Here are 10 mindset shifts to escape the diet prison you've been living in!
In the last podcast episode, I discuss how many women over 35 are living in self-imposed diet prisons. They say they want freedom from dieting and thinking about food, yet they are always enabling restriction to lose weight.
Many women over 35 are falling victim to random influencer MLM schemes, random supplements, crash diets and weird ways of eating to lose weight instead of practicing the basics to take care of their health.
Curious enough the majority of women I have worked with in my nutrition practice already know what to do, but they are not doing it and are falling victim to these kind of things that will never help them achieve their goals until they're 85 years old.
If you know what things to do and are not doing it, then why are you not doing it?
The reason why actually has little to nothing to do with food or nutrition. It has to do with your brain!
Your mindset dictates the behaviors and habits you do. If you have what I call stinky thinking, then executing the basics of health to lose weight will be unlikely something you do because your mindset gets in the way of you taking action.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, I share 10 mindset shifts that are critical for you to make to escape the diet prison and be successful with not only losing weight, but also keeping it off for good!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- 10 Mindset Shifts To Escape The Diet Prison You've Been Living In
- How To Be Motivated To Take Care Of Your Health
- Are You Desiring Freedom, But Enabling Restriction
- Food Is Not The Problem
- Are You A Flaky Friend
- Are You An All Or Nothing Person
- Dopamine & Boring
- Cortisol Detox Diet Plans
- Cortisol Problem vs. Lifestyle/Nutrition Problem
- Showing Up For Yourself When You Don't Feel Like It
- Comparison Is A Thief
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Are You Living In A Diet Prison?
- The 5 Basics Of Weight Loss
- Scale Loss vs. Fat Loss
- Why You Regain The Weight
- All Or Nothing Mindset
10 Mindset Shifts To Escape The Diet Prison Podcast Transcript
Hello friends!
Today we’re talking about 10 mindset shifts to escape your diet prison. I want to help you escape the diet prison you are living in.
So many of you are living in diet prisons. You want freedom, but you keep enabling restriction because that’s all you know.
Interesting thing is I speak to many women in my free consultations, and they tell me Megan, I have no idea what to eat or how to eat. I listen to your podcast. I follow you on social. But I have no idea how to eat.
Well, that’s interesting because you are an adult. How have you survived up until this point in your life not knowing how to eat? You are alive, correct? You must know somethings about food! I’m pretty sure you know how to eat and you know what foods are healthy.
The problem is you have always enabled restriction through dieting so mentally you are always dieting.
Always mentally thinking about what you should or should not eat. Mentally beating yourself up, mentally questioning your choices. You are living in a mental diet prison, but you have no physical results for the diet prison you live in.
You think food is your problem, but it’s not. If I tell you, I want you to eat 100 grams of protein daily does that solve your snacking, obsessive thoughts about food, your nighttime overeating, you skipping meals, you making everyone else a priority other than yourself, you not planning any meals or taking the time to look at the store for easy protein options? No…
Knowing doesn’t do anything. Your mindset is a large part of this problem and why you do not implement the things you know you should do. That is why I’m giving you 10 mindset shifts today to escape this diet prison you’ve been living in.
I can tell someone all day long how to eat, but the bottom line is they won’t do it if they have stinky thinking. Stinky thinking, stupid thinking, catastrophizing, not taking radical ownership, not believing in their ability to change, reacting to emotions.
Your thinking and emotions get in the way. Changing your health and losing weight requires changing behaviors and patterns. Changing behaviors and patterns requires a new way of thinking and dealing with emotions.
So, 10 mindset shifts coming your way to escape your diet prison.
Number one is you are your own hero. No one is coming to save you. You are your only hope. It is up to you to change your life. You can hire a coach or nutritionist like me or have accountability from others, but truly you are your only hope.
No one is going to save you. No one is going to make sure you eat your protein, eat your meals, get your steps, not be a jerk to yourself, get to bed on time.
