Hi, and welcome to the mindful shape podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. So today I was just going to share some ideas on how you can ensure that you keep off the weight that you've released. So when you're looking at your weight loss goal, you can really get there either way, but if the goal is really mastering the process, rather than just releasing the weight and, you know, weight loss at any cost and just getting to the goal, then you're going to be able to maintain it.

There's just increases the likelihood. Okay. So when I'm talking about process, I mean, essentially the process of change that's required to reach your goal weight or your natural weight. So that will involve, of course, improving your relationship with food, feeling in charge around food, improving how you talk to yourself.

Even when you overeat improving your body image overall, no matter what the scale says, right? So improving what you tell yourself about yourself overall. So of course I have a really specific process that I go through with clients where we work on these specific things and release the weight and we do like reflection and strategy and all of that.

But in general terms, without directly working with me, you can think of the process in this sort of more general term of the process of change that's required to get you to where you want to be. So  let's talk about motivation for a little bit, because I know that a lot of you are probably thinking, you know, I can stick with it for a little while, but then I get demotivated, or I lose my motivation, and then I go off the rails, or it starts a little bit, and then, you know, it's a slippery slope, and then I just quit.

Okay, so let's talk about that. By default, you're highly motivated. When you're in intense pain or deprivation. Okay. So those two things are correlated. High motivation comes with intense pain or deprivation of what you don't have. So Usually in weight loss when we're talking about deprivation, we're thinking of depriving ourselves of the foods that we want.

But in this term, I want to really think about the deprivation of having what you want, which is your natural weight. An example of this is how you can think about it is if you're you're highly driven and motivated to sleep when you're jet lagged or you're exhausted, okay? And you're also driven, highly motivated to eat when you're really hungry.

When we are really suffering around our weight, I think of it as being like in the fire, okay? So we have a huge motivation to change.  Because we are in some intense pain, we are so far away from what we want and how we want to feel The confidence that we want to feel the clothes that we want to wear all of that Even there can be a lot of physical discomfort when we're in a bigger body.

Okay, because why why is there? Motivation to change because we want to feel better We don't want to be going through all of that but then what happens is when we make some initial improvements and And we do feel better, and we're not in the fire anymore. We don't have any more motivation. We're more in a state of complacency.

Okay, so motivation dries up because That slight feeling better out of the fire is accomplished.  So what happens now? Well, you can keep creating fires by putting weight on again and creating even more drama around food so that you increase that pain so that you get motivated again. And that's what most of us do.

That's like that vicious cycle. Right? This is what happens when we rely on motivation, or you can decide that you will learn the skill of following through on your plan or how you want to be eating, even when you don't feel like it. So you're not requiring yourself to be motivated all of the time. Okay?

The second thing you can do is derive, Your reward by the process itself, rather than just the outcome. This is the whole focus on the journey kind of thing, right? But I, I think it's so valuable and we can think about it in new ways that hopefully, you know, the more you hear something, you hear things in different ways at different times, depending on what you're going through. 

How do we derive the reward from the process itself?  You want to be taking a look at how it feels to lay your head on the pillow at night, knowing that you followed through, knowing that you're that much closer to the body that you want. Okay.  I also want you to focus on how good it feels in your body.

When you stop eating it enough, the mental clarity that you have when you have lunch and then you go on with your day. And you're not overthinking food. You're not obsessing about what you ate or what you want to be eating. Okay. You want to be looking at how good it feels to feel like you have a lots of energy, the lightness on your feet or digestion. 

You want to be looking at. When you avoid highly palatable foods like sugar, flour, things like that,  when you avoid those, how you feel in your body, how much better you feel, and also giving yourself some credit for making these positive choices, eating more vegetables, eating more fats, eating more protein, drinking lots of water, moving your body in ways that you love.

Another way of deriving reward from the process itself is really focusing on who you get to be in this so called new normal. Like in this new way of being as a woman. So maybe that is someone who prioritizes herself, prioritizes her health, who has like high standards or like a vision of herself and rises to the occasion or takes on challenges.

Maybe you want to focus on how you are making a lot of progress with befriending hunger. Doesn't mean you have to be feeling ravenous all the time, but it could be that you are befriending hunger, which means you really like hunger. when you are a little bit hungry, the focus that you have, the clarity of mind, even the energy and the lightness, how food tastes so much better when you eat after being really hungry.

Okay. And then lastly, you can really enjoy  either glimpses of being this way or moving into someone who really doesn't dwell on overeating. If you do happen to overeat, you move on quickly without beating yourself up.  Or you eat meals and then just move on with your day, as I mentioned. Or you are someone who really knows how to relax, celebrate, and receive pleasure without food being the number one source, the main source of that in your life.

