Hi, and welcome to the mindful shape podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. All right. So today I am talking about doubling down on yourself when it comes to weight loss. So I'm going to be discussing, you know, what I mean when I say doubling down, what that looks like, when to do it, when it's a good idea.

And then also what to avoid, or like, what are the pitfalls? What can get in your way when you double down on your weight loss results. Okay. So first. What does this look like? Basically, it looks like going in all in on yourself, right? So, it's coming up with your very best strategy and then really deciding to give it your all, to really go for it.

So, this strategy, of course, must be different in at least some way to what you've been doing. Otherwise, you're just going to get the same results you have been, right? So, what I recommend you focus on is what I think of as like a protocol. So, what you're eating. When you're eating and of course how much you're eating.

So those are the areas that you can make changes in terms of okay I'm gonna double down What are the decisions that I can make ahead of time about what I'm eating when I'm eating and how much I'm eating? So when it comes to what you're eating, you just want to be taking a look at okay Well, there are foods that are going to you know spike my insulin and my blood sugars and keep me in fat storage mode for longer.

Of course, we know those are sugar and flour, the big ones there. So how much of that am I eating? And can I reduce that at all? Okay. So that's going to be kind of like low hanging fruit, very easy. To think of many of us already know other things are going to be just foods that don't work for your body that they may be okay foods, but they just don't work for your body in terms of how you want to be feeling in your body.

Another thing is going to be more of like, you know, vegetables, like how much vegetables are you eating and how much protein and fats, things like that. The when is going to be in relation to hunger. So how do you know when to eat? Well, Why would you eat if you're not hungry for one, right? So you always want to be eating only when you're physically hungry.

That's when you want to be eating That's when you will know it's time to eat when you are trying to release fat off your body You want to allow more time in between meals without eating? So that you can allow your body to use its fat stores. So when you're eating might be changed instead of doing three meals a day, you might be doing two meals a day instead of doing three meals and a snack, you might remove the snack and just do three meals a day.

Okay. So that's in terms of when you're eating. And then lastly, just how much you're eating. So of course, it's very easy to overeat at our meals. It's very easy to tell ourselves, well, we've already indulged. So we might as well just keep going. You want to be taking a look at where is my leverage. If I'm looking at what I'm eating, when I'm eating and how much I'm eating, where what's getting in my way, where am I overdoing it?

Where is the best place to double down? Now it might be on all of these and I'm going to be going into some pitfalls and I'm going to be talking a little bit about, you know, taking on a little bit too much at once, but if you're just like reflecting on yourself, is it that you just need to improve. All of these by like 10 percent or is there one area and usually when I'm working with clients, they will know into like with their intuition, where that is for them, they usually know well, you know, I'm, I have, I'm eating more often than I need to, or I'm eating a lot of exceptions like sugar, flour, or Or I'm eating past my satiation point.

I feel satiated and then I continue eating. So usually there will be something where we can identify where our biggest leverage is. And that's, that's makes a great point on where to focus or to double down on. Okay. So. You're essentially deciding, you are recommitting that you are going to give it your all.

So when is it a good time to do this? I think really anytime. The only time that you might want to avoid doing this is when you just really don't have the capacity. Meaning there is something else that is very challenging in your life that's not an ongoing thing. Like it's a bit of it's a bit of an outlier, doesn't normally happen.

So that might be some sort of grief, That you were working through that might be a specific stressor that you don't normally have to deal with. Like maybe there's a move or a loss of a relationship, anything like that. But if it's just your normal life stressors, then like, it's just kind of like, Oh, I've been kind of in a bad mood lately.

I haven't been able to get in a good mood and you've been feeling down about your weight. Anything that's just more of an ongoing life thing. Then it's a good time to change things up. It's a good time to try something new. And of course, if you have been working at this weight loss thing for, let's say you've been doing it for about three weeks and you haven't noticed any difference in the scale beyond the normal weight fluctuation, then that is also a good time.

I say three weeks because I really want to encourage you to think of the number on the scale as what I've heard as a lag. Indicator, which means it's an indicator of your success, but it's delayed. It's the very last thing that you're going to see to determine whether what you're doing is working or not.

So instead you really want to be focusing on your efforts, what you're eating, when you're eating, are you allowing hunger and are you overeating at your meals? Are you eating to satiation and not one bite more, right? Those are the things that you want to be focusing on to give you an idea of. Are you going to be successful at reaching your natural weight?

Okay, so the scale again is a leg indicator. It's going to be the last thing that you see for your efforts. So if you focus on your efforts, then you just know it's guaranteed. It's just a matter of sticking with it. If you've been sticking with it for three weeks, and you haven't seen anything on the scale, then it might be time to double down, make some changes.

Okay. But you want to give it at least three weeks. I have heard that it takes at least seven to 10 days to release weight off your body to release fat. It's a process and it takes time. Okay. So sometimes what I will notice is that we will say, have an exception one night, like eat ice cream, and maybe we even overeat the ice cream a little bit.