No one is coming to save you when you dive into your pantry and overeat instead of journaling or dealing with what you are feeling at that moment.
No one is coming to hold your hand. No one is coming to slap the food out of your hand or tell you didn’t screw up last night when you ate all the ice cream in the house and you’re sitting around feeling bad about yourself.
You are your only hope. That means you can be your own hero of your story. The hardest part of my job as a nutritionist and coach is that I can’t make you desire this change. I can’t force you to change and do things.
There have been some clients where I wanted the goal for them more than they wanted it for themselves.
Or I have seen the potential in other women and how someone is just one or two steps away from a radically different life, but I can’t force their hand.
You can be your own hero. You can swoop in and save the day. Save your life. The problem is most people have to hit rock-bottom before they change.
Some people gain 50 pounds before saying oh gosh, I better do something. Some people have to have a heart attack or get diabetes before they take their health seriously.
I can’t tell you when that moment is for you, but I can tell you it’s much easier road if you can foresee that rock-bottom and do something about it proactively.
It's a lot easier if you’re a 30-year-old who’s got 25 pounds to lose and a little bit of overeating going on to fix this then when you’re 57 you’re post-menopausal hating your body and have 50 pounds to lose and a lot of overeating going on.
The other thing you need to hear is that you are not helpless. You are not broken. But you have to take action and take radically responsibility for yourself. You have to learn how to push yourself to do things even when you don’t believe they will matter.
I can only go for a walk around the block tonight, that won’t matter. That’s what you think so then you don’t go. Then you don’t go for 2 nights, 5 nights, 10 nights. The problem isn’t the distance, the problem is you’re not consistent.
Going every night just for a walk around the block (if that is where you are starting), is going to get you stronger if you are doing nothing right now. You’re also more consistent. Versus, waiting for the right time to do it the right way you are not getting stronger.
Part of my job as a coach is to meet people where they are at. So, if someone is not following through with their plan, we have to dial it back to something they can be consistent with.
If walking 30 minutes a day is too much, let’s just do a walk around the block or 10 minutes. Here’s the thing. You can only scale back so much.
If the plan is practical and doable and you’re still not doing it, the question is why aren’t you doing it?
You have to eventually realize no one is coming to save and you have to put the plan to pavement. But there are some of you listening to this who need to be told, you are not helpless and broken. You need to get your you know what in gear. You need to take ownership.
I’ve seen so many people say I just can’t bring myself to eat my protein with my breakfast, I can’t go for a walk around the block. Like protein for breakfast could literally be a yogurt or a premixed protein shake.
If you say these kinds of things, you’re acting helpless. I’ve been doing this for almost 11 years now and some individuals have told me I just can’t bring myself to go for a walk around the block.
Well, maybe you don’t really want to change. You don’t really want to get healthier or fitter. Please don’t take this out of context because there’s a lot of nuances to why people don’t do what they say they want to do.
But you always find what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for an excuse you are going to find it.
Like I know I should walk around the block every night, but I’m not doing it. Can you walk around your house to get more steps or your basement? Well, I get distracted.
Can you get a $100 walking pad off Amazon? Yeah, but then I have to pull it out at night and my family will watch me.
Okay, can we go to the gym and walk on a treadmill? Well, that’s too boring.
Okay, can you watch a Netflix video, listen to a podcast or your favorite music? Well, I guess I could but that’s not entertaining.
At what point, are you going say to yourself I’m going to do the thing I don’t want to do?
Because remember no one is coming to save you. If you do not save yourself, you are going to find yourself on your deathbed with every struggle you’ve had your whole life.
You have to learn to push yourself to do things even when you do not want to do them.
Like do you not brush your teeth and make all kinds of excuses about that? I bet you don’t because you don’t view teeth brushing as optional. That is the difference. You view walking and eating your nutrients like protein as optional.
