"True health requires a lifestyle dedicated to the wellness of the mind and the body. Without one, you cannot truly enjoy the other!"-Unknown Source
Let's talk about weight loss shall we? Recent estimates by the CDC place the United States average obesity rate at 33.8%. That's 1 out of every 3 adults in this country that are over weight or obese. Now, as a transformative coach, I want people to live happy, healthy, love filled lives. If people are genuinely able to do that with large bodies, then I'm all for it. I also think it is entirely possible to experience inner peace in the midst of difficult circumstances, and yes, having large bodies that don't work as well as we like, are difficult circumstances. Let me just start by putting that out there. There are plenty of miserable people in thin bodies, and plenty in fluffy bodies. Given that, let me speak about my experience in working with people both as a personal trainer and as a life coach.
First, here's my quick disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and so nothing I say should be taken as medical advice. You should always check with your physician if you are unsure if something is appropriate for you. Always trust your own inner wisdom over my advice.
Warning: The information I'm about to share, is useful for most people most of the time. If you aren't interested in losing weight, keeping it off, and enjoying your life more and more of the time, then don't read any further.
The first question I will inevitably ask people who are interested in losing weight is, 'for what purpose?' Now, at first glance this may seem obvious, but I think you'll find upon further reflection, it's not as simple as it sounds. Go ahead and answer this question for yourself if it's relevant, and you're going to want to be really honest about this. Here's a few of the answers I get from people:
I want to lose weight because: It will make me happy. Other people will like me better. I will be able to get a better partner. My life genuinely will be better. Then I'll be able to do what I really want. I'll feel better in my body. I won't hate myself so much. It will make everything okay. I won't have to be depressed anymore. I don't want to die young. And this list goes on and on.
The purpose of this question is intended to draw your attention to what you think having a smaller body will do for you. If it's anything other than feeling lighter and getting around easier, than you are tricking yourself. A thin body will not make you happier, it won't make everything okay, and it won't get you more love. It won't make your self-esteem issues go away, and it won't make you like yourself anymore. Sorry to burst the bubble folks, but that is not how it works. Sure you can get more attention and approval from the people around you, but do you really want to hang out with people who only like you because of your body? Even if you have an attractive body, how long will it be attractive, 20 years tops? What then? Why do you think so many people have affairs later on in life with younger people, because they identify with the body... but it's awfully fleeting.
Here's the next question I ask people, 'Are you your body?' Most people have some sense that they aren't their nose, or their arm, or their toes we simply have a nose and arms and toes. Are you your body, or do you just have a body? Let's pretend for a minute that you aren't your body. Who are you then? Are you your brain, or do you just have a brain? Are you your Mind? Are you your Spirit? Obviously, this quickly becomes a spiritual conversation. For purposes of this article, I invite you to consider that you are not your body, and spend some time asking yourself the question, who am I? For me this question has yielded many answers over the years, the one I keep coming back to is, that I must be whatever part of myself that is changeless. To me, that part is love. I invite you to do your own exploration though.
My experience is that when we begin to let go of identifying ourselves as bodies, it takes much of the charge out of the whole weight loss conversation.
Next, I want you to put down the big stick that you've been beating yourself over the head with in an attempt to motivate yourself into action. We often attempt to motivate ourselves by telling ourselves that we are terrible for being fat, or we are a horrible ugly people that just need to get up off the couch, or if we don't put the bag of chips away, we're a worthless piece of $&!?. This kind of self talk can admittedly work in the short term. But ultimately it is just demoralizing. For most people it doesn't work at all, and if it does, they lose a couple pounds and say you know what, I'm still a horrible ugly person, and then give up.
You put down the stick by practicing self acceptance and self love. Most people want to lose weight to get more acceptance and more love and just feel better about themselves. What I'm suggesting is to make that the beginning and now the end. Start by giving yourself acceptance and love right now. Take a minute at this very moment, go get in front of a mirror, or close your eyes, and just imagine giving yourself acceptance and love. You can even throw in an affirmation if you want like 'I deeply love and accept myself.' I've seen people begin to lose weight over time from just this step alone, so don't skip it!
When you are no longer attempting to lose weight to get more happiness, love and acceptance, losing that weight gets really simple really quick.
Okay, now that you've put down the big stick, started to accept yourself just as you are now, and are no longer identifying yourself as just a body; you're going to want to create a vision for your life that is inspirational and compelling. In that vision you might want to include things that involve having a healthy fit body. If it's not sufficiently compelling, it won't propel you forward to make the changes you want to make.
The next piece of the weight loss puzzle, is examining how you got there in the first place. The extremely rare answer is an unalterable metabolic problem, in which case, if it really is unalterable, you might as well spend your time focused on something else anyway. The vast majority of people have simply taken in more calories(units of energy) than they consume. In other words, you have an eating strategy that doesn't match how much you move your body, which has a direct impact on your metabolism.
Addressing the first part of the equation is simple. Move your body more. Find something you love doing where you move your body continuously for a period of time, 20-30min preferably, and you get your heart rate up. That's it. If you haven't found something you love yet, explore, try new things. Go dancing, try hula hooping, or bike riding. If you haven't found an activity it's likely because you haven't spent much time searching and experimenting.
