Ep. 41 Feeling Impatient

Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shape podcast. I’m Paula Parker, and I’m a life coach specializing in weight loss. You’re probably in one of two camps. Either what you’re doing isn’t working, meaning your weight isn’t going down without going right back up again OR what you’re doing IS working, meaning you are losing weight.

What’s interesting is that no matter which camp you fall into, you’re likely feeling impatient about the whole thing. Am I right? There is a big range in the rate at which people lose excess fat. I have clients who lose 10lbs in a month and some who lose 2 or 3lbs in a month but what’s so interesting is that it doesn’t seem to matter. We always want our results to come sooner. We want to be living at our natural weight NOW, so anything outside of that, even if we’ve lost 10, even 25lbs, we still feel that resistance to our current weight.

Today I’m going to be exploring how impatience plays a role in weight loss and what to do about it. First off, if you are feeling this way and you recognize it immediately - this is a safe place for you. I’m not going to tell you that you need to feel differently about it - you don’t have to change a thing if you don’t want to. Feeling impatient about getting what we want is so normal and nothing has gone wrong. You get to be as impatient as you want. But if you’re like, um no… I would much rather lose weight while feeling at ease and relaxed about it, then this will be helpful. Because maybe it’s so normal to feel impatient you never considered there COULD be another way to experience losing weight. It’s almost as if we’re either on a weight loss plan, feeling impatient the whole time, wanting to get somewhere else or we’re off the weight loss plan and on pause, feeling a little resigned. So I’d like to offer that we have options here. So soften your shoulders, take it all in and then decide for yourself. 

First let’s talk about how impatience could be showing up for you and potentially having a negative effect on your results.

Here’s how to tell if you’re being impatient. When it comes to losing weight, I see impatience show up in 3 ways:

1) You have the sense that what you’re doing isn’t enough. You might find yourself going back into diet mentality, meaning you’re trying to eat much less and move way more. You might be counting calories, budgeting macros or trying old diets that “worked” in the past. I’m putting air quotes around the word worked because unless it was sustainable, and you kept the weight off long term, it didn’t really work. And listen, if you really enjoy doing these things and it serves you that’s great. But most people I know would much rather spend their time and energy elsewhere in their lives.

2) Here’s a less obvious one: You’re believing that YOU aren’t enough. You aren’t acceptable to yourself as you are - in the body that you currently have. The one you have out on loan. I think that’s kind of a funny way of thinking about our bodies. We don’t really own them, we’re simply borrowing them for our lifetimes. They are a gift. When I think of my body this way, it helps me have more reverence and feel less attached somehow. Gives me a different perspective. A client gave me this quote - my body is not a billboard, it’s my home. What?! I love that. Your body is your home. 

When we’re impatient, we’re really rejecting ourselves and that feels pretty terrible right? So we think that if we can speed up the process, we’ll outrun the negative feelings we have about ourselves and our lives. 

3) Another way impatience shows up is when you think sure, it’s working now but what about next weekend? What about my vacation? What about 6 months from now? You have little to no faith in yourself or the process. 

I want you to compare this to an amazon purchase. I think the last thing I ordered was a ring light for my new desk set up. I’m working downstairs in our living room now that Lucas, my husband is back to work. So far so good - I’d love my own space with a door to close but so far I’ve been able to have all the privacy I need and I have good lighting - could be worse. So I bought the light because I wanted better lightening for my coaching calls and was looking forward to not looking like I hadn’t slept for a week on my client calls. But as much as I was looking forward to it, I wasn’t impatient about it at all. After I placed the order I didn’t think much about it. They gave me an approximate date of arrival and I then just expected it to come. No drama right. I wasn’t thinking, well what if I don’t get it or what if it gets delayed? What if it comes and it’s not what I expected? Nooooo. Why? Because I trusted that a. It would come and I could trust the process and b. I would problem solve if I needed to. 

So if we match this up with the impatience criteria I just talked about it looks like this. I trusted that I was doing enough - meaning my order on amazon was sufficient to solve for the lighting problem. I wound never believe that if my light didn’t arrive on time it meant there was something wrong about me.  And lastly, I didn’t think well sure I got my last Amazon purchase but I doubt this order will show up. 

Now I know this is like, well who cares about the light - weight loss has such a bigger impact on my life. I get that. But I want to illustrate that being impatient about whether the light will come or not does not speed up the process over at Amazon. And impatience is not created by the thing you’re after and not having the thing yet. When you KNOW it’s coming and you know you will figure it out until it does, you can be chill about it. You can relax and feel better in the meantime. 