Until you start owning it and calling yourself out on your own BS excuses, nothing will change. But the amazing news is you can be the hero of your story.
You and only you can transform yourself. It’s up to you so if you want it, you have to push yourself to do the things you don’t want to do.
Number two is you don’t have to be perfect, just consistent and for longer than you think. Most people severely overthink what they have to do and think it has to be extreme.
Remember, my one rule is if you can’t do it until you’re 85 years old, you shouldn’t be doing it so no extremes.
The truth is you don’t have to do that many things to see results. It’s all basic and easy. What’s not easy, is the demands of our life, our jobs, our stress, our families.
The problem is unless you get rid of that stuff, it’s always going to be there but that means you need to start smaller than you think will matter. Just like the walking I described. Walking 10 minutes a day.
If you walk 10 minutes a day for 30 days, you will be more consistent with walking than if you walked 3 times for 30 minutes during that 30-day period.
A lot of people really get caught in the perfectionism of things when really, it’s about being consistent. What are you doing most of the time?
If most of the time, you are including your protein in your breakfast you are consistent even if you go out to brunch twice a month.
This is the mental prison people get trapped in though. They’re like OMG I went over my calories Friday night. There was a party, yada-yada and I couldn’t stay within my calorie target. I’m like that’s fine.
What has your average calories been over the 30 days? It’s not what you do here and there, it’s what you are doing overall. The forest not the trees.
A lot of people get caught in the trees not seeing the forest and are living in an all or nothing prison.
Funny thing is you are not all or nothing in other areas of your life. Do you buy eggs and when you get home 1 egg is broken so you throw out the entire carton of eggs? No! Do you wake up late for work, don’t have time to shower then say I’m not showering until Monday!
Do you get a flat tire then get so mad at the flat tire you slash the other 3 tires. No! You are not all or nothing in any area of your life. But if you continue to view your health habits this way you will forever be in a diet prison.
A lot of women I see are living in this extreme all or nothing mindset. They say they want freedom from that, yet they enable it.
For instance, I had a woman I was talking to recently tell me she wanted to start coaching but she had to wait 8 weeks because she had two weekend trips coming up and one wedding.
I was like are you planning this wedding? She was like no.
But it’s Friday night and Saturday. I was like let me get this straight. You mean you can’t do anything for 8 weeks because you have two weekend trips and wedding that you are going to and not planning.
She was like yeah. There’s just no way I can focus on this and give this attention.
This is just stupid thinking. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I’m sorry but this is mental diet incarceration right here. You can't include protein with your breakfast and still do these things? You can’t get a 10-minute walk in and do these things? This is a classic example of someone waiting for life to be clear.
Honey, life isn’t never going to be clear and if you can’t do some basic things like including your protein with your breakfast and getting just a 10 minutes’ walk while living your life, we got problems. The problem is this is where so many women are at, and they don’t realize how stupid their thinking is.
You would never do this in any other area of your life. If your child’s school called you at work and said your child is sick you need to come pick them up, do you tell them sorry I have to wait until I’m done with work? No!
You pick them up and you figure out the BEST you can do to finish work and get dinner on the table. Instead of saying I can’t do anything, ask yourself what’s the best I can do? That way, you’re doing something instead of nothing.
This is sabotage 101, but this is where a lot of people are with their health. Listen, this isn’t just about losing body fat.
This is about your health and you feeling your best. You’re telling me this is the most important thing to you in the world, but you can’t do one or two basic things while living your normal life?
You’re still thinking like a dieter not like a healthy person. This is the kind of thinking that keeps you in a diet prison. Always thinking it has to be the right way, the right time or perfect.
Stop thinking in terms of perfection. Start thinking in terms of what’s the best I can do to be consistent.
Number three is the work will be kinda boring. I talk about the boring basics all the time. Podcast 102 I talk about the 5 basics of weight loss that are guaranteed to get you healthier. They are all simple.
