Ep. 39 Daily Success Habits for Weight Loss

Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shape podcast. I’m Paula Parker, and I’m a weight and life coach. 

Alight let’s talk about daily success habits for weight loss. So I’m really excited about this episode because this one is kinda next level. So I hope you’re ready. I’m not going to be talking about the obvious weight loss habits that you are already familiar with. I know you already know to drink lots of water, eat more vegetables, reduce or cut out the twizzlers and chips and icecream after dinner. What I’m going to spend time on today are the habits that I consider to be the foundational habits for success in releasing weight. These are the habits that make all of those other ones, like eating on plan, not going for the icecream, food prep so much easier. 

So I really want you to think of these as a foundation, like a foundation of a house. They support all the other healthy habits you want to be doing. And without them, those other healthy habits will crumble. So if you’ve been trying to move more or eat healthier and you’re finding it really hard, this could be a real game changer for you. So you may want to download and save this episode so that you can go back to it later in case you forget. You can also find all of my transcripts for this podcast on my website at mindfulshape.com.

The first daily habit is, you guessed it The Daily 15. What is the daily 15? Well if you’ve been listening for awhile, you might already know so here’s a quick refresh. It’s simply time that you spend doing your thought work on paper. And I’ve never gone into too much detail about this so I’ll do that now. I call it the daily 15 because you do it for 15 mins every day. I can hear you now, what if you only have 10 mins or 5 mins or can’t do it every day. It’s no problem, do what makes the most sense for you and your needs. I call it the daily 15 because I like 15 minutes. Sometimes I do less and sometimes I do more. The next thing you're probably wondering is ok, so what am I doing? Just journaling for 15 mins? You can if you want. That still a form of thought work right? Putting your thoughts down on paper. But if you’re like me in the past who started a journal in 3rd grade, you mostly vent your frustrations and clear your head. 

What I’m suggesting is more deliberate. It’s using this time to coach yourself toward your goal. Your brain is the most powerful asset you have to manage your weight. So far, you’ve likely not been directing it in a useful manner. So far you’ve likely been relying on old programming like you can never stick with anything, it’s hard for you to lose weight, you just really like food, it’s going to take too long etc. etc. So when you look at that type of thinking and know it’s running the show, it’s no wonder you aren’t making the progress you want. We have to consciously change what we are thinking if we want something different. That’s why this habit of the daily 15, daily thoughtwork is the foundation. It’s how we start changing that programming so that instead of being someone who thinks, Well why bother I don’t ever really stick to my plan to eat healthy I might as well eat this cheesecake now and start again tomorrow, We become someone who thinks, Of course I want the cheesecake because cheesecake tastes good but what would it be like if I didn’t have it? What if I decided that if I still wanted it tomorrow, then I would, but I could accept the deprivation in this moment because there’s more to life than cheesecake for me. It means more to learn how to overcome the urge and be THAT kind of person than how good it tastes. Because again, this isn’t to crucify cheesecake, this is about using your urge for it as a path forward, toward who you want to become - someone who will have it when then REALLY want it and are in charge of their decision, not simply because they had an urge right? 

So when it comes to doing thoughtwork for weight loss, I’ll give you a few suggestions to work with. Now you can get out a pen and write them down or you can download my PDF that has them all laid out for you. You can get that for free at mindfulshape.com/resources.

First you remember your goal and write it down. Often we either have too many goals and forget them or we have a vague notion of what our goal is. I want you to be specific and OWN that goal. If it’s 150lbs great. If it’s size 2 great. It’s whatever lights you up. There are no rules about what you want. You can just want what you want simply because you want it. You can get clear on your specific reasons if you want to, but I like to emphasize that. It doesn’t mean you’re not a feminist, it doesn’t mean you don’t love your body or that you’re going against the body positivity movement. 

And maybe you have a number and it only makes you feel bad. That’s because you don’t believe you can reach it or you think it’s going to be terrible getting there. So that’s fine - that’s an old brain pattern and neither are true. So whatever that number is, allow yourself, literally give yourself permission to get a little excited about it. Like, yes it IS possible EVEN if you don’t know how yet. P.S. this used to drive me crazy when my coach told me I didn’t need to know how yet. And by crazy I mean frustrated. It’s like but if I don’t know HOW then it’s not going to happen. So if that’s you too, I totally empathize and here’s what I want to offer. WHEN you can clear your brain and create some brain enough to generate the FEELING of possibility, the next step (not the complete HOW) but the right next step will present itself. You’ll have an idea or someone will mention something and you’ll be thinking yeah, that’s something I can do to move me toward this thing that I believe is possible. VS. well I don’t know how so I’m not going to even try so I might as well watch t.v. 