And here’s the thing. Being impatient during your process not only adds to the discomfort on a day to day basis, but it will actually slow you down.

Here’s how. 

Look at what you do when you’re feeling impatient about your goal. You’re trying lots of different things rather than allowing it to be slow and sustainable. When you’re spinning in confusion and overwhelm you’re not focussed on the good things that are happening in your life right now. You miss them simply because you’re distracted. Your focus in on what isn’t working, what’s lacking rather than all that is working and wanting what you have already. 

The question becomes, what FEELING do you want fuelling your actions? It’s like we can lose weight from a loving place for ourselves or from a place of insufficiency, disgust, rejection. You’ll know based on how you feel and your level of impatience. 

When we’re in a hurry we’re trying to change the current circumstance to get out of negative emotion. It’s really important to remember that. And often times changing the circumstance, in this case losing weight quickly WILL make us feel better temporarily.  But you can also change how you’re thinking about yourself and your body and immediately change how you’re feeling about yourself, your body and your life. And this doesn’t even need to be drastic, it can simply go from thinking you need to live a life without sugar and flour and be hungry all the time OR be in free fall with food to believing it’s totally possible to feel in charge around food 100% of the time, no matter the situation. 

If you don’t believe it’s truly possible to achieve this AND reach your weight loss goal, you’re going to be desperate. You’re going to feel like it needs to happen yesterday for you to alleviate the pain you’re feeling. 

Notice you wanting it so desperately is just bc you’re in pain. You’ll get out of the pain by accepting the process no matter how slow AND accepting yourself a little bit more while you’re getting there. 

When you aren’t in a hurry you’ll feel at peace.

So I want to give you something really actionable to help you out of being impatient and help you cultivate patience within your weight loss journey. 

I want you to consider giving yourself the gift of time. Give yourself a timeline that offers more than enough space to breathe. Here’s what I want to challenge you with - whatever timeline you have in your head right now to reach your goal - I want you to double it. So if you’re thinking 3 months, now it’s 6 months. If you were thinking 6 months, now it’s a year. 

Try that on for a minute here. What comes up? Maybe some disappointment. That’s okay. You are likely already feeling disappointment about where are you now anyway. But what if in this new timeline it’s for sure going to happen? Like 100% guaranteed? Maybe you’d relax a little right? Maybe you’d stop going into all or nothing thinking knowing that you’re in it for the long haul. If 6 months, a year feels like a million years away - it’s because you’re in pain over where you are right now. 

And the best news is that we can start alleviating that pain not by adding to it with a super strict eating plan and workout plan, but by being really curious about what thoughts are contributing to that pain. 

Maybe there are some really negative thoughts that can be questioned and shifted even a little. Thoughts such as, “I have to lose 25lbs by summer or else…” We plan on withholding love from ourselves if we don’t meet our goals and then we wonder why we don’t feel motivated. 

Or you say to yourself, “I’m so sick of dealing with this,” or “I know what to do - why can’t I just stick with it?” “What makes me think I can do this when I’ve failed a million times before?” So much self judgment here right? It’s simply not useful. Instead we can think, “I’m figuring this out,” “I’m committed to myself even when I make mistakes.” “I’m just going to love myself through this even tho that doesn’t come easy right now.” “It will take as long as it takes and that’s okay.” This is the type of intentional thought work you can be doing to change your shape. 

So first is extending your timeline. Next is slowing down with the intention you are truly losing it for the LAST time. Yes. If the next 15lbs you lose never return, how does that feel? 

Spend some time here mentally to let that really sink in. You won’t lose weight permanently unless you can really start believing it’s possible to live at your natural weight without food drama. It’s possible to see the donuts at work and NOT want them. And if you’ve never experienced that before, you have to go out on a limb here. You have to have faith that it’s possible for you. And your brain can change - we know this, so we know it truly is possible. But it’s not going to speed up anything by feeling impatient and wanting it to go faster. 

Your job is to figure out how your body releases excess fat while you feel satiated and then manage your thoughts so that you can then implement that plan. It’s going to require patience not only to figure out what that looks like for you, but also for how long it may take for your body to reach its natural weight. Now if you want help with that, I’m here for you. You can reach out to me through my website and you can also find lots of free resources there at mindfulshape.com And if you haven’t already you can connect with me over on instagram at mindful_shape