And then the next day we get on the scale and the scale goes down. And then we kind of come up with this narrative of. Oh, well, you know what? I can kind of get away with, you know, air quotes, get away with eating ice cream. So then we make allowances and give ourself permission to have that as a more regular thing in our diet.

And then of course, what happens is the scale goes up. It's because that's a leg indicator. The scale is not a determination of whether that ice cream is going to help you get closer to your goal or not. Right. So when I know, when I experience Explain this. You can be like, oh, that's so obvious, but you would be amazed how we can kind of trick ourselves, right?

It's the same, you might experience it in the opposite way, where you eat exactly how you wanna be eating one day, and then you expect that scale to go down the next day. And if you don't see it, go down. You're like, Oh, it's not working. But of course it doesn't. Our bodies don't often react like that. If we do see changes, it's typically like drastic changes, like a one to two pounds overnight.

Of course, that's not fat gain or fat release. That is water release, water retention. Okay. So again, you want to be watching the longer term trends and focus on our, are you winning with your efforts? What is going on with what I call a protocol, right? Like what you're eating, when you're eating and how much you're eating, what's going on there.

That's going to be a better indicator. Okay. How do we do this? How do we double down? The first thing is you just want to take an honest look at your efforts and your results. So both, right? What you see on the scale and then the effort that you've been putting in. So in the last two to three weeks. How have you been showing up in terms of your efforts?

If you answer, honestly, you will know whether it's time to double down or not. It might just be, Oh, I just need to kind of make a few tweaks, but overall I'm doing great. Or it might be like, I really need to double down here, but try not to judge yourself, try to remain as neutral as possible. It's, it's proven that we underestimate our progress.

We forget oftentimes as a coach, it's really my job to reflect your progress over time because we will forget and so we need somebody to reflect that back to us to kind of narrate our journey because otherwise we will really underestimate all that good work that we have been doing. So in terms of.

What, when, how much you've been eating, where might be your biggest leverage point? That's what you want to focus on. Start there. That's where you want to double down. Okay. So where can this go wrong? A couple of things that I see happening is if we think of our emotions as emotional fuel, Meaning this is what drives our behavior.

So we take action based on how we are feeling. Sometimes we're present and aware of that. And sometimes we're not, and we're just taking action from that feeling. And when you are thinking about doubling down on your weight loss efforts on your strategy, typically it will be from one of these emotions.

It will be from excitement. Like it can feel great when you decide that you're really going to double down, you're really going to give it your all. It feels motivating. It feels exciting. It's very compelling. Only problem with that is that it burns out because eventually it gets a little hard again.

There's some negative emotion that comes up. There's some time when you really want to go off your new strategy and then you experience that negative emotion that comes up. It will always be an emotion. So that's really good news because if you can plan ahead of time, what emotions am I willing to feel?

Okay, I'm likely going to feel if I, with my new strategy, you can really take a look and be like, okay, what emotions might I feel with my new strategy? Well, knowing my past, you know, I might feel deprivation. I might feel sadness. I might feel missing out how I'm going to handle that. That's a better question.

How am I going to handle those negative emotions? Not just, how am I going to just remove. Ice cream, it's how am I going to remove the ice cream? And then how am I, how am I going to handle those emotions? That's excitement. It also can arise from frustration from where you're at. If you've been experiencing a plateau or self loathing, you've been so off track that you are just like.

In food, hell, you were just taking yourself and hating it all, right? Also not the best fuel to be making decisions from or taking action from, especially over the longterm. So it's not a problem. If this is why you're making this decision to double down, like if these emotions are really kicking this off for you, just know that you are going to have, as I mentioned, you're going to have to have a plan for when they wear off because they will.

They're like fast moving emotions and they peter out. Okay? Self loathing, of course, isn't a fast moving emotion, but it's draining. It's energy draining. So if you're making changes from self loathing, likely you are going to be relying on seeing the results. Thanks. Bye. Instantly to try to feel better. The reason why you're doubling down is because you want to feel better based on results.

You will potentially feel better when you double down sooner rather than later, if you can focus on your efforts and give yourself credit for that and you aren't relying on quick results. Okay? Because we don't often see that. Sometimes we do, but we don't often see it. Doubling down just doesn't mean, okay, remove the ice cream after dinner.

It also means having a plan for what the real obstacles are. So these can be obstacles like entitlement, deprivation, boredom, self pity that you create for yourself when you remove the ice cream. So that's the real problem that you're solving for, because we all know it's pretty easy not to eat the ice cream.

If you don't want to It takes more activation energy to go up and get the ice cream out of the freezer and put it in a bowl or grab a spoon and eat right out of the carton. That actually takes more activation energy on your part than just sitting on the couch, watching your show without getting up and going to get it.

So that's not the real problem. We know what to do. The real problem. is what happens when you remind yourself, Oh no, we're not doing that. We're doing this doubling down strategy, right? So when you get to the place where you do not want the ice cream, then you are free. But at first, You're going to believe it that you want it right on the surface, you want it, you're believing that, but you don't actually want it, right?

