Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shade Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. I'm a life coach specializing with women who really want to release excess weight off their bodies and really stop thinking about food all the time. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about resistance. I've been just really, to be honest, experiencing a lot in my own life, some resistance.

And of course it comes a lot With my clients as well. So we've all heard that resistance is normal. We set a goal and then we have a list of action steps that we know that we should try at least to get there. And then what comes up? We don't feel like doing it. We don't want to do it. Right. We'd rather almost do anything else.

So. We've all heard resistance is normal. And it's just a good reminder that of course it's normal. It's part of the process of achieving any goal that you have. It's simply the part of the brain that doesn't want to exert effort and, or feel a negative emotion. So one thing I've just been asking myself lately, just as an inquiry into my own resistance is what's the emotion that I'm trying to avoid.

There's some sort of emotion that I'm trying to avoid here. Otherwise I would just be doing the thing, right? That's how our brain is wired. It just wants. The pleasure and what's the easiest path forward. But I think another factor that contributes to this resistance is not just our biology and how we're kind of our default mode.

It's also doubt. Right? So we just don't believe that this specific action will have a direct, significant enough impact, enough that we can get ourselves to do it. So sure, it will help in the longer term, but your brain doesn't care about that right now, right? Your brain is thinking, well, what's another serving when it tastes so good?

Or what's a few more crackers, like it's not going to make that much of a difference. And then we feel resistance to sticking with our plan, whatever. however we want to eat, right? We also have doubt that we can sustain our efforts longer term, long enough to reach our goal, especially if we've been far from our goal, our weight loss goal for many years.

So we doubt it's even possible. You'll know this is really true. If just right now in this moment, you think of your goal weight right now and you feel discouraged, or you feel like a twinge of like your energy dropped just a fraction, like a little less energy, rather than more. Sometimes we think about a goal, we know there's like no doubt, there's no resistance when it really enlivens us.

We're in that kind of zone and we're thinking, oh this is possible and we actually get more energy by thinking about our goal. So doubt is natural. I want to emphasize that as well, just as resistance is natural, doubt is also natural. I think we're not going to really believe it 100 percent until we have the result.

We're not going to believe we can do it until we actually see ourselves doing it. So doubt is part of the process just as resistance is. And so I want to take us on a little journey on this episode from doubt to determined, because I think that that is how we will unlock This resistance, you might still encounter some resistance along the way because it's normal.

But when you're able to go from a place of doubt to a place of being determined, you'll be able to move through that resistance much more quickly. Okay, so let's talk about it. One is I just want to make the point As I said before, don't make doubt a problem. It's okay that you have some doubt, whether it's a program that you're about to try, or you have some doubt in yourself because you've tried so many times and nothing has worked.

Just bring that doubt along for the ride. As I say, you're going to doubt probably the whole time, a little bit. Sometimes your doubt will be like 90 percent on good days. Your doubt will be at like 10 percent and that's okay. It's going to fluctuate all along the way, depending on, you know, number of different factors.

Don't make it a problem. If you are in doubt, that's going to help us get closer to determination. Okay. Cause making it a problem will be in your way. Well, I don't believe it's going to happen. So I'm not going to take any action is not going to help you get, it's not going to help you feel determined.

The next point I want to make is that there's, they've done a lot of research on anticipation. What they've shown is that you will actually get more enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction from a holiday or vacation in which you spent like six months anticipating, rather than if I said, okay, You know what?

You're going to Hawaii tomorrow. I have free tickets. And you have, you don't have any time anticipating that trip. You'll actually enjoy it less if you don't have any time anticipating it. So anticipation of something that you're going to receive or something that you're going to achieve is an important part of your satisfaction and pleasure of it.

So enjoy the juiciness. So I'm going to talk to you today about the importance of anticipating something, anticipating your success. I think for many of us, we can easily lose sight of this. It's so easy to focus on, you know, how hard it is and the things we're giving up and we're not there yet. And I think our brains just, that's where our brains go.

And we really have to cultivate that skill and pay attention to and make an effort towards. Enjoying some of that anticipation of really leaning into how good it feels to really want something. I think of this as almost like a transferring of desire. We spend a lot of time, you know, maybe previously or maybe you're going through it right now, spending a lot of time desiring food, thinking about food all the time, deriving a lot of pleasure from food.

