Ep. 126 Apathy Into Determination

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker, a coach specializing in helping you release excess weight and feel in charge around food. Today we are talking about feeling apathetic about your body and health goals. So that could be releasing excess body fat. And reaching a really specific weight loss goal that you have.

It could be starting a new health regimen, your workouts that you usually do, or moving your body in any way that you love drinking less alcohol, or maybe you've got a few you're working on in the realm of health.  There is a lot going on in the world right now, and you're likely more stressed out. If you've watched even a minute of the news, it can make it hard to feel invigorated about feeling great in your bathing suit, right?

It might make the goal feel trivial even so. It makes sense if that's what's going on for you right now, or really anytime in the future. The reason I thought it's important to bring this up is because apathy as emotional fuel, if we look at our emotions as fueling our behavior, is pretty weak. When we feel this way for whatever reason, we will tend to say, ask her it and blow off our workout, overeat, then feel guilty or bad about that and sink even deeper into apathy and then continue in this rut.

And I want to differentiate apathy from contentment in which the flavor is more like, you know what, this is good enough. I'm okay with this. It's not great, but I can find peace here. Apathy's flavor is more brooding. It's like you're dissatisfied. But too tired to care. And if you're stressed out about the world right now, which as I said, would be very understandable. 

I just want to say, this is not a time to quiet your emotions with food and overeating. This is instead a time to reconnect with yourself, take exceptional care of your wellbeing so that. You are calm and feeling capable for whatever is to come. This is the time in spite of it all to tap into determination.

And before we dive in, one thing I wanted to mention to really watch out for here is where your brain might go, which is, well, if I really wanted it, I wouldn't feel apathetic and I would follow through. Desire for what you truly want is only part of the equation. So just don't tell yourself that you don't want it enough.

You want it enough. You wouldn't be listening to this right now. If this didn't matter to you, it matters. And you have enough desire to get to your goal. Okay. Even the level of desire you have when you're feeling apathetic is enough. And that might seem a little bit weird right now, but I'll explain. And by the end of this episode, you'll see why.

So let's talk about what creates apathy. So you might be able to avoid some of it. And what to do when you're feeling apathetic so it doesn't impede your progress. Mainly, how do we transform into determination? What does that process look like? What is the path of that? So what leads us to feeling apathetic about our weight loss goals?

First, you know, I think of things in terms of the physiological reason and also the more, you know, mindful reason or the psychological reason. So physiologically, it could be, you just want to check in with your body. Your hormones are different because of where you are in your cycle, or you might be on days 16 to 18, which for most of us, that can be a tough time.

We have less energy. We can't seem to get into a good mood. Everything is kind of dull. or lackluster. Okay. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep or you have interrupted sleep.  If you've got any of this physiological stuff going on, just know it's not going to be super surprising that you feel less motivated or no motivation whatsoever.

So we just want to normalize that for you. All right. Compassion is required. Okay. Be compassionate with yourself.  Let's look at mentally. Okay. So psychologically, what are some reasons you become apathetic?  It could be that you fall out of belief. And disconnect from that feeling of possibility that your goal is even possible for you.

This can happen alarmingly quickly. You think you're doing great, you're making some progress even, and then someone makes a comment that triggers you. Or you see yourself in a photo that you don't like. You see something on social media about how hard it is for women over 40 to release weight. And BAM! 

Apathy. What's the point? Why try? I thought I was doing well, but look at that photo. Maybe I'm not doing as well as I thought. It's, it is so much harder. Look at all the evidence. Okay. And we get apathetic. The next one is habituation. I've talked about this a little bit before. It's a process in which you can think of it as like the novelty effect, right?

It's where things that were once seemingly. Really interesting and amazing. They just seem less important. They give you less joy and pleasure even weight loss related things This can be things like being able to zip up your jacket easier, or you stop noticing that your body is moving with more ease when you get up and down.

When you go on a walk, it's easy, and this has become normal for your brain. You might have other life stressors going on. That are draining your energy. You don't have something you're looking forward to. For many of us, we almost need something that we're looking forward to.  You don't have enough social connection or love in your life. 

