Your before you lose weight checklist! These are 9 prerequisites you must do before losing weight, looking for another diet or tracking calories.
This Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode is not your typical eat protein, eat fiber, count your calories and get your steps.
In this weight loss podcast, I share the less talked about things that need to be addressed before losing weight, before attempting a fat loss phase or expecting to see the scale to go down.
Think about this... If I could snap my fingers and get all your weight off of you, would losing weight fix all your problems?
Will losing weight fix your bad relationship with food?
Will losing weight fix your relationship with yourself?
Will losing weight fix your emotional eating?
Will losing weight fix your sabotaging patterns?
Will losing weight fix your all or nothing mindset?
No!!! Just losing weight does not fix these things which is why you must address things like this before losing weight.
If you want to lose weight permanently and never regain it again, have a good relationship with food and have good sustainable habits you can do until you're 85 years old, then this requires you to stop focusing so much on just losing weight in the beginning of your journey.
Because just losing weight does not solve the problems that created your weight problem in the first place.
This jam packed weight loss podcast episode explains in great detail the non-negotiables you must do before losing weight or searching for a new diet.
This is your weight loss checklist!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- The Before You Lose Weight Checklist
- 9 Prerequisites Before Losing Weight, Looking For Another Diet or Tracking Calories
- How To Define Success In Weight Loss (hint - success is only if you have sustainable habits and you can keep weight off forever)
- Why You Keep Regaining Weight After Losing Weight
- Why You Lose Motivation and What To Do
- Losing Weight Won't Fix Your All or Nothing Thinking
- Losing Weight Won't Fix Your Relationship With Food
- Why Meal Routine & Structure Is Important Before Tracking Calories & Dieting
- The Importance of an Exit Strategy After Dieting
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Can You Not Lose Weight In A Calorie Deficit
- All Or Nothing Thinking
- Your Expectations Are Killing Your Results
- How I Lost 80 Pounds Walking
- Why You're Hungry On Weight Watchers
- Optavia, The Most Dangerous Diet
Before You Lose Weight Checklist Podcast Transcript
Hello Friends!
Today I’m sharing with you the before you lose weight checklist. Before you dive into another diet, another program, read another diet book, calculate new calories or track calories, you need to do these things.
These are non-negotiables before you diet, before you track calories, before you reduce calories, before you go into a fat loss phase.
Most women I work with in my nutrition practice are not ready to lose weight when they come work with me.
Their mindset is not in a good place, their metabolism is not in a good place, they’re not able to be consistent, they don’t have sustainable habits yet, their expectations for how weight loss should work and how fast it should look is inaccurate – all these things we’re going to get into in a minute.
The worst thing I could do is put someone right into fat loss if they’re not ready for that. It’s like if you’re building a house.
You as the homeowner may want the walls and ceiling to go up, but the foundation isn’t down yet.
The ground isn’t level, the foundation needs to be poured. If you rush this process and try to by-pass the order of operations, it’s going to cause more problems and cause you to spin your wheels over and over.
I have 9 checks for you to go through before you try to lose weight. And this is not a recommendation, this is a requirement if you want to be successful in your journey and by successful, I mean losing weight permanently.
Not losing it and gaining it back. That is not success.
If you want to lose weight and live your best life and never have to worry about weight coming back and you want to be a good, healthy examples to your kids and grandkids, this is what is necessary before you try to lose weight.
Number One – Before you try to lose weight, I want you to stop and reflect on this one question. Why do you keep regaining the weight? This is the real problem you need to solve for. Why do you keep regaining weight?
Do you keep doing crash diets that are unsustainable? Remember whatever you do to lose weight, is what you will need to do to sustain it. If you can’t do it until you’re 85 years old, you will regain the weight.
Do you not have good foundational habits that you can do until you’re 85 years old? Are you not consistent enough? If you’re not consistent enough, what things are getting in the way? What things may need to change?
How many you need to change to be more consistent? What behaviors and habits need to change? Do you not have good structure and routine around your meals?
Do you have an all or nothing mindset? Do you have to perfect or you’re totally off the wagon? Do you feel like you have to restrict foods you love?
Do you think there’s good and bad foods and if you eat a bad food, you somehow failed? Are you restricting your calories too much that you get overly hungry?