Simple, simple, but you know what? A lot of us don’t do boring very well. We suck at boring.
I teach spin classes on the weekends, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years. I have noticed that people in classes cannot sit and work in the saddle for even 30 seconds anymore. They get bored. They sit up, look at their phones.
Stop riding their bikes. I’m like this isn’t a break. People’s attention spans are so short these days that they need to be entertained.
So, I have learned as an instructor I need to keep people engaged and moving quick.
I see this with clients all the time. They don’t do boring well.
For you, the mindset shift to get out of your diet prison is boring is what works. If it’s boring, I must be doing it right. If it’s boring, I’m on the right track.
We do boring in a lot of other areas of our lives and don’t seem to mind it. We drive the same way to work. We have a similar routine each morning.
We brush our teeth the same way. We put on our jeans with the same leg every time. You do boring all the time.
If you can do it in other areas of life, you can do it here too. Boring and repetitive is what works. Every single time.
A lot of midlife women are in this bad mindset that there must be something missing. This is too slow. This is too easy to be right.
I must be missing something so then they become really susceptible to influencers who are marketing to you things you do not need.
You’re scrolling on social media, and you see someone talking about this thing then suddenly you’re like that’s what I need! Except it’s not what you need.
Recently, I did a reel on Instagram about a Facebook post I was tagged in. A woman asked in a Facebook group I was in if anyone have a cortisol detox diet plan. She searched all over online and in Pinterest and couldn’t find it.
So, I made a video, and you know what I said? She couldn’t find this diet plan because this isn’t a thing.
A cortisol detox plan isn’t a thing. It just sounds new and exciting. Sounds a lot sexier than doing the boring basics to take care of your health.
You have a liver and kidney that detoxes you. There is no detox thing. That’s not a thing. And cortisol unless you have Addison’s disease you do not have a cortisol problem. You may have a burnout problem, but that is a lifestyle and stress management problem.
Not a food problem.
I love how people automatically think when they are stressed out maniacs that food is going to solve that. They’re overextended in their lives and racing around like a chicken with their head cut off and they think food is the fix.
Food doesn’t solve that. Whatever you are doing with food is a symptom of your lifestyle and stress. We need to solve for those things.
My boyfriend’s niece came over the other night and told me she bought a detox supplement, and I told her she may has well have lit her money on fire because it’s junk.
I told her to cut back on her alcohol, eat real meals because she skips them, drink water and exercise. Sound too basic? Yep, but that is what works.
You cannot say I want fat loss, frictionless, on autopilot and not have to think about it but then you say I don’t want it to be boring. No, it has to be boring.
That’s how it works. If you say I’m not the kind of person who can do boring, well then, you’re not the kind of person who gets results. Sorry.
Number four is you never need motivation to take care of yourself.
Escape the diet prison by reminding yourself you never need motivation to go for a walk, eat your protein, do a little strength training.
Remember what I said earlier. No one is coming to save you. You can’t bank on motivation or feeling like it. Imagine saying I don’t feel like going to work.
I don’t feel like feeding my kids. I don’t feel like combing my hair or brushing my teeth. I don’t pay my taxes unless I feel like it. I don’t feed my dog unless I feel like it.
I don’t do the things to be a functional adult unless I feel like it.
You don’t let that stuff slide anywhere else in your life, but when it comes to this stuff. Your health, you do. And I’m saying this to help you.
If this is triggering to you, it’s because this is something you need to work through.
You don’t have to live by never needing motivation to take care of yourself, but don’t plan on living a long life or achieving fat loss results.
If these are the goals that you say you want. You want to live a long time, be an example for your kids, be around for your grandkids, be mobile as you age, like how you look in pictures, feel comfortable in your clothes, lose weight and keep it off forever… awesome.
You’re not going to be motivated most of the time. If you can’t show up when you don’t feel like it or you’re not able to execute when you’re not motivated or you’re not able to take unmotivated action, you’re not ready for the results.