You don't have a work project or otherwise any kind of project or something that you find inspiring, fulfilling, or stimulating,  or you feel like you've been doing all the right things when it comes to, you know, eating better, moving your body, but you're not seeing the results as quickly as you would like.

So that scale is just inching down ever so slowly. So how do we transmute apathy into determination? What if we could just flip the switch on it? How might we do it?  I'm currently taking a course called the neuroscience of change. So as I'm learning, Okay. So if you're able to right now,  I invite you to try out this exercise with me.

So you can be folding laundry, you can be making dinner, driving, even that's totally okay. What I want you to do is connect with apathy right now. So in your body, if you can summon up what it feels like. To be apathetic. So some of us have more practice at this kind of thing than others. So if this seems a bit foreign to you, getting into your body in this way, no worries, just relax.

See what comes up as you just listen to this exercise. You can't do it wrong. If you don't notice much as we go through the exercise, that's totally okay. It doesn't mean anything. Okay. It doesn't mean anything about you. So what do I mean by connect with apathy?  Call up a time you can remember when you were in a screw it mode with weight and food when you thought I don't care and you just ate the thing  you ate the food when you thought about doing something for your health when you thought about doing something for your weight loss goal and It was like crickets in the motivation department.

You just didn't care about your weight at all in that moment.  Okay. So just notice what's going on in your body right now.  Do you feel sensation anywhere?  You can even use your hand almost as a magnet to scan your body, to pick up where you are feeling any kind of sensation and just notice.  Notice what apathy feels like, and we won't stay here for very long, but just notice where are you noticing it in your body? 

Now, shake it off. If you can take a deep breath. If you're standing, do a full spin, stand up, do something physical that clears that away.  Now let's think about determination,  the quality of being resolute firmness of purpose.  Can you call upon a time in which you were very determined? Maybe you surprised those around you, or they commented on your effort.

Maybe you even surprised yourself.  There was simply no stopping you on this one. You stayed up late. You got up early to get it done. You were going to fix it, confront them, get your kid in that program, get help for your parent who needed it, get help for your pet who needed it, whatever the vet bill, whatever the cost, you were going to get to the finish line of that 10K.

You were going to make it happen. You were strong. You had will. You were a force.  So just take a second.  How does it feel to be determined to feel unstoppable?  Got it?  Notice how your body feels in this moment. What's your posture like? How do your muscles feel? What's happening in your chest?  What do you sense in your body as physical sensation? 

All right. So now just compare these experiences. What was it like for you to be in apathy compared to determination? Was there any difference? Was it slight? Was it significant? Did you feel nothing? Did you feel numb? It's totally fine. We're just experimenting, right? But what you just did there, if you were able to connect with apathy in your body and then connect to determination was you started to train your brain in real time to move from apathy to determination.

And remember what wires together fires together in your brain. Okay. So we want determination neurons. Not apathy neurons. I know that's not a real thing. Okay. So don't quote me on that, but you get the idea. So the more time you can be in determination, the easier it will be to get out of apathy and back into determination on your goals, on your weight loss goals and make the food choices that really serve your body.

And serve how you want to feel in your body. That ease with that you want to have in your body, you know, feeling good in your own skin.  All right. So  I am like amazed at my clients who have been listening to this podcast for years sometimes before they sign up with me and they. I haven't seen any progress.

And then we start coaching together and they release 15, 20, even 30 pounds. How can this be? They've maybe listened to a hundred episodes of information of what to do and often exactly how to do it. But this explains part of the reason to me, because when you have. dedicated time and space to focus on it.

You're literally rewiring your brain on the call. You're thinking and speaking and embodying determination. So you walk away more determined. You spend the next few days in determination. You're simply giving your brain more opportunities for determination neurons. To fire. Okay. So you're thinking thoughts that create this state for you. 

I don't think the goal should ever be to avoid feeling apathetic or unmotivated. I think it's part of the full human experience, but rather use it as a time to soften, to regroup, ask yourself, what is really going on? Because it's not that you don't care or that you don't want it badly enough. There's always valid reasons.