Do you struggle mentally and emotionally with your feeling your feelings and stress? Maybe you eat your feelings instead of feeling them?
If any of these things are going on, these are the things you need to solve for before losing weight.
Because finding a new diet, reading a new book or calculating new calories won’t solve these problems. I always find it interesting that we think somehow weight loss will solve these things. Weight loss will just make these things worse!
You cannot move forward with losing weight until you are able to answer this important question. Why do you keep regaining weight back?
You know, I speak to so many women. Women in my free consultations, women on social media, women who are my clients and have been my clients.
And it’s the same conversation I’m having with them over and over again.
Women tell me about all the different diets they’ve done and how many times they’ve lost weight and how frustrated they are that they’ve gained this weight back and they just want to lose weight.
And I’m like well, is this really a weight loss problem? Because in my mind you don’t have a weight loss problem. You’ve told me about all the countless diets you’ve done where you’ve lost weight.
Clearly, you can lose weight. The issue in my mind is why do you keep regaining it?
Arguably, many people I see are not approaching weight loss in a sustainable way. They are doing it in a crash diet way. They do these extreme things with their diet and it’s just not sustainable.
So, until you get really clear on why you keep regaining the weight, what are the things getting in the way, what are the real problems - is it consistency, lack of knowledge, lack of support, lack of changing your behavior, creating sustainable habits, is it your mindset, feeling like you’re either perfect or you’re failing?
Until you get boldly honest with yourself, this pattern of losing and regaining is going to continue. And no new diet, no new program, no new calories are going to fix that.
Actually, I spoke to a woman in my free consultation recently who told me about all the times she’s lost weight and regained it and none of the things she described to me were sustainable. I wasn’t surprised at all why she kept regaining weight.
She was not creating new behaviors and habits and she still had this mindset of thinking she needs to find the right way of eating vs. realizing she needs to create sustainable habits she can do until she is 85 years old.
When I explained this to her, she completely ignored what I was saying and asked me how to figure out how many calories she should be eating.
I told her she had no business thinking about calories yet because she had to build her foundational habits first.
And she just could not understand this. She must have asked me like five times in the call how to figure out her calories.
Now, first the purpose of my free consultations is not to coach you. The purpose of those calls is to figure out what’s been getting in the way of you reaching your goals, for me to give you some insight on what steps you need to take next to reach your goals and to discuss if you are a candidate for my coaching program.
Ultimately, I told this woman she was not a candidate for this program at this time because she couldn’t see that her habits and mindset were getting in the way of her losing weight for good.
Number Two – Your mindset must change and be on point. When people try to lose weight, they often focus on the calories, the points, the food, the exercise and the steps and yes these things are important but your mindset and your thinking is the number one most important thing.
Here’s some examples.
If you think you must see fast results in order to determine whether or not it’s working, this mindset needs to change.
Because you’ve probably done a bunch of crash diets that have taught you to lose weight quickly then regain it because it was not sustainable. Your thinking around how you approach weight loss needs to change.
If you think the types of foods you eat need to drastically change or that your diet needs to change drastically when you’re trying to lose weight vs. when you’re in maintenance, that mindset needs to change.
Because whatever way of eating you follow to lose weight, is what you will need to follow to sustain it.
If you think you have to be perfect 100% of the time or this is never going to work, that mindset needs to change.
If you think you’re a failure because you ate a donut, ice cream or pizza yesterday, your mindset needs to change.
If you think you can’t write down or track your food because you are ashamed of what you ate, that mindset needs to change.
The mindset is your inner game and it’s the most important part of this process and without changing your mindset, behavior will never change permanently.
Your inner game is things like your relationship with food, your relationship with yourself, your emotional eating, your sabotaging patterns.
If these things are not in order, it does not matter what plan you follow or what plan I give you because you’ll sabotage it.
Before I allow clients to go into phase 2 which is all about fat loss and maintenance, I have them go through phase 1 where we work on their mindset and their foundational habits simultaneously.
That stuff has to be there before we ever talk about a fat loss phase and how to exit out of it into maintenance.
Way too many people try to jump into fat loss, and they are not ready yet. Think of it this way… if I could snap my fingers right now and all the weight you’re trying to lose comes off, would your binge eating go away?
