Ep. 106 Working Through Resistance

 Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. I coach women who want to release excess weight and stop thinking about food all the time. Today, we are talking about resistance. So whether that's working out, going to bed at a reasonable time, planning your food for the next day, or saying no to yourself when those chips are really calling you at three o'clock, you might notice some days it's easier easy to follow through and others feel like either you're just really dragging yourself or it's completely impossible because the level of resistance is so high.

So what is resistance? Really? It's a thought feeling combination. It's the, I don't want to. It's the, I don't feel like it. So just imagine your inner teenager, that bratty version, or in my case, your three major, right? Tristan is three and a half and whether it's going to the park, which is something that he actually really likes or getting his pants on in the morning, there is resistance.

So you think I don't want to, or I don't really feel like it. What I really want is this other thing to relax, to overeat, to eat the food. And then you feel entitled. And permissive. And so you skip the workout. Maybe you watch another episode and stay up a little later than you normally would, or you don't plan to set yourself up to win when it comes to your food the next day or that day, maybe same day.

Maybe you plan in the morning or you just eat the chips. You just eat the chips. overeat, whatever it is. When you experience resistance, you are likely telling yourself, whether this is conscious or subconscious, this shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't have any resistance. I'm undisciplined.

I need more discipline. You might be thinking I lack willpower and self control. Otherwise, I would be able to work out. I wouldn't be overeating or subconsciously. It's, I don't feel like doing it. I'm not feeling motivated today. Therefore I'm not going to do it.  Basically, you're thinking there's something wrong with you that you need to fix to be better, or this shouldn't be happening.

You should Be feeling motivated, have more energy, not even want the food, like not even have the craving, not have any desire to overeat at all. But here's the actual problem. It's not being willing to feel something. So what's the opposite of resistance? I didn't actually look this up, but to my mind, it's a willingness.

Until it becomes a habit and then eventually becomes just how we live, the things we know in the long run serve us, like saying no when we want the chips or cookies or stopping at enough or not eating at dinnertime because we're not physically hungry, at first, doing these things will be hard. You will feel resistance and that's because doing them requires you to feel a negative emotion and some level of discomfort. 

When your brain wants the pleasure from the food and you decide no, that you're not going to eat, you're not going to get that pleasure, so you feel bad. You feel deprived, self pity, you feel anger, you feel sadness, you're going to feel uncomfortable or uncomfy if you're a love is blind fan like me.  So it's saying no to what is and trying to escape reality.

It's saying I shouldn't want more food, but I do want it. So I guess I have to eat. You're making feeling like it or feeling motivated at the moment, a requirement. In order for you to follow through, but it's not, it's not actually a requirement. You could decide that  what you need is to feel empowered in your mission to release the weight.

So maybe that's, you want to live a healthy lifestyle. You want to change your relationship with food. It needs to come from a place in you in which it feels like that temporary discomfort. Is in service of you and the life that you want and the vision that you have for yourself rather than it coming from needing to be better in some way or to look better or to like improve yourself in some way. 

Why? Because you need to have autonomy and power. Throughout your journey for many of us, a very specific, very rigid meal plan is not going to work. At least we're not going to follow through with it a hundred percent of the time. It's because we don't want to be told what to do. We need to think and feel like we have autonomy, agency and power over our decisions.

It's also why if you ever find just weight loss stuff in general kind of triggering to you like off putting, this is why.  We need to believe that we want it because it's in the best service. For ourselves, not because somebody told us that we need to lose weight, right? That doesn't feel good at all.

That's very disempowering. We need to believe that we're doing it for us, that the choices that we're making, we're doing in service of ourselves and the vision that we want, not out of a punishment, like we're eating healthy as a punishment, like denying highly palatable foods as a punishment, or we're moving our bodies as a form of punishment.

No, it's not going to be sustainable. So what's the actual solution? What are some solutions here when it comes to resistance? First is just recognizing that resistance is natural. And I would say in most cases, inevitable, when we are trying to change something, there is going to be resistance and it's not a problem.

When you want to release weight, when you want to go all in on something, like say it's releasing five pounds in a month,  it's like turning up the volume on that static. of food noise that you have that around your weight, the thoughts about your body that is already there. We used a sound machine for Rhea.

We didn't use one for Tristan, but we used one for Rhea in terms of trying to, you know, help her get to sleep. And what you'll notice is when you have the sound machine on at like 50 or 49, it's pretty low. And eventually it's just It just becomes part of the background and you don't really hear it. And you can think of that as like kind of your thoughts around food that you're kind of that discomfort around how you feel in your body right now, the kind of obsessing around food or thinking about food all the time.

It's always there. It's always in the back of your mind. That's what I hear so many times is that it's just, they don't, people don't want to be thinking about this all the time. They don't want to be thinking about their weight. They don't want to be focusing on weight loss and food and trying to control food all the time, but it's always there.

And I want you to imagine when you decide, okay, I'm going to make a change. I'm going to, and maybe you set a goal and that's part of the instigation of change, right? Is to, okay, I'm going to release five pounds in a month. You're turning that dial on the sound machine, that static sound. Really high.

You're like turning it to 70. It's going to be blaring. It's showing you all the obstacles that is, that have been there all along. So all that food noise, all that drama that you have around the scale, all the thoughts about your body, all of that is going to be heightened. All of those obstacles are really going to present themselves  like an overdesire for food.

that you have that causes you to be overweight, right? An over desire for food in which your brain and your body want more food than you need. That over desire is currently an obstacle because it causes you to overeat and then be in an overweight body. So to lower your over desire to a natural desire for food so that you can reach your natural weight, it's going to require you to change both in how you eat.