And what I've noticed in my personal life is, oftentimes, When my desire for food is really high, I don't think it's any coincidence that it's also the same time when my desire for life is low. So, I've been tracking my cycle really closely, and I really notice. I think it's like days 16 to 18, or it could be 15 to 17, I can't remember exactly.

But those are the days where it's just motivation is really low. There's just feels like more negative emotion is present. And in those days, I do notice I get less enjoyment and less, I have less dopamine like drive to do the things that give me a lot of pleasure and my brain will start turning to food instead.

So I think we really need to train our brains to want The right thing to have that desire, cultivate the desire for the right things. And what are the right things? The things that serve us. So soak up the satisfaction of the efforts, the efforts that you're making, whether that's following through today and you reflect on yesterday, or you reflect on earlier today when you followed through on your plan, or when you put your head down.

You know, down at night you think, wow, I showed up, I weighed myself. I drank lots of water. I ate when I was hungry, I didn't overeat. I ate foods that served me. You get to feel great about that. Don't discount your efforts that you're making soak up the satisfaction from that. Or maybe it's even just a sense of accomplishment that you made a healthy dinner, that you didn't eat past satiation, or you didn't snack after dinner.

You said no to yourself. We want to derive satisfaction and accomplishment from that. I think the mistake is that we tend to think, well, I, I'm only going to get satisfaction and pleasure and a reward. I'm only going to feel a reward when my clothes are feeling a little bit better, or I like my reflection in the mirror.

Because what that does is it really ties our dopamine, the drive to do that again, to the reward, and we won't always see the rewards. Either we won't be experiencing them fast enough, or, if you're like me, you might be just in a bad mood, and you just like don't see it, even if it is there. Okay. So instead we want to learn, and I do think it's a skill on how to tie our dopamine reward system to our effort.

I was thinking recently I've mentioned before I did this program. It's called bar definition. It's an online program for doing bar type workouts. And I started with this 90 day program and I just finished it. So today was day 90. Well, actually, to be fair, I did 90 of the workouts, but I didn't do it like in 90 days.

It took me much longer, but I did all of them, right? I completed the whole program, 90 days of workouts. And. What has changed? I mean, not a whole lot. Yes, I'm stronger for sure. I'm definitely stronger. I could do things now that I couldn't do even 30 days ago. So that's pretty cool. My flexibility is better, but really emotionally, because I was telling myself along the whole way and kind of bragging to my husband that I was sticking with it, I was feeling really accomplished and satisfied and like a sense of completion.

Because I wasn't beating myself up about it if I didn't do it. I was doing it even when I didn't feel like it. I was committed to the process, okay? So I was also deriving a ton of pleasure from, like, look at me, I'm doing it, okay? So, nothing has really changed now that it's all over, because, Although I'm proud that I did it, I was experiencing a lot of pleasure throughout.

Okay. So it can be the same with weight loss. I, I just really want to plant the seed that you are doing it. You are making it happen. Even if you have setbacks, that's totally part of the process. Lean into it. And one day this is not going to be a problem anymore. And one day you're going to like put on a bathing suit and it's going to be no problem.

And you're going to feel great. And you're going to really look forward going to the pool. You're going to really look forward to going to the ocean or going to the beach like that is happening for you. And the more time that you can spend leaning into anticipating your success, the more you will feel.

You know what? I'm determined to make that happen. I'm deriving reward from my effort. What can I do next? That will bring you more out of resistance and more in, okay, I'm determined to make this work. I think another thing that can get in our way of, you know, feeling really good while we're on the journey, not to be too cliched, but that's kind of what we're talking about here is really enjoying the process.

And I think another thing that really gets in our way is the When we're in that place of resistance, it's very hard to access that feeling of possibility and that feeling of tapping into that future self and like feeling really great. And so I think the path forward in that case is really to more neutralize it.

Is to be like, okay, I don't have to feel super motivated, but what is the minimum effort that I could make that would move the needle? Like, what is the minimum that I can commit to right now where I won't have to feel super motivated and glorious and 100 percent believe in my desire, right? So if, if that juiciness of anticipation is not available to you because the resistance is so high, then the way forward in that ability Becoming more determined is really going to be, as I say, coming up with the minimum actions required.