Because you can’t show up for yourself when you don’t feel like it.
If you’ve been sitting doing nothing and struggling and haven’t moved your body and don’t do anything with your nutrition and you’ve slacked off on this stuff for a long time… but then you think you should be blessed by the motivation fairy?
That’s not how this works.
It’s like your child not applying for a job and expecting someone to show up at the front door with a job offer.
No, they have to apply for jobs and see if someone calls him. But if your child is like no, I’m waiting for a job to call him. You’re like no, that’s not how this works.
Motivation with your health habits is no different. You don’t wait to be blessed by the motivation fairy.
If you’re doing nothing then you say I’m going to start with something tomorrow and then don’t, you’re expected to be motivated from that?
Think about how crazy that sounds. If you had a friend who does nothing but make plans with you then blow you off at the last minute repeatedly.
They never show up, they treat you like crap, talk down to you and are unreliable.
Are you motivated go do things with them? No! They’re a flaky friend. That’s the relationship with you. You are the flaky friend.
If you don’t have a good track record with yourself, if you never show up for yourself, you’re always saying you’re going to do things but don’t, you talk down to yourself. You are unreliable to yourself.
You are showing yourself you have poor integrity and character with YOURSELF. Because you don’t do the things you say you are going to do.
I’m not saying you are a bad person. I’m saying when it comes to your health, you are the flaky friend to yourself, and you are not going to feel motivated. If you start showing up for yourself when you are not motivated, you will feel more motivated.
Even then, there will be days you’re not entirely motivated. You don’t have to be motivated to brush your teeth or shower. Why do you need to be motivated to eat your protein and go for a walk. You don’t.
If you want out of the diet prison you’ve been living in, you no longer wait for motivation to take care of your health.
Number five is you can eat anything you want, just not as much as you want. There’s a lot of people who still think they can’t eat certain foods and lose weight.
This is dumb thinking. Body fat is simply excess stored energy. Food is energy. Losing body fat is just losing stored energy.
You can lose stored energy eating junk food which I don’t recommend, but you can do it. I hate to say it, but the quality of your nutrition does not matter for fat loss.
In 2010, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University conducted an experiment known as the Twinkie Diet to demonstrate that weight loss can occur regardless of the foods consumed.
For 10 weeks, he ate processed snacks including Twinkies while limiting his caloric intake. He lost 27 pounds during the experiment.
And there are so many studies that validate this, which is why it’s so silly when someone gets upset that they ate an unhealthy food.
You are living in a diet prison if you can’t eat pizza, ice cream, cookies, without anxiety and thinking you messed up.
You can eat anything you want to lose weight; you just can’t have as much as you want. You want pizza? Awesome! You probably shouldn’t eat a whole pizza. Don’t eat it like a jerk.
Don’t pull an all or nothing card and say if I can’t have all of it, I don’t want it. You know who does that? Toddlers. Sorry, you can’t have cookies for breakfast.
We need to eat this meal first kiddo. Well, I don’t want breakfast at all. That’s what toddlers do.
Just because you currently struggle with certain foods doesn’t mean you should give it up. You can’t say I want freedom from this diet prison, then enable restriction.
If you lose weight and have your dream body, are you going to magically know how to eat those foods in moderation that you struggle with? Of course you won’t!
Breaking out of the diet prison, means eating everything you enjoy within the parameters of your nutritional needs.
If you’re hitting your protein and fiber, eating fruits and veggies then having pizza is not unhealthy or detrimental to your fat loss goal as long as you are eating within your energy requirements.
What is detrimental is the psychological obsession that happens when we believe we shouldn’t eat something or can’t have something. That is how you remain in a diet prison.
Number six is comparison is a distraction and slowing you down. I can’t tell you how many times a client comes to a call saying things like my husband dropped 10 pounds last week cutting carbs, my sister-in-law did keto and lost 20 pounds in 2 months and here I’ve been working on this for 6 months and not there yet.