Would your emotional eating go away? Would your relationship with food be healed? Would your subconscious sabotage patterns go away?
If I got all your weight to come off right now, would your perfectionist tendencies causing you to start over every Monday stop?
If I got all your weight to come off now, would your all or nothing thinking around food stop?
You see we’re not ready for weight loss and losing weight does not fix these problems. You have to fix these mindset issues. This goes back to the foundation of your house analogy.
You can want to put the walls and ceiling up all you want, but if you don’t have a foundation they’re going to come toppling down. It’s the same thing here.
The number two thing you do before trying to lose weight (remember – the number one thing is to figure out why you keep regaining it) then number two is you have to have your mindset on point, you have to improve your relationship with food, you have to have a good headspace so you’re not an all or nothing person or perfectionist.
You have to have good coping mechanisms, so you don’t make progress then something happens, and you sabotage again. This is the thing. Your mindset needs to be in place and I’m telling you – you need all these things before you’re ready to lose weight.
The great news is as you address some of these issues, you’ll start to lose weight. I see that happen with clients all the time.
But this is what I meant when I said earlier that you need to get honest with yourself because you cannot expect yourself to lose weight if you have not addressed these issues first.
You don’t magically have a better relationship with food after dieting and losing weight. You don’t work on these things are you’ve lost some weight and I believe some people have that mindset, which again is the wrong mindset because it does not work that way.
Number Three – You need to have good structure and intention around your meal routine and how you fuel your body.
I cannot tell you how many clients I’ve seen trying to count calories, count points, count macros, do whatever but they have zero routine or intention around their meal structure.
What I mean by this, is a lot of people eat haphazardly. Oh, it’s breakfast! They don’t really feel like eating breakfast, so they skip it which leads to binging later in the day. Oh, it’s lunch!
They haven’t thought at all about what to eat for lunch and they’re so busy with work that either one or two things happen. Either they skip lunch which leads to over snacking and binging later on, or they have what I call a dieter’s lunch.
An iceberg salad with a little chicken breast and some dressing, or they have a bar or snack. Something that will never keep them full. Doesn’t have sufficient protein or fiber either.
From my view, it’s like a lot of people are eating like toddlers. The problem is you are not fueling your body so trying to stick to any type of calorie range or program is going to be extremely difficult without having some intention around your meals and having a routine around when and how you eat.
Yes, you may need to prep a few things ahead of time, so you’ve got items already prepared and ready to go.
Yes, you may need to keep things on hand like yogurt, cans of tuna, rotisserie chicken, lunchmeat, string cheese, jerky sticks, fruits, a protein powder, etc.
It is unbelievable to me the number of women who complain to me about this, but this is your body!
You need to fuel it to stay alive, have good energy, live a vibrant life, manage your health and lose fat. That is arguably the most important thing. Without your health, what do you have? And what are you teaching your children by not doing this?
Why we think this should not be a priority is so concerning to me. The reality is there are so many convenience options available at the supermarkets these days that can make your life easier, so you don’t have to do a lot of cooking.
You can legitimately make things work pretty easily with a few tweaks and it always comes back to looking for solutions and thinking about things differently.
I talk to a lot of my clients who struggle with lunch about just building a sandwich. You know what the number one question is? Isn’t bread going to make me fat?
No ‘mam… in fact you will probably binge a lot less if you include whole grains like bread. The only reason you need to avoid whole grains is if you are allergic to them or don’t like them.
Build a sandwich with a high fiber bread or wrap, add some protein, add more protein on the side, load the sandwich up with veggies, maybe do a piece of fruit on the side and an individual bag of chips if you want.
Lunch is done! Not hard to do – we just need to think about things differently and stop thinking in these extremes. Bread is not why people are overweight. Too many calories is.
Listen your biggest enemy during fat loss is hunger. If you are eating haphazardly, then hunger is going to become a problem because you are not going to be able to be consistent when you have no intention or routine around how you fuel your body.
I don’t care what time you eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. You just need a routine that works for you and your lifestyle. That’s it. But without it, consistency and controlling hunger will be a problem.
Number Four – you need to be at a good place with where your metabolism is at and your calories before losing weight.