What's the next step? And it could be as simple as, what are the foods that are spiking my blood sugar? What if I just decided today, I'm not going to have any of those foods, or I'm just going to have one of those foods instead of three, if I'm having three. So it's very practical, tangible things that you can do within one day.

And then also tracking that, like really tracking and following your success. I'm not a huge proponent of before and after pictures only because I think they can be kind of misleading. I don't know. There's something about them that's like a little bit cringy to me, but at the same time, I do know that I did a program away, like a really long time ago with some macro coaches and it was kind of part of the requirement, like they were like, These bodybuilder guys like performance, you know, they go on the stage, all that kind of body competitions kind of stuff.

And I wasn't of course doing it for that. I was just doing it for weight loss, but they knew how to get fat off your body. They didn't know how to like teach you the mindset of like keeping it off, but they knew the macro numbers to give you that you could follow. Right. And I, and I learned a lot from them.

So I'm really grateful. And part of the system was a part of the program rather was to. Take a picture of you before and then a picture of you after. And so of course I did that and it was so fascinating to me because I didn't think that I had really made that much change in my body, but when I looked at the before picture, it was almost unrecognizable and I wish I could find it.

I don't know where it is because I would love to share it on my social media and just kind of give you an idea of kind of my journey. But one of the things that can be really helpful is just Making notes of where you are along the way so that you start to see your progress, whether that's just mindset or whether that's your weight loss, but that you're always reflecting on your success and how far you've come.

Sometimes we can compare ourselves with others and it just feels terrible. Instead, what you really want to be doing is comparing yourself with your previous self, which. I'm sure even if your weight is higher than before, you have gained traction in some area, whether it's another area of your life, you've grown in some way.

I don't think you can live on this planet without actually growing and learning. Even if superficially your life kind of seems a little bit worse than maybe it did last year or two years ago. You've definitely learned, you've definitely grown as a person. If nothing else, you are more complex and more interesting and maybe more heart centered, right?

More self compassionate or have more empathy for others. You've definitely learned something. One of the things that I did to help reward my brain along the way when I was doing that 90 day program was you can print out a little calendar and then you can check things off along the way. So every time I did a workout, I would check it off.

And I'm sure that you have found that that can be such a reinforcing reward, positive reward for our brain. It's like this tiny little thing making a check Mark, but it's like checking off your to do list, right? It feels so good. And we need to figure out how we can incorporate that. Into our success plan for our weight loss doesn't have to be huge accomplishments because weight loss happens a little bit every day and not even every day, right?

Sometimes it's like, it takes a little bit of a pause for a little while, but it's the efforts every day that over time add up and then eventually make our goal happen and makes it inevitable. And lastly, I just want to sell you a little bit more on determination, because I think that sometimes we fall out of being determined and go back to doubt when we are not really sure if this program is going to work for us, or like this method, or this way of eating.

If we're not really sure, then We lean into doubt and we might only half heartedly give it an effort. What I want to offer is that you don't necessarily have to tie your success to one way of eating or one program, one weight loss program. What you can tie your success to is you and. The fact that even if this program, for whatever reason, whatever you, whatever you're trying, any way that you're eating, if it doesn't work, you will figure out another program.

You will find a way to get the excess fat off your body. And if it's not this, it's going to be something else. And that's where you can feel really drop in to that determination that if it's not this, it's going to be something else. You will derive as much learning and as much information and inspiration and knowledge and.

As much as you possibly can learning wise from what you're doing on a day to day basis, and you will apply it going forward. And so it won't matter whether it's this program or another program, you will make it happen and it's just a matter of time. So drop into that sense of determination. It's totally happening for you.

You can do it. Absolutely get excess weight off your body. It's just a matter of figuring out What is getting in the way between you and that version of you and then solving for that? All right. So if you are interested in doing that kind of work, I am taking on clients right now feel free to reach out to me and We can talk about what working together looks like.

You can email me at paula at mindfulshape. com. Also, if you have any questions about anything I've mentioned here, please feel free to ask me on Instagram. My Instagram is mindful underscore shape and I will see you there. Okay. Bye.