Like, that's meaningful, right? If you are someone who does not rely food as a main source of those things, That's going to make a huge difference. It's going to mean it's not a struggle to release weight and keep it off because you know how to derive relaxation, celebration, and pleasure from other aspects of your life.

You might really enjoy being someone who can take it or leave it when it comes to dessert, or you can navigate social pressure to overeat or social pressure to accept food or overeat foods that are maybe not in alignment with how you want to feel in your body or your weight loss goals. And you can navigate that easily and feel good.

feel good in your body? Like, what is that sense in your body when that's happening? For many of us in the beginning, that can feel kind of stressful and it can kind of feel like, ah, we're not, we're not doing it right. Or they feel bad. Or there's like, it's kind of anxiety provoking, like we're doing something wrong and it's just easier to not feel that discomfort.

How do we want to handle those situations? If we think about it in advance, then it's much easier to navigate those type of situations. Oftentimes we don't even spend any time thinking about that, right? So you can really tell what drives a person based on what they do after they get that win. So for example, if you release the  And then you struggle and you gain it back.

It's just a clue that what was driving you was likely a little bit more skewed to the outcome versus the process itself. This is just really good information. It doesn't mean anything bad has happened. It just means, Oh, this is an area where I can focus and I can. reap some huge rewards, right? This could be my leverage where I really want to focus on  the process and how do I enjoy that process and how do I learn to get satisfaction and reward my brain from the process versus being so focused on that result, on that outcome.

I think I mentioned in the last podcast that a couple weeks ago, my husband and I went to Seattle and in the hotel room, we were watching TV and we don't normally watch TV because we don't have a TV in our house. We watch shows on our computer. Like our TV game is, it's pretty pathetic. My sister came over and she was like, Oh, you watch shows on that?

It's like this tiny little computer. I'm like, yeah. But anyway, so we were watching shark tank and. It's it's not my favorite show. It's I like the business component of it, but I just find it a little bit hokey. It's a little hokey for my taste, but what I noticed, which I thought was so interesting is the investors, they really don't need to be doing that, right?

They have. all of the money that they could ever spend. They don't need that. But the reason that they keep showing up, the reason that they are haggling over 5%,  10 percent of the investment in the company, or 50, 000, which of course is nothing to them, is because they love the game. Right? They don't need the win.

They don't need the result or the outcome. They're just doing it because they love the process of it. So that's how we know if you keep on showing up to the process, you will be able to maintain your results. Because you're going to be doing what you're doing now in terms of releasing the weight. You're going to be doing that once you release your once you get to your goal weight, right?

Your natural weight. So, will you make some tweaks or increase a few exceptions or whatever? Yeah, maybe, right? There might be some tweaks. But overall, you're still going to be doing the same things. Which is going to be eating when you're really hungry, stopping at enough, and eating foods that really serve you and your body.

So, don't set the weight loss goal for just weight loss only. Because you're going to get there and then you're not going to be able to maintain it as easily. Okay, set this weight loss goal for who you will become in the process. So this means the skills that you're going to learn, the qualities that you're going to have as a person who you are, right?

And what you will believe about yourself for overcoming this challenge. And for many of us, this has been a challenge we've been dealing with for decades.  What is that going to mean for you when you do overcome it? Lastly,  this can be how you measure your own success. How you are showing up to the process.

So not the number, but the implementation about what you care about, your high standards that you have for yourself, how you are showing up for yourself, right? And you get to define that.  That's what I'll leave you with. I hope that helps in terms of. Don't rely on motivation. You're not going to feel motivated the whole time.

And that's totally okay. You want to set what you think is going to be a very informed and responsible protocol or way of eating. And then you follow through on that, right? And you focus on what I call 2 percent wins on where are you showing up in the process? How can you be invested in the change that's occurring as you as a human on this weight loss journey,  seeing the weight loss.

It's almost as a byproduct. It's a byproduct. It's if you master this process of change in this one area, then you will see that result, but you're doing it for that evolution of yourself. You're doing it for that compelling vision, for rising to the occasion, for taking on the challenges, for overcoming something that you struggled with for a long time, right?

For learning how to be in charge around food. That's what you're doing it for, right? Like those many wins, not just for the weight loss, but also for the relationship. Okay. Yep. that you have with yourself and reducing all of that mind chatter around food because that is going to be exponential. Once you learn those skills, you'll have them for the rest of your life.

All right, I'll talk to you again next time.