You don't have to go too much deeper before you see that it's not the ice cream that you want because comes along with the ice cream is the weight gain or maintenance, right? Which you may or may not want depending on where you're at. What you're really seeking is the pleasure, the joy it brings, that sense of relaxation and fun.

When you remove the ice cream, you have less of all of that at first. So it totally makes sense that you would want to escape that you have less of all of that until it becomes so unbearable. Those feelings of like not having all that pleasure that you either just revert back to, well, I just have to eat the ice cream again.

You go long enough without it, that your dopamine levels regulate. And you don't need it. You don't need that big sugar rush. You get enough pleasure from the show without it, for example. And, or you start doing more in your life that gives you all of those things that are not related to food, fun, joy, pleasure, relaxation.

It doesn't involve food. There are other things in your life. You're filling your life up with those things. And for some of us, when we first remove the food, the food has been giving us. So much of that and buffering out so much of that negative emotion that we don't even know what that looks like We don't even know what that would be, right?

So when you remove it, there needs to be a willingness to lean in to some temporarily Emotional discomfort, right? Some temporary emotional discomfort. There needs to be that commitment and resolve and that determination, that's part of the doubling down that you want to tap into in your body because you want to use that as fuel while you're, as I say, your brain kind of gets regulated.

The dopamine levels get regulated and you actually derive more pleasure from what I call natural pleasures, just things that are not related to food that you get enjoyment from. Okay, number two is really common, I'm sure you can relate to this, is that you just go way too extreme. So you say, okay, I'm gonna double down, that means no sugar, no flour, I'm only gonna eat between, you know, 2 p.

m. and 6 p. m. or something like that. Anything that for you would be really extreme. So I want to give you the example of Like a weightlifter. So if you can imagine Somebody who weights lifts weights every day and is like a bodybuilder when they go into the gym Maybe they left, you know a 15 pound weight.

It's like nothing for them. It's like no challenge. They could do it all day It's not a challenge, but they're not gonna see any results from it They don't because they need more of a challenge. Then you can imagine somebody goes into the gym and they've never worked out before in their life. If you hand them a 15 pound weight and they start doing some exercises, that's going to feel like a real challenge for them.

If it's too much of a challenge, they're going to be like, Oscar, I'm going to quit. Like, I just can't handle this. It's too much. I can't do it. That's what they're going to think. Right. And so Doubling down for you is going to be very individual. It's going to be unique to you depending on where you are at right now.

So if you are somebody who has most of this mastered in terms of you eat really healthy, most of the time the foods that you, you know, the foods that you eat, the choices that you make, the food that serves you, you allow hunger. But maybe it's just satiation. Maybe it's just that you eat a little bit past, That point where, you know, you've had enough.

So for you, doubling down might be doing that in addition to allowing more hunger, in addition to drinking more water, in addition to moving your body in a different way, you might be able to take on a little bit more to move the needle. But if you are somebody who is noticing, you know, if I reflect back, like I am going to McDonald's at like midnight after my shift, and I'm doing that regularly, then for you, it's going to be more about, okay.

This is not, I'm not a person that, who is ready at this time in my life to go to two meals a day. Like, for me, it might just be about removing foods like, that are gonna be way off my protocol. Like, McDonald's. Of course you can have McDonald's every now and then or whatever, if it's, if that's what you really love.

But, I'm just saying that if you have that, Again, and again, of course, that's going to really get in your way. And if you are finding that is a challenge to remove, then don't try to take on too much. So you, my point is basically, you just want to take a look at where you're, where you're at. You want to choose a weight in terms of my weightlifting example.

You want to choose a weight. That's a challenge, but it's not going to be so extreme that you're like, well, I just give up. So you want to have a challenge because then you want to see result. And then number three is that you expect instant results. So when we double down, we are like all in and then we want that instant reward.

We want that instant payoff. We're like, okay, we're doing this because we're going to get something from it. Right. And that like motivates us. But then what happens is typically. We don't say it fast enough. So you win when you can keep taking that same boring action, like making sure there's food for you in the house that works for your protocol, eating that food, and when you have other choices available.

Stopping it enough without overeating, not eating one bite more. And you do that day after day after day Without expecting that leg indicator on the scale when you keep showing up as the person you want to be Around food you will see that number on the scale eventually, but I really want you to focus on Setting up a boring, you know double down Strategy that includes eating when you're hungry Stopping when you've had enough and choosing foods that really serve your body.

And that's it. It's so, so simple. We tend to really over complicate it, but doubling down for you might just be that. What if it were that simple and you just do that over and over and over again, and you are not tied. to, you know, three pounds a week or two pounds a week or anything like that. You are just tied to, I am going to keep showing up for myself.

Having this simple plan, I'm going to keep on showing up and I'm going to constantly take a look at my efforts and measure my success that way. Okay. I hope that was helpful in terms of doubling down. You will be amazed at what you can do if you have the right mindset and you can plan for that negative emotion if and when it turns up.

Okay. I'll talk to you again soon. Take care. Bye.