So instead of giving up, I want to invite you to turn inward. At first glance, you might think we need to jump right into inspiration, light that fire within, right? Get super motivated about your goal. And sometimes that does it. So I'm not knocking that you can listen to a podcast, you can watch a video, you can use something outside of yourself to.

Help think the thoughts you want to think basically generating new thoughts in your brain. You're borrowing them from other people So use that when it works for you and I want to be clear that exercise that we went through it really wasn't to show you necessarily how to Transmute apathy into determination.

Although if that does it for you amazing and keep doing it but I really And I did that exercise because I wanted to give you an experience of the connection between how you're thinking and how you feel a direct experience of that.  Okay, great.  If your go to inspiration doesn't work right away, what you usually do to tap into inspiration and you're still feeling apathetic, or, you know, you're thinking about doing something inspiring, like listening to something, but you just find a lot of resistance to doing those things.

So the certain things that help restore your energy, you're just feeling a lot of resistance to doing them. Then lean into this next part. I'm about to tell you.  I think when we're in doubt, which is different than apathy, right? Doubt is not believing that it's going to be possible that it's going to happen.

That's when we double down immediately and tap into our own conviction, right? We tap into conviction to offset the doubt. I don't think it works the same with apathy. This is just my personal experience, so it may be different for you. When I'm in apathy, I need to rest first. I need to take a break. I need to soften, to get quiet. 

And note, this does not mean overeat. This does not mean take a break from eating on point.  You can feel apathy and not overeat.  How can you make things a little easier with food this week? Order in. Order in healthy meals. Make a food delivery, grocery delivery, decide it's going to be simple week, simple week this week.

We're looking at roasted broccoli, white rice and smoked tofu. That's what we got in the fridge. Okay. That is perfect.  I just think apathy is a call to charge our battery. That might be physical, like going for a walk, gentle yoga, stretching, meditation.  Try changing your physical environment. Rearrange the furniture.

Get rid of that thing in your house that you simply have been putting up with. You don't like it. Maybe you never did. This is usually a chair, okay?  Your pictures, reorganize your linen closet, clean. There is something so therapeutic and rewarding about tidying and cleaning. If you are struggling with processing some emotion, I would recommend cleaning first, okay?

It will just help you. And if you want to get inspired about cleaning, read the book The Maid by Nita Prose. She's a, it's a really good book and it's a great character in which she's a maid and she's so Into cleaning and every time I'd read it it would motivate me to want to clean my house Okay,  that also might might be physical It might be mental and emotional where we need to reset like taking a break watching a funny movie Taking a personal day with zero guilt And yes, you do have permission to have zero guilt.

Although I know it can be a struggle for many of us. It might be saying no to something you agreed to so that you can simply just go to bed early. All of those things can give you a bit of renewed energy and a fresh perspective.  Now from this place, after we are rested and we are well cared for, I think it's only then.

we can get into determination. So get out your notebook, get out your journal. If it serves you fire those determination neurons, this is a done deal for you. You're smart. You'll figure it out. You'll find a way. It's simply a matter of overcoming every single obstacle and you can do that. It's an opportunity.

It's simply a matter of learning new skills, acquiring some new beliefs, thinking new thoughts, and cultivating qualities like determination.  It's physically possible for you to release, let's say five pounds of excess fat in the next five to seven weeks. That is not unrealistic. I don't care who you are.

Okay. That's physically possible. So unless you defy the laws of physics. You are capable. You are unstoppable.  You are the embodiment of determination. Okay? Determination with teeth and grit. Doesn't matter how long it takes or what your history is. This is happening. You are moving yourself forward. You are doing that in tiny ways and in huge Leaps.

You're looking for the solution when it comes to this, you know, obsession with food, maybe, or overthinking food and weight loss, but you are the solution.  You're looking for determination, but you are the determination  and we need determined women in this world right now. So rest. If you need to rest, slow down, if you can, but do not give up and turn to overeating.  Be determined. Okay, I'll talk to you again soon. Bye