Way too many women I see in my practice are trying to eat 1200 calories or less a day and they can’t lose weight and now they’re stuck and that’s why they’re working with me. This is not a good place to take someone into a fat loss phase from.
Remember a calorie deficit is how our body’s lose body fat. If you are maintaining your weight at 1200 calories, you would have to create a deficit from there.
Where are we going to go to create a calorie deficit? 800 calories? 700 calories? You will not be consistent with that for 8-12 weeks for a calorie deficit phase and it will be damaging to your metabolism. That is not a healthy starting point.
It's scary how many women I’ve seen in this scenario. If this is the case, we need to bring your calories up to maintenance and stay there for a while.
This will put you in a better position later on to drop calories to a reasonable number making fat loss easier in the future.
And the thing is if you feel like you can’t eat more than 1200 calories a day or you have to starve yourself to lose weight, you’re not ready to lose weight.
We have to make sure you are at a good place metabolically before losing weight.
I swear this is the biggest thing I see women doing is chasing weight loss too much and not understanding that constantly reducing calories, cutting calories, trying to lose weight all the time is lowering their basal metabolic rate making it harder and harder to lose weight.
The good news is your body will adapt up to its normal after a period of time. You can also improve your metabolic rate with progressive resistance training and adequate protein intake.
But constantly chasing diets and slashing calories is actually making it more difficult for women to reach their goals.
This is why a lot of women say they have a slow metabolism and they do not understand that their efforts to constantly diet are directly causing a lot of those issues.
This is why for a lot of my clients we are not focusing on weight loss right away. The pressure is off.
We work on eating enough food and calories to fuel the body properly and we work on the mindset. You have to be at a good starting point otherwise it’s going to make fat loss harder.
Number Five – However, you eat to lose weight, is what you will do to sustain it. If you can’t follow a way of eating until you’re 85 years old, you don’t do it. If you can’t do it for 10 years, you shouldn’t be doing it for 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 months, etc. This is your new mantra before losing weight.
We as humans tend to make dumb decisions because we are impatient and desperate, and we want weight loss right now.
Way too many people are in the camp of thinking well, I want to get some weight off, so I get motivated so I’m going to slash calories, do stupid things like a meal replacement, meal shakes, Optavia, fast 24 hours a day, cut out food groups, follow some trendy diet or do something unsustainable until I get the weight off.
Except the weight comes back. How motivating is that? The trap most people fall into is they want the weight off now.
They’re frustrated then they do the thing to get the weight to come off, but because the approach was so unsustainable and not a good fit they stop then gain their weight back, maybe then some then they’re frustrated but in the back of their head they still think oh, the last time I lost weight it was successful.
It was with Optavia or Weight Watchers or slashing calories or whatever and they go back to that and this how people get trapped in this cycle. Your filter is can I do this until I’m 85 years old. If no, then you don’t even do it for the next 10 days.
Number Six – Before losing weight, you have to understand you are going to lose motivation. You have to have your expectations in check because the worst thing you can do is think you’re going to be motivated every day to practice habits of health. And when it’s not, it’s a rude awakening and people fall off and sabotage.
Most people when they start a plan, they’re super motivated and set high expectations for themselves. They try to do a lot of things at once.
Then that lasts maybe one or two weeks then all of the sudden they don’t want to do anything at all.
They fall off and sabotage and feel like a failure or feel like something’s wrong with them. The only thing that’s wrong is your expectations and you’re trying to change too much as once.
If you listened to my 80-pound weight loss journey, I talk about how I just went on a 10-minute walk every day. Not everyone needs to start with walking. The message is start small with reasonable expectations.
Do you think I was motivated every single day to walk? No way!
You must understand you are going to lose motivation and that is not a deal breaker for you.
Imagine if you thought you were going to be motivated every day raising your kids, brushing your teeth or going to work. Expectations are everything. If motivation is a make it or break it for you, you are not ready to lose weight.
If the only way to show up and make progress is if you feel like it, weight loss is not something you’re ready for yet.
That’s why this is on the before you lose weight checklist. You need to work first on doing things regardless of feeling motivated. Do you think I feel motivated to do things every day? Absolutely not.