My neighbor down the street did Ozempic and lost 10 pounds last month.
You know what my response is… so what? How does that even help you?
First can you do what those people are doing until you’re 85 years old? If not, you can’t even compare what they’re doing to you.
In fact, you should be thinking, how much farther ahead you are from those people.
Think about this. You’re sitting around envying people who are crash dieting. How does that make sense? This is stupid thinking.
And you are creating your own misery with this thinking. You are making yourself feel bad over this thinking and you control your thinking.
I wouldn’t think to spend a second thinking about any of that because again, how does that help you? It doesn’t! If anything, it stops you from taking action and makes you less consistent.
It makes you question everything you’re doing so then you sit around feeling sorry for yourself and do nothing. That doesn’t make sense my dear.
You can be the creator of your own misery and suffering, or you can be your own hero. Be your own hero. Keep your eyes on your own paper.
Number seven is shift your identify to who you have to become to get what you want. The question is not how do I lose weight and keep it off.
It’s who do I have to become to lose weight and keep it off. I have to become someone who shows up for themselves when they are not motivated. I have to become someone who shows integrity with themselves.
I have to become someone who works through resistance to get where I want to be. I have to become someone who is consistent. I have to become someone who walks daily.
I have to become someone who eats protein consistently. I have to become someone who has a healthy relationship with food.
If you stay the version that you are right now, you’re gonna get the results that are in alignment with who you are which is where you are right now.
If you are not happy with your results, you have to become an upgraded version of yourself and then you’ll receive the results. So, what do I want?
Let’s say to lose 30 pounds. Who do I have to become who loses 30 pounds? Now what you do is align all your actions with that version of yourself.
That’s it and it’s simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. You have to do what that person does. You have to become that person.
Visualize that person and do what they would do. This is an important piece of changing behavior that diets do not teach you.
Having healthy habits for life and staying strong, fit for life and keeping weight off for life means you have to shift your identity to become the person you want.
If you don’t want to be in a diet prison anymore, stop asking what should I eat and start asking who do I have to become.
Number eight is you can feel bad, but you don’t allow your emotions to stop you from taking action. Let’s say you’ve been working on your habits. You’ve been showing up for yourself. You’ve been doing a great job with your habits.
Then you go to the doctor, they put you on the scale even though your nutritionist has explained to you that body fat percentage is more important for your goals than a scale number. You get on the scale and have a meltdown over the scale.
For a week, you do nothing. You stop tracking your food, stop your calorie deficit, stop walking, start eating like a jerk.
Then you come to a coaching call with your nutritionist crying about the scale.
Makes logical sense. You should do nothing when you feel bad. Do nothing, sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Makes perfect logical sense. If you want to stay in a diet prison.
Listen to me ladies, I see this all the time with clients. Women who are emotional wrecks, emotional basket cases over the scale. You cannot have a meltdown like this anymore. You cannot react to your emotions like this anymore.
You can feel bad. You are allowed to feel bad. But you are not allowed to let your feelings stop you from doing the basic boring things to take care of your health.
Control what you can control. Your actions are all you get to control in this game. You don’t get to control the scale.
Do you know how long it took me to lose 80 pounds? A year and a half. After that I had to learn to build muscle because I lost so much when I lost weight. After that I had to deal with burnout and Hashimoto’s and changing careers.
After that I had a broken foot. Then my Mom had 6 bypasses and I had to fly home in a boot with a broken foot. What I thought was going to be 1 week ended up being 3 weeks because she caught a virus in the operating room, and it was at that time that I discovered something was going on with my Dad because he couldn’t remember anything.
A few months after that I had a stress fracture in my ankle. A year after that I had a stress fracture in my fibula from a car accident when someone rearended me on the interstate.
After that I had a hip replacement at 38, and I was on my own for most of my recovery because my parents couldn’t be there because they lived out of state.