The next is to think from your future, not your past. So often we look to our past for what did or didn’t work and sometimes that’s a diet we did 10years ago in which we lost weight or it’s that we didn’t stick to our plan yesterday and we make all of that mean something about what we’re capable of in the future. We think, “Here I go again, this is when I always get stuck and quit.” And that’s one way to go. That’s what our brains seem to be really good at - looking to the past for evidence. But the point of thinking from your future is to interrupt that pattern. 

Instead of looking to your past and all of the failed diets, why don’t we use our imaginations, think a little harder and imagine a version of ourselves that has already achieved what we want. So this version of you is at your goal number and you’re not spending all your time and energy thinking about food either. So what are you thinking about? What are your priorities? Write that down. And most importantly, how do you think about YOURSELF? What do you do when you don't feel like sticking to your plan? What do you say to yourself when you go off plan or overdo it on the cheese? 

Then write down the answers to those using your CURRENT self and notice the gap. That gap is your work. How your future self is treating herself and thinking about things is how you’ll release the weight. So now it’s a matter of practicing thinking as if you’re already there. And you practise by doing your daily 15 and writing out what you're currently thinking, remembering it’s optional and deciding to think differently. Eventually your body will catch up to what’s happening in your brain. Your body is very smart. It knows how to release excess weight. You don’t have to focus on that - you have to focus on managing your thoughts and feelings and being patient with your body. 

Here’s a super thought. Maybe your future self thinks it’s easy to fuel her body. To respect her body. How could that be true? How could that ALSO be true NOW? See, our brains will go to work on whatever we ask them. So if we ask Why is it so hard for me to lose weight? Your brain will go to work on that. When we ask, how could this be simple and easy? Or how could it be okay that it’s hard? You’ve just upgraded your thinking exponentially. 

Okay, so moving right along. Next I want to talk about focus. I’m going to share two ways in which we can shift our focus to help us reach our weight loss goals. 

The first is your relationship with your reflection. What is your habit when you see yourself in the mirror? With what lens are you viewing yourself? Have you ever stopped to wonder about it - to CONSIDER that this is up to you? I never did. 

A few years ago I did a dance class for fun, and if you’ve ever been to a dance studio, you know you face head to ceiling mirrors. There is literally nowhere to hide - some yoga studios are like this too. I mean, I can understand it with the dance studios because I guess it’s fun to see yourself doing the choreography and maybe even necessary (You can probably tell I’m quite amatuer). Anyway for me, I wanted to do those dance classes for years but kept putting it off until I felt more comfortable in my body. And finally I got to a point where I thought, yeah know, I’m not quite there yet, but I’m close enough to handle it. And I’ll tell you some days it was no problem and I thought, you know I look alright - pretty fit and others it was really confronting and I wanted to stop going altogether. Why? Nothing was that different in the mirror week to week, but it was always what I was thinking about myself. 

You may be in a relationship in which your partner tells you that you look great, that you don’t NEED to lose weight even if you’re carrying around 50 plus pounds on your frame. Your partner is seeing you with a loving lense in which they see MORE than excess weight - they may not even notice it at all or think it’s a big deal. They may even like the curves and find it very feminine. It doesn’t really matter though does it, because it’s what YOU see when you look in the mirror. Your partner can tell you a million times that your body is amazing, but it won’t make much difference if your brain doesn’t even think it’s acceptable, let alone amazing.

My point is that it’s the same body, just seen through a different lense. So again, I’m a weight loss coach and so obviously I stand for your goal to lose weight. AND I stand for you learning to not hate your body along the way. For you that might be easy, you may already accept your body and still want to release the excess weight but maybe for you, the idea of not hating your body as it is right now feels really out of reach. So wherever you are on this continuum, I want to reassure you that I’m not about to shame you for not loving your body. As women we’ve been shamed enough when it comes to our body. So instead of telling you’re doing it wrong if you don't’ love your love handles, I’m going to lay out some options for you, why they might help you release the weight and then you can decide if you should go to work on this or not. 

