Don’t know how to maintain your weight after you lose it?
Fear getting on the scale?
The fear of getting on the scale was very real for me. I was always losing weight and gaining it all back and then some. I felt so out of control, enough so I would always put off my yearly physical. I dreaded the Scale Fail: that humiliating moment when I would feel like a failure.
When you dread stepping on the scale!
I’d finally set up the appointment and wouldn’t sleep the night before feeling stressed and guilty from snacking all day. I would have flashbacks to the previous year when the nurse entered the exam room and cheerily said, “Let’s get your weight! You can put your purse and coat down and take off your shoes if you like.” I’m thinking, wait – I just want to stop and strip down naked, only that would just embarrass me more!
I’m sure you’ve been there, too. Off comes the coat and shoes, and you know that’s not going to be enough. Then it happens – the balance bar stays up, and the nurse slides another weight across the bar. You don’t even want to look. She records your weight and you don’t even make eye contact. The doctor comes in, “Hi, I see your weight is up a little up this year. You know we all could stand to lose a few pounds!” (and there she is, 90 lbs, soaking wet!) Then you ask, “But doctor, why am I losing weight and gaining it all back?” and her reply is the standard, “You have to exercise more and eat less.”
Seriously!
I can tell you if that worked, no one would be struggling with weight gain!
The doctor does not know how hard you have tried to give up soda or stop going to the drive-thru and snacking at night. If she only knew you lost the weight three months ago when you started that low-calorie diet, but then you gained it all back. When you explain this, she shrugs and tells you, “I’ve heard that before! But eat less, and you’ll get there.”
At first you feel angry, then guilty, because maybe you cheated on the weekends? Are you thinking, why do I always do this? I lose the weight, but then I always gain it all back?
Weight Loss Program Failure
You’ve tried the Atkins diet, the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, the SlimFast diet, the apple cider vinegar diet, and all the powders and pills. You’ve lost weight but gained it all back. Are you as frustrated as I was?
Good intentions, Diet Failure
You feel exhausted from searching for the right answer. You go home and Google “what diets work best that are easy to follow but still allow you to have a glass of red wine” because, after all, it does have resveratrol, which builds immunity! You attempt to do the math equation of weight loss to calorie intake. Finally, you find a low-carb diet you haven’t tried before!
Full of good intentions, you return to the gym, run on the treadmill, do the elliptical, and come home starving, tired, and craving carbs. You wish there were another way; you feel self-conscious at the gym like everyone is staring at you. But, after a lot of effort, you managed to lose the weight! Yay! The pressure’s off, so now you decide to only go to the gym two times per week, and the pizza, beer, and pasta you haven’t had for months are calling your name!
Fast forward a year, and you are back in the doctor’s office, ready to step on that scale for the epic Scale Fail, and here you go again, rinse and repeat!
Do you find yourself wondering what is the magic formula to lose weight without gaining it all back? Here’s the secret: YOU didn’t fail! Your diet mentality failed YOU!
You can lose weight without dieting!
In my 90 Day Healthy Habits Transformation program we begin looking at why and how you are eating, losing, and gaining back your weight! We look at why diets don’t work – because it is never just about food. Diet mentality and pressures from society have led us to believe that the number on the scale determines our worth. It conditions us to believe that we are weak, out of control, and don’t have the willpower about eating and exercise. This leads us to become obsessed with the number on the scale and oftentimes to mentally diet.
Mentally dieting is when you think you “should” be dieting all the time, even when you are not taking any actions to follow through. This is the diet mentality or rules that have been told to you for years. Do you find yourself:
- Weighing yourself daily
- Feeling guilty after eating
- Always counting calories
- Stressing over exercise
- Thinking about food constantly
- Secret rules for snacking
Do you recognize any of these behaviors? If so, the problem here isn’t YOU. This message is so wrong. You are not broken, weak, or unworthy! These are the messages that you hear every day. You get some of these messages from your doctors and your loved ones. They think they are encouraging you with what they think are positive suggestions: “you should try to eat less,” “you should watch your calories,” or “you should join a gym.” But then there’s the diet industry that wants to sell us weight loss products that never work for a lifetime. This all has such a detrimental effect on our self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence. When you have an image of the person you think you are and someone says you are not, you feel defeated, and give up! We lose our confidence which in turn destroys our motivation.
Feel confident and win the weight loss battle.
Weight loss starts in your brain, not your diet. All of your decisions, behaviors, habits, and thoughts have been ingrained there for years, most often starting when you were a child. When you deprive yourself the way diets do, you become unhappy and those feelings lead you back to the same old habits. When you redirect attention and focus from dieting, counting calories, and deprivation, you create pleasure loops for your brain and that allows you to feel confident. It’s a newly found self-love that shifts your thoughts, mood, and actions
I remember as a chubby little girl, my Dad, my hero, had once said, those chips are going to go straight to your hips! In his mind, he was encouraging me to be healthier and not have to deal with being the “fat” kid at school. But what my brain heard was he thought I was chubby. So guess what I did? I continued to eat the chips: after all if I was already chubby, what difference would it make!
When I work with my clients we look back to the beliefs they were taught as a child. Often these are the same beliefs that limit your confidence as you become older and more worldly.
Shifting your negative thoughts, feeling better about yourself, and seeing yourself as worthy of a healthy body is the magic potion for weight loss.
Confidence starts with your mood. How you see yourself in the mirror affects the choices you make every day. If you see yourself as someone who is overweight, then you send the signal to your brain negative feedback that you have the habits of someone who is overweight. With this mindset, your brain will continue with behaviors that an overweight person would have. Energy flows where attention goes. Shifting your thoughts, believing in you, is the first step to change your mood. Imagine when you look in the mirror and you see yourself as this amazing human, and not the “fattest” person in the room.
If you find you might need a little help making this change, schedule a complimentary call, and let’s brainstorm how you can jumpstart your weight loss.
Download 8 Tips to Own Your Confidence and start to shift your thoughts today!