After that my Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. After that I found out my boyfriend cheated on me with a married woman at work. Then three months after that my Dad died.
Imagine if I had stopped taking care of my health and sat around feeling sorry for myself every time something happened in my life.
Imagine if I did nothing but eat like a jerk and sit on the couch every time something bad happened in my life.
Truth is this is what a lot of women are doing, and this is exactly why they are not where they want to be with their health. We cannot sit around feeling sorry for ourselves anymore ladies.
Take your power back. Who do you want to become and what do you have to do to get it? You need to be your own hero. No one is coming to save you. You have the power to change.
You have the ability to do things even when you feel bad. Do you stop brushing your teeth when you feel bad? Do you stop showering when something bad happens in your life? Why not?
Those are health habits! No different than hitting your protein goal, walking, exercising, tracking your food if you have fat loss goals.
Escape the diet prison and embrace your power. You have the power to do the things to take care of your health no matter what happens in life. You can no longer be the version of you who stops when something happens or does nothing when you feel bad.
If you feel bad, go for a rage walk. If you feel bad, rage lift some weights. If you feel bad, go eat your protein. Notice how everything we talked about today is tying in here.
Number nine is to honor all your wins no matter how small. We have to stop putting ourselves down for not being enough. Not being perfect enough, good enough, where we want to be yet. All of that.
If you walk around the block and you’re not walking now, that is a win. You will surely get stronger even if you want to increase your steps. If you have a crazy day and come home and walk around the block or walk 10-minute laps in your basement, that is a win.
If you go on vacation and forget to bring protein and learn you need to bring protein, that is a win. If you go out to eat and track your food even though you’re not sure it’s right, that’s a win. You tracked your food.
Take credit for every, tiny thing you do for you.
I don’t know why but a lot of women are hung up on always doing things the right way. You are not always going to be able to do things the right way.
Life is going to happen, and you need to accept that and accept the win that you did the best you could do in that moment.
Also, a lot of women have a hard time accepting being a beginner. You are building new skills. Of course, you are going to make mistakes as you are learning. Every little step you take though is a step of progress.
Stop looking at how far you have to go and instead highlight to your brain where the wins are. No matter how little they are. Stack up the wins and stop looking for wins only with the scale.
Number ten is no more restriction and deprivation around foods. I believe a lot of women struggle with losing weight and feeling motivated is because when they think about losing weight, they automatically think about all the foods they need to cut out.
They have good and bad foods in their mind. If you go on a diet and enable restriction, this is just going to make you desire those foods more and you will mentally struggle when you eat them because you think you have failed or ruined all your progress when you eat them.
You can’t lose weight by enabling restriction and deprivation anymore, and that goes for calories too.
You don’t eat the least number of calories and lose weight. You eat as many calories as you can and lose weight. Imagine going to your job every day and saying, I’m going to do the least amount of work possible to not get fired.
I’m going to parent my children the least amount, so I don’t get them taken away. What? That mindset is just terrible. Eat as much as you can and lose body fat.
If you enable restriction, then you will fear this entire journey and you miss the fundamental point which is for you to be healthier. You fear not being perfect around the foods that trigger you, you fear not being perfect and failing with your diet, you fear being hungry.
No one loses weight out of fear unless they are a prisoner of war.
Here’s the other thing, if you do not learn how to eat the foods you enjoy while losing weight do you think you will magically know how to do that after you lose all your weight? No! Of course you won’t.
That’s what everyone does though. They try to be “good” and cut everything out and think they can re-introduce them later. Except that doesn’t work.
Weight regain will happen because you didn’t work on the fundamental root cause of your weight problem.
If you say you want to eat like a normal person and have freedom around food, then you can’t enable restriction because you’re just incarcerating yourself in a diet prison by doing that and your relationship with food will suffer.
So, no more going about this with restriction and deprivation around foods.
I hope this episode was helpful for you. I'll talk to you soon!
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