Okay, so first we need to take a look at our patterns. What usually happens when you look in the mirror? If you are focussing on what you don’t like every time, your brain will learn to seek that out. That goes back to the RAS reticular activating system - which is like an information filter for our brain that we can train to either dismiss things as not important (like the interesting color of our eyes) or to notice (like our protruding belly). And if you’re thinking, well how can I NOT notice my belly, I want you to consider that you’ve trained your brain to notice it maybe since you were a teenager and became hyper aware of your body and secondly when you notice it, you’re in a pattern of thinking about it. I suspect it’s thinking it’s not attractive, shouldn’t be like that etc. 

I’ll tell you about another time when I was walking down the street with a girlfriend, who legit used to model, so I’m sure you can visualize what she looks like. And we came to a crosswalk and on the other side of the crosswalk there was a building that had a floor to ceiling reflective surface - like one of those windows that’s a mirror on the outside. And it was very jarring for me - I was maybe I don’t know 40lbs heavier than I am now I guess, but I’ll tell you it only took a glance at that mirror to make me feel like that ballooned up kid in Willy Wonka. I think no matter what your body looks like, you’ve probably had moment or more like this. 

And for most of us when we get caught up in the negative spiral about our bodies, we feel terrible. And what do we often do when we feel terrible? Typically we over consume to bypass those emotions. Maybe you quit and overeat, maybe you overshop or overnetflix. I don’t think that’s an official term yet, but it should be. Maybe you vow to start a new diet - and then binge beforehand because you promise yourself this is the last time you’re ever doing that so you better enjoy it now. The problem is that this becomes a cycle and we spin and spin for years, even.

So if you can relate, I really want you to consider a new way forward. I want you to BEGIN, ever so gently, changing your focus when you look at your reflection in the mirror every day. You don’t need to avoid mirrors. When we avoid mirrors, we’re avoiding the inner work too. So for you maybe it’s simply looking at yourself in the mirror and noticing what comes up. No matter what it is, see if you can reach for a higher thought. So it’s okay if your brain is telling you a lot of mean things and that you want it to be different. For now, just let that be there - don’t resist it and THEN, look for what you feel neutral about. Maybe that’s your shoulders or feet. I know it seems a little silly, but we’re rewiring your brain here. And then once you’ve trained your brain to look in the mirror and easily find things you feel neutral about, see if you can find things you like. Maybe you like your hair, your eyes, your waist, the curve of your hip. 

Eventually you can get to the place where you always spot something you like and you feel neutral about what you would like to change. You may even get to the place where you think you look smoking hot EVEN before you’ve reached your goal weight. So imagine if that’s your reality. You have literally trained your brain to have a completely different experience with the mirror. The upside is that you have a neutral or positive experience every time you see your reflection, whether that’s in your bathroom mirror, the mirrors in the fitting room or the reflective windows on the street. Seeing yourself doesn’t cause you to spin into a self-sabotage spiral. You simply stay the course on eating responsibly. 

And here’s the best part, now that you have learned how to do this, you get to apply it to aging too. Is it easy? Does it mean you’ll never want botox? No. P.S. those things are not mutually exclusive, I’m all for botox and will likely get it myself later this year. But it’s not coming from a place of hating yourself or not being good enough right? Because you’ve done the inner work of accepting yourself exactly where you are, feeling at the very least, neutral about it. 

A concept you may be hearing more and more, because I’m noticing it too, is the idea of not either or but both and I really like this framework. So in this context it’s not either disliking what you see and wanting it to be different OR liking what you see and dropping your desire for it to be different. It can be both liking and wanting it to be different. How can this be true? 

Maybe your brain is doing some gymnastics here. Essentially you can like your body for so, so many reasons like it gave birth, it gets you from place to place, it beats your heart and keeps you alive without you having to think about that, it allows you to hug your partner and your children, it allows you to hike in nature, swim in the ocean AND you’re allowed to want it to have less excess fat too. 

The second way in which we can shift our focus to help us reach our weight loss goals is by focussing on our wins. When I post this episode I’m also going to post an instagram story of my son Tristan who’s 11 months as a visual for you to remember this point okay? So if you’re listening within 24hrs of this episode going live, you can see it at Mindful_Shape on instagram. 

In the video is him with one of those push cart toys. Now he’s just learning to walk now, so at this point he was only taking a couple of steps max and you’ll see him pushing this little toy and he’s so focussed. And he keeps banging into things because he hasn’t learned to steer, and his Nana keeps redirecting him so he can keep going. By the end he’s very pleased with himself. 