To change your physiology and get rid of all of those cravings and to have more energy and to not be so crazy hungry, if that's what you're dealing with. And it's going to require you to change in how you're thinking so that your brain doesn't even want all of that food. The only problem is you will naturally be resistant to changing both of those things.

So if we don't work through that resistance, We will keep that level of desire for food too high, and we'll never have the health and the body that we want.  So I encourage you to recognize that there will be discomfort. Maybe you even know the emotion that's going to come up for you in a specific situation that you find especially challenging, like snacking after dinner.

What's going to happen for you when you tell yourself, no, there could be sadness. There could be deprivation. There could be discontentment. There could be loneliness or boredom, and you decide ahead of time  that you're willing to feel that  we can also create a sense of empowerment by getting really clear on why we want to release the weight and ensure we have a plan that meets us where we are, our need for flexibility, our need to be able to adapt when life gets really stressful or the kids get sick, or you're on holiday or vacation for the stage of life.

that you are in, whether you are really working extra or you just became retired. And like, that's a whole new challenge.  Also you want to consider your nutritional requirements depending on what your medical history is. That might be a little, you know, personal to you and your personal preferences. Maybe you want to incorporate alcohol into your weight loss plan, or maybe alcohol doesn't do it for you, but there's something else that's important to you, like making sure that you have protein with fewer animal products or that kind of thing. 

Rather than your weight loss plan being dictated to you, you need to be equipped to make food decisions for yourself. That way you will feel empowered and you will feel a sense of being in control and you will have less resistance because it's really coming from you. It's not being put on you. It helps your brain get into, I'm doing this for me rather than I have to do this or this is being done to me as a form of punishment. 

When I was creating this podcast episode, I came up with a framework that you might find useful. You can think of it like a resistance dial. So picture a half moon where the base is on the bottom and at the top in the highest part of the moon in the middle is neutral. And by the way, if you want to see a picture of this, I'm going to post it on my Instagram feed so you can check it out there. 

So  Let's imagine the middle is neutral. That's where your stance is flat footed. You're solid, you feel calm and committed about doing what you need to do to release the weight. Whatever that is, we're all at different stages of the game and our action plan might look a little different depending on where we are.

And what's specific to us, right? How long we've been at it, how much weight we want to release all of these factors, where we are in life, our age, how much we move, for instance, all of that stuff. Now, going back to the dial, the left hand side or the back part of the dial is resistance. So that whole area is resistance.

It's as if you're back leaning from neutral. You have doubts, If we go further on the dial, you feel apathetic, even further discouraged, and then ultimately hopeless. On the right side of neutral, on the front part of the dial, you're in willingness. You're forward leaning. You're feeling determined. Further on the dial, you're feeling motivated and excited.

At any point in time, you will be in. One place on this dial, so either in resistance at neutral or in willingness, the key is not to never be in resistance or to always be in willingness. The key is to notice where you are and manage going back and forth on the dial as needed. The resistance dial is really just a framework for identifying where you are at any given moment so that you can become more skilled at managing, you know, moving back and forth on that dial. 

Again, you can find it on my Instagram at mindful underscore shape,  and I currently have openings for private clients. Resistance is a real barrier for you when it comes to eating better or being able to stop it enough. If you feel like, you know, I'm a born rebel when it comes to food and weight loss, then I really encourage you to set up a conversation with me because when you coach with me, we will have.

Dedicated time and space to identify how resistance is showing up for you so that one, we can acknowledge it and to coach your brain through it toward being that next version of you who can easily adapt and it can easily move on that dial. So you'll learn how to transition out of resistance and into neutral and into willingness.

You'll learn how to turn that dial on demand because you'll be working with your brain and how you're thinking and feeling. So you'll also learn my process to optimize fat loss. That's not going to require you to count calories, track every single bite of food or follow any kind of meal plan, but instead I'm just going to teach you how to eat in a way that one gives you more energy, more clarity of mind, and of course allows your body to release excess fat.

And in addition to that, and even, I think more importantly, how to make food decisions that work for your body, your lifestyle, and what you like to eat. Because ultimately I always say this, but we make one big decision to release weight and then weight loss is a culmination. of food decisions that we make repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.

So I guess I only needed one repeatedly there, but you get my idea, right? It's a lot of food decisions that we are making. And so the key is not to tell you exactly what to eat. The key is to help you feel empowered and, and teach you what you need to do or need to learn to be able to make those decisions that work for you.

Ultimately, what you learn from our coaching time together is how to eat only when you're hungry. Stop it enough and choose the foods that serve you. It's simple, but for many of us, not so easy. That's why we need a coach. We need to coach your brain from where it is now to that next version of you in which it is easy to do exactly that.

Because it is. If nothing else, I really want to emphasize that's available for you. I don't care how long you've been at this or how far out that seems for you right now. It's totally possible to reach the weight you want and feel in charge along the way. Feel in charge with food, not at the mercy of food.

So if you are even the slightest bit curious about this approach, about Learning how to coach your brain to release the weight that you want. You can sign up right now for a free call with me where we can talk about what's going on for you. It's a chance if nothing else just to remind your brain to speak it out loud.

Remind your brain this is important to me. I do care about this and Then you and I will explore what your next steps are, whether that's coaching with me or continuing to go it alone, but you will have more awareness on specifically where you need to focus. So if that's something you're up for, please reach out to me.

You can email me directly at Paula at mindful shape. com or you can go to my website and set up a call there. The website of course is mindful shape. com and I really look forward to seeing you. Okay. Bye.