The other half of the equation is your eating strategy. In my field of NLP(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) we talk about how as humans we have unconscious strategies for just about everything. We have buying strategies, selling strategies, emotional strategies, success strategies, and the list goes on. There are actually naturally thin eating strategies that work for most people. Usually when I bring this up, people think I'm speaking about for instance a low calorie diet, which is an actual strategy that can work for a time... if you want to feel starved all the time and have a miserable relationship with food. I personally prefer the gentler more enjoyable approach to eating healthy.
If you are interested, you can elicit your current eating strategy by asking questions like how do you know when it's time to eat, how do you know how fast to eat; how do you know how much to eat, and how do you know when to stop eating? However, in the end, knowing your old strategy isn't particularly relevant to creating a new one.
The most useful eating strategy for people waning to lose weight and keeping it off that I've ever seen, comes from Paul Mckenna's best selling weight loss book, I Can Make You Thin. I'll outline the basic four step process, but if you want more details, I highly recommend you go read Paul's book. I don't get anything for recommending it, it's just the best I've found available.
Step 1. Eat When You Are Hungry. Starving yourself can actually make you fat by creating a horrible yo yo affect with your metabolism. When your body get's less food than it needs, it actually goes into starvation mode, and starts storing as much fat as possible, because it doesn't know when it will get more food. And then if you go back to eating normally, you will actually be storing even more fat than before. Your body doesn't care if you are attractive, it just wants you to survive. This is also why people who go a long time in between meals have predictably slow metabolisms, because their bodies are storing up for the next mini famine, from breakfast to dinner.
Step 2. Eat What You Actually Want, Not What You Think You Should Eat. When we create forbidden foods for ourselves, they begin to have power over us. These unnatural cravings come from self imposed limitations and that then blocks our bodies own natural intuition about what foods it wants and needs. Paul McKenna references a study done in the 1930's where kids were allowed to select from a huge array of foods with 24/7 access for a 30 day period, and what they found is that over that 30 day period the kids naturally ate a healthy balanced diet, even though they ate different things day in and day out. So it's time to get rid of the whole notion of forbidden foods.
Step 3. Eat CONSCIOUSLY, and Enjoy Every Mouthful. Essentially, slow down. Also stop with the distractions like TV, or reading the paper, or listening to the radio while you eat. When we aren't paying attention, we often will eat so quickly that we will not give our bodies enough time to get the 'full' signal to our brain, before we put an extra 8 or 10 bites in. And by that time it's too late, we've over eaten. Try slowing down to eating at about 1 quarter of the speed that you were at before. Also be sure to thoroughly chew every bite.
Step 4. When you THINK you are full, STOP Eating. If you've been ignoring this signal for a while, it's going to take a couple weeks for your body to re-calibrate itself to what's natural. Also the slowing down is key for this fourth step, because you'll have much clearer access to your full signal when you are going slow and paying attention. Remember it's not, stop when you're about to puke, it's stop when you think you are full. And then if you wait a while, and decide, oh I'm still hungry, then you can always go back for more.
One thing I want to invite you to keep in mind is that you can't just do a couple of these golden rules and skip the others. It is a system that has to be done as a whole. For instance you can't simply skip the slowing down part, or the stopping when you think you are full part because it won't work as a strategy unless all the pieces are working together.
Alright, the final piece of this weight loss puzzle is overcoming Emotional Eating. That's right, stuffing our emotions with food to avoid them. Let's face it, food, is America's drug of choice. Just like people use other drugs to change how they feel, most American's use food in an attempt to change how they feel. This has been one of the leading factors in the obesity epidemic. It's actually more of an emotional avoidance epidemic because it goes far beyond just food... but we'll save that conversation for another time.
In order to change our tendency to eat or over eat in an attempt to stuff our feelings, we've got to find a healthy outlet for our emotions. Paul Mckenna actually has a great CD in the back of his book that helps with this. In addition though, I want to encourage you to brainstorm some different practices that you could begin to play around with in order for you to get your emotional needs met. It could be anything from getting more hugs every day to writing in a journal, to telling your pet everything that went wrong that day. I don't care what it is, just find something that works for you. Because if you get the eating thing down, and you lose weight, but you don't address your emotions, a whole new problem will likely manifest.
Alright, there's quite a few different steps, so let's review.
Weekly Coaching Tip:
- Acknowledge that losing weight and being thin will not give me more love, peace, happiness, or make everything okay.
- Recognize that I am not my body
- Get in touch with who you really are. Essence, Spirit, Higher Self, Love, Joy... (explore)
- Put down the stick and stop trying to motivate yourself with negative self-talk
- Practice Self-Love and Self-Acceptance daily. I like doing it in front of the mirror
- Create an Inspiring and Compelling vision for your life. What would make you go WOW! It's useful if the creation of that life will be aided by you having a fit healthy body
- Move your body 20-30 min. a day doing something you love and getting your heart rate up
- Take on a natural intuitive eating strategy like Paul Mckenna's
- Find new ways of meeting and expressing your emotional needs. Write in a journal, hire a therapist, talk to your pet, practice saying what you feel, etc.
- Watch as the pounds melt away, and at the same time you just find yourself caring less and less if they actually do.
Although this may seem like a lot of work right now, I promise this will be a project well worth your time and energy, because it will almost certainly positively influence all areas of your life.
And always remember, there's never a good reason not to love yourself, even having a few extra pounds.
Until next time,
Love and Light,
Coach Ty
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