The obvious parallel here is that he doesn’t give up, but we can also use it as an example of focus. It’s a very short video and I think he bumps it into the counter 4 or 5 times. But when he gets back on track he’s only focussed on moving forward right? When he gets to the end he’s not focussed on the fact that he’s hit the counter 4-5 times. 

This happens with my clients a lot too in which they will stay on their protocol for 13 days and then go off their protocol 1 day and their brain tells them they’re doing terrible and they might as well quit. They are so focussed on that one day and ignore the other 13 days when they rocked it. 

Another way this shows up is when we focus on not how far we’ve come, but on how far we still have to go. I’ll have a client who’s lost 10 or even 15lbs and I’ll be celebrating with her and she’ll say, yeah sure that’s great, but I still have so far to go as if losing that 10 or 15lbs doesn’t even matter. It’s not helpful to discount our success. Why? Because when we don’t acknowledge and really sit with our success, we don’t change our self concept as someone who struggles with their weight. We don’t start to see ourselves as someone who is ACTUALLY finally succeeding at weight loss. Maybe even someone who’s really good at it? 

And think of how you show up when you think you’re succeeding at something. You feel great right? You feel motivated to keep going. A big part of my work with clients is pointing this out to them while their brain is on that old program of failure. No. We have to FOCUS on where we are succeeding. And you know you’re going to have those days where succeeding means getting dressed and at your desk and that’s about it. Sometimes succeeding can look like simply bringing in some awareness to your overeating that day. Some days, even that can be a success. And this isn’t about letting yourself off the hook, it’s about really giving yourself some credit for what you’re doing, so that you start feeling better about yourself and from there you’re more likely to treat yourself better and respect your body by eating in a way that serves you and your natural weight.

Alright, we’ve reached the last habit and it’s learning to manage your thoughts when you weigh yourself. Now I think I might do an entire podcast on this, there’s so much to cover. But essentially here’s why it’s important.

First, we know that what we measure improves. So if you get into the habit of weighing yourself every day your weight is more likely to improve than not. But notice I’m not saying the habit is weighing yourself every day, the habit, the foundational habit is managing your thoughts and here’s why. If you don’t manage your thoughts, you’re likely to have a really negative experience and will likely end up avoiding it altogether. Or worse, using it to beat yourself up.

If you’re avoiding the scale regularly or if you suspect it’s going to go up that morning because of what you had the day before, you are giving your power away to that scale. Why does that matter? Because when you practice getting on that scale, seeing the number stay the same or go up without going into mind drama about it, you are free mentally. And isn’t that what really matters? Because honestly, if your weight goes up a few pounds overnight because you had chinese food, it’s not fat increase, it’s weight increase. What do we really care about? It’s not how much water your body currently has in weight. So when we weight ourselves regularly we get really used to seeing normal fluctuations. My clients can fluctuate up to 5lbs in a week. Some it’s only .5 so it really depends on you. 

So here’s what you can do. First before you get on the scale, decide in advance that no matter what it says you’re going to stick to your protocol that day. Next, notice your thoughts and feelings that come up when you see that number. Are you making it mean something like what you’re doing isn’t working, that you’re never going to get there, that you have so far to go? What good is that? Not helpful. If you can, this is a good time to do your Daily 15 and write out your thoughts and feelings to see what’s really going on. Because whatever is going on in there is driving all your behavior. So you want to know, and then you want to be intentional about it.

If the scale goes up or stays the same, here are some self-coaching questions you can ask:

Have I followed my protocol 100% for the last 2 weeks. If yes, then what is one thing I could try changing this next week to see if the weight goes down. 

If the answer is no, then you know what to do, follow for your protocol for 2 weeks straight. 

Next question, could this be water retention?

Next question, did I get enough sleep?

If I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was on my way to my goal weight, would this matter?

What am I committed to, no matter how long it takes?

What’s the highest possible way of thinking about this?

I think that is the most powerful question you can ask yourself about anything. If you want to uplevel your life this year, apply that question to everything you’re dealing with and see what your brain can create for you. So powerful. 

Okay that’s what I have for you. If you would like the PDF that goes with this episode along with all of my free resources, you can find them at mindfulshape.com/resources and if you have questions, or you want to see that clip of my little guy in all his glory, find me on instagram at mindful_shape