracted to, and attracted guys who at least could pay rent. So take a good look at your standards for what’s acceptable eating, what’s acceptable behaviour for you. You can DECIDE that you are someone for whom eating healthy is a priority. For whom binging is out of the question. You get to decide right now that you are a women who love herself enough to treat her body with respect and kindness. That’s available to you.
Get off the sidelines and into your life. If you are bored. If you haven’t set a goal for yourself, if you’re not pursing anything meaningful to you, that void is draining your life energy. It’s draining your vitality and you’re likely turning to food to fill yourself up. I want to urge you to take a risk - get off the sidelines and into your life. Don’t think that you’re too old, or too fat or too tired to take even one small step toward your dream. When you have something in your life that you’re excited about, food won’t be nearly as interesting. I’ve even noticed this in my own life. When I finish my meal and have something else to do that I’m interested in, I don’t think about eating more. At times in the past where I didn’t and I even dreaded what I was going to be doing after the meal, I really wanted to extend that meal and then afterward I would still be thinking about food. Totally makes sense right, our brain is trying to get the dopamine it needs. If it’s not getting it from our lives, it will get it from the easiest source: food.
Treat yourself well through failure. I’ve talked about this a lot so I won’t go into depth on this one. But basically, there will be times when you say, Screw it and have that donut or have eat the entire bowl of popcorn. Your weight loss journey doesn’t need to be perfect to get you there. You’re not going to go from one day turning to food to cope, to the next NEVER doing that ever again. It’s a gradual process and failure is part of that, so don’t be afraid of failing. Which leads me to my last point.
What if quitting wasn’t an option? Simply NOT an option? How would you show up? How would you treat failure for example. Not a big deal right? You're not quitting. No matter how many times you need to tweak your protocol, no matter how much negative emotion you have to process without using food as a crutch, you’re simply not giving up until you have learned how to make peace with food and feel good in your body.
If you adopt these 8 lines of thinking, I promise you, you’ll have the strategic mindset you need to release as much weight as you want.