You need to practice doing the things you say you’re going to do even though you don’t feel like it. The worst part is every time you say to yourself that you’re going to do something then you don’t follow through, you are breaking a promise to yourself which reinforces distrust with yourself.
Image if you had a friend who constantly made plans with you then didn’t show up. You start to believe that friend is not going to show up and that they’re not a true friend.
That’s what you are doing for you and that’s why I say you need to practice doing things even when you’re not motivated is something you need to work on before losing weight.
Number Seven – You are going to think you are not making enough progress. Our brains play tricks on us. Every person will always think they are not making enough progress, or we should be further ahead.
That’s a slippery slope and can lead to sabotage. I have seen so many women make huge progress, but in the back of their head something is telling them it should be more, it’s not good enough, it’s not enough progress, this doesn’t count and that is so dangerous to think that way.
They have a belief somewhere that they should have made more progress, or the scale spiked, or measurements didn’t change, and it invalidated all their progress. It is so dangerous to think like this and it will cause you to sabotage.
Imagine if you found $100 and you were mad and said it should have been $500. Or you won a million dollars in the lottery, and you got mad and said it should have been $5M. That thinking would be silly.
So, you have to understand in fat loss, you may lose a couple inches around your waist, but your brain will go to well I still have more to lose. I still have so far to go. The scale still hasn’t gone down.
You must be ready for this because this is normal for our brains to react this way. It’s a sneaky way we all sabotage and you have to be on the lookout for this because sabotage will try to convince you that giving up will get you more progress. It’s crazy!
You have to understand going into your journey, that you are going to feel like you’re not making progress. Literally, every single person feels this way and you must understand that it’s not true.
Number Eight – No all or nothing thinking in weight loss! We often say we are an all or nothing person to validate our decisions. I’m going to binge on this pizza now and I’ll start over on Monday.
No, you’re trying to validate the choice you’re about to make to feel better about it and justify it.
You must realize you are not an all or nothing person. Nothing in your life operates in the all or nothing or perfectionism in any other area of your life outside of weight loss. If you have a flat tire, you don’t go around and stab the other three tires.
If you open a carton of eggs and one is broken, you don’t throw the entire carton away. If your kid smarted off at you, you don’t put them up for adoption. If you’re late to work, you don’t say screw it and don’t bother going to work.
You don’t forget to brush your teeth and start over Monday? You don’t get up late one morning and don’t have time to shower then say screw it I’m not showering for three months. You don’t do that.
It’s only in weight loss where we do it and it’s when we are trying to justify behaviors we struggle with.
Number Nine – Last one! You must have an exit strategy for your weight loss. You must know how to go back to weight loss, and you have to be thinking about this before losing weight.
This is another missing piece I see for the women who come work with me. They know how to lose weight, but they don’t know how to maintain it. Often, I find there’s a lot of fear around maintaining weight.
Women thinking they’re going to gain weight by bringing calories up to maintenance of women thinking they should be losing weight.
That is probably the craziest thing I’ve seen. Women thinking the scale should be going down and inches should be going done when they’re in maintenance.
That’s the wrong expectation, but that’s because our brains have been so wired to always want to lose weight and not recognize there is a huge victory in just learning to maintain results no matter where that is!
Weight loss is not the goal. Maintenance is the goal. Being able to maintain whatever results you achieve is the goal.
Why do you think you don’t see companies like Weight Watchers have an exit strategy? It’s because it keeps you in their cycle longer.
When you gain weight back, you then go back to dieting again because that’s what you know. You don’t know maintenance. You’ve probably never lived there before or had a diet teach you that.
But maintenance is where you will thrive and enjoy your life. You’re not meant to live in a calorie deficit permanently or be dieting forever. That should not be the goal so before you lose weight, make sure you have an exit strategy.
How are you going to bring calories back up? How does the plan or program you’re going to follow going to account for you going back to maintenance?
Generally, I tell my clients 8-12 weeks in a calorie deficit for a fat loss phase and then we’re back to maintenance for a while.
Now, every client of mine is different how long they stay in maintenance, how long they’re in a deficit varies, but this is a key part of your journey!
Make sure you have an exit plan out of your diet or calorie deficit before you start losing weight. Very important!
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